Particle system problems

mr_Nebel · January 2002

I'm having a few troubles with the particle system so I was wondering if I could get help with them.

1. I'm pretty sure this is a GFX card issue cos I saw something about it ages ago BUT i'm getting this really weird effect of small sqaures appearing through low alpha value particles (see attached screenshot) and was wondering if anyone else had run into this and what they did to fix it. (I'm running a Geforce 256 with the 21.83 drivers)
2. The ingame particle system editing won't work for me, I can get the sliders up but whenever I go to edit them they set to zero and won't let me edit them again (not sure if this is a known bug cos I haven't been around here very long).
3. Any tips on making a good distance haze i've been working on it for a few days now and it all looks crap.

Thanks in advance

Greedo · January 2002

As far as the sliders, it should be all fixed up by the time the NSTR2 comes out and about. When that comes out, you should be able to edit that haze until it looks all great like. As for the squares, it could very well be a GFX card thing.

Relic25 · January 2002

Well, those square edges may just be where the sprites in the particle system are passing through surfaces. Remember that the sprites are still 2D. Am I referring to the same thing you were describing?

There is a shadowed rumor (I don't want to let cats out of any bags) of a 'haze' entity in NSTR2. Don't quote me on that though. I can't guarantee anything!

Yamazaki · January 2002

I don't see any squares in that picture, except for where the particle sprite is clipping through the wall... but Relic already noted that.

For haze you will need a sprite that has no 'hotpost' (As Merkaba put it), a sprite that is uniformly coloured all over. Then you need to place them as slow-moving large particles that fade in and fade out, so that it looks like drifting fog. Merkaba does it by simply using really large env_sprites spaced apart in his corridors, but a particle system can do it too if you want movement.

mr_Nebel · January 2002

Ok thanks guys, the squares ARE quite hard to see there, i'll try and edit the picture to make them more visible.

mr_Nebel · January 2002

Ok I set the saturation incredibly high but they are very visible ingame, especially when the sprite has an alpha of about .2-.3

Moleculor · January 2002

That has -got- to be a graphics problem. Have you updated your card's drivers lately? What kind of card is it?

mr_Nebel · January 2002

Its an original GeForce 256 32mb Ram, running the 21.83 reference drivers.
I saw it mentioned in an article AGES ago but can't remember where it was.

Moleculor · January 2002

Hmm.. does GeForce have forums or something where you can post that pic and ask?

liquidscript · January 2002

My geForce2 card does stuff like that on the entire screen in Deus Ex. I kinda got used to it, but i don't know how bad it is on your system.

Nemesis_Zero · January 2002

Yup, seems to be a NVidia problem - my GeForce 2 MX produces the same kind of graphical confetti.

Lotis · January 2002

My geforce 2 mx dosnt have problems like this that im aware of, ill go test it out and tell you if I get any problems.

Jim_Raynor · January 2002

I saw the same squares when my friend played the intro movie from Max Payne (Hellicopter,fog and stuff) And he too had a geforce 2 card..

Howling · January 2002

If that's a particle system problem than I have a bigger one. Maybe I set something up wrong, but when I wanted to playtest my map with the particles system entity HL crashed and this odd 'e-mail the bug screen' came up. But it didn't matter because my good ol' PII 350 with 128 megs ram, Riva TNT Ultra had already crashed. Is it my specs? A bug in NSTR or did I prolly set something up wrong?
Here are the tjomgs

targetname -
P_GenerationSource -
P_GenerationShape - Box
P_Sprite -
P_SpriteNumFrame - 1
P_GeberationShapeParameter -
P_NumParticles - 50
P_GenerationRate - 50
P_Size - 1.0
P_SystemLifetime - -1
P_Lifetime - -1
P_StartingVelocityShape - Box
P_StartingVelParameters - 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
P_Scale - 1.0
P_MaxAlpha - 1.0
P_RenderMode - Additive -> (src*a+dest)
P_PSToGen -
P_AnimationSpeed - 1

Flags:
start on, fade out and minimize edges

I compiled the map completely before testing.

Flayra · January 2002

You need to specify a sprite, or it will ASSERT (that's the dialog you saw, something along the lines of "this->mSprite != 0"). If you add a sprite here, it should work fine.

Merkaba · January 2002

Wait wait wait...it's not a GFX card problem, its simply because HL, by default, runs in 16-bit colour mode, and therefore has to use dither patterns to generate some colours. I'm pretty certain that's the problem.

HanzGruber · January 2002

The sprite problems could be the bit depth you are using...
halflife defaults to 16 bits per pixel...add -32bpp to the command line when running halflife.

HanzGruber · January 2002

greaaaaaaaat....I didn't change pages...sorry for giving same bloody info bloody twice....bloody

mr_Nebel · January 2002

Yup thats the problem.
Thank you!
maybe haze.spr needs to be changed to 16bit so that it doesn't do this to people on older machines.

Particle system problems

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