How resource heavy are particles?

jonmulcahyjonmulcahy Member, Sous Chef Posts: 10,408
edited November -1 in Working with GS (Mac)
In my game Obliteration HD I want to use particles as smoke trails when the buildings explode. How resource heavy are they? I'd have 30-40 moving actors at once with smoke. I could reduce it to 20 or so if needed.

I've got the smoke trails working on a single building piece, and I'm setting up a test level with 30 of them to play with, but anyone done anything like this before?

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Comments

  • scitunesscitunes Member, Sous Chef Posts: 4,047
    Have you tried using magnitude so that these types of things only happen when in the camera view? Or are saying all of these things are happening within the camera view?
  • jhaasjhaas Member Posts: 233
    The only time I tried particles was quite a few releases ago. I found that the particles and the game performance degraded over time (5 - 10 minutes).

    Hopefully things have improved now - just let your game run for a while to make sure the particles still work properly after several minutes. :)
  • jonmulcahyjonmulcahy Member, Sous Chef Posts: 10,408
    Scitunes: everything is in the camera view unfortunately :)

    jhass: the particles will only appear when the object is in flight, and they have a life of 2 seconds

    I'm about 30 seconds from testing it on my iPad with a level with 30 pieces of 1 building :)

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  • jonmulcahyjonmulcahy Member, Sous Chef Posts: 10,408
    I'm happy to say, with 30 actors using basic particle effects, everything works great. It dips down to low 20 FPS with every actor on screen showing particles, but as they fall of screen they get destroyed, and the FPS climbs right back up.

    question answered by a simple test! and makes the game look even better :)

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  • EastboundEastbound Member, BASIC Posts: 1,074
    Well I was going to answer for you :p

    In my experience the particles have performed really well, but every once in a while they will just randomly not work or not stream nearly as many particles as it should.
  • JamesZeppelinJamesZeppelin Member Posts: 1,927
    I have had good luck with particles

    I like to use them instead of actors when i can.

    I use them for smoke... 50+ at a time but they die fast so performance was good.

    I also use them for things like the timer that starts a level... great because they fade and change sizes without a bunch of rules and attributes.

    I agree though that they do random things from time to time
  • paranoid_androidparanoid_android Member Posts: 22
    can anyone show and example of particle smoke. I am trying to create a slow trail of smoke moving up.
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