Do you mean like this?: Because that idea popped in my mind instantly when you said "replace the drum." In my opinion that wouldn't break the revolver kind of feel of the gun too much and it would be make reloading faster, would make more sense to carry already reloaded cylinders instead of shells and would be easier to animate and model. Edit: OR OR LIKE THIS!!! Now THAT would really mix the design up. Basically it really would be a revoler which has shotgun bucks in it and it is reloaded like shotgun but it the firing mechanism is like in revoler. Maybe even modify the cylinder axle so that you can press it better when the shotgun is open and you can push the empty bucks out like more modern revolers do with their ammo: you open the cylinder, press the axle in front of the cylinder and a plate pushes the empty shells out and then you can put new ones in. Edit: Oh yeah, I think it wouldn't break the design either if the latter idea had also replacable cylinders. Now THAT would be some fucked up shit right there. (Also it would fasten up the reloading animation because you just have to open the shotgun revolver, throw the old cylinder out, put new cylinder in and close it. If you used the speed loader it would go like this: open, push the axle to get old bucks out, put speed loader with bucks in, release speed loader, throw it away, close, shoot.)
While I felt like creative and tried to come up with unique design for BE's shotty thingy, I came up with this reloading method for NF's one: (I know it could use a bit more fine tuning because the cylinder doesn't have a support beam or axle going through the support beam and it can't be attached to the beam above it but who cares, this is a concept drawing, not a model.)
Ok. While feeling creative and then trying to come up with BE's version of this shotgun I came up with this idea: Yeah, it needs Brenodificationing and finished touch feel to it but that's the basic idea. Basically this shotgun would be belt loaded like a machinegun and the loading inside the gun would work in the same way as in machinegun: Buck gets pulled back from the belt, then pushed down and when the grabber moves forward it loads the buck in the barrel while grabbing another buck. Vess, if you feel like getting insipration from that picture and using it, be my guess. Use it away as much as you want to. After all this thread is about your shotguns, not mine. I just felt like creating something. Oh yeah, I think how to reload with new belt is pretty simple. Just pop the cap, place new belt in and close the cap, shoot till empty, repeat. And I don't give a damn how hard this would be to animate or model. I just wanted to create something unique and I think this is it. Just imaginate that belt flinging around when you shoot and finally when it drops off you just reload new belt which again loosely finds it way through the gun.
Theres one thing these designs are drastically missing: Do the devs want magazine based shotguns or more traditional ones where you load shells 1 at a time and can break off and fire? Because how the shotgun is loaded affects the model. A revolver style, while cool, makes no freaking sense if you open the damn thing to PUT IN INDIVIDUAL SHELLS D:
Well you could always make an animation where the player picks the empty bucks off by hand. Simple, eh? Just make one animation where the player picks all the bucks away by hand except the last one and then add code which limits the time of the animation based on the amount how many shells must be loaded. Oh yeah... this would require some harder work because that would mean the model should be dynamic and by that I mean that if the animation is stopped prematurelly then there shouldn't be all in sudden no bucks in any of the barrels except the last one. Oh well, I guess you could just make one long animation, then shorten the animation to 6 bucks taken off, then to 5 bucks taken off and so on until you have all the required animations for different ammo amounts.
It just makes no sense to have to open a revolver style cylinder and manually load it. And you need to make it quick, per shell is supposed to be fast. Like 2 sec each.
The break open style for the revolver is silly, but that's because I'm all wrapped up in REAL REAL REAL REAL. Cool designs, but I think Jessiah has a very valid point.
shouldn't the belt be allinged with the barrel? as in the bullet casing comes in at the height of the barrel to let it fire? just asking
Speaking of shotgun revolvers... The LeMat Revolver. Conventional revolver with shotgun barrel and chamber forming the cylinder axis. A toggle on the hammer allows a firer to switch between them.
New designs but before that I'll comment a few things. To Jessiah: About "avoiding ammo waste" reload style this one thing came to my mind. There are several games which use awkward transitions to get full clips. It happens everywhere. In empires, in Fistful of Frags and so on. For example, you fire your SMG clip half full and you keep doing this with all your clips, reload them when they are half used. Yet somehow you won't waste those ammos with the clip which you just threw away or put in your pocket and when you are having your final bullets, miraculously you have a full clip again even you should have only two half full clips. The player doesn't do any clip exchange stuff there in the game. The game is made so that it takes a shortcut on this. Even more visible example is in FoF. You have a revolver. You fire one shot and reload. Then your player shakes all the bullets away and puts 6 new bullets in the cylinder and starts firing but those bullets which you "threw to ground" will still be with you even you clearly saw that they dropped to ground and they should stay there. Or take a look at NF shotty pistol. You have 4 ammos, 2 in the gun 2 in your pocket. You shoot one shot, you reload and both bucks fly away, yet when you reload the gun you lose only 1 buck from your pocket even you reload two. So. I think it is safe to say that it is valid way to throw away all the bullets/bucks from the gun and reload a full clip in instead of doing multiple animations for different ammo amounts. That's just way too much work when you take into account all the possible ammo amount possibilities and reload ways and so on. To Blizzerd: About that belt feed. I designed the belt to be flexible. It is just some nylon strap wrapped around the bucks so it will swing around when you fire and that's why it is hugging the gun, the 8th buck is already aligned with the barrel, thus you can't see it. Anyway, I though about a possibility of a solid belt too. More like solid rack which you push in from the side of the gun and if you want to throw it away, you push a button on the side of the gun so the rack comes loose and you punch the half used rack through the gun. Then you just release the button and push new rack in and it will locked to the first buck until it is fired and the reloading mechanism pushes the rack through the gun and drops it off from the other side. Anyway, I think the way how this gun will be reloaded is by using speed loader or just by replacing the cylinder because there won't be any ammo loss if you throw away a few unused bucks and making animations for those empty bucks which you want to pick away is just too much work. And finally here are a few new designs. (There's one more to come which I haven't seen anywhere else before so stay tuned. Though I designed it for 9mm bullets or some other short bullets, would make very good design for an SMG. ) Bottom Break shotty revoler. This design would be much more on par with the BE's fast reloading desings: Design 1: Pop the cap, put new belt in, close the cap, fire. Design 2: Push new rack in, fire. BECAUSE when you run out of ammo, you open the gun, press some button with your left hand to drop the cylinder while you are opening the gun, when the gun is folded you just push new cylinder in with your left hand while keeping your gun aligned to your target and then you just close the gun with your left hand and you are ready to fire and you staid on the target pretty well. Notice that this design has shorter barrel so it won't bang to player character's shoulder all the time, that would become pretty painful after some time. Also notice that this method would require some sort of cavities for the sight and top of the hammer so those won't get banged to pieces but I think they would be pretty simple to make and make the height of the sight and hammer fit in those cavieties. (And also notice this design may need a handle for right hand so it is easier to keep on target.) Pump action shotty revolver. This design is a bit more complicated but imaginate a shotgun which you reload from bottom by stuffing shells in its barrel under the barrel which fires. Then you just reload the gun to get new buck in the barrel which fires and so on. This design is a bit similar to that. You use the pumping action to spin the cylinder, to reload a new buck in the cylinder and also use it to load the hammers. The cylinder has to have only 4 holes in it so it will work. If we look at the top picture and the lower barrel in the cylinder, that's where the bucks will go from the loading barrel. After you have fired and start to pump the shotgun, the cylinder spins lifting the buck into position where it can be fired. You pull the trigger and two hammers will hit, other one will hit the buck which shoots and the other one will hit the buck at next stage. Then on the new pump action the just shot buck will move outside the gun where the second hammer will kick the buck out of the gun when you fire newly reloaded buck. Now the empty cylinder barrel will still stay outside the gun and wait for a new buck to be reloaded into it on the next pump action. And when finally you do new pump action, the cylinder spins, aligns to its position and new buck is reloaded into it. And cycle may start all over again. (Though there's a small design flaw here. When you fire your gun empty and you hear click sound all your cylinder barrels are empty then. You reload new bucks in and they are waiting there to be pumped in BUT this pump action will rotate new empty cylinder to firing position and you will hear a click again. But I though there just could be some sort of pass mechanism which would allow the first buck enter the empty cylinder barrel when the click sound appers. That way the last buck which you reload in the gun will slide right in the cylinder barrel and when you do the pump action it will rotate to its position behind the firing barrel and you can fire again and you don't have to do double reload. Other bucks will stay there waiting until you pull the pump grab back so the cylinder spins and then push the pump grab forward so the buck will get pushed into the cylinder barrel and will be ready to lifted behind the firing barrel.) And here's the technical picture trying to explain the way how this gun would work and make it logical. (Yeah this is quite far away from Vess' first NF shotty revolver but I just let my imagination fly and it still is built around the revolving mechanism and bucks.) Anyway, Vess, sorry for hijacking your thread but if you feel like getting inspiration from these versions feel free to use them. I made them just for the fun of thinking new designs, not to try to compete with you.
Aaannd finally the last design which IS NOT SHOTGUN DESIGN! (Though I think it could be used in it too...) Now, imaginate that this isn't a shotgun and it would be... like BE SMG 2. Yeah, the design is over simple and may be hard to understand BUT take a look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Z83jS_sn8 Now imaginate that reloading mechanism upside down and in double. Yes, there are two barrels and I imaginated that when other mechanism has fully loaded the bullet and fully grabbed other bullet in the clip, the other reloading mechanism is half way loading and already throwing away the empty shell. This would increase the rate of fire by double because of there are twice as many barrels firing rather than when there would be only one and because of separate bullet streams and separate reloading mechanisms the firing rate doubles based on the barrel amount. 4 barrels would be 4 times fast firing rate as single barrel (though clip changing would be a mess as well as throwing away used shells.) Anyway, imaginate that weapon as BE SMG2 or something like that and just think about how DAMN fast reloading that thing is. You just press a button, pull and drop your arm to pocket, grab new clip and throw your hand up again and pull it a bit back and TADA THAT'S AAAA NEW RECOOOORRD TIME!!! And you even stayed on the target with very good accuracy. (I designed this to be used on SMGs because of two reasons: This way there's far less space for the bullets because of their length so they have to be short and the fast firing rate of this weapon requires a light weapon so it is easier to keep still and it won't go all over the place when you are trying to hold the weapon on your arms and aim somewhere there near the target.)
In all honesty, that makes more sense for a NF weapon. That kind of design doesn't belong with BE, they would never use it or need with all their high-tech machining. It fits NF far better since their weapons are made by any means possible. It has more of a thrown-together feel that suits NF.
I just used Vess' shotty as base for my design demo. Look at the way how it works and the different design of the clip. Not at the weapon as whole. Anyway, everyone has their own opinion.
Thats what I was looking at. From a mechanical standpoint this fits NF better, it suits their thrown-together weapon designs (2 slow weapons merged together instead of 1 faster firing weapon since it would be easier to build). BE is a highly industrialist empire, they wouldn't design any weapons like this.
