Painslayer 2.0.0 released

This update spent a bit too long in the oven, but it's finally out! The main focus was to improve performance. The main source of performance issues in GZDoom is a multitude of actors, such as smoke, debris, trails and flames spawned by projectils and special effects.

GZDoom has had an internal particle system for a while—that system allowed spawning particles that were very cheap on performance, but the downside is that you couldn't modify their look. They could only look like circles or squares. Well, this has changed!

Now particles can be textured with any graphic. While their animation capabilities are limited, and they can't have physics or interact with environment, this meant I could replace almost all smoke, debris and flame effects with these shiny new particles. So I did.

The performance difference varies from slight to very significant. You can find multiple examples (and more information about the update) in this video: