Smoke effects resetting.

[hollow point 1]

Dear all,

I have CO with the newest patches. Along with newest ACE stable release, Jsrs sound mod, JTD smoke, zeus ai and a few other mods. I am now experiencing a bug where the smoke effects 'reset' It happens mostly when using tank shells HE and DU. Or when there are lots of explosions. I know there is a limit to the number of effects allowed on screen. But it has gotten much worse. I have tried to remove addons to find out what is causing it but it happens no matter what I try....:(

Any advice?

[dmarkwick 259]

Hi Hollow Point :)

When making Fire & Smoke, I'm very mindful of the particle limit hardwired into the game. As my addon necessarily makes large additions to the game particle count, I try very hard to get good looking and reasonable performance tuned effects, with a combination of particle count and particle size. The ArmA2 engine does have a problem with particle size, particles can only be drawn up to a certain screen size which is why they sometimes look odd (like they're shrinking) as you move close up to them.

You are right about the resetting problem, I see this problem in two situations:

1. When there is a real lot happening on the battlefield.

2. When there are a lot of graphical addons running.

Number 1 can be alleviated by trying to play missions that don't have all their action all at the same time, or have a coordinated nature so that flurries of activity happen instaead of an all-out battle.

Number 2 can only be alleviated by pruning away some addons I'm afraid. This will be down to what you personally prefer to see in the game, great effects and bombastic explosions, or observable long-distance battlefield history. I tend to go for the latter, because well that's why I made the addon, I prefer the ambience to the ooh-aaah :)

But, that's only my preference. By reading your post however, I might suspect the first reason to be the problem, simply too much happening all at the same time.

[hollow point 1]

The thing is that I get this even with two or so units. With only one shooting!

This is a recent thing. I did not used to have this problem. I will do some more testing and report back.

cheers.