Best data structure for a particle system?

[xbut360]

On Friday, 15 November 2013 at 11:52:44 UTC, Mikko Ronkainen 
wrote:
> What would be the best data structure for handling particles in 
> a particle system in D2?
>
> Here's some thoughts:
>
> Particles are simple structs.
> Two lists, one for alive particles, one for dead ones.
> Memory allocations should be avoided, preallocate everything, 
> no allocations when moving between lists.
> Keep alive list as short as possible for fast iteration -> move 
> dead particles off  during iteration.
> Removal and addition of single items only, and it should be 
> fast.
>
> Maybe a single-linked list, std.container.SList? Is there any 
> gotchas? Or some better container for this scenario?

Another popular data structure for particle systems is a quadtree 
or octree, which is a tree data structure that recursively 
subdivides a 2D or 3D space into smaller regions (for more about 
data https://www.programmingassignment.net/). This allows for 
efficient spatial queries, such as finding nearby particles or 
detecting collisions between particles, by traversing the tree 
and only considering particles in nearby regions