Particle effects lag question

I was going to put this in how do i, but i realized its not a how do i question:

do particle effects lag less than sprites?

because quite frankly I find them troublesome, and almost useless, they have 1 frame so you cant randomize animations ( hello people! its a particle effect, the whole point is to be random!)

and secondly, you cant even control it correctly, it has all of these stats/settings and I cant even tell it to move, slow down, stop, and then fade, I find it easier to make my own ''particle effects'' with sprites,

they also seem to come out over time instead of all at once, i dont see an option to change this anyway, it takes a good second to shoot out 8 particle effects instead of just all at once.

(no im not talking about single shot or continuous spray)

i mean the rate at which they come out

so to the question do particle effects lag significantly less than sprites?

if not id rather customize my own particle effects using sprites =/

Making your own particle effects with Sprites is a good alternative if the Particles effect does not do everything you want. Particles is more of a shortcut to quickly put together simple effects.

Particles is a little more efficient than drawing lots of sprites (it takes advantage of the fact the particles don't rotate). However we've done a lot of work optimising the renderer so using lots of sprites shouldn't be much of a problem either. Make sure you have WebGL enabled with a WebGL-compatible PC/browser and it'll probably still be fine.

BTW you could try mixing particle images by placing different particle sprays directly on top of each other.

Thanks, yes i realise i can have multiple particle effects but i would have to call each one, i like saying to just make 1 object then tell it to go to a random frame,

if I can make sprite particle effects and not lag like heck because they arent particles thats good to know,

keep in mind my current game is on the brink of being way too laggy.