So as the title says, I am interested in ideas how to achieve a true lightning effect for a beam-like weapon. The idea is to create something like a beam effect, but without the obvious tiling issues normal beams have which always results in some sort of a sine-wave appearance. So basically, irregular lightning beam.

I considered using a projectile weapon effect with seamless, randomly animated texture segments detached from the emitter and rigged so that they match up as the projectile travels (obviously very quickly), but that idea fell through as soon as I realized that the game engine erases travel particle effects on contact with the target.

Alternatively, I could use a really long texture for a beam effect, but that obviously has texture size problems as well as animation problems (it's static).

As far as I know, one cannot use texture animations for beam effects, right?

Which is the biggest problem with the whole idea, but I am hoping for some resident genius to come up with a nifty solution or suggestion!