Top 6 Mistakes Modders/Game Devs Make When Designing Shotguns in their FPSs

[DNSKILL5]

The purpose of this post is to give modders/game developers some things to consider when designing a shotgun weapon for their game. While the game theory aspect stems from my personal opinions, the minor information I provide here about real-world shotguns can easily be backed up beyond just the YouTube links, but I don’t feel it’s necessary because these are very general points about shotguns that don’t take a rocket scientist to figure out, and are only one part of the equation to this post. This is NOT about gun rights/gun control, absolutely do not even bother talking about this because I will ignore you and encourage everyone else to do the same, it’s not the point of this post to debate those things anyhow. This is about video game shotguns, and if you’re reading this, you’re already guilty of using one in Doom, so spare us from that type of discussion, please. There are times I say game dev and other times I say modder, or I say mod or game. I am referring to both regardless of which word is used; those that are making Doom mods, and those that are in the industry making their own shooters. 
 

If you don’t learn anything after reading this, I at least hope it can entertain you. 

 

Briefing:
Shotguns are a well known type of weapon in the real world, all around the globe, and they’re known for their capabilities in hunting scenarios, police/military breaching scenarios, and are the most well known choice for civilians for home defense. They are also well known for their roles in films and video games, and they are often hailed by many to be their favorite weapon type in games where they’re most featured.
 

Shotguns have been a staple in video games for quite some time. I don’t know which game was the first to have a shotgun in it, but I’m pretty sure Doom was the first game to have one in a first person perspective in which you could also move around in the world freely. Doom definitely made them popular choices for FPS game weapons, though. 

 

The realities of real-world shotguns and the fantasies of film/video game shotguns is almost like night and day in difference. As someone who owns and has fired a 12 gauge shotgun, I know what they feel like and how they function to me, but everyone’s experience is different. For the most part, the realistic aspects would not mesh with making a fun video game, but because of these misconceptions people believe from what they hear or see from films, games, grandpas, and politicians, I believe that shotguns suffer the most from designs that are implemented, deliberately, because the author assumes they understand how shotguns work in real life. These design choices are not only unrealistic (the less important issue), they are often very destructive towards the purpose of an FPS shotgun (the real issue this post is made to discuss), and your game or mod’s shotgun will become the easily forgotten weapon, in my opinion, if you make one of these mistakes below. 

 

This is my top six mistakes game devs/modders make when designing shotguns for their games: 

Spoiler

 

Recoil:

Shotguns generally have stout recoil when they’re 12ga (which the Doom shotguns are), but this recoil is often greatly exaggerated in video games and by people online who claim to have shot a shotgun before. Let’s put it this way.. if you design your shotgun to where there’s a delay between shots to simulate recoil (not reloading, just recoil alone)... just stop it right now! This does nothing but annoy players. You may think it’s going to balance out your gun, but it will only make the gun useless for anything other than short range combat (more on that later, so hold your replies).

 

If the character in your game is a small child or something, then maybe this makes more sense, but a grown space marine (male or female) would have no problem dealing with the recoil of a shotgun, no matter the type of shotgun it happened to be. I suggest ignoring recoil entirely. It is one realistic aspect you should ignore, especially if this is how you’re going to go about it. I think a better approach to recoil would be akin to Doom 64, where the screen shakes just a little bit when the gun flashes. That gives it a recoil effect, without having to delay the follow-up attack. 

 

Range:

This is where I think most modders are better off not messing with at all, and just keep the original Doom behavior. Shotguns may have shorter ranges than rifles, but with the right ammo, under the right conditions, shotguns can reach out much further than people tend to think. Doom’s shotguns pretty much have an unlimited range. That may not be realistic, but believe me... you can get a hit with a shotgun much further than 15 or so feet, we’re talking at least 100 yards or more as a possibility for these pellets/slugs to reach out far and still be deadly. Don’t believe me? See it for yourself.
 

The idea that shotguns have no long range capability is an absolute myth, and all this does to your shotgun in a game is makes its use extremely limited in combat. More on this next.

 

Accuracy:

Shotguns may not be as accurate as other types of guns due to their barrels often being smoothbore (no rifling in the barrel), but to design your gun where the pellets spread drunkenly between shots is not necessary. Shotguns tend to have fairly consistent patterns when fired between shots. The spread is also overly exaggerated, but again Doom’s original behavior wins yet again here. When the shotgun pellets reach out further in the game, they spread out more and more. This is actually exactly how shotguns work in real life. The massive spread is usually when the pellets are at much longer ranges. At closer range, they don’t get much larger in shot pattern than an open hand with your fingers extended out. Here’s another example image. 

 

Making the gun have excessive spread at close ranges will make the gun less effective than it is in Doom, because there will be next to no long range capability, because the pellets will be way too far apart to have any real use at longer distances, and if you’re capping off the distance these pellets can reach through the code, you’ll only make this more noticeable. The player will soon disregard the shotgun for anything other than point-blank use, and they may not even bother if they can just spray a more powerful machine gun or plasma weapon instead. 

 

The amount of shotgun pellets or the single “slug” projectiles in a shotgun shell depends on the manufacture and type of shotgun shell. Typically, 7-9 pellets are common in 12ga Buckshot loads. Slugs are one solid projectile, basically a bullet for a shotgun. They can be accurate much further away than the pellets, but are only one projectile so you lose the increased chance in hit probability. 

 

Reloading:

This is a mixed bag honestly. Reloading is more realistic of course than not reloading, but adding in reloads can slow down the gameplay. I recommend never making a reload where the player cannot escape reloading the gun. There is no real good reason for this other than wanting to piss someone off as they get mauled by demons because they’re being forced into a reload and can’t interrupt until it’s finished. Shotguns are also not THAT slow to reload. It shouldn’t feel like a chore, or the gun will be rarely used. In a survival horror themed game or mod, it would make more sense for the reload to be slower (especially if the capacity of the gun is low), but not if the character is a space marine who’s supposedly trained in using a combat shotgun.
 

I recommend taking a look at Dangerous Dave: and the Haunted Mansion to see how that game handled reloading. I think that is a much better approach to balancing fun and realism when it comes to reloading. Typically, shotguns like the pump action in Doom would hold up to 3-9 shells in real life.

 

There are ways to reload these guns very quickly. Take a look at Lena Miculek’s Quad reload on YouTube and see for yourself. The average person might not be able to pull that off, but a fictional character, especially one like doomguy doing so would speed up the reload process and that will annoy people less. 

 

Malfunctions or Jams:

This isn’t as commonly seen in games, but when it is, it’s often done very poorly. Jams and malfunctions are generally easy to fix and resume firing in real life. It should only cause a delay for about as long as the pump action animation sequence or the SSG animation sequence in a video game. Anything longer than that will just add unneeded delay in the combat.

 

Some games make it to where if the gun jams, you lose the gun and have to switch to a different gun or find a new one. Please, if you’re going to do that, call that a catastrophic failure, meaning the gun has become completely useless due to extreme damage to the internals of the gun. A typical misfeed or double feed jam, as they’re known, don’t typically make the gun completely inoperable, but something like the barrel blowing out, or the receiver cracking after rough usage, would. 

 

Power: 

Doom did this perfectly, others choose to do it, poorly. Shotguns are POWERFUL. If your custom shotgun in your game cannot kill the weakest of enemies in about 1-3 shots, then it is too weak of a weapon. The power is often nerfed due to being combined with the other items on this list because the designer feels it will better balance the gun. It will not better balance the gun, it will just give it less practical use in your game because it is underpowered. It will be as quickly disregarded as the pistol once a better weapon is found.

tl;dr: 

“Shotguns can deliver a heavy punch at close range and a generous pelting from a distance”  as seen in the Doom instruction manual - steering too far away from this formula can greatly reduce not only the usefulness of your game’s shotgun, but the enjoyment factor as well.
 

Balancing realism and fun can be a challenge, but you don’t have to own or have ever fired a shotgun to understand the difference between facts and fiction, and knowing how the guns actually work can keep you from making terrible design choices because now you won’t have the false perception of how they actually work hindering your design decision(s). 

Edited December 9, 2020 by Gerolf
spell check

[Murdoch]

Yes pretty well done. Jams and the like should definitely only be done in something like survival horror. Not in a fast action game. Shotguns overall should feel, sound, and act impactful. Recoil - as you probably know - can be variable depending the exact gun and it's age. I have always been pretty solidly built and strong. I remember firing my Grandfather's old side-by-side 12 gauge when I was kid aged maybe 13 or 14, and it nearly put me on my ass. But my Dad's current shotgun is a semi-auto whose make escapes me. Took that out claybird shooting one time and the recoil was basically non-existent. It was an absolute dream to shoot.

[Nevander]

I absolutely hate it in games that ruin shotguns by making them have the effective range of a squirt gun. Like, have the devs never seen or fired one before?

[Skeletonpatch]

I'm reminded of the shotguns from Goldeneye Reloaded. It's been years since I've played that game but I specifically remember that the shotguns were poorly designed in all the best ways. I'm pretty sure that they were supposed to be buckshot, but they functioned like slugs with more range than a sniper rifle, and probably did more damage.

[Vic Vos]

Hideous Destructor's shotgun is my waifu.

[hybridial]

So like a lot of things, Doom got it right in 1993 whilst many games since insist on fucking it up. 

 

I do quite like the shotgun in the original Resident Evil though, mainly due to how satisfying it is to explode zombie heads. I don't recall it being great at range in that game likely because you'd be firing blind offscreen, but it does the job it has to to up close enemies.  

[Cruduxy Pegg]

It is weird because Quake 1 and Doom 3 have 2 of my most hated shotguns ever. Quake's is sooooooooo styleless and boring to use, doesn't matter how strong it is if I don't want to see it. Doom 3's shotgun isn't even a shotgun, it is a melee weapon pretending to be a shotgun.

 

Some of the coolest shotguns ever on the other hand:

1) L4D2 Spas : if you used it then you know this is the shit. More games need them. Interchangeable with the auto shotty, both are good and stylish.

2) Fully upgraded bioshock 1\2 shotguns : Excuse me devs? you want me to use other weapons? Ok the other weapons are mostly stylish too so that's fine.

3) F.E.A.R.'s shotgun is too legendary to need to describe it.

4) Blood's akimbo shotguns.. is this cheating? The quake shotgun should've been at least as good as the single version of this, but alas! 

[seed]

Yeap, like how older games got many things right, but many newer titles screw up certain aspects that worked perfectly there. Not all of them, mind you.

 

Shotguns, when it comes to arsenal, are my biggest gripe of all since they are my favorite weapons and I choose to be a "shotgunner" in every game I can be. But the often abysmal accuracy they went to have, making them useful only at very close range... no thank you. That makes them extremely impractical.

 

Some of my favorite Shotguns include those from Quake 1, Blood, HL2, L4D2's SPAS-12, and even Max Payne, slowmo shotgun kills were so much fun in that game, and they felt like they carried a good punch too. I think Stalker also had some neat shotguns, but I'm not very sure.

[TwinBeast]

Thanks for stuff here, I think it'll be useful for making a better shotgun (and maybe other weapons too). Right now the main concern for the shotgun I have is, is the spread too much? Then another is.. it's a double barreled pump action shotgun that need to be cocked after every 2 shots, with 2 firemodes player can fire one barrel at a time or both. If I remove alternate firemodes (in some weapons they feel kinda forced to be there), how should it fire then?

[DNSKILL5]

@TwinBeast, the best solution I could think of is to make the gun able to shoot once, then one more time, and then it cocks the action to load up more shells. This is how the actual double barrel pump action in real-life works. There’s only a few of them in existence and they’re fairly new designs, but they only have one trigger and there’s no way to shoot off both shots at once. With that said, if you want the gun to be more powerful than that, you could take some liberties with that and just have the gun shoot both barrels at once, which would be similar to the Quake II Super Shotgun. I think altfires like you’ve described would be fine, too, but since this isn’t a break-open shotgun, I think having both shots one after the other between pumps would balance it out quite well. 
 

Oh, and while double barrel shotguns (that have two triggers that is) are capable of having the gun fire both barrels at once, there’s actually a slight delay between each shot in real life because the triggers aren’t side by side, there’s a “front trigger” and a “rear trigger”, so they don’t shoot exactly simultaneously, but fairly close. Shooting both barrels at once is also a great way to damage a real double barrel (it won’t necessarily destroy the gun the first time, but doing this over and over certainly can), so if you ever get the opportunity in real life to shoot a friends double barrel or own one of your own... don’t be that guy without the go-ahead, because some of those guns are over 100 years old and they’re just not fit for that type of abuse. The more popular double barrel of today would be the over and under styled guns (barrels stacked above each other), and those tend to have only one trigger, and which barrel shoots first depends on the model of shotgun. This bit isn’t so much directed at you, I just wanted to put that out there because I should’ve mentioned it in the orignal post. 

[Marisa the Magician]

I care a lot about getting things right, so do groan at me if the shotguns I make aren't working as they should (or any other weapon, really).

 

Honestly, when it comes to videogame shotguns, I'm most often disappointed to see the ol' "hollywood standard" of range on them where they will be completely useless at anything farther than a couple meters due to how absurd the spread gets. It's especially nonsensical if it so happens that the shotguns have fairly long barrels. Though, even sawing that shit off will not get it to the same level as, say, the doom 3 shotgun (oh god why).

 

Also I've gotten people to tell me that a shotgun wouldn't gib something. Look, flesh is weak and squishy, buckshot will absolutely destroy that.

Edited December 9, 2020 by Marisa Kirisame
post was too short

[DNSKILL5]

Oh absolutely. When people say it won’t obliterate something at close range, they are going by people or animals that have died from bird shot. There’s a reason that those types of shells are called “birdshot” and the others are known as “buckshot” ;) but even then, birdshot isn’t as puny or weak as some make them out to be either. 

 

Agreed about the range issues. Doom 3 is by far my biggest disappointment in terms of shotguns in a game. It’s also true that longer barrels like 28” and longer will make the pellets have more velocity to them, which can also mean more power, accuracy, etc, but even an 18” or 20” shotgun is still going to have some decent range to it, certainly more than games and movies make them, and the loss of power, velocity, etc is fairly marginal (especially at close to mid range, which shorter shotguns are usually used for specifically). 

Edited December 9, 2020 by Gerolf

[ChopBlock223]

4 hours ago, Marisa Kirisame said:

Also I've gotten people to tell me that a shotgun wouldn't gib something. Look, flesh is weak and squishy, buckshot will absolutely destroy that.

Well, if you like put the muzzle right near the body part in question it would definitely mangle it, but you'd be looking at a rather enormous shotgun to demolish an entire body (which you can certainly put in a videogame).

 

You'd definitely get some tightly grouped and gnarly wounds, really close up it'd look like a single big gaping cavity, even with birdshot.

[Murdoch]

6 hours ago, Marisa Kirisame said:

Also I've gotten people to tell me that a shotgun wouldn't gib something. Look, flesh is weak and squishy, buckshot will absolutely destroy that.

 

Honestly people who play a game and go "Oh that would not happen in real life" should probably sit down somewhere and quietly reassess their life.

 

Edited December 9, 2020 by Murdoch

[Biodegradable]

7 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Honestly people who play a game and go "Oh that would not happen in real life" should probably sit down somewhere and quietly reassess their life

 

When you see someone say shit like that, you instantly know that they are a profoundly tedious individual and would be painful to be around. Like, what happened to destroy their sense of fun, wonder and suspension of disbelief? 

[Murdoch]

2 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

 

When you see someone say shit like that, you instantly know that they are a profoundly tedious individual and would be painful to be around. Like, what happened to destroy their sense of fun, wonder and suspension of disbelief? 

 

Indeed.

[ChopBlock223]

On 12/10/2020 at 12:26 AM, Murdoch said:

 

Honestly people who play a game and go "Oh that would not happen in real life" should probably sit down somewhere and quietly reassess their life.

 

 

16 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

 

When you see someone say shit like that, you instantly know that they are a profoundly tedious individual and would be painful to be around. Like, what happened to destroy their sense of fun, wonder and suspension of disbelief? 

 

Exactly right. There's a time and place for realism, and if realistic portrayals aren't an explicit stated goal of your work, it really doesn't matter and thus aesthetics and style takes priority.

 

Rise Of The Triad uses digitized actors to have a fairly realistic look, but it never makes any pretense of being some realistic simulator, and the gore on display (along with everything else) is completely ridiculous, burning an enemy to death to see a remaining skeleton standing in place, which collapses with xylophone noises, it's completely unrealistic, and that's just *chef's kiss* perfect.

 

On the other hand, you have games which toot their own horn about realism, like that new Call Of Duty game, where the devs pat themselves on the back for how great their 'realistic' weapon models and weapon animations are, and you see a close-up shot of a pistol firing with the slide moving maybe an inch (not enough to even eject). I feel I'm justified in nitpicking on things like that because they're clearly not trying as hard as they brag, especially when the rest of the industry has mostly done details like those better (including themselves in the past) for decades.

[ketmar]

yeah, CoD is very realistic, indeed. because IRL, when i injured, i just have to sit a little behind some cover, and i'll be healed. i wonder why medics are still employed.