To create a somewhat 'custom' particle effect you can now use an xml file. Most of the stuff on the Custom Sound page applies to this as well, so read that too. Currently the system is limited to changing properties of a MovementParticleEffect, so no custom sprites or custom ParticleSystem settings.

A file containing sound effects should be called ParticleEffects.xml and must be placed in a mod's or asset's root folder, same as with VehicleEffectDefinition.xml. Below is the contents of VE's own ParticleEffects.xml file, showing the Diesel Smoke effect.

The important thing here is the Particle Effect tag, which has a few required attributes: name and base. The rest of the attributes are optional and can be used to change the particle settings.

Here's a list of all attribute names, they map to properties of ParticleEffect, MovementParticleEffect and CustomMovementParticleEffect (Part of this mod).


You might want to change the blend color of the particle. To do this add a Color tag as a child of the ParticleEffect tag like so:
It uses values from 0 to 1.0 for r,g,b and alpha.

There are some things to keep in mind about the loading process that Vehicle Effects uses for custom particle effects. To start, mod folders are always loaded first before it checks and loads from asset folders. When it detects that another custom effect already exists with the same name it won't load any other with that same name. Error messages for duplicate effects are only displayed when loading from mod folders. This means that you can include the same effect config and sound in multiple assets without having to worry about the mod complaining or loading duplicate effects.