SirBlockles
commented
2 years ago note that all testing was done in first-person and third-person, but not tested against the view of another client/sourceTV (so i'm unsure how much of this is clientside-only)
after having a chance to test it now with two clients, heres an update on that:
the only visual effects other clients see at all with the manmelter are the crit-boost effects of the weapon itself (glow + sparks) and the particle of the fire being absorbed off of teammates when they are actually being extinguished. other clients don't seem to even render the vacuuming particles at all, nor do they see the fire particle appear when shooting a crit with more in reserve. additionally, other clients also don't hear the sucking/vacuuming sound the first-person player does - they receive zero cue at all that the pyro is trying to extinguish, which makes them less likely to notice friendly pyros trying to extinguish them, and possibly dying to afterburn trying to run away from their pyro to a health pack.
there are multiple issues i'm reporting here, and if you want me to split them into separate issues i can do that, but they're all visual bugs related to the manmelter's alt-fire vaccuum thing so i'm consolidating them all into one issue for now.
note that all testing was done in first-person and third-person, but not tested against the view of another client/sourceTV (so i'm unsure how much of this is clientside-only)
1) the particles showing dust and debris seems to pretty frequently not show up at all. the only way i could get the particle to consistently show up is when spamming alt-fire repeatedly very quickly. otherwise, delaying alt-fire attempts by even 1-2 seconds, it is very likely that the particle will just not appear.
2) firing a stored crit triggers the "absorbing fire off a teammate" particle as long as the manmelter has another crit in reserve after shooting. (ie shooting with 2+ crits stored will trigger it, but if you're consuming your last crit, it won't) this means shooting the manmelter with more than 1 crit left will guaranteed flashbang yourself with fire.
3) minor visual bug that only affects viewmodels, but holding either fire button after firing will hold the viewmodel animation on the last frame of the "rechamber"/reload animation until released. this technically happens to all of pyro's flareguns, but the animations for the regular flareguns line up well enough that you'd only notice it if you were actively paying attention to it.