Wow, hard to believe that what felt like a negative yesterday may turn into a positive. I just discovered a neat advantage to creating particles this way. I had some fire particles already working, so I added an action and function for smoke.
Get this, when the smoke particles (since bright is not on) travel into the shaded area of the building, they are shadowed also, so my grey smoke turns dark grey, but just the ones that should
You couldn't get this with particles, AFAIK.
I have a nice plume of fire and smoke operating right now with less than 50 sprite entities total.
Regards, Ron