If you played my latest demo (secret of manes) there is some smoke with the impact of the bullets when you fire the gun against a wall. If you like that - I released it some time ago, check blitzcoder.com for a particle system by norc.
basicly it works in a way that a number of sprites are fading in and out cascadicly, partially overlapping (in time) while their size is increasing. Tey are all using the same sprite, the nebula sprite at a max of about .2 alpha transparency. It's not single surface, but it's very simple to use and flexible. you can have any number of textures simultanously with that system. In the Demo I use it for Fire and Smoke in the same time. however. -
http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=norc02062003164813&comments=no
basicly it works in a way that a number of sprites are fading in and out cascadicly, partially overlapping (in time) while their size is increasing. Tey are all using the same sprite, the nebula sprite at a max of about .2 alpha transparency. It's not single surface, but it's very simple to use and flexible. you can have any number of textures simultanously with that system. In the Demo I use it for Fire and Smoke in the same time. however. -
http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=norc02062003164813&comments=no