[Nuke]

dump in your fs2 dir, run the build with the directory as mod, load up a subach hl-7 and have fun.

clicky

so far i support 4 spew types most parameters are about the same as the default spew parameters. rotation rate is for the helix, controls direction and speed of rotation. z scale is for the sparkler, to make it more ovoid 1 is spherical. this is good for matching it up with the laser effect for some awesomeness. offset and normal dont do anything yet. the code is still abit roguh and the engine likes to crash if you try to remove unused feilds. its now 10am and im going to bed.

*added diff*

[attachment stolen by Slimey Goober]

[chief1983]

i c wut u did thar:

dump in your fs2 dir, run the build with the directory as mod, load up a subach hl-7 and have fun.

fixed

so far i support 4 spew types most parameters are about the same as the default spew parameters. rotation rate is for the helix, controls direction and speed of rotation. z scale is for the sparkler, to make it more ovoid 1 is spherical. this is good for matching it up with the laser effect for some awesomeness. offset and normal dont do anything yet. the code is still abit roguh and the engine likes to crash if you try to remove unused feilds. its now 10am and im going to bed.

*added diff*

[Nuke]

heh, i guess i was half asleep. feedback? how does it run on suckey computers? suggestions?

[Vasudan Admiral]

Oooh
Well it looks pretty awesome and is waaay ahead of all existing particle effects in game, but I'm seeing approximately a 10FPS drop while holding down the trigger, and this is on an 8600GTS with an i7 920. Might that be considerably worse on lower systems?

[chief1983]

Yeah but consider the drop on some systems when rendering a lot of the old school impact effects.  I don't know why but that even slows down my box considerably.  10fps on my rig right now wouldn't even be noticeable.

[Nuke]

i really dont have any suckey computers right now. so its good to get feedback. had aardwolf give me a report on his crappy intel chipset and gets dropped to 30 during combat. still im impressed with the speed acheived over the old lua implementation. still im gonna put in some automatic scaling. like automatically reducing particle counts when the framerate drops below 60. more performance can be attained by tweaking. the effect i did was mostly a capabilities showcase rather than a real world implementation. then again if i can offload the system to the gpu that would further increase the speed.

[chief1983]

You could tie it to the existing particle options in the graphics settings, and leave control of it in our own hands. 

[Narvi]

On my crappy Intel 945GM, framerate drops from 60fps to 30fps whenever I fire.

Playing without mediavps, on that build you posted.

[Nuke]

well it would probibly crash on the media vps. for some reason the optional strings arent being very optional, so if the new flags are missing, kerplam! on the brightside i did manage to make it so retail pspews would work.

[ARSPR]

Pretty good looking...

Nevertheless in the very FS2 campaign mission (training one) my FPS drop from 120 to 60 when firing. And I've got a 8800GTX...

(Although I suppose, performance will improve in the future)

[chief1983]

Screenshots anyone?  Can we see what interesting pspew combos you guys are coming up with?

[Aardwolf]

On my crappy Intel 945GM, framerate drops from 60fps to 30fps whenever I fire.

Playing without mediavps, on that build you posted.

On my crappy Intel 945GM, framerate drops from 60fps (the refresh rate) to maybe 30fps when there's combat, and when there's a bunch of these things at once it went as low as 17 or 18.

[Nuke]

Screenshots anyone?  Can we see what interesting pspew combos you guys are coming up with?

seconded, ig gonna post this on the modding board, maybe i can get some pretties

[Nuke]

ive uploaded a new build. the ring type is now supported as are offset. i decided to replace the normal field with initial velocity. why merely indicate direction when you can indicate direction and speed with one vector. i know this is confsing cause we already have a vel value. but dont blame me because volition sucks at naming their pspew variables

also i fixed the required fields bug, so it should now work with pspews in mods and the media vps. this also means you only need feilds you want to use. for speed i strongly suggest omiting the 2 vectors, since they throw extra vector-vector and vector-matrix math into the mix if theyre non-zero.

its very easy to overload the game with these features and make it unplayable even on high end systems. so im gonna try coming up with some automatic scaling based on detail settings and the current frame rate. things like count time and life are your critical performance numbers. lower count means fewer particles. higher time means more delay between spews. and lower life means particles are being removed faster. so performance is dependant on how you set those values.

k ive added a couple more weapon replacements. the tempest now demonstrates the ring type. the harpoon has an effect demonstrating what can be done with the initial velocity and offset.

[Dark RevenantX]

60->40fps in a nebula

60fps constant in empty space

This is with holding down the trigger using a subach.

Seriously, is this stuff even viable?  20fps drop using an Athlon X2 5600+ and an HD 4870.

[Nuke]

i got a few ideas for scaling the parameters, creating fewer particles as the framerate begins to drop. other idea is to use stream processors to handle the particle system. also my sample effects pspews probibly try to go way overboard with the particle creation. the railgun emits 41 particles every frame, some of which linger for several frames before being removed. modders would need to strike an equilibrium between quality and performance. my railgun effect could probibly loose the sparler and the default spewer and still would be better off used on a weapon that fires only every few seconds.

[DaBrain]

Did the development for this stop, or are the new spews in other builds as well?


I really like the new spews, but the performance drop is still pretty bad. (I remember something about using the GPU might should be faster.)

Also, the particle count is still too low for multiplayer. The particle effects look very cheap from the side.

[Nuke]

the problem is with the low level particle code. my code is rather high level and just says, "make these particles in this shape". really just defines particle generation rather than actual rendering or anything speed related. the underlying particle code is kinda slow, mainly because it focuses on creating a small number of detailed particles instead of a large number of simple particles. i have some theoies on how to increase their speed. one idea is to use hardware pointsprites, another is to offload the generation code to the gpu. i ony have a very rudimentary understanding of opengl, and lack the skill to do either of those things.

on the otherhand the code works well, is reverse compatable, scalable, and when used in moderation can improve the appearance of particle effects.

[DaBrain]

Could we also have particles that only use a single texture and fade out, or rotate and stuff like that?
Or is that another battlefield?


While it often has advantages to use ANI/EFF particles, for simple stuff, it's just a waste of memory.

[Davin]

I got a framerate hit of about 15fps running an NVidia 8200M G with an Athlon dual core 1.9GHz. I think it looks great, however its up to you guys who know the guts of the program better than I to decide how feasable it is.