We have a nice particle system when it comes to emitters, but I can't think of an easy way or any way to attract or repel particles. I was looking at TV3D 6.5, and they have a particle feature called an attractor. It can be used to influence particles by either attracting them to this special entity or just the opposite by repelling them. It seems to be a helper object given it depends on the presence of an emitter.

They also have a keyframe feature for emitters which will allow certain events to take place at a pre-determined time during an emitter or particle's lifetime. This would be another cool feature.

well, you can of course add some code to your particles function make them move towards or away from attractors. its more a question of performance, since i think the particlesystem is not so fast. when i look at demos which use millions of particles in a great manner, it is not possible to do such stuff with 3dgs (ok, it is but its a slideshow)

No I dont think I can agree here, it is no good to have an engine cluttered with lots of trivial functions that the user can easily program himself in 2 or 3 lines of code.

vec_diff(temp,target.x,p.x);
vec_normalize(temp,speed*time_step);
vec_add(p.x,temp);

there's your attractor.

That's a start. If I ever need the code, then there it is. However, I'm not sure how it would be considered clutter to have it featured in the engine. It would simply be another element of an existing feature. I only suggested the feature given it's part of what I consider Conitec's main competitor in regards to user friendliness. Right now, TV3D has the edge on the feature front, but A7 should close that gap soon enough. Many of the things that give it that edge are in development, so it's just a matter of time.

Most users probably couldn't easily program it themselves. I've been around for almost 10 years (fourth quarter 1999), and I wouldn't have known how to do that, and I've created plenty in my time. When you start getting into using lots of vector instructions this is where I and many others start scratching our heads. This is why an easy to understand feature would be beneficial.

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I'm more interested in the addition of the feature itself so neither myself or anyone else has to worry about creating the code

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Such things are rarely used in my opinion.. i have never wanted a particle attractor before, but if I did i would code it...I don't think Conitec needs to add such little features every time someone requests something or another engine has it.

never wanted to have smoke out of a chimney of a house that's blown away by wind?

It's quite evident that Conitec wants this engine to be user friendly via either use of their templates or easy to understand instructions. IMHO, perhaps the best solution to adding these features I've requested would be to modify the effect instruction. A new parameter that tells it to create either an emitter, attractor, or a repeller would need to be created. This would be as simple as typing a 0, 1, or a 2 at the end of the instruction. To avoid the annoyance of having to edit all of your existing effect instructions, if there is no new parameter present then it defaults to our standard emitter. That sounds easy enough to implement on paper, but actually doing it may be a different story. Anyway, I've just provided one possible solution/implementation, so there it is.

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I'm more interested in the addition of the feature itself so neither myself or anyone else has to worry about creating the code

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Such things are rarely used in my opinion.. i have never wanted a particle attractor before, but if I did i would code it...I don't think Conitec needs to add such little features every time someone requests something or another engine has it.

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@Matt:

just because you might never want to do this doesn't mean we all are of the same mindset. And, I don't think you really know if this kind of thing is rarely used or not. I don't see any evidence to back it up. The very fact that another engine has such a feature is a very good reason to consider adding it. Of course, it depends on the engine in question and in this case it is TV3D 6.5. There are some of use that believe it is the #1 competitor to 3DGS, so I think, in this particular case, that borrowing ideas from it is a necessary step to make sure the two pieces of software are at least equal. Finally, Conitec should at least consider "little" features when they are requested. And yes it is a little feature but a very powerful one. It's the small things that make a difference. 3DGS is made up of a lot of small things requested by users, and I bet the small things are a greater portion of the engine than the bigger ones.




Anyway, I can think of more than a few reasons/situations for use of such a feature. Yes, coding it is an option if you are a competent programmer. I do have some skills in this area; however I am not as talented nor skilled as a lot of our professional programmers that frequent this forum. Quite simply, there are things I cannot code; thus I require help when those situations arise.

The whole point of having a built in feature like this that can be activated with a simple line of code or adding a single digit to an already existing instruction (see first paragraph above) is user friendliness. It's something that could benefit all of us, both hardcore programmer, someone like me, or better yet the noob who doesn't know a damn thing, yet but knows enough to add a 0, 1, or a 2 to the end of the effect instruction. What's better....coding it or flipping a pre-existing switch?

Yes, I tend to ramble, but that's how I write (I also ramble when I speak, but I'm a Southern boy...colorful stereotypical sayings and all just like in the movies and it's nothing like my writing style). I'm a writer after all. I want to provide a detailed view of what I'm trying to explain. That tends to bloat a post, but you're going to at least know where I'm coming from hopefully. I cannot stand internet shorthand, and typing complete sentences and paragraphs that hopefully make sense are what you're gonna get. With that said, if one is going to address every point from a post, then the reply is sometimes going to be long winded. It simply can't be helped.

Well, perhaps you're right that they shouldn't add a feature because another engine has it, but it seems to be that almost all of the newer features that have been added are because other engines have them. Is it not a good thing to add a feature that say comes from Unreal3 or whatever the new "big boy" engines happen to be? I believe if we see a feature that we don't have that's cool and....Heaven forbid....is next gen or even an old standard that should have been implemented long ago then Conitec should think about adding it. This same process can be extended to the "little boy" engines like TV3D, as well.