when my character gets too close to large particles (which happens quite often), the game slows down heaps. i tried increasing camera.clip_near, but my character starts seeing through the walls and it still doesn't help. any tips?

Julian

I think there is nothing you can do... Your game becomes slower, because the bitmaps you can see (i guess you made bright=on) are bigger, so the engine must render "more" on this particle effect...

I hope you understand what I say - oh, and I hope im not too wrong

i guess you are right.
i have seen others complain that this engine handles particles slower than other engines.

i haven't got bright on.

thanks, anyway.

Julian

Particles are really slow... I did the same effect in 3DGS with Irrlicht and a big difference in the FPS. I think thats something they should work on...

here's a pic of the particles i'm using. they shoot out of the camera, so they get really close to the camera.



Julian

The particle are to big? You use a lot..

On an AMD 2600 (2GHZ), Radeon 9800 Pro (128 MB video memory, 1GB RAM), I can have huge numbers of large particles and they do not seem to make much dent in a target 60 FPS.

On an AMD 950, Nvidia TNT 2 (16 MB video memory, 384MB RAM), the same particle fountain will cut that 60 FPS to between 20 and 30 FPS.

If you have a good graphics card, maybe the function you are using for each particle is too complex?

@_burnner_:
lol, i don't use alot. have u played UT2K4? what you see there is something like 5 trails. it only slows down when a big particle gets too close to the screen, or when there are stacks of smoke trails, which won't happen when this is only applied to a rocket-launcher. their functions aren't complex at all.
Code:

---

 
function smoking2()
{
   my.size += 2 * time;
   my.alpha -= 2 * time;
   my.lifespan = my.alpha;
} 

---

believe me, if you want a good smoke trail particle effect, you need that many (keeping in mind that what you see there is 3-5 smoke trails).

Julian