So, I'm quite far with my Game, but I see many examples of Particles and as they just look to great I have few questions:
I'm going to make a "EffectsGameState", wich decide wich effects should be enabled, so that shaders could be easily disabled… if there not supported, and every effect could be disabled by a config file or so…
Do I need only one Particle Mesh for all Particles… or does it make sense do have maybe one for each room (it will be indoor) so we don't need to render them if they're outside of the frustum (or culled by cell-and-portal)…
I think particles are pretty expensive in many terms, so yes, I'd say that having separate meshes for different effects will be better, so you can cull them.
I think you should even try to disable them if they are not viewable or close to the view point, as I think that they will continue to be expensive even if they are not drawn.
Yes… they have to update I think, don't they?.. but since most of the particles I would use, are always seen… Explosion's…
Dust, etc… it would make sense to let them never be culled…
And those wich I doesn' always see… hm… can I disable update for them? ( So they stand still… but i can still see them… )
Yet, another question:
Can I maybe make one static ParticleMesh for all the particles I'll always see?
Or should I create one ParticleMesh for each kind of particle(fire/dust/etc…)?