How to limit the length of a ribbon particle emitter?

I’ve created a particle emitter for a lighter flame, working around a ribbon emitter.

I want the ribbon to stretch when i’m moving the character it is attached to, but i can’t find a way to limit the length it can stretch to in relation to the speed of the character’s movement.

Is there a way either in the emitter, blueprint or even c++ to set this?

I don’t know of a way, because the spawned particles which are used for the ribbon in the past are unaware of the object in the future. You can possibly create your own procedural geometry for the ribbon, but then you lose out on the great editor.

A trick you might try is to expose lifetime as a parameter, and set it based on the objects speed (reduce it when the object is moving faster). This will help with continuous fast motion, but won’t help if you go from slow to fast quickly.