Avalanche

#1 I'm a Torque newbie, but here's my best guess:

Maybe you could create this in two parts: first, add a particle emitter at the source of the avalanche; second, dynamically create a pzone at the area of effect of the avalanche.

How would your ideal avalanche be used? Will the player be inside the avalanche when it starts? Should it be possible for the player to be buried in unmoving, solid snow once the avalanche has stopped? Will players be able to physically touch the avalanche, or can they only see it from afar?

#2 Probally need several particle emitters across the top, then several mid mountain at different places. Then have the particles at top emit first, putting a pause on the other emitters until the particles would about get to there. This would give a sheeting effect which is what happens with a avalanche.

I would start with looking at the demo app and the smoke emitter from the chimney to get you a idea of how to work with them and play tweak and play some more. See if you can get the chimney to flow particles down around it. Play with the time the particles are active. Hope this helps.

#3 Another technique would be to follow the example of the crossbow explosions from starter.fps.

Make an explosion at the top of your avalanche. Give the particles a long lifetime, large size, and a heavy gravity.

That explosion should emit debris (rocks, snow, trees) that provie the "flow" of your avalanche. As those debris objects collide with the terrain, have them create MORE debris and "snow". That way your avalanche will have the effect of "building" as it rolls down the hill.

Just a thought..

#4 Also thought of this last night, there is a friction tag for DTS files, you can create snow blocks and have the friction changed when you want the avelanche start. Then you get large blocks sliding from where they were.

This gives the nice detailed effect of where the snow breaks from as well as the large solid chunks plowing down the mountain.

Reguardless though there are many methods, your imagination and time to learn are your only limits here.

#5 Or have animated .dts objects moving down a path..