On Cocos2D Particle Systems

It's difficult to talk about the designing of a particle system because there's a lot of parts to it. But I suppose if you break it down, you can see two distinct parts -- 1. How the particles behave and 2. How the particles look. To get both of these things right will require significant trial and error. There's a couple tools to make your life easier, though. You can use Particle Designer to create your system of particles. The main thing to keep in mind while designing your particle system is to keep the particle count low as you possibly can while maintaining the look of the system you desire. Also, play around with things like particle size to see if you can achieve the same system design with fewer particles. To texture the particles, you can use SVG-edit, GIMP (best imho), or really any graphics package to determine how your particles look.

CCParticleSystemQuad *system= [CCParticleSystemQuad particleWithFile:@"SystemCreatedWithParticleDesigner.plist"];

[YourCCNode addChild:system];