How to use PixelSwarm
Pixelswarm has four swarms of three distinct species for you to play with, the twin Spray & Prays, some Gravity Dust, and the Gravity Bees. Each type of swarm has completely different behaviors and will react to your touch in unique ways. Play with them one at a time, or combine them to make complex, layered effects! Create a near-infinite number of beautiful, colorful moving patterns by interacting with them and monkeying around with their controls.

You can access the settings at any time by shaking your device, bringing up a dizzying arry of options to tinker with. There are at least 73 different controls to try out, each changing how one or more of the swarms behave, almost always interacting with each other in amazing, unpredictable ways. Tapping on the name of a swarm opens and closes its panel of settings. Lucky iPad users can adjust the settings and see the the effects in real time!

You may want to experiment with the conrols while using only one swarm at a time, so it's easier to see what effect your choices are making. Keep in mind that certain settings won't do anything noticable if hidden by specific other settings... this is rare, but if you're not seeing anything change as you fiddle with a control, try changing some of it's neighbors.
Spray & Pray I and II Settings

If a machine-gun could fire Etsy crafts like it was in a scene from Scarface, this is what it would look like! Blasting pixels all over the place, with the Spray & Pray you have a crazy firehose of color at your fingertips. Create fireworks, ice tornadoes, or squiggly heaps of worms... with the most controls by far, these swarms can do an insane number of tricks. What will they do next?
1 • Colors Tap on the three swatches to set your particles' colors for when young, middle aged, and late in life. Choose a color in the color picker by selecting the hue and saturation, then picking the brightness.
2 • Vary Color The higher this value, the more the hue of the particles varies. At the lowest setting, all the particles will be the exact same color, but at the highest setting you'll be seeing rainbows!
3 • Particles The number of particles to wrangle, within the maximum allowed. The larger the particles the fewer PixelSwarm will draw, to keep the framerate snappy!
4 • Size The size of the particle, of course! Since larger particles take longer to draw, you won't have as many of them to play with, but some of the effects created by big floaty dots are gorgeous!
5 • Vary Size How much to vary the size of the particles. Particles will get randomly larger as you raise this higher, so setting it to the maximum will draw the largest possible dots when paired with a size at maximum.
6 • Speed The speed the particle is traveling when it's born.
7 • Vary Speed How much to vary the speed of new particles. The speed will increase by a random amount, the higher this slider the more it can increase.
8 • Thrust The thrust of a particle when it's born. Imagine forward and reverse thrusters on a spaceship, it's like that! Setting a backwards thrust can even slow down and reverse a particle that starts off moving forward.
9 • Vary Thrust How much to vary the thrust of new particles. The thrust will increase by a random amount, the higher this slider the more the backwards or forwards thrust can increase.
10 • Spread This is a weird one... this setting helps control the spray direction. The higher the value, the wider the angle your touch will spray particles, like an adjustable lawn sprinkler. The spray direction is also influenced by the spin setting, which controls how fast this effect rotates around your touch.
11 • Spray The amount of random jitter to add to the starting location of the particles, higer settings looking more like a spraypaint can. Use it to break up your particles, spattering them around.
12 • Spin The rate at which the direction of spray spins around your touch. If the swarm's spread is at maximim, changing this value won't do anything noticible, but if it's less than the max, the spray angle of the particles will rotate faster one direction or the other when set towards the ends of the slider. It's one easy way to create spirals!
13 • Life Span This controls how long a particle lives before it burns out, which has an impact on how fast they spray from your touches. The longer the lifespan, the fewer particles will spray, since there are only so many available to toss about!
14 • Vary Life How much to vary the life span of new particles. The life span will increase by a random amount, the higher this slider the more it can increase.
15 • Curl How much this particle habitually curves to the right or to the left as it travels. This sets an initial value when sprayed which might get modified over time by other settings.
16 • Spiral How much this particle habitually spirals to the right or to the left as it travels. It's a curve that increases or decreases in angle as the particle travels! This sets an initial value when sprayed which might get modified over time by other settings.
17 • Stray How much this particle randomly deviates from the normal curl setting when it it's born. The larger the value, the more particles will tend to fan out from their initial starting point! This modifies the initial curl value only once.
18 • Meander How much this particle randomly deviates from the normal path while it's travelling. The higher this value, the more likely it's apt to change its mind and head off in a new direction!
19 • IdleFlies This is a cute effect that randomly scatters particles around the screen like lightning bugs while you're not touching it and the swarms are idle.
Gravity Dust Settings

Like the rings of Saturn, this space dust orbits around your touches, pulled towards you by gravity. Unlike the rings of Saturn, it comes with a bunch of controls that can make it do crazy things! The most unpredictable of the swarms, certain settings make it form rings or ribbons, even cat's cradle-like shapes when swirling between multiple fingers. Tap a setting, and stable orbits decompose into a chaotic haze of swirling colors. Oh you fickle dust!
1 • Colors Tap on the three swatches to set your particles' colors for when they're slow, steady, and speeding along. Choose a color in the color picker by selecting the hue and saturation, then picking the brightness.
2 • Vary Color The higher this value, the more the hue of the particles varies. At the lowest setting, all the particles will be the exact same color, but at the highest setting you'll be seeing rainbows!
3 • Particles The number of particles to wrangle, within the maximum allowed. The larger the particles the fewer PixelSwarm will draw, to keep the framerate snappy!
4 • Size The size of the particle, of course! Since larger particles take longer to draw, you won't have as many of them to play with, but some of the effects created by big floaty dots are gorgeous!
5 • Vary Size How much to vary the size of the particles. Particles will get randomly larger as you raise this higher, so setting it to the maximum will draw the largest possible dots when paired with a size at maximum.
6 • Gravity The gravity, which doesn't have even remotely the effect you might imagine. After all, this isn't actual outer space, this is a trippy swarm of dust particles that like to do weird stuff all the time!
7 • Speed The overall speed of the space dust. It kind of works like pouring molasses all over space and the dust. The dust gets all gooey when set to a low value but set it higher and the molasses melts off!
8 • Boost Another way to control the speed, this is sort of like a pep setting. Higher values mean the particle will zip around more, feeling snappier.
9 • Inertia How likely a particle is to turn at high speeds. The higher the inertia the more gravity it takes to turn the object while travelling.
10 • Dark Matter When dark matter is on you can't see the dust at rest, it fades away while at slow speeds.
Gravity Bees Settings

These bees like to whiz around in a frenzied cloud as the slightest provocation, at least until you slow them down, after which they'll lazily orbit your finger like a living splash of paint. Touch a bunch of places on your screen at once and they'll whoosh around, riding the eddies of gravity spilling from your fingertips.
1 • Colors Tap on the three swatches to set your particles' colors for when they're slow, steady, and speeding along. Choose a color in the color picker by selecting the hue and saturation, then picking the brightness.
2 • Vary Color The higher this value, the more the hue of the particles varies. At the lowest setting, all the particles will be the exact same color, but at the highest setting you'll be seeing rainbows!
3 • Particles The number of particles to wrangle, within the maximum allowed. The larger the particles the fewer PixelSwarm will draw, to keep the framerate snappy!
4 • Size The size of the particle, of course! Since larger particles take longer to draw, you won't have as many of them to play with, but some of the effects created by big floaty dots are gorgeous!
5 • Vary Size How much to vary the size of the particles. Particles will get randomly larger as you raise this higher, so setting it to the maximum will draw the largest possible dots when paired with a size at maximum.
6 • Gravity The gravity, which behaves pretty much like you'd expect for objects floating in space, with more of a tendency to oscillate around instead of just orbiting!
7 • Speed The overall speed of the bees. It kind of works like you'd expect. Lower the value and the bees slow down, raise it and they speed back up, never changing their orbits.
8 • Boost Another way to control the speed, this is sort of like a pep setting. Higher values mean the particle will zip around more, feeling snappier.
9 • Mass The mass of the particles, pulled around by the influence of gravity.
10 • Vary Mass How much to vary the mass of the particles. The mass will increase by a random amount, the higher this slider the more it can increase.
11 • Dark Matter When dark matter is on you can't see the bees at rest, they fade away while at slow speeds.
General Settings

These setting effect the entire application or all of the swarms.
  1 • Trails How long trails linger after a particle has passed over part of the screen. The higher the value, the longer the trails!
  2 • Hide Tooltip Hide the tooltip that reminds you to shake your device to see the settings.
  3 • Reset To
Defaults		 Reset the settings of all the swarms to their default values. Conveneient for if you get a bit lost.

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