Thanks for trying though. I kept the regular blur but I'm using the particles a little differently so they use a LOT less particles and don't have a huge X randomizer (apparently X randomizer is really slow). Have to sacrifice somewhere right? The new way of doing the particles looks even better actually

I just hope I don't end up in a situation where there's no alternative whatsoever...

For some reason, when I turn up the X randomizer on my two particle objects, the framerate goes down. It is the same number of particles, why would this happen? Each particle object is supposed to have about 1020 X randomizer, but when I turn one (or both) down to 200, it goes back to full speed...

This doesn't make much sense to me, but as I don't want to have to scrap the effect of the particles, I really wany to know why it is doing this.

Thanks for your time.

Actually, when I put that effect on my two particles instances of one kind, it also makes an entirely seperate particles object (using the regular blurs) look super blury, lol. Anyway, the lower points does kind of look bad on my tiny particles, but thanks anyway.

Also, I've noticed that particles can become MUCH slower when you turn up the X offset. This does not make sense to me. It is the same number of particles... I'm gonna make a Help topic for it to see if it is a bug.

How do we know the "crippled version" isn't the only version?

Looks pretty cool so far. The death/level exit at the end is kind of strange though...lol.

That sounds useful 6Fix. Where exactly in the .fx file can I change the number of points?

Yeah, that's totally helpful and not a personal attack at all. This is the help forum. If you want to make stupid jokes, do it in the Joke Thread in the Open Topic Forum.

I'd run it by "states." Have the cars check things around them and do stuff accordingly. For example, when a car comes to a 4 way intersection, have it choose a random direction. Or you could block out choices where there's a road block set up. This would run a LOT of private variables and global variables. For regular cars you wouldn't need as many variables, but they'd work on the same principles. If you are driving a car, you could use the Car Object which should be more "car-like" but that won't work for AI. For the AI I'd use Custom Movement and work on tell it to detect when there's a turn or a solid in front of it. You could check out Line of Sight too.

Basically, AI can get complex. I hope this gave you some ideas at least. Maybe someone who knows more will come along and give you an example, but I haven't delved into this sort of thing myself yet so I'm just throwing ideas out there.

What kind of decisions do you need the AI to make?

Have you done anything else with Construct already? Have you looked at the Ghost Shooter Tutorial? Also, which version of Construct do you have? I need the EXACT number.

For some reason, setting particle speed to negative still lets them move outwards just not as fast. (bug?) Is there a way I can make them go backwards to where they spawned? I know I'd have to set angle changes to 0 to get them back to the exact point, but is there any way to reverse their direction? If not, I'll put in a request for negative speed to work this way or something. Thanks for your time.

Well, I'm using Blur Horizontal + Blur Vertical + another effect (which doesn't seem to be slow) on particles. When the particles move really fast or happen to overlap other particles with other effects, the blur can slow things down.

I read this post by Ashley in a topic about Bloom: "It's not quite what you wanted, but you could try playing around with a combination of blur and glow shaders like this .cap. It's not particularly efficient, though - the blur shaders in Construct are a bit slow."

I was taking this to mean that they could be faster, but from more searching it seems Blur is one of the most intensive shader effects to run and maybe it cannot be written better. Sorry if that is the case. I also noticed that for a full Blur, I have to use Horizontal and Vertical rather than just a single Blur effect. I was thinking this would be slower? I thought with many effects, one effect after another uses the image from the first effect, so it would have more to blur the second time.

Anyway, since what I'm doing is with moving particles, I'd like to save all the performance I can. If it can't be faster, are there any recommended effects that are similar to blur but quicker?

Thanks for the help

Edit: As for the overlapping thing, it was the effects on the other particles that were slowing it down. So yeah, particles with Soften or Blur of anything like that passing by each other are a bad idea (kind of expected). I still have the slowdown with fast moving particles though.