Particle Effects DX7 and VB

[Lord Helmut]

I am making a 2d RPG using DirectDraw and it will be multiplayer over the internet. My question is how greatly will particle effects reduce FPS on the game and what are disadvantages of this?

[Zaei]

Also, the size of the particles will affect your frame rate. Bigger particles will really hurt, while smaller ones will be easier on you.

When planning particle system usage in your game, you have to take into account how many systems will be onscreen at any one time. I would do a simple test, and write up a particle system engine, and simply run it ful out with nothing else on screen, perhaps several of them. Tweak the number of particles on screen until you have an acceptable frame rate. Use this value when planning how many particles to use for a certain system.

You might also want to check out Jotaf's particle systems demos over on http://www.particlesystems.com .

Z.