Today in my programming class we learned about different projectile types in preparation to create a weapon system for the weapons we made in our 3D class. My weapon shoots concentrated emotions at people to apply different effects, the default one I focused on was "happiness" that caused the target to lose their will to fight. The simple implementation of this would just be to stun the target for a short moment, but I think the more fun way would be to cause uncontrollable dancing but I have no idea if that is possible in any way.
Because of the precision required for this basing the weapon around a line trace would be ideal. But I also want it to fire a "beam" of emotions using a particle trail, so I may have to find a way to combine the line trace with another option, most likely projectile movement since I don't need the fine control of a physics object. Because of this I'd likely have to apply the damage or effects on a hit event.
As for sounds and VFX my plan is to continue to lean into the cute and silly. The particles will be a beam made of hearts, stars, and smiley faces that launches from the nozzle of the gun and "explodes" into a pink cloud on impact, possibly also with cute graphic elements. I think it would be very silly if I used some kind of generic children going "yaay" sound clip when it explodes but I'm not entirely sure of this idea yet. Otherwise I think some kind of "ka-chunk" noise for the wind up and a cute little "peeeew" would work for firing.
