So I got to thinking about this a bit. If the mag is under 10 bullets, You could just make an ammo counter like on the ar, except the numbers would be the bullets (like, the counter would be on the back of the mag. If three bullets were left, it would show the backs of three bullets in the mag.)

For mags of over 10, a sort of heat gauge (like the one on the side of the plasma rifle) could be used. The problem I hit when thinking of this method is that you would either need to tie the heat gauge to the ammo, or you would need to create heat for each bullet and have the heat dump only on reloads.

Are either of these ways possible/practical?

Well, yes. But iirc, there is a limit to how many nodes a gun can have (that, and I have never really figured out how to animate that/I suck at animating).

Although that would be pretty good to know if I ever get around to attempting to animate the m2033 basterd gun

edit: As for the heat gauge, I was think about something like the Saw in halo 4, where there is the meter on the top that shows the amount of bullets.
Edited by SAS on Oct 24, 2013 at 02:01 PM

I think theoretically you could just use an animated texture thats associated with a function. otherwise you could probably make something similar to the AR's counter, but making perhaps an animation or overlay that mimics the effect of the counter