Hi Guys

I've just moved this question from the AS3 board to here (chances are someone here may have an answer)
I'm in the middle of developing a shooter which has a particle class that is spawning a lot of movieclip instances. Is there any way to optimize particles in AS3 to improve speed/performance? I've noticed things get a little sluggish when there's 800+ instances.

I tried using the "cache as bitmap" option but it seems to affect the motion. For some reason it makes it jerky. I can't figure that one out.

I have managed to increase the speed by between 5 - 9 FPS by replacing the vector particles with photoshopped bitmap particles, but I could still do with a few tips on giving it that extra boost.

The particles are just blobs and don't change shape, form or size once they are "born". A pre-determined number is spawned and they just move constantly and recycle themselves once they leave the screen, thats all.

Any ideas on optimization would be really helpful.

Thanks guys!