This thread has been long coming.
Wanted to write one a while ago but busy life is busy.
With Niagara on the horizon (for quite a while now :p) and me using cascade more often than my front door…
I wanted to write down a list of things I feel are currently missing in ue4’s Cascade.
And I am sure the awesome team working on niagara is adding awesomesauce features, buuuut… just in case I will add my few cents as well 
I will probably update the list quite often when I hit walls, get a spark of inspiration, or after I took one of those philosophical showers.
Keep in mind that I dont know how Niagara will work exactly, so my pov will be that of cascade.
there is always the off- something already exists, and I didn’t know about it, or never learned properly how to use it
here goes:
anything that is “Over life” could use an “over time” version as well, preferable with a looping time (i.e. after 2 seconds, or loop between each 1.5 - 2.5 seconds thing)
which was available in udk, but just… didn’t make it in ue4
mesh data module where you can input multiple meshes, and either spawn in sequence, or random.
Screen space location module (id sell my soul for that)
so it doesn’t matter where the particle is emitted, it takes screen-space location as its origin, this is handy for 2d sidescrollers
very valuable as it wont take into account that i.e. the character is moving really fast trough world-space, which can bleep-up particles a lot.
required node alts:
emitter duration uniform option (so it can have a min/max)
emitter loops uniform option.
emitter delay uniform option.
spawn module:
burst list count with uniform option.
initial mesh size module:
where XYZ are always identical, but can scale uniformly.
Random:
any “vector uniform curve” could use an alteration where there is an option for “only change on spawn”
so if you have a color set to vector uniform curve, it doesn’t change color 100m times over life, but it takes a random start color, random end color, and curves between that.
ribbon orbit module:
one that actually allows ribbons to properly follow particles that have the orbit module.
Camera offset module:
For pgu particles.
Light module
Seriously, that stuff is so bleepin broken and bad for fps atm… really needs an overhaul. (breaks lighting channels and other mumbojumbo)
Pivot offset module:
one that works for meshes would be great, especially if you have two types of rotators, one that rotates the mesh on its original pivot, and another one that takes the offset into account.
Would save me a load of useless blueprints.
location modules:
Besides sphere, cylinder, triangle… a custom shape either trough meshes or splines would be awesome.
Follow spline module
Something that makes emitter particles follow a spline, not the emitter itself, i mean the particles (any, ribbon, gpu, cpu, mesh)
**
Size by speed module:**
size by speed over time, size by speed over life.
size by speed uniform, etc. (min/size)
Sound module
Add sounds to this stuff, trust me… you’ll make their lives better!
Save/load curves
Please add this back in, i do save some curves in .txt files but its soooo annying.
UDK had this.
Particle instancing
like material instances, but able to disable/disable modules etc.
not sure if there is any performance benefit from it, but it sounds cool in my head.
then again, “get on my horse” also sounds awesome in my mind.
basically anything from the PEX code plugin… (Galaxy, swarm movement, spawn on mesh surface, turbulence, heightmap, colormap, force points, jiggle)
— that’s it for now.
More to come.
Keep up the great work!
**update:
**
Event generator:
event generator with a timed offset. so i.e. 0.5 seconds before/after kill/spawn/etc.
Mesh Surface:
spawn on mesh surface, but with a vertex color option. so it only spawns on vertices with X color, where x is whatever color I input. (or alternatively, use a mask texture for it)
Like MPC in materials but in any given property of particle. Or some other way to manage large amount of particles on level.
