@Scorpion: I'm getting black boxes with your function, too. I see how it should work...what type of value does pixel_for_vec return? And if my image isn't already in an alpha format, does your function support it? If I make a PNG image with a few black pixels entirely transparent so I know it has an alpha channel, the particles disappear altogether.

@tompo: That is the kind of effect I'm looking for, but that's written in C-Script. Lite-C is the core of the problem: flare doesn't exist anymore, and the suggested replacement doesn't seem to do what it's supposed to.

EDIT: here is a link to my Gamestudio Picasa album, so you can see the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/Futurulus/Gamestudio