So I played ba the other day.

[smoth]

a few things struck me....

first the good. I love all the work that has been put into the ui and widget selection.

Now...

Why are you still using nano particles?

Why not go over to a nano laser and use those particles to improve the look of the game's explosions?

Teamplatters would be a nice addition

[Beherith]

To be honest, I dislike the nano lasers, but if it eats less computer, then it could be included as an option.
XTA has much nicer explosions.

[Gota]

I agree with behe on the laser effect and making it optional.

[Pxtl]

I agree with behe on the laser effect and making it optional.

Lasers and nano-particles are an fx-emit, so they'd be damned hard to do as a UI-side option.

I would think the best approach would be just to steal CA's nanotowers - they use a laser. Other units can keep their particles.

[Gota]

interesting word use,didnt know CA owned anything.

[Jazcash]

Teamplatters would be a nice addition

I already use that.

[Wombat]

1. teamplatter - thats called wiggit !

2. nanos - or just go spring settings, decrease number of nano particles, result - no lags, u dont need to steal anyones lazor.

[smoth]

Why not go over to a nano laser and use those particles to improve the look of the game's explosions?

[Jazcash]

Yeh, I personally would prefer laser beams rather than particles. For nanos only though.

[Pxtl]

Why not go over to a nano laser and use those particles to improve the look of the game's explosions?

Who's going to do that? As has been frequently remarked, nobody is really *developing* BA. TheFatController has taken a nice role of steward, but he has no interest in going through and redoing all the CEGs. He's mostly content to play with the Lua code, fix bugs, and tweak the balance.

The reason BA's explosions are simplistic is because there's nobody working on them - not because of misering particles.

[Wombat]

looks like tfc got life.

[TheFatController]

I disagree that XTA has better explosions it just has more obvious explosions.

However if someone did make some explosions for BA and they were an improvement then they'd certainly be included. They'd just have to be non-cartoony and not over the top (sometimes less is more!).

[Saktoth]

interesting word use,didnt know CA owned anything.

The author owns his original work, GPL is a copyright license, it does not remove the rights of the copyright owner. Though technically, the owner is jK rather than CA.

The downside of lups nano fx is that the laser updates slowly, so on a moving unit or moving constructor beam will lag behind slightly. The update speed can be increased but that requires more system resources. It doesnt encompass the whole units radius (hitsphere) the way the nano particle does, which goes to a random point within the radius. The laser fx just go to the centre of the unit.

Of course you can use the cloud nano fx instead, which are more like the origional FX (I think the random clouds drifting across the map problem was fixed) and dont have any of those downsides.

But they would need to be applied in the script to every constructor (because a piece must be defined- perhaps the lua-sfx could simply read the nano piece to make that simpler? I've no idea).

At the start of the script put lua_QueryNanoPiece() { return 0; }
In the QueryNanoPiece(piecenum)
Put call-script lua_QueryNanoPiece(piecenum);

So its not a big deal, and the necessary files are just lups AFAICT which BA already has.

[el_matarife]

Is it possible to make the FPS management script change out the nano effect for lower end computers? I know the particle system is a giant CPU eater, and if the nano laser or cloud is better I think players should be forced into it when they lag the entire game.

[hunterw]

if someone maeks new explosions make them like ota where u see a big white shockwave for every unit that dies, its tactically relevant

[Wombat]

to be honest i dont like new 'sonic wave' effect... it fits dgun and looks great, but looks simpy silly when u see it after lab explosion or golly's hit

[Tribulex]

I disagree that XTA has better explosions it just has more obvious explosions.

However if someone did make some explosions for BA and they were an improvement then they'd certainly be included. They'd just have to be non-cartoony and not over the top (sometimes less is more!).

wrong xta explosions are far superiour

[TradeMark]

yeah those nano particles are real problem; sometimes they disappear because of my particle limit.

instead of thousands of smaller particles we could make some sort of a texture that has dots in it with alpha could be animated to scroll up to make it look like its nanoparticles.

[TheFatController]

I cba to test right now but does the nano particles limit just stop drawing them for all builders once the limit has been reached?

Cause if so it could stop drawing every 10th particle or w/e instead to reach the limit so the sprays just get thinner.

[Hobo Joe]

I disagree with removing nano particles, I <3 them and would never want to see them leave. If anything, keep it an option.