Well by default there's only 1 particle type, setting it to 4 allows you have to your particle emitter emit 4 different types of particles.
The only difference is that you would have to use particle[index] instead of just particle.
Post your code so we can try and debug the white orb.
The array of colorz just stores multiple red, green, and blue values. I.e:
PHP Code:
temp.colorz = {
{red, green, blue},
};