Time  Nick       Message
02:07 MTDiscord  <exe_virus> A particle, typically, is something the GPU can move easily, so it's a set and forget kind of construct. I.e. you set some parameters and away it goes.   Particles are often just a single texture on a plane, typically a square plane. That plane can have an orientation and position, velocity, acceleration, lifetime. Some have orientations that always face the player, and some don't.   Billboards and particles are extremely similar in
02:07 MTDiscord  essence.   They don't have meshes typically, they are 2D pictures moving around your screen
08:06 MTDiscord  <herowl> Billboards aren't similar IMO, billboard is about facing the player, which is most particles, but could also be an entity.
08:07 MTDiscord  <herowl> Also actual engines allow you to set any particle visuals plus a good control of particles. Godot's system in particular is something to look up to.
08:08 MTDiscord  <herowl> You can set there any mesh with any materials as a particle, and then spawn however many you want.
08:08 MTDiscord  <herowl> That's to the point some rely on particle system for grass and stuff, because you can write a shader that makes particles behave however you want it.
08:09 MTDiscord  <herowl> For start, we'd probably want control over particle rotation: non-billboard as full transform, and more importantly, z-rotation of billboard particles.
08:12 MTDiscord1 <herowl> Ah, and a fix to the blending... to have proper alpha blend, additive blend, subtractive blend and multiplicative blend.
08:13 MTDiscord1 <herowl> And then any mesh as particle. Even cubes can obviously go a long way, but what if I want tetrahedron or icosphere?
08:13 MTDiscord1 <herowl> Or triangles and not quads?
08:13 MTDiscord1 <herowl> Or even whatever more complex things
09:01 sfan5      particles with a fixed rotation would be quite easy
12:06 MTDiscord  <exe_virus> That godot definition of a "particle" is basically an untracked entity lol. Traditionally a particle system is one the CPU doesn't have to animate, it's fully in the shader pipeline. If godot is pulling that off with meshes and whatnot, then yeah hats rockin', though I worry about old computer and integrated GPU performance with such a heavy particle sytem
13:00 MTDiscord  <mistere_123> We could definitely use a cube particle with basic set-and forget transformations (rotate, scale, etc)
20:20 MTDiscord  <et086> cube particles would be really cool
20:26 MTDiscord  <greenxenith> Alternatively, engine-provided mesh primitives that can be used with anything that takes a mesh visual, which particles could leverage