Time to complete the weapon series with the final chapter — energy weapons.

This category includes:

• Blaster (covered in Chapter 1)
• Shock Rifle
• Laser Rifle

What unites them? High voltage and electric discharge. Let's dive in.

Shock Rifle

Fires concentrated electric current — either as a beam or as a ball.

If the beam hits the ball mid-flight, it triggers a singularity — a large area-of-effect explosion that deals massive damage.

Both electric projectiles also have a strong knockback effect. You can use this to:

• Keep enemies away
• Push them into pits or hazards

I didn't want to make an exact copy of the Shock Rifle from Unreal Tournament, but... I ended up copying even the name.

                  

Technical Implementation

Electric Beam & Ball differ from other projectiles:

• Hit reaction — triggers a unique damage animation on the target
• Animation & sound — both projectiles are animated and emit crackling sounds during flight
• Wall impact animation — redrawn several times, probably will be redrawn again
• Volume scaling — both projectiles are quite large, so they spawn at reduced scale and grow during the first seconds of flight

Bugs caused by scaling:

The main feature — Electric Explosion (Singularity):

• Beam and ball use a separate collision layer
• When the beam hits the ball, the beam disappears and the ball triggers the singularity animation
• Damage is applied as area-of-effect (similar to rocket splash damage)

Laser Rifle

Fires a powerful light beam, charged by electrical discharge. Before firing, the rifle must accumulate a charge. While charging:

• The player's field of view narrows
• But the range is doubled

The laser pierces through characters — one shot can hit multiple enemies. Think of it as a railgun that reloads before the shot, not after.

Technical Implementation

The Laser Rifle projectile is a modified version of the Plasmagun's alternate fire beam:

The game has a fog of war system using a light mask. The Laser Rifle modifies this mask texture while charging — which forced me to design all maps in horizontal orientation rather than vertical.

Summary

Additional Weapon-Related Systems

Explosion Decals

Explosions leave marks on the ground:

• Built from particles with fast animation in their first frames
• Collision enabled with certain zones (e.g., pits, water) — particles disappear there
• Also managed through the projectile pool for optimization

Muzzle Flash

Every shot generates a light flash (except the Glove's impulse). These flashes help players locate each other in the fog of war.

Weapon Hand Customization

In the customization settings, you can choose which hand carries the weapon. This matters on some maps for corner shooting.

What's Next?

The weapon series is complete. Next plans:

• Sound design — weapons, voices, atmosphere
• Game modes — deeper dive into DM, TDM, CTF, Last Hero
• AI — bot behavior, navigation, shooting

Thanks for reading the entire weapon series!

— AlexAnniken

P.S.Question for you

What's your favorite energy weapon in any shooter? Mine is the UT Shock Rifle — and yes, I definitely borrowed some ideas from it.