XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide

Chapter 5. Asteroid Belt Assault – Special Effects

As it stands, the Asteroid Belt Assault game allows the player to move around and fire shots in an animated asteroid field with enemy ships that fly in patterns across the screen. For the most part though, there is no "game" structure in place yet.

In this chapter, we will look at:

• Creating particles and particle-based special effects
• Handling collisions between game objects
• Playing sound effects
• Completing the game's structure

Explosion effects

While it is possible to assemble a frame-animated explosion effect and overlay it onto the screen whenever an explosion takes place, there are drawbacks to this approach.

The explosion will, by its nature as an animated sprite, be limited to a few frames which ...