Particles2 is a world plugin that uses controlled sprites as particles, so they can be animated, rotated, colored etc. Most of the settings are available in the editor properties (no need for event setup). The example above used an extra 4 color fades that were input in the on start of layout event.
Many of the inputs containing multiple values that are separated by commas. How does this work? Well, most are a means of entering min and max values to determine an on-spawn random number. For example, the Timer entry has "a, b, c, d" where a and b are the min and max delay times for the random delay that happens before any fading starts, then c and d are the min and max values of the random fade out time.
The plugin supports sprites with "Tint" effect, which gives better performance (but no Tint is also supported).
Bounce off solid is also supported, as is a 30 fps option. All of the random numbers can be spread linear or pseudo-Gaussian between the min and max values.
This is still a work-in-progress and some options might yet change, but I've been wondering if there are any suggestions for features that I should add. Thanks.