I thought I would learn something new this morning so I decided to open up the Particle Editor in Obsidian's tools (Its an orangebox feature).
I went through a fire tutorial (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... e_Particle)on the SDK wiki and had a bit of a play around.
Yeah just run obsidian with the command line -tools and choose the particle editor. And have a bash at the tutorial.
To get your particle in game, use an 'info_particle_system' and tie it to a tied brush entity of some sort. It seems anything will do, at first I used env_embers (nodraw texture) then switched to a trigger_hurt (trigger texture). Once tied you have to specifiy the targetname of the brush in the info_particle_system's properties.
You'll also need to add your particle.pcf to the manifest.txt also in the same folder (obsidian/particles).
I read there is a bug with players not being able to see custom particles in custom maps, even if you have a mapname_particles.txt, it's still buggy.
Though I also read and it was recent that Valve or atleast Robin Walker is fixing this very soon.
Have fun!
'I would probably smarten up before you meet Violet'.
'She has zero tolerance for idiots'.