Quite a lot of things don't use it at the moment, rocket trails, cannon explosions (as far as I can tell) muzzleflashes, exhausts. Even if you don't actually put particle systems in, add the support for them in the game, because we have plenty of perfectly competent particle system developers on the forums, including myself. We can make particles if you add the support. I know there are a lot of placeholder particles which need finalising, if you did this it would massively improve the visual appeal of empires, and more visual appeal is easy selling power. A particle system named for each cannon and missile muzzleflash, explosion, and projectile trail, each vehicle exhaust, mine explosions, grenades, RPGs, that sort of thing, would allow us to really beef up the eye candy. I doubt the people who make particles would object to you using them in official releases either.
Personally, I like my computer being able to run Empires smoothly, but if there was an option to replace those sprites with actual particles under video options, I do believe that this would have absolutely no drawbacks and only add to the appeal of this already breathtaking game. (do note that (if I remember correctly) it does say somewhere that the coding of a suggestion is an innate con, and is therefore moot in any argument against the suggestion)
I've been poking the coders to do this for months, its just a matter of getting them to actually do it.
Have you tried yelling at them and saying 'fuck' a lot? Because that's my normal recourse when people don't listen. The whole point of particles is they can be easily edited by the players. So if the particles are too laggy, make your own, or get someone to make low cost ones for you. Particles doesn't mean 'always lags more'.
No, I was surprised actually because I thought the cannon explosions used particles, because they look different, I guess however the sprites have simply been replaced.
Would it be possible to tie it to an already existing visual option, where if you put it on medium it uses simpler effects. Actually isn't there some option called "effects"?
My mother's natural recourse to make people do things is swear at them in Chinese. And once you have been sworn at in Chinese for most of your childhood, you develop an immunity to all other cursing languages.
Possibly, I don't see why not, in fact you could probably just disable some effects on lower settings.
Yes that's a thing, you'd need some way to enforce purity for some files like smoke particles. Although considering the amount of things you can exploit like that I guess it would be futle.
If this will increase demand on performance, I'm all against. Empires is just about the only Source multiplayer that I can play without any expectation of lag. Besides, the game is not really about aesthetics all that much.
Well no, it isn't, because it doesn't have any to speak of. I'd rather like that to change however and as I said, there is no reason why it has to be a performance intensive thing, it's highly modifiable. You should make it look as good as possible and then get people to remove bits until it works, rather than making it run as smooth as possible and have no option to make it look good, otherwise it's like demanding that games never be made with any graphical setting above low. Of course there's no reason why it shouldn't be efficently pretty, but prettiness is something that people expect and rightly so.