As I was playing around with particle emitters, trying to make cool teleports and other things, I noticed that if you want something to actually fill up, such as when I wanted to fill up the Teleport, with light particles, I got nowhere near to it with using 1 particle emitter. I thought, I might be able to get away with it by using 3. Yet even that didn’t do it. Went up to 6, still wasn’t good enough. Had to use 9 to get it how I wanted it.
I’ve also noticed how people don’t really use them in games. Even though they can be really cool. Like, really really cool and eye-pleasing. I’m not sure how others feel, but I would use it a lot more if I didn’t have to use 9 particle emitters to get such a small portal filled up.
Point #2
More Properties
Face Camera
I think this should be a think because by default, the particles face the camera. And if someone wants to make a flat looking effect, which for example can only be seen from one side… They can’t.
Texture Mode
This one, I think could some in useful when for example you want a smooth texture, you can use Stretch. And for other cases, Static/Wrap.
End
This are the only things I thought of that could be added/improved to ParticleEmitters. I would absolutely start using cool effects by ParticleEmitters more often. And assuming so would quite a few other developers.
And they seem to be kind of ‘dead’ at the moment, rarely used.
tl;dr
Improve particle emitters, by increasing rate limit, and adding a few other properties, such as Face Camera and Texture Mode.
I don’t know, I see ParticleEmitters in a lot of games. Something I would like added would be a ‘vacuum’ effect where the particles spawn outside of the centre and move into it. Can be done with a lot of them, but is annoying.
And yeah, I guess ParticleEmitters which emit based on the actual shape of a union/mesh would be much appreciated. I’d like to see that happen.
Have you tried making a large particle that slowly decreases in size? For the texture, put the actual particles you want at the edges of the image. This should get a similar effect to what you want.
As far as Increasing the Rate Limit, I’m not sure exactly what your issue is, and I believe there can only be a certain number of particles on screen before visual glitches or performance drops occur.
Oh yeah, I didn’t think of that. I think instead of a vacuum effect, particles should have a path that they can follow if you set it like that, like you select points a certain distance away from the previous one and they’d follow the path. Not sure how it’d be implemented but it’d sure be better than loads of ParticleEmitters facing different directions, which I have also had to do.
