Halving the lifetimes is a bit....advantageous. There are other ways to do it without giving the users of these particles a horrendous advantage. But you've released them now, so there's no fucking way I'm not using them so I can have said advantage. Also, if you touched artillery, make sure you touched Empty's updated version. It helped my FPS a fucktonne.
I touched what ever was in the updated 2.29. I did NOT touch nukes and handguns tho. I like the the nukes the way they are. Remember the only thing I halved was the smoke attached to the effect. The effects are already brief and rather low on fps usage. From what I saw the smoke uses most of the particle count. I can't remember what... but there was one effect that used insane amounts of particles tho. (besides nukes)
Sounds cool. When you do post pics so we can fap. Hey trickster... I remember the arty your talking about but a quick search didn't bring anything. Know where it is? edit: lolz.. its in this thread but search failed? bah. ok ill look into it in the morning.
ok I have looked at emptys cheaper particles and indeed they are um... cheaper. Looking at them also reminded me what particle it was that used a huge amount of particles. The mortar splash thats used for arty strikes. It uses 1000 particles and stays on for 20 seconds. long ass time. I took it down to 800 particles that last from 4(when you can't see anymore)-6 seconds(bottom of map). here is the new particles. Removed see newer post
Tweaked the rain as well as artillery a bit more. as for the rain I used to get 90 fps average now I avg 114, 95 min and up to 140 in some places. removed. see newer post I shortened the rains particles lifespan so that it dies closer to the ground surfaces. Shortened the emitters amount a tad as well since it looked like it keept hitting max and stopped emitting till some more was freed up. I think im happy with the outcome... however there are two particles types that look like placeholders for something as they are blanks... so to speak. Any comment empty? Its the explosion_mortar and explosion_large. in two diff pcf files, weapon_fx.pcf, tank_weapons.pcf. also.. is it necessary to have both of them? they appear to be the same(altho I didn't scrutinize much).
weapon_fx is an unused backup file, it exceeds the max number of particle systems in a file and hence it no longer gets loaded by the engine. It was replaced by infantry_weapons and vehicle_weapons. Also stop lowering particle lifetimes, it screws up loads of things, explosion damage radiuses will be larger than the explosion, it'll be harder to identify effects etc. What you want to do is primarily lower the amount of particles emitted while maintaining good looks on the particles. I'll get around to it at some stage. Also if particles are hovering at the maximum amount that's usually because I've timed it so the spawning/dying is at an equal rate, hence they cancel out and it sits at a steady number rather than pushing over. I know what I'm doing.
I was careful with the life times. I only modified all the different smokes lifetime not the effects lifetime. The only effects I modified was rain and arty. I modified that debris spray from 1k to 800. Meaning(for thoes that don't know) that the fiery explosion you see is the same and the smoke will fill the same area but, the smoke lingers a long time. The smoke is what I cut down to dissipate within 1-4 seconds instead of 3-8.
If you used my particles.. sorry. you might have noticed a green box when you shoot mortars. I saw it an investigated it with empty and found it was due to the way the system uses the newest entry. There was a blank entry in vehicles with explosion_mortar and since that was the last file I saved it used the blank overriding the one in infantry. Deleting the vehicles entry which empty says shouldn't be there anyways fixes it. I think its in all my older particles to so please use this pack instead. I have verified that it works. This pack STILL doesn't solve arty spam lag but it helped me keep 20fps instead of 5. I can only shudder in hoar, at the idea of arty spam in rain. thankfully hasn't happened yet to me. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11954784/Cheaper Particles v3.7z
