Continuing our exploration of the SpriteBatch and Sprites, let’s turn our attention to particle systems. Particle systems leverage thousands of very small sprites to create the illusion of fire, smoke, explosions, precipitation, waterfalls, and many other interesting effects. They are a staple in modern game engines both to create ambience (i.e. fires and smoke) and to enhance gameplay (glowing sparkles around objects that can be interacted with). In this section, we’ll discuss the basics of how particle systems work, and iteratively build a particle system in MonoGame that can be used in your own games.
This approach is based on one that appeared in the original XNA samples, but has been modified for ease of use. You can see the original source updated for MonoGame on GithHub at https://github.com/CartBlanche/MonoGame-Samples/tree/master/ParticleSample