Posted December 19, 2025 by Morpho Monarchy
Major Changes:
This major update adds a couple of useful features to Pollen. But I'll start with the less shiny one, which is that I finally added wrappers for GM's part_X_clear functions. This means that Pollen now officially covers all of GM's particle API (as advertised) except for the automatic_draw/update functions since those are easier to use as they are, though I may reconsider adding wrappers for those in the future.
Keep in mind that for most of the wrapper functions, I named them along the lines of "[System/Emitter/Type]Reset()" instead since it's more clear (pun intended) as to what the function is actually doing to the data. There is, however, one new function called "SystemClear()" which does the same thing as part_particles_clear(), and since it actually clears the visual representation of the particle of the screen, it made more sense to name that one similarly.
The second and more exciting change is that I added an optional dbg_view for Pollen! This lets you see Pollen.System data and any changes in real time. It also lets you copy/dump the underlying GML data which could also be useful for catching bugs. In the future I may expand this into an in-game visual editor, however, I decided to keep it simple for now, especially because of the limited functionality that dbg_views currently have.
Finally, I added some useful "Troubleshooting" and "Workflow" tips sections to the "Getting Started" page which have some super useful info in case you're having trouble getting Pollen setup!
Bug fixes: