Big plasma

Is there a way to use the plasma object on large levels, so that there isn't absurd lag?

I'd like to be able to use plasma effects on a whole level (scrolling about), for guns or whatever but the only way that works seems to be to just make a giant plasma over the whole level, which predictably causes lag.

It's not that important but I was just wondering if there was a clever way of making one the size of the screen move about with you or something.

I've also tried putting it on a layer above everything and giving that layer scroll rate 0, but it only works properly in the top left corner.

I guess its probably not designed for this.

If it's only working properly in the top left corner, are you zooming your display? If so you'll need to move your Plasma object down and to the right.

Er, maybe.

Maybe I should actually test this stuff out before offering a solution

I have the same problem, i've got a bunch of different plasma effects, but to be of any use, they need to cover at least the whole screen, there's three ways i can think of to lower the lag but haven't done, one of which doesn't exist

1. Make it so whenever there is an effect like an explosion or something, create a plamsa object around the vicinity where it will be needed. This does cause some problems for scolling screens/objects though

2. Make it take up the whole screen/level, but make it invisible when it isn't in use. Good in theory, hard in practice since if there are a lot of effects on screen, it will still lag.

3. Bug the devs to make it so when nothing is happening on the plasma object, it doesn't render what whatever it does that makes it lag

That's all i got

I think the best solution would possibly be to have an option which causes the plasma to scroll with the screen.

So if you had a 640x480 screen, you could have a 640x480 plasma object, (either on a layer above that doesn't scroll, or always setting position to be on the screen) which, when you move about, translates the visible plasma pattern in the opposite direction. That way the plasma object doesn't have to be absurdly big, so there shouldn't be lag, but it would be able to have plasma effects anywhere that is being displayed on the screen.

I guess this could be achieved by adding a "shift plasma pattern" option which literally shifts everything happening on the plasma by however much you specify, then you could set it to shift the difference of the last scrolled point and the current one.

I don't know if this is currently possible or not, I think it sounds like a plausible solution for future though at least.

Yeah I've thought about doing that, the only problem is, what if you need multiple effects at once?

eg: you're in some game where your like a fire mage and you're vsing some ice mage

That would require at least two plasma objects, having multiple plamsa objects taking up the whole screen, even when they're not doing anything causes pretty massive lag