particleEmitter.Simulate Woes

Hello everyone!

I'm having some trouble trying to advance my particle system when it loads so it doesn't need a "warm up" period. Looking at the forum everyone seems to recommend trying particleEmitter.Simulate(). I have a particle system set up and working in my scene, and have attached a javascript file to it with the following, very modest test.

Code (csharp):

1. function Start () {
2.       particleEmitter.Simulate(stepSize);
3. }

In return, unity says:
Assets/scripts/particleJumpStart.js(2,23): BCE0019: 'Simulate' is not a member of 'UnityEngine.ParticleEmitter'.

I would use the time scale trick some people have written about, but it needs to run for a second when set to 99 so it looks pretty silly until it's ready

Thank you so much for any assistance you can provide - this is confusing the heck outta me.

-Chris

 

you need to set up something like this

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. var Emitter : ParticleEmitter;
3. var time : float = 1.0;
4.  
5. function Start () {
6. Emitter.Simulate(time);
7. }
8.  

and then select which particle emitter you need to simulate.

I also have some problems getting this to work though, seems like the simulate doesn't work with larger values. unity answer recommended:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. for (i = 0; i < warmupTime; i++) {
3.    particleEmitter.Simulate(1.0);
4. }
5.  
6.  

 

just tested it, this works for me:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. var Emitter : ParticleEmitter;
3. var time : float ;
4.  
5. function Start () {
6. for (i = 0; i < time; i++) {
7.    Emitter.Simulate(1.0);
8. }
9.  
10. }
11.  

 

No, chrisw's code is correct. Just use particleEmitter.Simulate.

It's not available in Unity iPhone.

--Eric

 

fair enough, I'm not a real programmer but I usually get that error whenever I need to define a specific component

 

Aw crud - so just no go on the iPhone huh? I tried the time scale solution as a substitute. When it's simulating in unity it works fine, but it freaks out in the compiled app running on the iPhone.

Another solution I tried was sending out a burst of particles in the Awake at a high speed and then in the Start setting the emitter parameters back to normal. The problem I had with this solution was that I couldn't get the first burst to slow down. I tried targeting them by looping through the particleEmitter.particles array and setting their velocity.x to a lower number, but it doesn't work - they just fly off into oblivion.

Are there any other workarounds that I should try?

Thank you very much for the input Eric and Pirate -- I really appreciate the assistance!

 

For now...I would guess that it will work on Unity iPhone 3.0.

--Eric

 

Ah well, I came up with a less processor intenstive solution anyway, so maybe it was for the best

Thanks again for the help!