AsBirthRule

The asBirthRule files define a particle effect. A particle effect is an effect where many, small objects are spewed out from a point at certain occasions. For weather effects, the particles can be rain drops, for colliding with a parking meter, the particles may be coins.

The format is ASCII-based and consist of a block enclosed by { and }.

The files start with a definition of the type of banger data given. None of the MM2 files use anything but type a, like this:

type: a

Next comes the main asBirthRule block:

asBirthRule {
...
}

This block can contain several tag-value parameters:

Tags of the asBirthRule block

tag	format	Description
Position	float float float	Position where particles originate
PositionVar	float float float	- is randomly modified within this range
Velocity	float float float	Velocity and direction of the particles when created
VelocityVar	float float float	Variance in velocity, the velocity is randomly modified within this range
Life	float	Life-time of the particles
LifeVar	float	Variance in life-time
Mass	float	Mass of a particle
MassVar	float	Variance in particle mass
Radius	float	Size of a particle
RadiusVar	float	Variance in particle size
Drag	float	Unknown
DragVar	float	Variance in drag
Damp	float	Unknown
DampVar	float	Variance in damp
DRadius	float	Unknown
DRadiusVar	float	Variance in dradius
DAlpha	float	Unknown
DAlphaVar	float	Variance in dalpha
DRotation	float	Unknown
DRotationVar	float	Variance in drotation
InitialBlast	int	Unkown, maybe number of particles created immediately on activation
SpewRate	float	rate of new particles per second?
SpewTimeLimit	float	Maximum time, in seconds, for particle creation
Gravity	float	Gravitational factor for particles, for Earth conditions enter -9.8 or thereabaouts
TexFrameStart	int	Index of the first frame of particle animation in the image
TexFrameEnd	int	Index of the last frame of particle animation in the image
BirthFlags	int	Unknown
Height	float	Unknown
Intensity	float	Unknown
Color	int	Unknown

The global particle effects use the texture image named "TODO: I could have sworn that I saw an image where the indices matched all of the default vehicular particle effect, now I can't find it", but object collision particle effects may use other images, see dgBangerData.