40K Source

Some questions:

If i strike someone with a powersword, will there be a noticeable flash of light? That would be cool to see.
Will the melta weapons and flamers illuminate? As well as the bolter muzzle flashes? I noticed something similar in Gutter Runners, where the rat mage illuminated the area when casting magic.

I havent looked into dynamic lights in Source yet, but this sounds all sounds feasable to me.

Q) If I strike someone with a powersword, will there be a noticeable flash of light?
A) No.  They're not lightsabers.  I do have a powefield effect for the blade in mind though.

Q) Will the melta weapons and flamers illuminate? As well as the bolter muzzle flashes?
A) Melta beams will probably glow at their start and end points, we could do that much in HL1.  We have no plans for flamers in EX yet.

power weapons come in 2 general catagories:

1- field produces a cutting edge (cutting weapons0

2- field discharges causing silly damage (bludoning weapon)

in the main swords and the like use #1 where the abilites of the sword are amplified by the effects of the field which either produces a mono-molecular edge to the weapon making it cut easyer, or it uses heat/sonic damage to for the cutting edge, a distortion field that bends reality/distorts it in some way to negate armour, or in some cases the blade is made of a material that is naturally (or un-naturally) sharp to easily cut thorugh armour.

In all cases the effect wopuld be a surrounding field of some kind which would encase the blade just above the surface and form a hard point at the blades edge. By hard point i mean area where the effects of the field are at their greatest and thus it would probably be more visable at this location.

Power fists, some axes, mauls and thunder hammers use #2 where the damage being applied is mainly from the weapons impact enhanced by the field which discharges on contact thus adding more pain to the equation. Agin this type of field uses several types of impact, some just discharge a pile of energy into the target, like being punched and electrified at the same time. Some use the field to distort like the sword version to tear the target appart in one focused blast. As these are about discharging of energy they are more likly to produce a flash of some kind as said discharge occurs.

This has been a Fluff information broadcast by the Imperial Ministery for Information

I never knew there were that many different power-weapon designs.

Amazing what you can do with power-fields: Sharpen, heat, electrify, blast, disort reality and make sonic energy.

yeh, although oviously in the TT game its all simplified to "generic power weapons" there is a lot of technical variation throughout the Imperium.

The more importantr you are and the closer to a forgeworld generally means you will have access to more schofisticated tech.