Particles have a lifecycle. They are born with energy-max and they die with energy=0.
With every step their energy is lowered by one. A unit particle system currently can control 200 particles.
If the particle system has a high emission rate and you would get more than 200 alive particles the ones
with the lowest energy are recyclet and used as new ones.
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<unit-particle-system>
<texture value="true" path="images/particle.bmp" luminance="true"/>
<mode value="normal"/> <!-- currently supported is normal and black. -->
<!-- its the way the particle colors are calculated by the renderer -->
<primitive value="quad"/> <!-- line qorks too, but its not really useful -->
<offset x="0" y="-0.4" z="0.0"/> <!-- position of the particle system -->
<direction x="0" y="1" z="0"/> <!-- starting direction(and speed) of the particles -->
<color red="1.0" green="0.0" blue="0.0" alpha="0.8" /> <!-- particles are born with this color -->
<color-no-energy red="1.0" green="1.0" blue="0.3" alpha="0.6" /> <!-- particles die with this color (if they are not recycled!) -->
<radius value="0.7" /> <!-- size of the region where the particles are emitted -->
<size value="0.6" /> <!-- particles are born with this particle size -->
<size-no-energy value="0.3" /> <!-- particles die with this particle size (if they are not recycled!)-->
<speed value="3.0" /> <!-- speed of the particle systems ( used in combination with direction ) -->
<gravity value="0"/> <!-- basic kind of gravity. The speed in y direction is lowered by this value in every step -->
<emission-rate value="10" /> <!-- number of particles that are emitted in every step -->
<!-- the emission rate is a float value, so you can give an emissionrate of 0.2 for slow emission too! -->
<energy-max value="30" /> <!-- the starting energy for new born particles -->
<energy-var value="0" /> <!-- a variability for new particles -->
<fixed value="false" /> <!-- if the position of the particle system moves with the unit -->
<relativeDirection value="false" /> <!-- if the direction of the particle system will rotate with the unit.
<!-- For example smoke always has same direction ( wind ) -->
<relative value="true" /> <!-- if the position of the particle system rotates with the unit -->
<teamcolorNoEnergy value="false" /> <!-- if teamcolor should be used instead of <color-no-energy> -->
<teamcolorEnergy value="false" /> <!-- if teamcolor should be used instead of <color> -->
<static-particle-count value="4" /> <!-- You can have a static number of particles in a particle system now -->
<!-- if this is set their energy is always alternating up and down, but they don't dissapear.-->
<!-- ( make noEnergy / Energy the same if you don't want this alternating thing ) -->
<!-- And if this is set the particles have no more movement! So speed, gravity and direction doesn't matter. -->
</unit-particle-system>