Yeah, they should be in for good imo. Shame sv_pure isn't working though, a bunch of people will cry "muh visibility!" and cut out the good stuff.
The last thing I want to do is further alienate players with low-end rigs. I'm not about to toss a sizeable fraction of the playerbase out simply to make the game look nicer, and neither would Empty.
That's not what I meant, dude. People have better computers now. This is empiresmod, not poorpiresmod.
Oftentimes they don't; I know there are numerous players in the community playing on rigs half a decade or more old. If you want the particles, enable them. If you don't want them, keep them disabled. If the argument in turn is that "No one will enable them then because it'd put them at a disadvantage," well tough luck because I'll have them enabled regardless of the disadvantages.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey even if it might not be representative for empires in specific, i think you can assume the majority of people has decent enough computers today.
Angry plays on a touch screen with a usb keyboard and mouse. Why not just give it a test run and see the general consensus on performance? The particles don't look like they could melt Doritos.
I want to use the particles against my enemy. That's not possible when it's disabled by default. The people playing on rigs half a decade or more old can upgrade. It's not good to alienate players, but it's worse to provide future players of the mod with a game you have to tweak in order to look current.
That's why you add it into the graphics options. Source will decide default settings on it's own, it doesn't force anyone. It's a bullshit excuse candles, I'm tired of other devs using that excuse just so they don't have to add pretty stuff.
I feel like responses to these (admittedly well intentioned) posts might get heated, so I'd like to reiterate my interpretation of the goal of this release before those responses occur. I expect that empty found some old particles, noticed that they were compatible and decided to share with the community. It sounds like these particles were a labor of love for him and he couldn't stand to create neutered versions for improved performance. Likewise, candles seems to be spending just a few minutes to go a step further in assisting the community in implementing these newfound particles. I'm sure candles would love to edit the graphical settings to include these particles. However, I believe that part of the code might be less familiar to him and he may not have the time to acquaint himself due to mid term exams. So it comes down to a small amount of emotional grief necessary to create lower performance particles and a failed university career to get them properly implemented. This is one of those lose lose situations, so I hope everyone can understand the circumstances.