[Feature Request] Additional Particle Generators

Tormentor667 · Post by **Tormentor667** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 12:22 pm

I'd be glad to see new particle systems in the engine of ZDoom because the always made up a great atmospherical addition to our maps. What I have in mind?

- Generic Particle Fountain (arguments are as followed: 1. amount of particles, 2. height of fountain, 3. speed of fountain, 4. horizontal fountain angle

- Snow Particle Thing (produces randomly snow, arguments can be the amount of snow, the size of the snow thing (just as bridge things and their radius), maybe even the color (for yellow glowing hellish sparks or stuff)

- Horizontal Particle Fountain (doesn't produce particles from below but can be placed on walls, just for slimefalls, waterfalls or else)

- Single Floating Particle (arguments are for colors (rgb) and translucency, system creates one floating particle without gravity. Might be useful and interesting to create particle objects just like the deathstar in the first map of "Dark Forces")

- Rain Particle Thing (just the same as the snow, just faster and makes small particle splashes when hitting the floor

)

Cutmanmike · Post by **Cutmanmike** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 12:29 pm

Decorate? Plus snow and rain has been done, and it's damn laggy

Post by **Enjay** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 12:35 pm

There was a Christmas engine mod of Zdoom 1.18 some time ago (the mod was called Xmas'99 I think - the page has gone now). It had a particle based snow system. No indication of any slow down that I noticed. Certainly nothing like the slowdown you get with actor based snow.

Tormentor667 · Post by **Tormentor667** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 12:55 pm

@cutmanmike - Not with the particle system, snow has been done with "real things". And as far as I know, it isn't possible to create new particle objects with DECORATE!

@Enjay - Exactly, that's what I was thinking about, and as you already said: It runned very smooth, even on my old PI-100MHz machine!

LilWhiteMouse · Post by **LilWhiteMouse** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:52 pm

http://www.zdoom.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... icle#18671

Tormentor667 · Post by **Tormentor667** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 2:35 pm

@LWM - Very outdated this thread, so I think this new one might be useful (btw, I think that some of your arguments for a generic p-fountain arent necassary)

Ixnatifual · Post by **Ixnatifual** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 3:25 pm

I love snow.

Tormentor667 · Post by **Tormentor667** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 6:08 am

Same to me, and that's why I'd be happy to see this new stuff in ZDoom!

@Randy - Any comments on this (and my other feature requests)???

Macil · Post by **Macil** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 1:03 pm

What's the difference between the normal "Generic Particle Fountain" you mentioned and those weather ones? (Other than size, but I don't see how that's important or can't be put in the generic one.)

Tormentor667 · Post by **Tormentor667** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 1:11 pm

@AgentME - Easy to explain: We just have 5 args for a generator and if we put normal ones and weather effects together, we would need by far more than just 5 arguments. Also snow behaves different, the particles just disappear when they hit the ground or an object, fountains fade away. Fountains generate particles from one certain point, weather should behave like "generic bridge things", so you can resize them and adjust them to their environment! Also other behaviour just like speed, angle and stuff is different, so a solution with two things might be much easier.

Macil · Post by **Macil** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 1:26 pm

Okay, that makes since.

Post by **Enjay** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 2:18 pm

If anyone is interested in looking at the old engine-mod christmas thingy, I've put a copy of it up on my lycos examples page

http://members.lycos.co.uk/enjay001/

Scroll down to the bottom. Remember, this is an old version of Zdoom so install it into a fresh directory to avoid overwriting important files like Zdoom.wad.

I think the original distribution came with an install program. I just zipped up this copy, so you should be able to just unzip and go.

Just for info, for christmas 2000 I hacked together a compilation mod of a few different christmas themed levels and sprite modifications using this engine and have my own little christmassy mod. It's not too great, and consists mainly of work that isn't mine but it was quite fun to do and the engine certainly coped with a slightly more extensive mod. Would anyone be interested in that. It's not too special and it weighs in a little heavier (just over 3 mb) and it could never be an official release seeing as how most of it is stolen work, but if someone wanted to take a look at it...

Sticky · Post by **Sticky** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 2:26 pm

Enjay getting broadband is the best thing to happen to this forum in a long time.

/Off to play in the snow!

Edit: Ok, the fog gets real annoying real quick, but the snow effect is awesome. And who wouldn't wanna dm in the forrest with the trees? Sniper rifles anyone?

Killo Zapit · Post by **Killo Zapit** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 3:58 pm

I just wonder if actor-based snow would be as fast as particle-based snow if there was a flag which said "do NOT do the ridicules CPU intensive pointer cleanup that actors usually do when they are removed, because this actor is just a temporary visual effect and should not be referenced by everything anyway". Hay, expanding on that, I wonder if Zdoom could be sufficiently faster by applying a flag like that to bullet puffs and such also...

Anyway, I say we should have a TEMPENT flag.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 7:09 pm

Killo Zapit wrote:I just wonder if actor-based snow would be as fast as particle-based snow if there was a flag which said "do NOT do the ridicules CPU intensive pointer cleanup that actors usually do when they are removed, because this actor is just a temporary visual effect and should not be referenced by everything anyway". Hay, expanding on that, I wonder if Zdoom could be sufficiently faster by applying a flag like that to bullet puffs and such also...

Anyway, I say we should have a TEMPENT flag.

This will massively increase performance. Back when TNT3 was released I used a hack like this to make it playable. More than 75% of the slowdown comes from the pointer cleanup alone.