I like CMT's reload animation, because it isn't a random swing, and it isn't too over the top. And it would make sense to reload it like that, because the ammo goes to the right place in the gun and you don't have to turn the gun over to find where to put the ammo.

I think the ammo canister is somewhere near that "scope" thingy on the top.

^
Make it similar like it was on halo reach needle rifle.

I kinda put a scope on a weapon that can't zoom, so

I "refitted" it to be a clip insert, like the carbine.

cool, I like that idea much better

Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. Can I change my vote to this idea, then? :P

Can we have a FP render ? :)

IT'S GENIUS!
Edited by grunt_eater on Dec 27, 2012 at 09:02 PM

Xfire for now. Not much to show and youtube takes too long for my bandwidth atm
First time animating a shotgun.
OS messed up the origin so I'll need to fix that. So basically, it's all in a scrap that I barely pieced together.

http://beta.xfire.com/videos/5d300f

You could make that a cap which the needle core/power supply/thing goes into, then flips back down and provides the ammo counter?

Or possibly that piece in front of it, the core goes inside that, then as you said, you push in that piece which causes the needles to pop up. It could then push itself out as the needles are spent.

You know what'd be cool? The ammo being a giant needle that goes into that middle hole on top and once it's in, the gun synchronizes it of some sort by having the middle hole light up, goes down into the gun an inch, and then a ring of pinkish purple dots light up around it.

That sounds pretty cool.
The needle could be inside the cylindrical thing and as you push it in (or at once) the needles on the sides pop out. Once the ammo is out and reload, the thing pops out, you replace it with another one.

wouldn't be very practical, you could stab yourself with the needle very easily, and we all know what would happen next 0.o

Boom.

Better than being wacked with a Needler.
BIG BOOM.

yeah , but the needler spikes are shorter, and not inline with your forearm.

So seriously, I know we have always just explained the needler with "MAGIC" as far as its loading system, but how does it make a ball of pink into a bunch of needles then take those needle shards and eject them out the front? What does it compress it into liquid crystal or something while in transit that just re-solidifies when in contact with air? I have not really read much for the books. Did they ever explain this phenomenon?

I imagine that there is a mechanism that fragments the crystal block (assuming hexagonal crystalline structure), those spikes you see is just the main rock, cleaved into shards

If I would have to guess the method of ejection, I would assume some sort of repulsion, mimicking an amplified reversal of the crystals affinity for organic material.
Edited by SilentJacket on Dec 29, 2012 at 01:12 PM

Literally magic. We never actually see the ammunition inserted into the weapon when reloading (although CMT came up with a likely method), and according to the UNSC, the Needler has no moving internal parts. It simply works for gameplay purposes.
Edited by Echo77 on Dec 29, 2012 at 01:46 PM

The needles are not explosives until they leave the "barrel" you see it goes through a radioactive field inside the gun and the needles react with the radioactivity and create the atoms to be unbalanced and start to decay on the molecular level leaving the needles unstable and prone to exploded when in proximity to other needles. Hints the combine explosion.

(What I would say, if I had to make up how it worked)

long story short, having an explosive spike pointed at your face is a bad idea

Not exactly what I meant. I thought of the cylinder encasing the pink shard.

Or maybe not even a shard. Could be some sort of liquid substance with a melting point so that when the needler does something chemically it changes into a solid. When the solid hits the enemy it could go through sublimation exploding or something.
Edited by Spartan314 on Dec 29, 2012 at 07:36 PM

The needler hasn't magazines. I think it works like an energy. When the shots are over we push a kind of button and we have others needles. But this energy is not physically reachable, this is integrated to the Needler.
JUST A THEORY!

Your theory is poorly typed.
I don't really understand.Here's what I think you said:
The Needler doesn't actually use magazines.
The Needler uses energy inside it to create needles,but we can not physically interact with it.

Several things are not explained by your theory:
*The purpose of the pink object that is inserted into the Needler
*Where and what the button is (the Needler has no electronic or physical trigger)
Edited by Dumb AI on Dec 30, 2012 at 05:36 PM

Then why do you shake to reload it? There are pretty much no visible physics behind it that I know of. Besides the well kown special magic and wizardry behind it.

Possibly based on some weird Forerunner crystal growing method.

I think 'magic' is the best word, and the magic can not be explain.

There's a logical reason for everything - magic does not exist.

Think of the hive hand in Half Life, it had no real magazine of sorts. Could the needles be made by a creature inside the needler, similar to how the engineer was created by forerunners?

Maybe it heats up the pink crystal-looking object into a liquidy form and then molds into needles,which cools very quickly.
The temperature of a lifeform would be sufficient to cause to it to shatter,for whatever reason.

Edited by Dumb AI on Dec 30, 2012 at 08:25 PM

Neither does the Needler, which is why it is not bound by the typical rules of reality.

Fair point, although it's probably possible to recreate at least a partially functional Needler.

Hello there, comrades. Am I doing it right?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64034437@N03/8327418653/in/photostream
It would be great if someone could help me out with the UVs, hint hint.

With current technology, I believe the closest we can get is flechette guns (which fire metal darts) and guided munitions.

If the Forerunners (and therefore, the Covenant) can create and sense semi-organic substance, then that system could explain how the needles trace.

Rapid sublimation/evaporation and deposition/condensation of the Needler ammo through tiny tubes inside it could explain how the "ammo cluster" become the shards that stick out -gasses can quickly cool into solids if the temperature gets high enough, and it'd be pretty natural for that gas to crystallize as it cools.


With this method, all you're doing is subjecting the Needler ammo (inserted by a moving external part) to extreme heat; there's nothing internally moving.
The official games never actually showed the clip being inserted into the gun, meaning that the maneuver is probably so simple, there's no point in seeing it.

Basically, this is what I mean:



If you think of it this way, then I think you can realistically explain how Needlers work (beside "it's magic")...

(EDIT: changed the image size to make it more legible)
Edited by renegade343 on Dec 30, 2012 at 10:23 PM