Particle System Draw Limit

[Deif]

In my old code I had little projectile objects that were each their own particle system flying about and drawing themselves to screen. When I had 50 of these particle systems drawn to screen at the same time, my fps would drop below the 30 mark.

So I optimised the code by making a single particle system, and then tracked the projectiles moving round the screen individually, but used the single particle system to draw their positions. Now I would've thought that would be much more efficient on processing, but it turns out it didn't optimise my code at all, and I get the same FPS issues. Now I know that I'm wondering why LOVE has trouble rendering 10,000 particles to screen (assuming each of the 50 particle systems is made up of 200 particles), but I didn't think it would be too much of a problem drawing those particles to screen when they're all using the same particle system.

Is there something fundamental that I'm missing here with particle systems (let me know if this is not really what the particle system is meant to do)?

The reason I'm asking is because the engine has no problem updating the systems and their positions off screen, but as soon as I move the camera over the particles, then the FPS drops instantly.

[Deif]

I'll try and make the question clearer (wording was a bit rambling). Is there anything such as a spritebatch that I could load all the particles that are drawn to screen into? Or are particle systems really that intensive and shouldn't be drawn 50 at a time to screen?