Paths tab: Flow

Starting preset + Load preset - a whole flow to start from: Genie smoke, Waterfall, Lava river, Torch flame, Portal ring, Coin fountain, Star river and Smoke wipe. Loading one replaces the field and the item and layer looks.

Start from the preset nearest to what you want. The Torch flame with a grey tint and a taller spine is steam; the Portal ring with a coin picture and a negative Speed is a vortex. The Flow journey page lists what each one does.

A preset replaces your layers and drops any picture you uploaded onto them. Save first.

Dots on the stage - drag a dot to bend the spine; drag the faint fill inside the outline to move the whole field. Everything snaps to 10 px. Press a dot twice quickly to remove it.

Put the game screen behind first (Board tab), then drag the white dot onto the lamp's spout, the top of the waterfall or the torch, and the others along where the effect should go.

A spine keeps at least two dots and holds at most eight. The line between them is always a smooth curve; two dots close together make a tight bend.

+ Add node - adds a dot in the middle of the longest stretch, so the shape stays as it was and the new dot is easy to find. Remove last node takes away the end dot.

Reverse direction - swaps the start and the end: the stream runs the other way along the same shape, born at what was the end.

A waterfall you drew from the bottom up: Reverse, and the water falls.

Closed (a ring) - joins the end back to the start, so the spine is a loop and items go round and round: a portal, a halo, an orbit, a vortex.

At the end in Motion greys out: a ring has no end.

Width - how far either side of the spine the field reaches, in pixels, where the curve below reads 1. Items sit anywhere from the spine out to this distance on each side.

150 px for a lamp's smoke, 40 px for a thin ring, 380 px for a wipe across the whole screen.

Width along the flow - a curve: left is the start of the spine, right is its end, the height is the width as a share of Width. It works like every curve in the tool (click to add a point, drag it, double-click to remove), see Controls you meet everywhere.

Narrow at the start and wide at the end is a funnel or a smoke stack. A bump in the middle is a pear or a bulb. Flat is a river. Wide at both ends and pinched in the middle is an hourglass.

A point at 0 closes the field there: every item passing that spot squeezes onto the spine.

Twist - how far the field turns around its spine from the start to the end, in degrees. The items spiral around the middle line on their way, passing behind and in front of each other.

90 to 180 for a smoke column that corkscrews gently. 720 is a tight vortex.

With Deep at 1 the field is flat, so a twist pinches it to a thin line wherever its flat side turns away from you. Set Deep to 2 or more and Depth range above 0, and it reads as a turning column with small, faint items behind.

Twist speed - the field also turns with time, this many degrees a second: the whole column slowly rotates around its spine.

10 to 20 degrees a second for smoke. 40 makes a portal ring shimmer.

Amount - how far the field is pushed at most, in pixels.

80 to 150 px for smoke. 20 px gives a waterfall a light boil.

Size - how big the bends are, in pixels. Items closer together than this move together.

400 to 600 px for a lazy sway of the whole column; 150 px for a boiling surface, like a flame.

Speed of change - how fast the bends change shape, in bends a second.

0.1 to 0.4 for smoke, 1 or more for a flame. 0 freezes the field in its bent shape.

Amount along the flow - a curve: how much of the Amount applies along the spine, start on the left, end on the right.

0 at the start rising to 1 keeps the smoke stuck to the lamp's spout while the top sways. Flat at 1 bends the whole river.

Along, Across, Deep - how many cells the grid has in each direction. The group's title shows the total.

Along 1 is a stream: every item is born at the start and travels the whole way (smoke, a waterfall). Along 10 or more spreads the births over the whole field (a portal ring that is full from the first frame, a field of dots). Deep 2 or 3 gives the twist and the depth something to work with.

The items share the points in turn, so with fewer items than points only the first points are used and the note under the group says so. Raise Count or make the grid smaller.

Jitter - how far a birth may sit from its point inside its cell. 0 is exactly on the grid, 100 % anywhere in the cell.

100 % for smoke and water, so nobody can see a grid. 0 with Speed 0 is a neat lattice of lights that only the twist and turbulence move.

Count and Lifetime - items alive at any moment, and how long each lives before it is born again at its point.

Give an item enough Lifetime to cross the field: the spine's length is in the Spine group's title, and the Speed tooltip says how long an item at that speed takes to cross it. 60 puffs x 7 s for a lamp's smoke.

While a trail, sparkle or hit layer rides on the items, Count is capped at 60 in this journey.

Depth range - how strongly an item's depth in the field shrinks, dims and slows it. Here the depth comes from its Deep cell, turned by the twist, and items are drawn back to front.

50 to 70 % so the smoke has a near side and a far side.

Speed - how fast items travel along the spine, in pixels a second. Negative runs them backward, from the arrow toward the start. 0 holds them on their points.

120 for slow smoke, 900 for a waterfall, 1400 for a wipe across the screen.

Speed randomness - each item is a little faster or slower than the Speed, by up to this share, so the stream is not a marching band.

20 to 40 %.

Drift - a steady sideways travel across the field, left or right at random per item, in pixels a second. Items born near the spine spread out on their way.

Drifting items may leave the field's width. Keep it small, or widen the field.

At the end - what happens to an item that travels past the end of the spine (or before its start, when Speed is negative). Die hides it and what rides on it until its next life: smoke thins out at the top. Wrap puts it back at the start: an endless river. Hold parks it at the end.

Greyed out when the spine is Closed.

Born at full speed and the forces - the forces you know from the Sparks tab and the Atmospheric journey (gravity, wind, turbulence, wander, drag, a burst, swirl and more), added on top of the travel in screen space. Gravity still pulls a lava river downhill and wind still leans a smoke column. See Controls you meet everywhere.

Wander 20 to 30 px at 0.15 Hz lets each puff drift on its own inside the swaying field.

Run - For ever: items are born for as long as the effect runs, a smoke stack or a waterfall. Once: items are born for the On time from the trigger and never again, so the field runs out and dies down: a lava field cooling, a smoke wipe, a symbol's poof. Trigger flow in the header plays it again.

With Once, Off and Randomness are hidden: there is only one window.

On, Off, Randomness, Fade in, Fade out - the same on / off rhythm as in the Atmospheric journey. With Off at 0 the field is always on.

A puff of smoke every few seconds: On 1 s, Off 3 s, Fade in and out 0.3 s. A wipe that builds and tails off: Run once, On 1.2 s, Fade in 0.1 s, Fade out 0.4 s.

Trigger flow (header) - jumps to the next window, or restarts a flow that runs once.

Depth - Behind the top elements draws the whole field under the pictures that sit between the board and the effect on the Board tab: the reel house, the lamp. In front draws it over everything. Split lets each item decide by its depth: the far ones go behind those pictures, the near ones in front, so smoke wraps around a lamp. Element 0 in the Board tab's stack moves to show the result.

With Split, a trail or sparkle layer riding on a far item still draws in front of the top elements.

Split at - only with Split: where the dividing line sits. -1 puts everything in front, 0 sends the far half behind, 1 sends everything behind.

0 to start. Move it toward 1 if too much smoke is hidden by the lamp.

System seed - every birth point, speed and cycle window comes from it. Same seed, same flow, in the tool and in the game.