Particle effects and performance

#1 First, figure out whether the problem is the number of particles (i e, CPU bound), or whether it's fill rate. For example, try making the window really small (320x240) and see if the frame rate increases. If it increases, then you are fill bound; if not, it's vertex or CPU bound.

If you are fill bound, create smaller particles. You may get away with filling further out in each texture square and making the particles smaller in world space and still get the same look, for example.

If you are vertex bound, create fewer particles. You can create particles with funky patterns in the texture suare, instead of just fuzzy round dots, to get more variation with fewer particles.

#2 Yes I believe that's normal. Torque usually slows down for me when using lots of particles. Im not sure, but I believe it's because torque doesn't handle alpha transparency too well. you could try making the particles smaller so that they don't take as much screen space when rendered. also try reducing the number of particles which need to be rendered and the lifetime of the particles.

#3 Thanks

I'm new to Torque and to particles - so now that I've confirmed it's the particles - I can start looking at fixing it.

How would I put the frame rate on the screen while I'm testing?

#4 In the console type "metrics(fps);"
or use a utility like FRAPS.

#5 Great - thanks