For the past few hours, I've been working on making a Particle Beam Cannon, where you hold down the trigger to charge the weapon. As the weapon charged the projectile got bigger and more powerful (up to a point). When you let go of the trigger, the large projectile is launched.

While testing the charging effect, this happened


I'm tempted to abandon the Particle Beam Cannon idea and make something else out of this! If any of you guys have any ideas for this, please post them . I'm kind out of fresh ideas at the moment.

Does it pull apart other actors? That would be epic.

You should probably still make the particle cannon as well by applying velocity to the affected floating particles via aimangle trigonometry, which I'm sure someone here will gladly post for you.

Or just check the presetname.

I already have the aim angle trig in the mod. That's how I got the projectile to stay in front of the gun.

Would applying velocity to those particles do damage to other stuff though?

Just set them to HitsMos = 1 when you fire and you'll be fine.

That is incredibly cool, release that as is, maybe with custom sprite if you need to, and then work on the other gun.
Also, does that lag much? looks laggy.

LOL! My soldier wasn't. I just tried it, and all the particles behind him flew straight through the back of his head. Totally worth it


Lag is actually pretty low. I put the "pull" effect on a time delay, and it seems to handle it just fine. Though, i'm sure with enough particles, it'll lag bad.

So, how do I get one?

Well if you set the centre of gravity further away and set the gravity higher you should eventually be able to set them to HitsMOs = 1 and apply force directly forwards and end up with a particle cannon.

Rip up the ground and blast it at your enemies faces. I like it.

Alright, I'm getting close to getting a release out. Here's what I got so far:


I really liked LowestFormOfWit's suggesting of ripping actors apart, so I added that in. This'll make the weapon an insta-gib at close range. However, sometimes the gibs can fall back on you, so you have to be careful. I love how the body parts of the soldier fly out slightly first, and then get sucked in. Its like his body just popped apart. Also, launching the gibs is very deadly (sometimes to even your guy).


I've also taken 411570N3's suggestion and moved the orb further away from the gun. All particles are launched in the direction you're facing. The closer they are to the center of the orb, the faster they will be launched. The size of the orb also effects the launching speed (bigger = faster). If you stand still, the blue particles should orbit closely around the center. Also, the blue partilces now cause damage. Just don't swing them around too fast. Otherwise, they might crash into while orbiting and rip your face off.

I've been tweaking the launching velocities of the particles, and they may not be as fast as they are in the .gif above.


A single particle floating behind a soldier could mean death when the trigger is released. Here, this guy's head exploded from fire particles sitting under him when they were launched upward.

I'm still trying to tweak the launching velocities of the particles, so I'll probably send out the first release later today. Tuning the math takes time. Right now, I need to sleep.

That's really quite wonderful, and deserves a new sprite. If I get time I might have a shot...

Wow, looks great, what do you want the sprite to look like?

Make it's muzzle like the Tesla Claw from Ratchet and Clank:

Can't you just see it now? It'd be like the two charged points were binding it.