how do I give a bullet a particle trail in 2D?

samuraidan

I have a shotgun I'm adding to my game and want to add particle trails on fired bullets to give it that extra oomph, only problem is I need the bullets to trail behind them regardless of direction, so that it doesn't do something weird like go up when the bullet is going left (it's a top down shooter).
all I can find online about this problem is an addon from 5 years ago and I feel like the particle system godot has now can handle that without it, I just don't know how.

SnapCracklins

Have you consider a secondary animated sprite for the "trail" effect versus particles? You can have it match the direction and trajectory of the bullet too with less work.

samuraidan

SnapCracklins this idea intrigues me, can you elaborate? I'm not too familiar with AnimatedSprite since I usually animate using normal Sprite and the animator node.

samueljbfrye

I would add a GPUParticles2D node as a child of your bullet scene. In your bullet's _ready() method, or every frame if your bullet changes direction after it's spawned, you could use $GPUParticles2D.process_material.set_shader_parameter("property_string", value) to change properties like the angle min/max of the particles. That way, whichever way your bullet spawns, it can manage its own trail. I hope that helps!

samuraidan

okay... update. I figured it out. it actually already does what I want, I just had to turn all the gravity off.
for anyone in the potential future reading this, that's under (in 4.x at least) process_material > particleprocessmaterial > accelerations > gravity > gravity (set to 0,0,0)