No. If your graphics card can't run the current particles then it's a terrible piece of shit that should be using the square particles. If your card doesn't seem to be that old, then there's another issue causing your FPS drop, did you try tweaking graphics settings, resolution etc.
Look into this thread: FPS in Empires just do that and please post the results from console and your system specs. Maybe u wanna try the timedemo with different particles etc. but please give comparable results before u bitch more about particles.
lol tbh, that demo is not very useful for a fps stress test. It isn't first person and it stays far away from battles where all the smoke and models are. I have some screenshots to show you what i encounter with these new particles. And this isn't even an intense battle. When I shoot, it makes it hard for me to control and aim my tank due to the fps drop. The point is I had no problem in the earlier versions of empires. What I'm looking for is just simpler particles, though not the ones in this thread because I had better ones with better fps. There are other offending particles like grenade explosions, etc.
You should add low cost particle effects to default build. Every particle effect can have lower cost verison and engine will choose which one to use on demand. It works with sv_pure where manual modification of .pcf files does not.
yea, every commercial game has the choice of level of particles. Also, the squares are too big and block my view. Why can't you just use the 2.25 particles, they were fine for me :/ Could I override the particles in 2.30 with particles from 2.25?
Weren't they 2.24d and earlier. I thought 2.25 was the first overhaul. I also thought they were supposed to be much laggier than anything we have now.
I have a number of backup'd 2.25 .pcfs. I'm pretty sure that's when Chris made his pyrotechnicy bullet tracers too (since I wasn't around for 2.26-2.28).
Ohhhhh. Still, those particles were way unoptimised. These ones are better, smoke is much less intensive up close and they should fade out at certain distances.
Sigh...then there's nothing I can do now. The game is now unplayable for me for the first time. I sure as hell didn't get any drastic drops in fps when I fired my tank cannon or arty cannon last time... Thanks for your help anyway. Couldn't you just reduce the density of the particles somehow to like 10 percent? lol
