could someone tell me how to create realistic-ish fire in my game?
Create particles - each particle would be an alpha-enabled sphere (partially invisible if you so wish), and have the particles rise upwards. You can use my X-Emitter Particle Emission System - if you keep the number of particles low and optimize the particle script to only run the parts that you need (i.e. don’t run the particle script every frame if the particle only needs to rise initially), then it would fit your purpose. I need to update it soon - I have fire and smoke (volumetric and planar) done.
you cant use particles in the game engine! anything else… anyone?
… I know that you can’t create particles in the BGE. By particles, I meant plane objects (or otherwise shaped, according to your own specifications), that behave how you wish… If you want to see what I’m talking about, see the X-Emitter thread in my signature.
oohhhh ok thanks
Animated alpha planes are a popular choice for fire, I believe. Render your fire using Blender particles, post process it using compositing nodes so it looks really good! Convert the image sequence into an animated texture then place the animated texture on an alpha plane or a couple of intersecting alpha planes.
There are manymany fire tutorials on the interwebs that you can use for creating your animated texture.
Animated alpha planes coupled with some simulated particles for stray tongues of fire and sparks as suggested by Joeman16 can look really good.
Smoke can be achieved in the same way.
Edit: I think haidme posted a mini tutorial in his Krum thread (works in progress forum, 5 star thread) showing how he made fire. It’s a big thread though since he’s been working on the game since late 2007.
Really good fire, Monster - I’ll try to recreate that fire in my X-Emitter. Also, I saw that in the tutorial you state that the life time of particles is half of the IPO. I believe this is because the game engine runs at 60 FPS default, but Blender’s animation system runs at 24 FPS default. To fix this, in Blender 2.56, under Blender Render, ensure that the FPS value is 60.