With all the work we've seen on fire being done, are there plans to include a flamethrower as an FPS weapon?asked by Del_Ivery
TL;DRNo flamethrower design document exists yet, but the systemic hazard system would let such a weapon start fires, and plasma weapons are intended to spawn hazards in the environment.
I've been asked that a few times internally, actually. So it's not something that we've written a design document for yet in terms of actually having a weapon that we want to start pushing through the pipeline. But as the hazard system, and the fire system is the hazard system basically, is built to be systemic, there's no reason we can't have weapons that spawn hazards, like a flamethrower. So if we do have something that is pushing flames out everywhere, it'll start fires in the environment. And then obviously the fire system that we've talked about quite a bit at length now takes over, and that will start spreading throughout the environment and damaging things and people. So something else I just wanted to touch on as well is that the hazard system is more than just fire. We've got some plasma weapons out there already now, and obviously we want to expand on making the plasma weapons feel a bit more unique, because right now they're a lot heavier hitting than some of our other weapons, but basically we want the on-impact effect to be much more unique. So it'll basically burn people when it impacts them, and you'll hopefully see it sizzling away on your armor or whatever. But some of the bigger weapons, and especially those ones with charge modes, we want to have them spawn hazards in the environment. So if I'm using a giant plasma LMG or something, for example, and I switch it into plasma blob mode and I fire that out into the environment, I'd expect it to make a hazard on the floor and bubble away and sizzle for a bit. And if anyone's nearby and walks over it, they'll take damage. And it's the same thing if we have any weapons that create a radioactive fallout in an area: if people walk into it, they'll start getting irradiated. The hazard system, when it's eventually built up and complete, we can link in on a lot of our weapons and have these hazards spawning as part of unique weapons that are firing and impacting different places in the environment.