[http://sourceforge.net/p/ufoai/bugs/2764 Item 2764] imported from sourceforge.net tracker on 2013-01-28 19:47:16

Edited Report
=============
The smoke particle effects quickly spawn too many particles, causing other particles to not render and printing a stream of errors to the console:

2012/12/04 19:59:52 PC_SPAWN: Could not spawn child particle for 'smokefield' (smokefield_smoke)

Throwing two smoke grenades is enough to cause the problem.

This is more than an aesthetic problem. When too many particles are going at once, other particles (like weapons firing and exploding) can fail to spawn. This is important with, for instance, thrown grenades when you need to know how close they were to the target when exploding. Also, new smoke effects can crowd out old smoke effects, causing smoke fields to "disappear" even though they still exist. The player must try to remember where they are (assuming the smoke field visibility effects are still applied).


ORIGINAL REPORT
===============
On map "-bridge/br_ +main +craft_drop_firebird" "-56 -40 0 -40 24 0" tons of warnings printed:
PC_SPAWN: Could not spawn child particle for 'crashsite_fire'

-geever
===== Comments Ported from Sourceforge =====

====== crystan (2011-05-16 22:28:05) ======

Looks like its fixed with new ptl effect.
====== mcr2010 (2011-07-15 14:07:49) ======

Setting this item to pending if it is fixed.
====== mcr2010 (2011-07-15 21:29:01) ======

okay, I played a Skirmish +bridge map - no errors in ufoconsole.log.

I did some heavy shooting, but did not throw 50 smoke grenades to extensively test the limits of our particle system ;)
====== crystan (2011-07-17 22:41:20) ======

Well the error still occours but only on a first startup of the map(s) and thats nothing i can fix. Its not a problem related to the particle effect. I think its the fault of the particle engine which will cause a massive spawn of ptls on the first startup. This bug also happens on winter maps with a snow weather effect.
====== tlh2000 (2011-07-18 06:14:45) ======

yeah - but that is due to the particle definition - it spawn too many child particles
====== aduke1 (2012-09-22 20:27:05.972000) ======

Sorry, I didn't get it. *Who* needs to do *what* here ?
====== natewr (2012-12-04 21:52:24.945000) ======

I'm raising the priority, renaming this bug report and editing the initial report because it causes important game mechanics to fail (report at the top).
====== natewr (2013-01-07 18:43:48.422000) ======

I've pushed a temporary fix for this which improves performance on my machine and raises the number of smoke grenades you can use before maxing out the particles.

https://github.com/ufoai/ufoai/commit/0adabcdb09263985c0efe5a2b91d891941d3f0b4

I'm leaving this open in case a better solution is available.
====== natewr (2013-01-08 09:59:33.883000) ======

Crystan says the temporary fix is as good as we can do for now, so I'm going to go ahead and close this report.