My sprite system is not exactly a particle system, but it supports automatic animation of all the properties of a sprite including scale, rotation, position, color, and alpha. I've used it in my own games for particle effects, including explosions, sparkles, smoke, and wind.
The thing is that not being a particle system, it doesn't have "emitters" which you can attach to sprites to make them automatically emit particles. You need to create each new particle yourself at the right time in your game loop. So if you have a fireball on your screen, and you need it to emit smoke, then you need to store the pointer to it somewhere so you can get its position and then spawn animated smoke sprites at that location.
The thing is that not being a particle system, it doesn't have "emitters" which you can attach to sprites to make them automatically emit particles. You need to create each new particle yourself at the right time in your game loop. So if you have a fireball on your screen, and you need it to emit smoke, then you need to store the pointer to it somewhere so you can get its position and then spawn animated smoke sprites at that location.