Particle Candy -worth it?

I was just wondering what your opinions are on Particle Candy for Blitz3d, http://www.x-pressive.com/ParticleCandy/ How is the support, functionality, and overall rating you give it?

I'll be using it for a 3d U-boat simulation so you know what i plan on using it for.

It's not a wallet breaking decision, but if there is something better out there, I'd like to know before I purchase this.

Thanks,
Chad

I use it in Tank Universal and its been a great lib, very flexible. The author has also answered by queries fairly promptly.

In a U-Boat sim, I expect you'd be using it for bow waves, explosions, smoke, bubbles and I'd expect it can handle all that.

Definitely worth it

There's also a couple of nice editors floating around for it - think they're listed on the x-pressive website.

Yes it's well worth it.

Yes buy! you wont regret it. my current version is 1.5.4 is there any new versions and how do we get the updates?

kev

Yeah, it's a great library. A word of advice though.

Position the emitter, before starting it, as the sounds don't follow the emittor for some reason. I was starting the emitters then moving them, yet the sound were emitting from 0,0,0 co-ords. :o) Took me a while to find out what was happening.

All in all, great particle library and the editors are great for it. They export create emitter functions that work easily.

Definitely worth it. You can download an editor from the link mentioned in my sig.

Whoopsy, I recognize that CandyFactory isn't available any more. I will contact xpressive to change the links...

yes it worth it. great library. never needed to contact the author an little questions i got answers here.

Okay, awesome, will purchase once I get home (at school).

After about playing with it for 3 hours, I have concluded, drum roll please..

I love it. I'm using Candy Store beta and have smoke stacks, fireballs, and secondary explosion sprites already in my game.

Highly recommend it, and would write a better review, except, everyone already knows how much this thing kicks butt.

Thanks guys!

*me waits til chad comes across z buffer issues with alpha :D*

And I'll ask you first Ross C when that happens :)

..and I'll give ya solution for it when ya all stuck.. :)

And don't go overboard on the particles mind - they can still eat fps.

Worth it?

Heck yeah! The after sales support is also awesome - I have emailed Mike a number of times and on some occasions he's even written new functions in to help me out - worth every penny, as is Sprite Candy.

IPete2.

IPete2, what version of Particle Candy do you have? I don't think I have received an update for 2 years or so.

I have Sprite Candy rather than PC - SC is certainly very good as is the support.

My reason for posting is re those people who asked about updates. I wondered if my SC was up to date but there is no indication on the website what is the latest version.

I emailed Mike to check and it turns out that updates are handled via ShareIt newsletters delivered to the email address that you used for the original purchase. If that is an email account that you no longer use or if if the email gets treated as spam then you may well have missed updates. Best contact him in that case.

er... the version I have been using recently is...

; PRODUCT : PARTICLE CANDY EFFECTS ENGINE
; VERSION : 1.5.5


IPete2.

really i emailed X-PRESSIVE about an update and they sent me a link to 1.5.4 that was in december last year what does the new update fix?

Hmmm... and I still have 1.5.3.

me too.... hmmm.

me too..... 1.5.3

IPete you sure hes not just moved the number up wwhen add your functions you where talking about.

Is it coded in blitz like sprite candy or is it a dll? Also, can it really handle 30,00 particles?

Thanks

Its all Blitz. Very good too

So can it handle lots of particles?

Yeah. Just watch you don't blend too many together using alpha. Or your graphics cards fill rate will probably choke. Not the libraries fault. Juts got to watch what your doing :o)

Yes, a crap load. Basically to justify the cost, think about how long it would take you to create the library and times that by your countries minimum wage.

For example, Sprite Candy, the sister package of particle candy, is over 12000 lines of code. It costs about £10, the minimum wage in the UK is £5.50

That means to justify the cost of not buying it, I would have to produce 12000 working lines of code, documentation and bug fixes in under 2 hours.......

If you want to program a particle system as a learning experiance, then by all means do so. If you want something that you can quickly get particles into your game, then always buy the lib.

Other than that, try a free lib, Devils particle system is ment to be quite good, and its free. I havn't used it though so I can't swear by it, only becuase I haven't toched anything since I started using particle candy.

Totally agree. There is little point, if you need a lib for a project, of writing your own, if a perfectly good alternative already exists.

Especially as it takes 50-100 hours to write your own ... no mather how worthless your rate your time, its more expensive than x-pressive libraries.