   Muzzleflash anyone?
  Any suggestions for a good muzzleflash implentation? The way I see it, I have two options. Billboard with a texture of the muzzleflash, or construct the muzzle flash out of particles that diserpate really quickly.Any 3rd, 4th options I'm not thinking of? This is the one area I always dread, cos it never comes out looking like a real gun going off.   
  I'd recommend a billboard plus a short-lived light entity, so the flash actually lights up its surroundings.   ;  Mine is a short-lived fading billboard.   ;  Depends on how often it is seen, and from what angle it's seen. But generally a billboard will do fine, unless you've got some time to spare and your artists can come up with a better looking muzzleflash using particles. In the end, it comes down on the artist skills anyway.A 3d method, which I'll call 'beam' (I've spend various years creating Half-Life levels, and that game offered a beam entity, which was essentially a billboard or sprite, but stretched between two points in space), might be usefull when the muzzleflash is less spherical, and seen by another player from the side. If I'm not mistaken, Dawn of War unit muzzleflashes were done in a similar way.This method can be implemented using actual meshes, too.   ;  Particles is not a good idea because1. A real muzzle flash doesn't look like as if it was made up by moving particles. (It looks more 'on' or 'off' so to speak.)2. To "fill" the muzzle flash you would lots of particles which would just be a waste of processing power on the GPU/CPU since the same effect can be achieved with a single or a couple of sprites.A well-textured muzzleflash sprite with a temporary light entity will probably look fine.   ;  OK thanks for the tips, I've decided to stick to Billboards. I do like your beam idea but I'm currently artistless so it would probably end up looking like a shard of broken glass more so than a muzzle flash.Any good free muzzle flash textures on the net? I can't draw. I can't dance. The only thing about me is the way I walk.