Space Cloud Effect! Help!

So, I have this overhead space shooter game I've been working on, on and off, for just over 2 millenia. In it, I have these "space clouds" that orbit the "black hole" at the center of the playfield. See pic:

<img src="http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee215/JDoejoe/SpaceWarp_zps75325fe5.jpg" border="0">

EDIT: The cloud is pretty hard to see in this pic, but it's there. Trust me!

I was HOPING to add an effect where anytime a player flew through one of these clouds, they'd leave a kind of furrow -- like a car driving through snow.

I thought this might disappear after a moment or two, as the gas of the cloud filled in the gap.

I've tried dropping sprites whenever a ship was overlapping the cloud, and having those sprites inherit the cloud motion... Then adding a FADE behavior so they slowly wink out of existence leaving only the cloud sprite... It doesn't look to great, perhaps it's the sprite I'm choosing?

I also tried playing around with a quazi blob type setup where the "blob" sprites all had a physics component and were tied to an invisible object that made it seem like they were drifing along. Then when the player's ship moves through -- they'd move aside, etc... This looks okay. But not at all like the "furrows in the snow" look I was hoping for. Here is a CAP for that:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0orlinpcnmam28r/BlobTest3.cap

That one is using the BlobTest effect from Tulamide that I found on the boards here somewhere, but will now rehost here:

Fluid.rar

Anyway, that's as far as I've gotten. I was hoping someone might have a suggestion as to another way of achieving this kind of effect.

Any help greatly appreciated--

BluepointVance

hi!

im not sure if its of any help, but have you tried toying around with the erase effect?

you know, make a trail from sprites (or maybe even particle object) and add erase and fade effects. havent tried if that works, but just crossed my mind as a possible solution..

also, you could check the effects-thread, there was this fluid/smoke/haze kind of effect around here somewhere, but iirc, it is quite heavy.

im afraid thats all i can offer to help for now.

EDIT: just checked that .cap you posted. maybe my suggestion wasnt exactly what you were going for, sorry.seems like you would want something a bit more dynamic. though you could still try that erase effect if it works out somehow.

Actually, the erase effect (which I had never used before) does do a little of what I was hoping for.

It looks a bit like it's kind of "smearing" the underlying "space cloud" sprite... It's seems to want to smear the player sprite at well. I can try to offset it by a few pixels, see if that helps... But at least it give me something new to play around with. Thanks!

Any other thoughts greatly appreciated!

Okay,

So I got a version of a "space cloud" working. The CAP is here:

BlobTest4

There are really two problems with it:

1) The way it's set up, I can't really make the cloud all that big. The underlying sprite that controls the movement by having a Physics behavior attached stops working as expected if I try to make it larger. (currently 20x20) -- and if I try to increase the number of sprites beyond 125, it just crashes. Which brings me to point 2:

2) I know already this is total overkill for what I'm looking for. This is 100 Physics objects on the screen all for this little wispy effect that in no way effects game play.

It looks cool, though!

Again, any suggestions for alternative methods greatly appreciated. Thanks!

it does look nice.

i tend to avoid using physics object these days as much as i can, it can easily kill your framerate when stuff keeps piling up as you go.

you could try and reduce the "simulation steps" value and see if that helps. or you could take the long hard road and make something simpler and less demanding with custom movement with push out of solid action or trying out different stuff, ball behavior etc.

anyway, this was the example i was thinking about:

http://www.scirra.com/forum/download-fluid-plugin-alpha-here-smoke-and-firedemo-exes_topic40552.html

...but it seems the links are dead. you could try asking lucid or someone else here if they have it.

i can check if i have it too when i got the time.

Yes, I was very interested in checking out that Fluid Plug-In, but the link was broken. I'll mail Lucid and see if he can send it. It'd be nice to rehost some of these things since all the old links are dead... I realize most people have moved on to Construct2 -- but for my needs, that just won't work.

I'll try playing around with custom movement. I've never been very good with it, but it's worth a shot.

Thanks!

Found the fluid plug-in by Lucid, so I re-hosted and added links to the end of the original thread:

Fluid Plugin Thread by Lucid

In case anyone else was having trouble finding them.