Particle and Particle systems Options

[Bittah Commander]

Something ive discovered recently is that probably around half the tags designed for Particles and Particle systems, are not even used
With alot of fiddling around im sure you could get some pretty amazing effects if you actually used them.

particle and particle systems seem to be only touched on by WW in TS (and even less so in RA2)

I thought id post this here so that other modders can have a go at messing around with some of the tags (as i just havent got time at the moment to do experimenting of any kind), remember post your results

Particle System's

SpawnSparkPercentage=
OneFrameLight=
LightSize=
SparkSpawnFrames=
LaserColor=
Laser=
VelocityPerturbationCoefficient=
MovementPerturbationCoefficient=
PositionPerturbationCoefficient=
SpiralRadius=
SpiralDeltaPerCoord=
ParticlesPerCoord=
SpawnDirection=
BehavesLike=
Lifetime=
SpawnTranslucencyCutoff=
SpawnCutoffSlowdown=
SpawnRadius=
ParticleCap=
SpawnFrames=
HoldsWhat=

Particle

NextParticle=
FinalDamageState=
StartColor2=
StartColor1=
NextParticleOffset=
ZVelocityRange=
MinZVelocity=
YVelocity=
XVelocity=
ColorSpeed=
Translucent25State=
Translucent50State=
StateAIAdvance=
StartStateAI=
EndStateAI=
DeleteOnStateLimit=
Radius=
Deacc=
Velocity=
WindEffect=
NumLoopFrames=
StartFrame=
MaxEC=
MaxDC=
ColorList=

Im not sure of the values and/or value ranges for some of the tags, but thats why i said experiment
I may update this later on posting the obvious value ranges (like binary ones) and ones that are already present in the rules.ini

Perhaps a short description of what the known ones do might help too.

Hmm most ones are fairly self-explanatoiry..

Particle System's

SpawnSparkPercentage= ; This is weird one could just use the ParticleCap
OneFrameLight= ;Dunno
LightSize= ;Casts a light
SparkSpawnFrames= ; how many frames will actually create sparks? Dunno the difference with SpawnFrames..
LaserColor= ;This is cool and handy, you can draw a laser without any side effect like stupid red lighting around it.
Laser= ;see above
VelocityPerturbationCoefficient= ;weird stuff
MovementPerturbationCoefficient= ;weird stuff
PositionPerturbationCoefficient= ;weird stuff
SpiralRadius= ;for railguns
SpiralDeltaPerCoord= ; how many spirals per coord (some unit smaller than a pixel) in railgun particle system
ParticlesPerCoord= ; particles per coord
SpawnDirection= ;probably a number (see aircraft facings), or a degree(360 max) or a word (doubt that) (the standard seems to be north(upward))
BehavesLike= ;what kind of particle system...
Lifetime= ; lifetime of the part system
SpawnTranslucencyCutoff= ; when to stop spawning translucent particles (?)
SpawnCutoffSlowdown= ;rate of stopping particles (ie slowing to a halt)
SpawnRadius= ;obvious
ParticleCap= ;number of particles..
SpawnFrames= ;how many frames to spawn particles
HoldsWhat= ;Particle to use

Particle

NextParticle= What followup particle to use (like next= in art.ini)
FinalDamageState= ;dunno
StartColor2= ;obvious
StartColor1= ;obvious
NextParticleOffset= ;offset from 1st particle location that 2nd will start (see above)
ZVelocityRange= ; max Z travel velocity of particles; also affects Z range of particles
MinZVelocity= min Z velocity.
YVelocity= ;duh
XVelocity= ;duh
ColorSpeed= ;Speed to use when shifting particles through colorlist (higher number seems to indicate higher speed, unsure though)
Translucent25State= ; when to use translucency=25
Translucent50State= ;when to use translucency=50 (ie the particle slowly dimmes before being deleted)
StateAIAdvance= ;dunno
StartStateAI= ;no idea
EndStateAI= ;dunno
DeleteOnStateLimit= ;wtf is a state limit?
Radius= ;well duh...
Deacc= ;Rate of deacceleration of particles (higher number seems to indicate faster deacc)
Velocity= ;speed of particles
WindEffect= ; what wind effect to use (direction)
NumLoopFrames= ;not sure what is looped, either whole particle stuff or only certain frames
StartFrame= ;what frame of part sys to start spawning particles?
MaxEC= ;duration of the particles
MaxDC= ;damage per particle
ColorList= color list for particles to shift through, edit like this:
(255,255,255),(0,99,190),(0,100,202),(0,111,180),(255,255,255)
Colors are in R,G,B obviously..

i know this is old but does anyone have any more info on what you can do with particle systems

That's a good point. We know they can be used for gas, sparks, smoke, railguns, firestreams and (I don't know what it's actually referring to, the damage animation for FS wall?) Firestorm sparks. To be honest, I can't really think of much else we could do with particles.

one thing im curious about is attaching a particle or particle system to a building, say one that generates sparks, and where the sparks land have a small patch of tiberium start to grow.

in the mod im designing i want to have a new building for nod called 'Tiberium Reactor' its basically a giant blue tiberium crystal thats harnessed as a power plant for the bases, and has the side effect of spawning tiberium around it.

thusly, the only sure-fire way i know of having a tiberium-generator is how it was done in the ultima mod, with giving a building a weapon thats attached to the same thing that happens with meteors and spawning tiberium; but you have tio force-fire it on a location to make the tiberium, and it NEVER grows, reguardless of the settings for grow and spread of tiberium.


if anyone can lend a hand in this, please reply or drop me a line.

Drakis, the problem is, it seems that you can only spawn these small tib patches and not the bigger ones. You also can't make them grow or spread (growing is needed before it can spread). I think this is because the size of a tib patch is controlled by the map it is placed on. (Remember that newly spawned tib patches from tiberium trees also won't ever spread, they grow because there are other patches spawnen right to it, though)

About the particle that you want to attach to the building; there is a bug in TS that makes is so the particle will always stay even when the building is destroyed. The tag to use is NaturalParticleSystem= , if I remember correctly.

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

as we all know, TS doesn't supports a wide area damage effect.
Even with spawned debris you won't have a wide area effect, because they are stopped by buildings and cliffs in their trajectory.

So i thought about using particles to make a wide area effect. My goal is to create a damaging ionized air effect for the ion cannon.
here's my current code

CODE

[Particles]
26=IonizePart

[ParticleSystems]
20=IonizeSys

[IonizeSys]
HoldsWhat=IonizePart
Spawns=yes
SpawnFrames=1
SpawnRadius=1000;radius of the spawned particles around the impact point
Slowdown=.025
ParticleCap=30
SpawnCutoff=15.0
SpawnTranslucencyCutoff=13.0
Lifetime=200
BehavesLike=Smoke
;Smoke can have SpawnRadius
;Web,Fire,WeakGas doesn't
;Gas uses by default the common gascloud anim and behaviour

[IonizePart]
Image=CLOUD2D
MaxDC=25
MaxEC=100
Translucency=25
Velocity=1.0;speed of the ascending smoke cloud
Deacc=.05
WindEffect=0
Damage=25
Warhead=IonCannonWH
BehavesLike=Gas
;Fire like Gas but without mutation
;Fire can only be used with a system spawnradius up to 300 (though not always/ this is a weird one)
;     for bigger spawnradius, the anim is invisible though damage still works
;     Theory: the anim plays only there, where a fire passable path from shooter to target exists
;Smoke: anim can't do damage and anim ascends while disappearing (though with Velocity=0.0 this could be avoided)
;Web,WeakGas,Smoke can't do damage
DeleteOnStateLimit=yes
EndStateAI=20
StateAIAdvance=4

[IonCannonWH]
Particle=IonizeSys

this is how it looks ingame


the problem now is, that if i use BehavesLike=Fire on the particle, it doesn't always plays the anim, but still does damage on those points where the anim should be played.
If i use Gas it works like in the preview. It works all fine, except that each cloud would mutate a destroyed unit into a visceroid. But since an IonCannon wouldn't mutate anything this doesn't fits here.

So does anyone know a way to play the anim and have damage, without using gas?

I thought already about a 2 step particle system
first step is a very short anim (1 frame) that does the damage and then goes to the next particle using NextParticle= key, which then plays some kind of ionized air anim. But i always got IEs if i tried to use this key. Does anyone know how and with which behaviour types this works? Obviously do the behaviour types Fire,Gas,WeakGas,Smoke,Spark,Web etc support only certain keys and functions, so it would be helpful to know, which of them supports which functionality.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: Jul 3 2008, 02:22 PM

[SeekSomethingNew]

Internal Error? Where

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

There's no need to upload it imo. I know what caused the IE. I doubt that the except.txt could tell why the code has problems with the NextParticle key.

\EDIT here it is anyway:  except.txt ( 20.67K ) Number of downloads: 2714


This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: Jul 3 2008, 05:10 PM

[The DvD]

How about having the ionring anim spaw invisible debris (like a modified METDEBRIS), with a high velocity, that does damage when it explodes? For a nice particle-based ionisation effect, check the Ioncannon code in TSTW.

[SeekSomethingNew]

So what caused it LKO?

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

How about having the ionring anim spaw invisible debris (like a modified METDEBRIS), with a high velocity, that does damage when it explodes?

Even with spawned debris you won't have a wide area effect, because they are stopped by buildings and cliffs in their trajectory.

This is the problem of debris, that if you fire direct on a building, all debris are stopped by this building and you don't get an area effect. Instead the building gets the damage of all debris too.

I also thought about using the cluster logic, but this has the problem, that the spawned "missile debris" don't make a nice round area effect. They never fly to the north and seem to concentrate most times on the south only.

For a nice particle-based ionisation effect, check the Ioncannon code in TSTW.

I'll do this, but i think i've found already a cool effect. I just have to make some small pixel flying randomly up in an shp and replace the gascloud from the preview with this one.

So what caused it LKO?

The IE happend, because the key NextParticle works only on the 2 BehavesLike types Web and Gas on the particlesystem. But i need Smoke on the system so i can use the SpawnRadius= key to get the area effect and unfortunately do Web and Gas don't support SpawnRadius.
I also tried it with having 2 BehavesLike keys like it was done with the binary Railgun trick, but in my case they didn't combined their features.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: Jul 6 2008, 10:42 AM

[The DvD]

This is the problem of debris, that if you fire direct on a building, all debris are stopped by this building and you don't get an area effect. Instead the building gets the damage of all debris too.

Well, to be honest, in 'real life' the damage would originate from the ion cannon blast, so objects behind a big building would be protected from a good part of the damage. BTW, you should be able to make the debris bump up high enough to 'jump' over bigger buildings.

I'll do this, but i think i've found already a cool effect. I just have to make some small pixel flying randomly up in an shp and replace the gascloud from the preview with this one.

A .shp won't really be random, ofcourse But combining both particle and shp animation might be neat.

[Rampastring]

For a nice particle-based ionisation effect, check the Ioncannon code in TSTW.

I'd like to have some sort of an ionization effect in my personal mod, however there doesn't seem to be a download link for TSTW in it's forum section. Where can I download it?

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Jul 7 2008, 07:40 AM

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

www.ppmsite.com TSTW1.1Full.exe