Recycle particles

Troubleshooting General Help
1

i'm using lots of particles for magical effects (the biggest one, mininuke, uses 2500) and i'm afraid i'll run into garbage collector problems in big fights. is there a way to recycle particles or particle meshes? if i simply reuse them, the effects are quite buggy (particles disappear before they should, appearing not every time they should…)

2

i have thought about that as well, currently in our game we use just one explosion effect. Our effect of course can only appear once to a given time which is not very nice.



One possible solution might be:

Define how many effects of the same type need to be active at the same time, say 5.

Now create an Array of 5 of those particle meshes.



When en effect needs to be triggered, get the next from the array, set location and fire.

When 5 of those effects are already active and a 6. effect needs to be triggered, then the oldest effect would be reused. (but chances are good that this effect is already fading.

3

i thought about pooling per effect, but i didn't know how to completely reset a particle mesh.

and i still don't. do you?

4

i don't, but why would you need to reset it?

5

explosions should always emit all particles at once. i randomized their lifetime a bit, so if i simply reuse the meshes, they are "out of sync". some particles are emitted too late, some vanish too soon.

6

FurBallz used recycled particles for explosions and such.  It's older code, but could give you ideas.  (http://www.renanse.com/furballz/webstart/furballzsrc.zip)

7

thats what i meant.

here the part from FurBallz:


   
    public static ParticleMesh getExplosion() {
        for (int x = 0, tSize = explosions.size(); x < tSize; x++) {
            ParticleMesh e = (ParticleMesh)explosions.get(x);
            if (!e.isActive()) {
                return e;
            }
        }
        return createExplosion();
    }
   
    private static ParticleMesh createExplosion() {
        ParticleMesh explosion = ParticleFactory.buildParticles("big", 80);
        explosion.setGravityForce(new Vector3f(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f));
        explosion.setEmissionDirection(new Vector3f(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f));
        explosion.setMaximumAngle(FastMath.PI);
        explosion.setSpeed(0.4f);
        explosion.setMinimumLifeTime(600.0f);
        explosion.setStartSize(2.0f);
        explosion.setEndSize(5.0f);
        explosion.setStartColor(new ColorRGBA(1.0f, 0.312f, 0.121f, 1.0f));
        explosion.setEndColor(new ColorRGBA(1.0f, 0.24313726f, 0.03137255f, 0.0f));
        explosion.setRandomMod(0.0f);
        explosion.setControlFlow(false);
        explosion.setInitialVelocity(0.02f);
        explosion.setParticleSpinSpeed(0.0f);
        explosion.setRepeatType(Controller.RT_CLAMP);

        explosion.warmUp(1000);

        explosion.setRenderState(ts);
        explosion.setRenderState(as);
        explosion.setRenderState(zstate);
        explosion.updateRenderState();
       
        explosions.add(explosion);
       
        return explosion;
    }

8

In the case of furballz though, the user asking for the particles would then reset the particles back to "ALIVE" status.

9

i don't see any reset there

10

You're looking in the factory, not the user.  See PlayerShip.killShip() for example:



        FurBallzGame.shipNode.detachChild(shipModel);
        ParticleMesh mesh = ExplosionFactory.getExplosion();
        mesh.getOriginOffset().set(shipModel.getLocalTranslation());
        mesh.setLocalScale(0.65f);
        mesh.forceRespawn(); // <----
        FurBallzGame.shipNode.attachChild(mesh);
        mesh.setCullMode(Spatial.CULL_NEVER);