Particle systems and clearing the emission thereof

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Sat Dec 04, 2010 4:23 pm

Okay I'm not sure if this is a "beginners question" as I consider particle
systems to be more advanced. But what I'm trying to do is rather simple
and I'm surprised that I was unable to find the answer in the tutorials or
on the forums with a search.

Here's the problem.
I can't find a way to effectively clear or reset the particle emissions of
a given particle system. This means that when I fire a gun the projectile of
which has a particle system attached, wait for it to hit the wall, and then fire
again, some of the old particles which were still there and were just invisible
reappear and go on.

I've tried doing a 'particleSystem->setEmitter(0)' along with a handful
of other things, but I cannot find a way to clear or even kill the particles
of a particle system.

I'm hoping there's something like 'particleSystem->clearParticleEmission()'
or something like that...

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Tue Dec 07, 2010 3:02 pm

BUMP!!!

Come on, am I really the only person who has ever thought of doing such
a thing? If anybody has advice or solutions, I'm all ears.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Tue Dec 07, 2010 4:18 pm

Sorry, forgot to answer this. Right now it's really a problem. I remember I patched that a few years ago in own code, but it's not yet in the engine (and the patch wasn't good as I just hacked in to clear it always on setvisible). It's a missing features that we have to add.

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Tue Dec 07, 2010 4:26 pm

Ahh, I thought as much. I'm sure Irrlicht will do it eventually.

In the meantime, I'm trying to patch it myself. I have no idea where to start,
so advice would again be helpful.

easy · Post by **easy** » Thu Dec 09, 2010 6:59 pm

The way I did this, I attched a fade out animator to the particle system, and also added a timed auto delete animator (I forgot it's name). So I could handle explosions.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Fri Dec 10, 2010 9:34 am

@lazerblade: When you're not afraid of changing engine sources - all you have to do there is probably add a function to CParticleSystemSceneNode that calls Particles.set_used(0). I try to get to at the weekend (I just have to write a small test first to make sure this really works in all cases).

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 5:23 pm

IParticleSceneNode:clearParticles is now in svn trunk.

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 5:43 pm

Awesomeness, Thanks!