Connecting the dots

In this recipe we will show how to connect particles with lines and introduce another way of drawing particles.

Getting started

This recipe's code base is an example from the recipe Simulating particles flying on the wind (from Chapter 5, Building Particle Systems), so please refer to this recipe.

How to do it…

We will connect particles rendered as circles with lines.

1. Change the number of particles to create inside the setup method:

   int numParticle = 100;

2. We will calculate radius and mass of each particle as follows:

   float radius = Rand::randFloat(2.f, 5.f);
   float mass = radius*2.f;

3. Replace the draw method inside the Particle.cpp source file with the following:

   void Particle::draw(){
    ci::gl::drawSolidCircle(position, radius);
    ci::gl::drawStrokedCircle(position, radius+2.f);
   }

4. Replace the draw method inside the ParticleSystem.cpp source file as follows:

   void ParticleSystem::draw(){
    gl::enableAlphaBlending();
    std::vector<Particle*>::iterator it;
    for(it = particles.begin...