Particle effect not working? This is what my problem was

Took me a few minutes to figure out but I realised that you NEED TO, apply the effect as a child of the object, i.e. rocket ship. Then drag that effect from the hierarchy, NOT the ASSETS! BOOM!

Hope this helps someone correct this rookie mistake.

18 Likes

My Engine particle system wasn’t working ether, It would work if i didn’t have the stop() method. for some reason i couldn’t have the it the way Ben said… out side of the if statement.

This didn’t work for me

rigidBody.AddRelativeForce(Vector3.up * mainThrust);
        if (!audioSource.isPlaying) // so it doesn't layer
        {
            audioSource.PlayOneShot(mainEngine);
        }
mainEngineParticles.Play();

Mine works like this…

rigidBody.AddRelativeForce(Vector3.up * mainThrust);
        if (!audioSource.isPlaying) // so it doesn't layer
        {
            audioSource.PlayOneShot(mainEngine);
            mainEngineParticles.Play();
        }
7 Likes

Thanks, we had made exactly the same mistake. I don’t suppose you know why it has to be done that way? I thought it was meant to be Prefab to Prefab?

1 Like

Hi Nathaniel,

It will come down to the approach you take.

If you have the partcile effects GameObject already in the scene, then it will be instantiate, e.g. it exists, you can then activate it and play it.

If you were to reference a prefab, this won’t exist in the scene until it is instantiated.

So, you could use a prefab, but you would need to add some extra code to first instantiate the GameObject, and then play it.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

1 Like

Hi Rob,

That does make sense. Thank you

1 Like

You’re very welcome :slight_smile:

I made exactly the same mistake as OP. I was going bananas trying to sort it out, so I’m glad this thread was at the top when I came to the discussion boards, haha :smiley: thank you!

3 Likes

Omg i’ve been rumbling around for more than an hour and I couldn’t make sense of what was happening,

1, Thank you four sharing!
2, How come this was so unanounced? What happens if a Gary is not there to point this out? I think I wouldn’t have ever found it without a troubleshooting post like this.

2 Likes

Hi Manu,

Without looking back through the video(s) its hard to say whether this was something missing from the lecture, or a step that got missed by a student, potentially, it could be either.

Often the longer you look at a problem the more difficult it becomes to actually see it, as we all take what we have done, or the code we have written to be correct. You have probably experienced situations like this yourself in the past, you look at something for hours, then give up, go to bed, look at it the next morning and “boom”, found the issues in seconds.

This is where the Q&A for the course and the community (here on the forums and the Discord channel) can be of real use. That fresh pair of eyes, or someone who already experienced the issue and found a solution. You are lucky in that GameDev.tv has almost half a million students, so chances are there will always be a Gary :slight_smile:

What I would add is that if it were to be a problem with the video, if something got edited out and the steps to take were not clear for example, posting on the community site or on Discord is not likely to get it resolved within the course content, although you’ll get your own resolution. If there is a problem that needs to be raised to the instructors, so that they can determine whether to add an annotation to the video, or re-record part of the content (very rare), the Q&A is the way to go. In the first instance the student instructors will aim to help, if they notice a large amount of students all asking the same thing they will invariably raise this with the instructors to then make the call on the way forward.

Hope this helps and know that you did the right thing, e.g. aim to resolve the problem yourself, spent significant time on trying to work it out rather than just reaching out instantly, but then when you were stuck, asked for help. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Thank you for this - thought I was going mad! I’ve been actively trying to make sure I’m always working on the prefab, so it’s good that you brought this to light because it’s the last place I would’ve started looking to resolve. Thanks again!

2 Likes

Yo!!! Thanks so much for this tip. I’ve spent quite a bit of time wracking my brain over the jet particle effect only working when the level loads for the first time and only in such an instance. You’re a real one. :metal:t5::facepunch:t5:

Thank you for asking this question and providing a solution!

Have been banging my head against it for a while and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going wrong.

Not anymore :slight_smile:

I had a issue with this section I figured it out the came here to post on it. I was adding prefab partical systems to the rocket.cs. The problem with that is they where not the ones on my rocket game object. I mean they are the same systems ones just on the game object and I was trying to control a prefab. Took me 30 min to a hour to figure out where I went wrong. So from what I understand, the ones on the game object are in off mode. That changes when the code executes and flips them on like a light switch. Since they are already part of the game object they do not have to be instantiated, just toggled on and off. Is this correct?

awesome it helped me, I had the same thing, particles would not show up, and after doing what you described, everything was fine ^^ Thanks a lot for sharing!

It almost feels like a program design bug. It’s just not intuitive enough to do it like that. Great post OP! :smile:

Thank you so much Gary!!!

I breezed through your comment and thought i was doing what you instructed.
Tried to play again and didn’t work. Searched the forum for an answer but didn’t find any.
Went back to your first post and read it carefully. Noticed the CAPS and BOOOOM!!!

It worked. I hope they try to maybe put a notice on the vid or a highlight saying you need to drag the child from the parent to the inspector AND NOT drag the original pre fab FX.

Same here! The thrust would work after I STOP holding the space bar! Thank you for your solution, Maverick_SFO.

Thanks! This worked for me.

This is how I ended up solving it. My guess is that this is similar to the sound problem we solved earlier in the course. I.e. the animations starts over and over and over so we only see the first ms of it.

What confuses me is how this could work for Ben and not for us.

        if (!mainEngineParticles.isPlaying)
        {
            mainEngineParticles.Play();
        }
1 Like

Thanks Gary, this was my exact problem too. This isn’t very well explained in the tutorial or in any of the other threads for this section. Much appreciated

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