Hello!
First of all, thank you all for your replies.

>to Savage: sorry I hadn't seen your reply, and i would be ashamed to show screenshots cos I've made lots of progress with AI and stuff, but that is not what shows on a screenshot, so no.

>to Nitrogen: I checked out your programs, the idea is pretty cool! However, I didn't manage to c the smoke one because it goes extremely fast and i dont know how to change the frequency.

>to Huehnerschaender, I understand I didnt give enough details, so let me elaborate :
It is a turn-based strategy game, inspired by Advance Wars (Gameboy), but in 3D.
camera: the camera is fixed in a way, but the environment rotates, so I guess in a way, it's as if the camera moved. To give you an idea, it's very much like Blender. Zooms, shifts, rotations.

I dont know what billboards are, so probably not.

What I had in mind was the following:
-to make was to make units explode when they are hit (a bit like your Tanx), which would be like an animation every time a unit is destroyed. So it would be a procedure that is called, does the explosion, then it all goes back to the main procedures, it is not constantly called in real time.
-to make units burn as they are not yet dead, so it would be a fire that keeps burning as the player plays. It would therefore have to be a real time animation, a dynamic fire that keeps burning.
-eventually some smoke as well, but that is not essential

The idea of a particle system sounds interesting, I have never made one, so I don't know how to start...and wouldn't that slow it down heaps tho? I heard particle systems were heavy on the RAM.

well, what else to say...? If you would like more details, don't hesitate!

C ya