Particles or Spawn Actors?

richcoy

So I'm working on a game where the user breaks blocks by touching them. I want to have an effect where the block breaks into 4 pieces and they float out and disappear. I have the block graphic and the four corners.

Is this a situation for using particles or should I spawn the 4 pieces, animate and then destroy them?

Using particles I think would require four sets of particle rules, one for each corner to animate away from the center.

If the player moves quickly there could be as many as three or four blocks breaking at a time so resource usage is a little bit of an issue.

Thanks.

Rich

Photics

For the main robot enemies in BOT, I used both particles and actors in the explosion.

http://photics.com/bot
(You can see in the video how the enemies are destroyed.)

I don't know how you're doing on performance overall. I think it's important to make sure you're using the right image sizes... and disable physics when not needed.

With separate actors, I had more control over the effect.

Is performance an issue? It can be, as spawning lots of actors at the same time can be problematic. But with BOT, I think the effect worked out... and 3-4 enemies can be killed at the same time.

richcoy

@Photics, Thanks. Watching your video made me think of another option.