Particle Playground: Falling Sand
Simulate falling sand, water, or fireworks as ascii particles with gravity and velocity, a tiny physics toy that prints frame by frame.
What you'll be able to build
Simulate falling sand, water, or fireworks as ascii particles with gravity and velocity, a tiny physics toy that prints frame by frame. Along the way you pick up real, transferable Lua skills, not just this one project:
- a grid of particle cells
- per-particle velocity and gravity
- update rules and collision with the floor
- swapping cells to move particles
- seeded spawning for repeatable runs
- rendering frames with table.concat
A course like this one
Yours is built from your own placement, so module count and depth will differ. This map shows what a intermediate-level Lua learner building Particle Playground actually gets.
- Module 1: Values, tables, and output5 lessons
Builds the script for your particle playground.
- Module 2: Tables as data: arrays, records, and lookups5 lessons
Builds the table model workflow for your particle playground.
- Module 3: Control flow and truthiness5 lessons
Builds the function that powers your particle playground.
- Module 4: Functions, varargs, and errors5 lessons
Builds the reusable module for your particle playground.
- Module 5: Metatables, coroutines, and program design5 lessons
Builds the metatable behaviour for your particle playground.
- Module 6: Packaging and release readiness3 lessons
Builds the release package for your particle playground.
How the lessons actually work
Every lesson has you predict what a piece of Lua code will output before you run it, then run it for real in your browser and fix what you got wrong. Each module ends in a challenge gate with hidden tests, so you can't advance until your code actually works. The course closes with a capstone that assembles everything into Particle Playground, and a runnable proof page tied to your own code.
Common questions
How long does the Particle Playground: Falling Sand course take?
about 7 hours, across 6 modules and 28 lessons, at roughly 15 minutes per lesson. Your own course may run shorter or longer, since it's sized to your placement result, not a fixed template.
Do I need experience?
Some. This is an intermediate-tier Lua project, so it assumes you're comfortable with Lua basics and pushes past them.
How much does it cost?
$15 one-time, no subscription. The first module is free, so you can see exactly how the course teaches before you pay for the rest.