Gun Enthusiast's Opinion
polycounter lvl 7
I'm making a gun for a side think I'm working on, but I don't really a lot about guns other then what looks nice or not, so instead of just tacking sci-fi bits on it I'd like the opinion of anyone who knows anything about guns how to make it more interesting without just tacking on greebles.
First column. Should it have no clip, a revolver style clip, or Striker style clip? Maybe even the standard rectangle clip, if I can find a place for it. The gun doesn't actually use ammo (Think like Mass effect 1 maybe? Still debating on this since it's cool to see spent shells being ejected, but that requires ammo.)
Second column. The barrel's position. I think I like 2 the most, but I'm not sure if it matters where the bullets come out of.
Third column. The hammer is obviously nowhere near any bullets to strike, the gun is also full auto? (Or Semi auto? how does this work?) so it kinda serves no purpose where it is, but the gun also looks kinda dumb without something there.
Basically I'm stuck with function vs. form. What looks nice doesn't necessarily work, and what is functional doesn't necessarily look appealing.
Also, what do the bars on top of the gun do? I've seen them on various guns as far as I can tell they are to hold scopes and things? They look cool and break up the flatness, but could I put something more appropriate?
Replies
A robot uses the gun so the weight won't be a problem, I want it to look too heavy for human hands. That's why the handle looks small, it's normal sized, the gun is just really big.
What I like about the striker kind of magazine is that it's simply bulkier, might fit if the gun is to be wielded by a robot and that is the kind of look you want, bulky. Something I would test, just for testings sake, what if the barrel was further to the nose of the gun. Putting it at the other side of the mechanism would be trickier to keep functionally explainable though.
Raising the barrel at least over the trigger finger would give the weapon some height to relate to, keeping a gun silhouette stronger. As for the hammer I'd say keep it but perhaps redesign it, I'm not entirely sure about the scale but if its larger It could take on another silhouette from the smaller "human used" guns.
I'm not sure what you mean by "barrel was further to the nose of the gun... . Putting it at the other side of the mechanism" Do you mean like pull out the barrel so it sticks out further then the two square pieces? Could you doodle it to illustrate what you mean maybe?
I gave it some plates, and highpolied some of the parts now that I chose which design set to use. It just doesn't feel Epic or Huge enough, like it should feel intimidating, not generic. I don't think I really care for that dial or the part just below the striker, or intersecting the striker.
(Taking a small reference from the ogryns in Warhammer 40k, theyre automatic shotguns but large like their carriers.)
As for the sheer size and "largeness" of the weapon it really comes to what context its in. Right now I would say it still could be a standard size weapon, but is it meant for a robot 1-2 humans tall or perhaps even a giant mecha? Say if the weapon is serviced by a human, then maybe details like plating, screws etc. come in more manageable sizes. How big a robot are we speaking of?
Edit: including a very simple paint over, and a small notice about the hammer, considering the pistol "anatomy" it might need thinking about how it hits the bullet.
Slid it forward. It makes it seem a bit front heavy, not well balanced, but maybe if I lengthen the barrel it will work better.
In short, those are two conflicting pieces of gun anatomy. It's like giving someone two sets of hips instead of two hips and two shoulders. It looks ridiculous, and it doesnt make sense. Look at schematics of guns, try and break down the basic, big moving parts; where is the hammer, where do the bullets travel through, how do the ergonomics relate to this?
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c288/TheRealHobie/Firearms/Remington/M51_cutaway_1.jpg
I think the bigass cylinder is a fundamental flaw in your design. It makes the gun impossible to conceal, it makes it heavy, it's huge, and it presents a serious difficulty in reloading the real guns it exists on -- which are way bigger, and way easier to freely control with two arms. Why would someone design a handgun like that? Why would anybody ever buy a handgun that's designed like that? What compromises would posisbly make that worthwhile?
My suggestion: Keep the basic model, but drop a lot of the design. Google image search 'machine pistol' -- anything you'd want to take inspiration from with a different/bigger profile from a basic pistol that's still practical to carry (concealable, ergonomic, light) and constructed functionally is going to show up.
The big Cylinder is a Striker ammo drum deal, a lot of the problems you had with it are there on purpose, it's supposed to be big and heavy and noticeable, not like a conventional concealed firearm.
The picatinny rails are waaaay off for this supposedly being "normal sized, but for a 8' robot". Picatinny rails are 10.008 mm from center groove to center groove.
PT Rails explained
I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way and think I'm complaining about precise machining. Its about proportion, no matter if the grooves are enlarged to 10" or 10'. Groovy
So lets say that they do measure up, thats .394" per centerline. You have 11 rails that are spanned by centerlines from front to back. Thats 4.344".
Now I'm sure you can see what I'm getting at. That means your barrel is roughly around 2.25", thats a small ass gun.
I'm not trying to be a dick, I just have no tact, so I give you a blunt explanation
Proportionately I'd say to make it have the most effect go with a barrel length of in the range of .75" to 1.5" per foot of wielder height. The former for a more compact look the latter for a oversize look.
My Shot at a Paintover.
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Tried to incorporate the things you mentioned. Ammoless. Cartridges in a drum to determine the shot type.
Powered off of the Robots own power, or alternatively the power cell hidden under the barrel.
A simple thumb wheel to select shot type.
I hate the trigger I did...
You're confusing a few key concepts that matter aesthetically -- "magazine" (what some folks mistakenly call a "clip"), "drum", and "cylinder".
A "cylinder" is the part of a revolver that holds the "rounds" (what some folks mistakenly call "bullets" -- the bullet is just the part that comes out the end of the barrel and kills something).
A magazine is the part of a semi-auto pistol or rifle that holds the rounds and is generally detachable from the firearm for speedy reloading by swapping an empty magazine for a full one.
A drum is a type of magazine. The most iconic drum I can think of is that of a Thompson submachine gun (tommy gun). Today, mostly you see drum mags on automatic shotguns (AA-12, Saiga 12 -- my personal favorite from my own collection).
Any revolver I've seen puts the cylinder directly above the trigger, so right away that's the thing that strikes me as "off" about the gun. It looks like you're leaning towards a drum mag. The part of the gun that holds the magazine is called the magazine well. For pistols, a magazine well is almost always in the pistol's grip. For rifles, a magazine well is almost always in front of the trigger group as it is on your gun, so to me, your gun looks like a sawed off automatic shotgun.
In contrast between your gun and a Saiga 12 (the automatic shotgun I know the best), the ejector port (I assume the square above the magazine is the ejector port -- where spent casings well be ejected) should be in-line with the barrel. You're missing a charging handle (the thing you pull on to load the first round into the chamber after inserting a magazine), and you're missing a gas tube.
Gas tubes are subtle but they're what gives modern firearms their distinctive look over their ancestors -- modern rifles and automatic shotguns are gas operated, meaning there's a tube that runs from the middle of the barrel back towards the bolt (the thing that flies back and forth over the top of the magazine as each round is fired, ejecting casings and scraping the next bullet into the chamber). When a round is fired, gas expanding into the barrel also expands into this tube, pushing the bolt backwards, ejecting the spent casing, and scraping the next bullet into the chamber (I know I said it twice, it's confusing). On an AK platform (as in AK-47, what Saiaga 12 is based on), the gas tube is pretty huge and noticeable.
If this *is* what you're going for, ditch the hammer (I think you called it a "striker") -- on an automatic rifle, the hammer is almost always hidden inside the receiver (the box above the trigger).
Here's a video of a guy shooting a shorty Saiga 12 with no butt stock:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYsQDq9_wvk
I could see a robot wielding a couple of those like pistols. Hell, I'd LOVE to see a robot wielding a couple of those like pistols.
I tried to incorporate most of the parts of your paintover, while not compromising some of the design features I wanted to keep in it.
I know no other gun does it and it seems wonky, but I really want the front profile to be Square, Circle, Square. Like:
__
[_]
.O
[_]
I can't get the spaces to stay in it no matter what alt code I use, be it 255 or 0160. Oh well.
There are still a lot of things I need to change though. The whole handle area is a mess of different directions with no flow for the eyes to follow.
Major issues: Why is there an ejection port way above the barrel? needs to be in line with it to eject the ammo properly. Could be on top.
Also, if this gun is not intended to be concealable, light, and manageable, it isn't a pistol as we know them... It's just one handed and a firearm.
Which actually gives you a lot more freedom to go wild with it. If this is a robot's gun and it's not to be concealed, it can have a longer barrel, an unconventional (not fit for human hands) grip, different ejection method (not worried about burning yourself), etc.
I guess it's not a 'pistol' then, it's a gun, that's one handed and not a shotgun or an automatic rifle. I don't know what else to call it. Firearm? Handgun? Weapon?
I like the idea of a longer barrel though, it feels too stumpy right now.
Longer barrel done quickyl. Pretend there isn't a gap in the rails and holes in the block part. Maybe its too long now.
Ejection of spent cases is handled differently on the striker than it would be on a conventional automatic weapon. The rounds, obviously, are held in the rotary drum, much like a revolver, and the gun kicks out the previously spent round every time it fires.
Detail in the first 30sec of this video. This is a different but closely related gun; im pretty sure the striker works the same way: [ame]
You, of course, don't have to make your gun work with this, but it's by far the most logical solution if the magazine is going to rotate like that. The other obvious choice would be to keep the spent casings in their slots, and empty them out before reloading like revolvers traditionally do.
And the reason there are no rails on the bottom of it as well is because it's bladed on the bottom, it's just really hard to tell from this angle since how it shades. There is a sharp edge like: \/
It seems heavy enough that if you brought the blade side down on someone, it could slice though people, especially if it's a robot doing it. I know real guns couldn't take this kind of punishment for long without something breaking, but lets say it's made of adamantium or something. :P And it's not like a 20ft silly FF gunblade either.
And I hope you elaborate soon Kaskad. I sorta see what you did there but with the striker drum below the gun barrel, how does the ammo get inside? Do bullets get pushed upwards into the chamber or something? No PT Rails? I like the little curve at the tip though.
Well since you had an ejection port in there I was reading it as a drum mag, not a cylinder. In a drum mag the bullets get pushed up into the chamber, yes.
Once the ejection port gets moved down to where the chamber actually is, there's no need for all the vertical room above the barrel, so I chopped it down and suggested that you turn the front into a sight and turn that big piece in back into a rear sight.
Didn't include the rails because they represent a huge clich
@Kaskad, yes a Bayonet makes more sense in terms of guns historically, but its used totally differently. Bayonets are for stabbing/piercing motions, a blade is for a chopping/bringing down motion. It's too heavy to fence with, and if the gun is already pointing straight at the guy, why not just pull the trigger, way more damaging.
I can probably make the blade part more interesting though, right now it's just a placeholder triangle.
Also there was a sight on it before mounted to the PT Rails, I think I deleted it by accident at some point while moving things around, I'll add that back on in the next update.
@Grimm_Wrecking, I hadn't considered any of that at all about the rails, The only reason I added them in was because the top of the gun was just one flat, bare area and I felt like it needed something to break up the uniformity. And since like you say, they're pretty standard and people can look at them and be like 'Yeah I know what those are for.'
You are also right about the robot isn't just like a production line Terminator, I'm still debating but either the population is 50/50 robots and humans, the robots just as unique as regular people, or all robots. Like the movie, Robots! Which reminds, should watch Armitage, I've heard the name before and it looks interesting.
When asking myself those questions, I'm going to say:
Anti-Personnel AND Anti-Material, maybe? Assuming all the people are robots, and I'm guessing 'Material' means like able to pierce tanks and armor instead of just people? It would need to do that to harm other robots. Or does Anti-Personel mean like it has a spread like flak mean to damage organs and stuff? Either way, its an all purpose weapon in that department.
Mostly Close Quarters. Not that it can't be used at long ranges, but it's meant more for close quarters, sorta like Equilibrium's Gun-Kata. Thus, the bladed edge.
Ammo used is a little bit of all of them. The ammo drum barrel chamber whatever word is used to store different types of shot for whatever occasion, and the gun fires whatever is currently loaded, and expells like a shell. I guess the shell is some sort of sci-fi left over in the making bullets proccess. Likewise the propellent is probably in the respective bullet.
And it's semi-auto with the option to switch to full auto. It probably shoots bullets, no ray beams or lasers, but the bullets are replicated, rather then ever needing to reload.
A little more background, the gun's target audience is the robot protagonist of a game idea I've been toying with for a while. He's sort of a detective/hitman, like Penny Arcade's Automata, Samurai Jack's X-9, or like a robot Max Payne.
Anyways, that aside, time to change the gun up some.
That one? It's the power source for it's strange bullet replication technology. Science fiction! It'll have glowly bits and not just be flat roundness later on.
Added some le Grill to the part above the battery, as well as a few other minor tweaks. It still feels like its missing something though.
Do you crush three fingers, or grab it with the whole hand? In the case of the latter, then why does it have finger-grooves on the handle?
I guess you just wrap your whole hand around it, two fingers in the groove and two not. I can change it if you think a different design would suit it better. Traditional hole for the trigger?
A bit hacked into place, I think it needs to be larger.
I have learned these lessons the hard way myself! Good luck and fix that trigger (too small now)
easier to sum it up with a po.
The most important part of the design to me is the barrel and the blocks above and below it. They're supposed to be the biggest part. I just noticed/remembered now that it's this shape:
Wolfwood from Trigun. Completely non deliberate, I guess it was subconscious of me to go for that shape.
Is there any reason you took out some of the screw holes? It seems like the plates wouldn't stay on well, but maybe I'm just wrong. There's no screws in them right now because I keep moving everything around but normally there'd be some in the holes.
I'll have an update at lunch with things changed. Right now there is this:
The top one is what it currently is, and the bottom one is more like what I should rescale everything to so that it makes sense. That's also a pretty accurate depiction of what this gun is scaled to a Glock I think maybe. That is a Glock right?
EDIT: Changed it. I'm not really sure if I am satisfied with the grip area now. I might put the plate part back onto it. The angle itself might be too much as well.
A friend also suggested I do it this way, bringing the thingy part to be in line with the barrel.