Help editing cluster bomb effects

[+malibu43 142]

Ever since the sept 08 patches, the cluster bomb effect from the MF weps pack absolutely kills my framerates and turns things into a slideshow. I think it might be the cbusmoke part of the effect, but I'm not sure.

 

Anyway, I have no idea how to edit effects. Can anyone point out what I could try to get the effect to have less impact on frame rates?

 

Thanks!

 

PS - which .cat file and which .ini file have the stock effects? I'd like to take a look at the stock effect.

Edited December 1, 2008 by malibu43

[+malibu43 142]

Another random question on the subject of cluster bombs... the bomblets never seem to dispense from the canister and continue on the same flight path. But instead they seem to shoot forward. If you use the F9 key, the result is that your bomb is tracking to a certain point, and then the canister dissapears (I mean splits open) and then you see the impact way off in the distance.

 

I don't know if I explained this well, but does anyone know if there is any .ini setting you can edit somewhere that will tone down the distance the bomblets leap ahead of the canister? None of the values in the weps editor seem to have anything to do with this.

 

Thanks!

[+ST0RM 145]

Go into your effects folder and find the CBUeffects.ini file.

 

If you reduce the view distance from 18000 to about 10000 or less (depending on your system), it should help out on the frames. I've done with this will all of my bomb explosion effects as I was getting really slow during the mass bombing runs.

 

Hope it helps.

 

-S

[+malibu43 142]

Thanks. I kinda tried that, but my problem is mainly with CBU effects, and it tends to happen when I'm using them as well as AI flights. This means that I'm within the 5-10k meter range, so dropping the max visible distance probably won't help much.

 

What I did do, was remove some of the emmitters from the effect. Most noticeably missing is the dust cloud (among others). The dust cloud seems to be pretty realistic part of the effect based on the youtube videos I've seen, but eliminating it helped a lot with FPS. And the end result isn't that bad. I just replaced the top section of the effect with this:

 

[EffectType001]

Name=ClusterBombletExplosionEffect

Element[01].ElementType=PLACE_EMITTER

Element[01].ElementName=CbuGroundExplosion

Element[01].StartTime=0.000000

Element[01].StartTimeDeviation=0.000000

Element[01].EjectTime=-1.000000

Element[01].EjectTimeDeviation=0.0

Element[02].ElementType=PLACE_EMITTER

Element[02].ElementName=SmallRocketFlashEmitter

Element[02].StartTime=0.000000

Element[02].StartTimeDeviation=0.000000

Element[02].EjectTime=-1.000000

Element[02].EjectTimeDeviation=0.0

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

A better idea may be to change the EmissionRate variable, which controls how often image "particles" are generated.

 

Be aware that EmissionRate is not an emission rate but its inverse: time period. So ramping up EmissionRate sounds bad, but its the time between particle births, so a higher value gives lower emission rate, and correspondingly better framerates. Confused yet? hehe

 

Another one is ParticleLifeTime, which works as sounds like. You could reduce this, say in half, but ramp up the speed of motion of the particles, or if applicable their gravity sensitivity, so they fill out the same final volume of space but only half the particles are used, saving framerates..

[+malibu43 142]

A better idea may be to change the EmissionRate variable, which controls how often image "particles" are generated.

 

Be aware that EmissionRate is not an emission rate but its inverse: time period. So ramping up EmissionRate sounds bad, but its the time between particle births, so a higher value gives lower emission rate, and correspondingly better framerates. Confused yet? hehe

 

Another one is ParticleLifeTime, which works as sounds like. You could reduce this, say in half, but ramp up the speed of motion of the particles, or if applicable their gravity sensitivity, so they fill out the same final volume of space but only half the particles are used, saving framerates..

 

Ahhh... that made a big difference. I still cut out some of the other emmitters, but I got the "dust cloud" back in there with a lower emmission rate. Seems to now have no negative impact on frame rates.

 

[EffectType001]

Name=ClusterBombletExplosionEffect

Element[01].ElementType=PLACE_EMITTER

Element[01].ElementName=CbuGroundExplosion

Element[01].StartTime=0.000000

Element[01].StartTimeDeviation=0.000000

Element[01].EjectTime=-1.000000

Element[01].EjectTimeDeviation=0.0

Element[02].ElementType=PLACE_EMITTER

Element[02].ElementName=LargeGreySmokeEmitter

Element[02].StartTime=0.050000

Element[02].StartTimeDeviation=0.000000

Element[02].EjectTime=-1.000000

Element[02].EjectTimeDeviation=0.000000

Element[03].ElementType=PLACE_EMITTER

Element[03].ElementName=SmallRocketFlashEmitter

Element[03].StartTime=0.000000

Element[03].StartTimeDeviation=0.000000

Element[03].EjectTime=-1.000000

Element[03].EjectTimeDeviation=0.0

 

....

 

[EmitterType002]

Name=LargeGreySmokeEmitter

EmissionType=RADIAL_EMITTER

UpdateType=SIMPLE_POINT

LifeTime=0.20

Inheritence=0.00000

MaxVisibleDistance=20000.000000

ZeroVelocityZ=TRUE

EmissionRate=0.50000 <----- was 0.006 before

...