So as a minor mod (and my first) I was trying to do my best to recreate the original 1860s gatling gun in a handheld form.

Current rendition:


And this is the reference picture.


CURRENT ISSUE: Lack of a good "primitive" spinup-spindown sound.

And for a first mod, I want to make this look good. Not some kind of crappy dime-a-dozen assault rifle. I want to make a gun where you can kill clones with that old-school style (and a healthy dose of gravity-fed high-caliber bullets).

Of course, even with its barrels spinning, since it's hand cranked, you're not getting a super-high fire rate.. With the spinup, that will be balanced by relatively high-damaging bullets.

Feedback appreciated.

EDIT: PROTOTYPE REPLICA NOW IN TESTING STAGE. Download your own replicated 10-barrel (actually 9 barrels) Gatling cannon now!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you not give this to light actors. You're carrying a cannon-sized gun (In CC scale), for Data's sake. Give it to a heavy dood.

The sprite looks okay to me. For shading, if you're having trouble, you can always experiment with shading in RGB and converting to CC's indexed color to see how it works. Shading such a multibarrel piece will be troublesome regardless of what method you choose to do it.

I might need to ask A LOT of questions before I'm done here.

Like how would I make it so that the bullets come out of the top barrel and not the center piece at the end of the barrel (that's part of the frame)?

This will be troublesome considering it has ten barrels, but I've gotten this far with the concept. Not quite willing to back down.

And I really don't want to deviate from standard CC palette cause I have no idea what kind of problems I might encounter if I do that.

You don't need to deviate. You can shade the sprite in RGB mode, then switch to CC-paletted Indexed color mode, transforming all colors in the image to their closest CC Palette approximates.

To make all shots come out of a specific point of the gun, you set the gun's MuzzleOffset to what you need. In this case, the Y value of the variable should be set to -3, I think, putting the muzzle three pixels above the sprite's center, assuming your SpriteOffset variable is set right.

Also, looking at that sprite again, you should probably get rid of all the black. Get some more metallic colors, and use a different shade to make the frame of the gun stand out against the barrels. Even in the image you provided, the barrels seem darker than the frame.

Also also, I seem to never get the english spelling of that thing's name right. Mittralieuse?

Thanks.. This is gonna take a while..

I might be detailing this on and off the whole week.

It doesn't help that for the few arts that I do, I tend to be perfectionist and take forever to do these things.

Or maybe it does.

Anyone else got anything to help me? Feedback from expert spriters is especially appreciated.

Oh yeah. I'll also post significant updates to the sprite when possible.

For sounds, I can't think of a good spinup one, but maybe I can rip the firing sound of The Heavy's version of this Gatling Gun, known as the Brass Beast.

I'm pretty sure they didn't use metal casings for bullets back then, so no need to worry about that.

Removed outline (since I don't need it anymore). Added a little shading. Already looks better. The black is actually a very dark metal. Which is according to the reference exactly the color of that bar.

Make it smaller, it doesn't really fit CC atm.

Yeah. Needs to be man-portable.

Anyway, corrected outline on the ammo feed.. Fixing proportions for slightly improved looks. Ditching ugly hand crank.
Wait.. You sprited this?

Only problem I'm gonna face now is how I'm gonna shrink this without ruining it. I tried and it produces too much blur for my tastes. And my shading is still kinda light for a sprite of this size.

Feel free to use the sprite I made if you want to.

I dunno.. I kinda want to try my hand at this idea..

However, because I need to resize this, it means I have a LOT of tweaking to do.. Looking at yours, my dark shade isn't dark enough, apparently.

Giving off a unearthly feel, which really shouldn't be the case with brass.

To shrink things reliably, just select the parts you want to keep, then move them more "into" the sprite.
Also have my sprite next to it then try to replicate the shading, best way to get better at pixelart.

Thanks.. I'll need a break now.

I can't tolerate the blur of a handheld version.. So in the end, I decided to keep its shape. Why? Well, I wanted to retain as much of its original scale as possible.. And face it, you're essentially carrying something as bulky as a cannon. With ten barrels.. Man portable my ass.

I edited the shading to be darker. Thanks Lizard.

STILL.. Something doesn't feel natural about this sprite.. What is it?. Oh, and I need to update it to display the darker shading encompassing slightly more of the gun.

Anyone?

You have a problem with the 3D. The front area looks like it is kind of facing towards the screen, but the rest looks completely 2D, creating an odd effect.

Oh my god thank you so much..

You nailed it right there.. I am giving you SO much credit once I'm done.

NOW THIS is what I'm talking about.. Welp, onto making the magazine, gibs, and the spin..

I know there's a way to make the gun spin slowly.. Well, that's the end of that sprite.. It looks DONE. Again, thank you VERY MUCH.