This repo is the public storage of all samples and issues for the Purrticles app.
The repo was created to accompany Purrticles v1.0 because it has a developer focus and we want to make samples available as well as give you an issue tracker for adding requests, or voting on the priority of our suggested enhancements or bugs.
Purrticles is usable as a standalone design and developer tool that can create code and other assets to do with particles. It is easier to use than the XCode particle design interface because it understands field defaults and lets you see just the Applied parameters.
V1.0 is limited to SpriteKit code.
Purrticles acts as a companion to Touchgram (below) - you can directly copy particle definitions from Purrticles and use them in Touchgram v1.3.6 onwards.
Future versions will provide more options for exploratory design and other game and UI engines.
A particle emitter often uses a texture to specify the basic shape for each particle.
If you don't specify a texture, it defaults to a simple rectangular shader, for now a solid block of colour.
Adding your own images is not yet possible. A near-future version of Purrticles will add it.
See the list of bundled textures from which you can copy the files.
The samples directory contains zipped Swift Playgrounds and other code, demonstrating use of code exported from Purrticles.
A Mac version of Purrticles was developed in parallel with the iPhone and iPad versions. It is coming soon in August 2025, as our entrant in the Shipaton 2025 competition from Revenue Cat.
If you save your documents in iCloud, the purrticles folder there will let you open from iOS or Mac.
Purrticles was developed from the start as a pure SwiftUI app which hosts use of SpriteKit.
A few interesting challenges have been met along the way, some of these have been explored with public test projects
- SwiftUI
- SpriteKit especially resizing and video export.
The interface of Purrticles v1.0 was obviously designed to match the SpriteKit particle editor in XCode as closely as possible.
Any features of that editor which are not yet in Purrticles are therefore labelled as bugs. As of v1.0 shipping, there are no other known bugs in the app (that was a lot of testing and fine-tuning especially on different iOS versions, thanks to SwiftUI's interesting evolution).
As of v1.0.2, Purrticles already goes past the XCode editor, with features:
- Applied tab showing only the non-default parameter settings, making it easier
- Full tab providing an interface to edit settings such as RGBA color ranges
- Generating Swift code (you can save a
.sksfile in XCode but the visual editor doesn't give you source code).
Touchgram is a platform for creating messages that respond to touch. It's an add-on that dramatically expands what kind of content you can send through iMessage.
It runs on top of SpriteKit and uses particle effects:
- As feedback to follow where you touch, (eg: flames as you trace a rune) and
- as effects on composed pages (eg: Snow on a Christmas card).
It's currently available on the app store for iMessage.
A common set of legal terms apply to Touchgram, Purrticles and any other helper tools or associated products we release.
We try very hard to preserve your privacy, so all use of Touchgram to make content is anonymous. Apple's iMessage technology helps here - the Touchgram code is not able to see any details identifying who is sending a message or the recipients.
Our core terms are fairness, just behave decently and don't rip-off other creators. Oh, and create great, weird and gorgeous stuff!