I was just wondering.. how do you do some of the cute particle effects like in My First: Skydiving Academy or Knytt stories? I can't really seem to find a button for it. There's even that special effects extension which put an Effects folder in my MMF folder, but I can't seem to activate that. Any buttons I'm missing?
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Never dl'd that game... but usually particle effects are custom... I had a good one from Chansey awhile back... had something to do with always subtracting Value A from XPos and Value B from YPos, and then setting the values to a certain thing that had to do with random numbers... I'll try to find it tomorrow, it was a good one. I've used it countless times.
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29th May, 2008 at 22:24:25 -
Special effects are cool but they eat up a lot of memory.
And when you're making those wicked particle effects keep in mind theres an object limit.
My particle effects don't end up looking that nice I can handle movements and such very well, but I can't get the lighting or fading or whatever they're using to look as nice.
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Isn't there some blitter object for effects? I used it in Jet Ball but never tried it elsewhere. I think that overcame the object limit somehow.
Actives that run off your physics engine are the best things. Or even just bouncing balls or pinball movement effects. A big glowing Add light that shrinks or turns black (which is trans with Add). Meh there's loads of ways of doing it.
Hmmm.. alpha channels are a great idea! Do they use more processing power?
I remember this game called The Line. That was quite a good game, the best special effects of its time. The guy who made it said that it mostly used the bullet extension, which I never figured how to use
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Originally Posted by Dr. James ^ That's the same extension I used. Doesn't it come with a tutorial or example file?
I couldn't really make any good use of it, but a lot of people seem to be doing great with it. I know a guy who made some nice bullet shooting effects and sparks when combined with an instant hit code. Hmm.. I never checked to see if there was a MMF2 version of it.
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I usually don't have trouble with active object limits even in tgf, as long as you deactivate the particle effect when (if) it's offscreen, and the MMF2 line of products ups the limit by a couple thousand I believe. Maybe it's because of the method I use, but I never have trouble with memory issues either. (and my computer is an old 366Mhz 128MB RAM-er)
Originally Posted by OldManClayton I usually don't have trouble with active object limits even in tgf, as long as you deactivate the particle effect when (if) it's offscreen, and the MMF2 line of products ups the limit by a couple thousand I believe. Maybe it's because of the method I use, but I never have trouble with memory issues either. (and my computer is an old 366Mhz 128MB RAM-er)
Edited by the Author.
Deactivating effects and groups are pretty mega important if your game uses a lot of them. I've managed to bring the RAM usage of my project to 26mb. Worked for months to knock a good 8mb off that.
Another good thing to do is, if the particles are necessary, have them exist and work out of sight but remove extra coding that controls animation, transparency but still with motion.
HWA does help take the edge off resources too if you're prepared to go down that route.
Phizzy made a good example of special effects, mainly explosions and screeshakes but some 2d water effects too.
I don't think any of them require the alpha channel object,
it's just creating small animations and quickly deleting them again with a bit of movement.
Originally Posted by Captain Andyman MMF2's object limit is 20,000 lol
Lol, it's only close to 1,000. Try it. It locks up at around 1K events, unless most of them are deactivated.
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Hmm, I've got about 1800 events minimum in my game and it doesn't lock up. I doubt they're all running at once though. Don't think I go over 500 objects.
Oh, lol, sorry, typo. I meant 1K objects. Heh, I remember the good ol' days back when 1024 was the event limit. If CNC displayed any more, it crashes, or so I heard.
On the topic, I just found a nice particle thingy from Nifflas from the Clickteam website.
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They use 33% more memory than a normal image actually, because it's an extra channel in the image along with R, G and B. Best way to do effects is just bouncy ball movement + random speeds and deceleration coupled with scaling and fading effects.
I don't think I've ever gone over 400 objects unless it was a really extreme effect / a lot going off at once.
I thought this topic died... But, since it's alive again, I'd like to ask a question. Does it seem weird for me to not care how much memory my game takes? I must be odd, but I always thought bigger files and more memory had a sort of awe-inspiring effect. (heh, don't start saying things like, "Just a-cause it's-a big doesn't mean it's awesome. Guh-HEH!" I know that. ) People speak of optimizing their games, and not only do I not see how in the world would you do that to a game, (Unless it was a specific section of code that had a better alternative) I don't really understand why...
Use up to 50 objects with circular White->Yellow->Red->Black gradient and the additive effect.
In events give it a decreasing speed in any angle (randomly) and use the scale functions.
You may also want to include an animation that makes them go darker (Results it fade out effect).
This results in quite an awesome explosion effect that can be changed to other effects such as Fire with some events.
EDIT: Btw, that Effect folder is from the HWA beta.
The unique object limit is 10000 in MMF2 (Should be enough for everyone, really ) and the total object limit is 20000.
2 "Active Object 1" and 3 "Active Object 2" are 2 Unique objects and total 5 objects.
Originally Posted by Phizzy 'Where's the particle effects button?' seems similar to the people who were seriously asking for the 'make my game for me' extension.
Lol, I know. But seriously, there is this particle effects extension thing which led me to believe that there's a button for it just as there's an option for transitions
@LIJI: Haha, I'm hitting close to the 500 unique objects mark, which is seriously making it hard to read my code. But I find that the game doesn't really function well with about 600 objects on screen. Guess I have to refine the code or something when I'm done.
I'll try the White->Yellow->Red->Black gradient thing
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I can handle movements and such very well, but I can't get the lighting or fading or whatever they're using to look as nice.
(and my computer is an old 366Mhz 128MB RAM-er)
Edited by the Author.
(heh, don't start saying things like, "Just a-cause it's-a big doesn't mean it's awesome. Guh-HEH!" I know that. 
) People speak of optimizing their games, and not only do I not see how in the world would you do that to a game, (Unless it was a specific section of code that had a better alternative) I don't really understand why... 
