Pyrotechnium

Pyrotechnium is a simple program that simulates a firework display. Using a particle animation system and a very fast graphics filtering algorithm, this program creates a realistic and entertaining display, with several types of firework, sound effects and so forth. You can also record complete displays of your own devising for later playback.

Note: The PPC version runs acceptably on Intel machines using Rosetta - being graphics intensive, the worst bottlenecks in the program are the screen blitting functions which run natively. An Intel native version (Universal Binary) should be available soon.

Originally this was written as the "finale" to iKnow, but in investigating how to make the display work in a realistic manner, I developed this as a standalone app. Then it just sort of grew from there and I decided to release it. It's not useful for anything, but a few people seem to have enjoyed it, judging from the comments on Version Tracker! So here it is, take it or leave it.

People frequently ask if there is a screen saver version available. Logically this should be a screen saver, but isn't due to its development history. While a screen saver version was planned, I have decided not to bother - I just have too many other projects on the go. On the other hand I have now released the source code (see below), so feel free to build a screen saver if you want!

Source Code

Continuing the spirit of releasing source code for various freeware applications, you can now download the source code for the Pyrotechnium application. This app was built on top of MacZoop so for a complete picture you'd need to download that as well. Note that this is not an Xcode project - it's a CodeWarrior project and C++ sources. With some effort you could compile both MacZoop and Pyrotechnium with Xcode but I have not attempted this. Source is available more for technical interest and curiosity rather than as a starting point to add features, etc.