Skip to content
OpenTS Manual

Lifetime

How many frames a particle system runs before it winds down.

Specification
Applies to
ParticleSystemType
File
rules.ini
Section
[<ObjectType ID>]
Value
integer
When omitted
-1

A positive value ends the system that many frames after it is created, whatever its behavior. From then on, the system is removed as soon as it holds no particles, which can be on that same frame. Ending a system covers the other ways a system ends.

What the system still does until it is removed depends on its behavior:

  • A Smoke or Fire system stops emitting at once.
  • A Spark system keeps throwing bursts until its SparkSpawnFrames run out. If every particle it holds expires between two bursts, it is removed early.
  • A Railgun system is unaffected, because it ends by itself after laying its trace.
  • A Gas, WeakGas or Web system emits nothing anyway. Its particles still turn into their successors until the chain ends.
rules.ini
[MyGasPuffSys] ; a ParticleSystemType registered in [ParticleSystems]
BehavesLike=WeakGas
HoldsWhat=MyWeakGas ; a ParticleType registered in [Particles]
Lifetime=3

Gas, WeakGas and Web systems, and systems with no behavior, have no end condition of their own. Without a positive Lifetime, such a system ends only through an outside route, such as the loss of the object it is attached to. A system that belongs to no object, such as a WeakGas or Web system built by a warhead’s blast, then stays on the map, empty once its particles are gone, unless a Remove particle anim at… action names a waypoint in its cell.

See also — BehavesLike, SpawnCutoff, SparkSpawnFrames