There’s a ton of particles used in TU that I’d love to have available in the Particle FX item’s selection, but there wasn’t really a dedicated thread just for suggesting new particles yet, so I thought I’d make one.
I tried to limit this list to particles that I feel like I’d actually use in a condo or game world map, but it still ended up being stupidly long anyway. Feel free to add to this if I missed anything.
Natural
Cloud
Used in the Personal Storm Cloud and Personal Blood Cloud player particles, along with a rain and lightning effect.
A pure white version without the extra effects would be very nice; good-looking 3D fluffy clouds are pretty difficult to make with current items.
Mist
Used in Nimbus; faintly visible far in the background.
A similar particle is also used in the thumbnail for Altitude, but seemingly not in the map itself.
Small Mist
Used on placed Ghoul Coins.
God Rays
Used in Nimbus.
Falling Cherry Leaves
Used in Garden. Since the cherry tree item is colorable, it’d be nice if this was white and could also be recolored.
Flowing Grass / Leaves
Used in Altitude, Treasure Cove, Sunrise Isles, Wishy Washy Waterfall, probably other maps.
Wind
A visible wind particle would be really nice to have for outdoor scenes. The Snow FX item and the Flowing Leaves particle shown above have a similar effect mixed in; if that could be isolated and made into its own particle that’d be great.
An additional small wind particle would be great to have as a way to visualize the push area of DIY Fans, Push Volumes, etc.
Black Hole
Used in Zombie Massacre and Minigolf (HIO upgrade).
Blue Flame Jet
Used in Little Crusaders (dragon roar upgrade).
Candle Flame
Used on various candle items.
Smoke
Used on players killed by Acid-type damage volumes.
Bubbles
Used in Underwater and Corrosion/Decommission. A smaller version is used in Tower Threads.
More Fountain Variants
There’s a Fountain particle in the current selection, but there’s a couple different sizes used in the Plaza (a larger one in the Tower Lobby and a smaller one at Seasons).
Dripping Water
As far as I know, there aren’t actually any particles exactly like this in-game, but I felt like mentioning it anyway since it would be extremely useful.
Basically, just a single drop of water that falls down and hits the ground periodically. This would be good for creating leaky pipes and ceilings or dripping stalactites in caves.
Dust Motes
Another particle that I don’t think is actually in the game, although there is a very similar one.
You can make kind of convincing-looking dust motes using scaled-down Starfields, but you can still get close and see that the particles are actually + shaped sparkles (plus the Starfields also get more difficult to select when scaled down).
A particle like Starfield but with smaller, circular specks would be a bit easier to work with and would look better up-close.
Explosions
Heart Explosion
Used in Minigolf (HIO upgrade).
ZM Ghost Orb Explosion
This is also used when equipping size potions.
Pixel Explosion
Used in Zombie Massacre when you get enough kills for a Combo Power.
Radio Tower Pulse
Used in Zombie Massacre. This would especially benefit from being colorable; the effect itself looks very cool but the color being limited to green would limit its usability.
Bubble Explosion
Plays when falling into water at high speed.
Impacts
Bullet Impacts
It’d be nice to have some of the impact effects for shooting certain types of surfaces.
The wood and glass impact effects in particular would be nice to have, especially if they could be upscaled and used for stuff like shattered windows or broken planks and furniture.
Ring Impact
There’s a few particles like this with varying sizes and colors: in ZM (when picking up bonus points and when revived) and Minigolf (after putting into the flag hole).
Anime Sparkle
Used in Minigolf (HIO upgrade).
Ball Race Pickup / Star Impact
Wandering Stars
Used in Ball Race when finishing a level.
Cosmic Rainbow / Rainbow Stars
Used when bouncing with the Magic Trampoline.
Mega Spark
Used on players killed by disintegration.
Sparkles
ZM Weapon Pickup
Similar to the currently available Sparkles particle, but the sparkles are much larger and appear more sporadically.
Cuboid
Radiant Shine
Used on Treasure Chests o’ Units and Always Lucky Slot Machines.
Trails
Lightning
Bullet Time
The bullet time golf upgrade is the default solid trail + the actual bullet time effect, but for condos a version of the particle with just the bullet time would be a lot more versatile.
Rocket Trail
Used by the RPG super weapon in SDNL. It looks similar to the Fire trail in the current particle selection but I’m like fairly certain it has less fire and more smoke. I think it looks a bit better but maybe I’m actually insane and both trails are exactly the same.
Wind Trail
Used for the RC Rocket and RC Plane.
Bright Cloud Trail
There’s a Cloud Trail particle already, but its default color is a dark bluish gray. There’s a similar trail in Nimbus that’s much brighter by default and would be a lot easier to recolor.
A similar (or the same) trail is also used when you get a HIO in Minigolf.
Explosive Flask Trail
ZM Ghost Movement Trail
Also used on placed Ghoul Coins.
Blocky Trail
Used on the Sleigh items (RC and Vehicle).
Unnatural
Tendrils
Used in the Game World Ports.
Kalarry
Cosmic Fog / Dark Cosmic Fog
Used on Cosmic and Haunted Catsacks.
The Cosmic Catsack fog is kind of available in the current particle selection, but it’s a trail and looks very sparse when not moving, even if upscaled.
Rings
There’s a few different ring particles, used in Accelerate (Item Box), Virus (Sonic Shotgun), and the RC UFO.
Player Particles
Some of the player particle items would be nice to have for use in condos.
If any of these are added, it would be great if their condo versions could emit particles in a cubic or spherical area instead of their usual playermodel-shaped area. It’d make them a lot easier to work with.
In particular, these would probably be most useful: Stink Fumes, Pixels, Flare, Meteoroid Shower, Stars, Abduction.
