Possible lead on the Particle Bug

I was working on my Flak mod when I see some Phase Missiles flying in the distance after their target died...
and they kept going...
and going...
and going...
I'm talking over 2 minutes here...
I really can't see them anymore because they are so far from the well their effect is simply far too small to be rendered.

I open the missile .particle files and I find:

TXT
ParticleSimulation
HasInfiniteLifeTime TRUE
TotalLifeTime 10.000000
...
ParticleLifeTime 3000000053248.000000

Hmm... no wonder the particle buffer fills up after a while.
All missiles have the same properties, probably why Vasari have the most problems with the particle buffer bug, most of their units have missiles including fighters and flaks which are prone to targetting (soon to be) dead targets.

P.S.: Most travel .particles have the same settings. Looks like a lazy way to not have to set correct lifetimes on particles. :NOTSURE:

how long is that in dog years?

Assuming it's in seconds and that I did my math right... something like 655 thousand dog years...

That's a little more than lazy... it's ridiculous.

For reference, my mod was shooting missiles in bursts of 3 with a 1.0 delay.
Although without the burst the missile seems to disappear after a while, it's still much longer than the missile life time, and simply having missile on burst 'breaking' the collector is a good hint the leak could be around here somewhere.
Setting the all travel projectile lifetimes to 15 or 20s could fix the problem.


665,905 dog years

Awesome guys, I'll check this out soon. Hopefully we can fix it for 1.04.

you rock!



ds

Wow this is a discovery. It would explain why it only really effects Vasari, and why it seems to happen a little while into the game (about the same time I start using the missile frigates).

I already fixed all of those particles for my next mod   

Yay!
Hey bail, is that merge pack comming soon?

I had noticed that when you fire a bunch of missiles at a target just as it's jumping out of the gravwell, the missiles just keep flying out into the void, forever.

Guess I should've shared that information, huh?

That also occurs for the Advent firing lasers (it's kind of neat seeing a beam weapon go shooting off into infinity   ), but the beam disappears and presumably doesn't cause the same problem with the never-ending particles.

Would love to know what SoaSE is using for those specifics so I can put the changes into current SoaSE.

-- Retro