"Smear tool" for the fire/explosion engine?

[olofson]

It looks a bit off when sprites fly through explosions without affecting them in any way. As it is, the fire/explosion effect layer is just rendered on top of all sprites.

Not sure if this would really work without also implementing some basic physics in the particle systems, but the idea here is to just have sprites partially clear their way through the flames and smoke, but manipulating the "fire effect" output buffer with a blur/fade/smear brush.

Even in its simplest form (no particle physics) this might actually work better than it would seem at first, as this new smear feature (like the "fire effect" filter) is applied after rendering the particles, so it may actually fade and/or blur the particles themselves as needed - not just the filtered trails they leave in the buffer.