Flamethrower

[MindVisceral]

Now that the game's premise is settled on, the main weapon must be added. It will be the Flamethrower. The main point of inspiration is ULTRAKILL's firestarter, but the Flamethrower from Metro Exodus' Two Colonels DLC was more fun to use.

It fires simple projectiles (RigidBody3Ds, which work very nicely with Jolt physics), fashioned to behave like real fluids fired from a flamethrower. That means quite low exit speeds (for a firearm...), large range, and influence of gravity.

The flames should also light their surroundings, set items, entities, and the environment on fire.

[MindVisceral]

While attempting to implement these projectiles, I discovered fully automatic artillery. Firing these projectiles at high speeds (and even just with these meagre debug collision shapes) makes for a very nice effect. They even collide with terrain (despite their insane speed) and bounce right off. This could easily be used in a very impressive setpiece, all it requires is some projectile work and adding a trail to these Bullets. They could be fired from a standing gun while the Player runs around the place.

Anyway, the Flamethrower itself is already way on its way to being fun to use, despite lacking any and all visual flair.

[MindVisceral]

I planned on using Volumetric Fog for Flames and Fire, but they don't work too well out of the box, so I would probably have to create my own Fog Shader, and they get expensive when there's so much of them. I'll stick to the age-old Particles + billboard Sprite method for now.

[MindVisceral]

The Environment Fire, that is Fire that sticks to surfaces, now grows until it reaches its maximum size, and eventually grows smaller and disappears when it 'runs out of fuel'. This effect makes a world of difference.