I think nails visibility take a big part in why sng is used rarely and many players have trouble to use this gun with enough efficiency. It's a weapon much more powerful than sg/ssg in medium range, but many people would rather use sg than sng in close combat. Why? I think because nails are too poorly visible, and proper aiming including prediction is much harder because of that. SNG is nothing more than precursor to plasmagun known from Q3/CPMA/WSW but without splash damage. If it would be easier to aim with this weapon, it obviously would be much more effective and used more. I have some ideas how to improve nails visibility:

-replace them with particle effect like CPMA plasmaball or bright bolts (possible in ezQ, but current effect eats too much fps, 24-bit sprite should be enough)
-replace with enforcer laser projectile model - it's the same as for Q2 hyperblaster projectile. Visible, bright, and don't blend with enviroment.
-replace with new model
-add cvar to change nails colors using RGB values - try to swap nail texture with one pixel bright red, bright green or white texture, it already helps a lot.

I didn't posted it in client talk, because i also want to ask how you feel about this change? Is it still customization, or cheat alredy? Should it be make as default to help newbies a little bit? Would it make difference in weapons balance? Discuss.

Try gl_nailtrail 1 for improved visibility on nails (this is the standard default these days), and gl_nailtrail_plasma 1 for insanely bright trails.

[edit] If I had actually read your post, I would have noticed that you already knew about these. You can change the colour of nails by replacing the spike_0 and s_spike_0 image files in your quake installation.[/edit]

SNG sucks because the nails are too small :p I can't even kill enemies in close range when having a quadded SNG.

Why not increase the speed of nails with 50%. Not the firing time just the speed of the nails... would be pretty nasty then?

It's not the speed as much as the size. Q2 hyperblaster is a thoroughly useless weapon, whereas the Quake Live plasmagun is something approaching useful solely because of the increase in projectile size, meaning you don't need 100% perfect aim to land every shot.

Replace the spike_0 and s_spike_0 textures with your own, like so:

(using fullbright cyans, bad image I know, but when moving it's more visible)

I actually replaced my nails textures to bright cyan long time ago It helps, but nails are still too small. I'm talking about model, not actual 1x1x1 projectile. My point is to allow some modified nails models, or to have better effect to replace them. Warsow have 1x1x1 plasma projectiles represented by big green bright model, and it's still useful weapon, even if it require much more precision than Q3/QL plasma. I'll try to do something simple in QME tommorow, and post results here.

Could anybody upload these cyan nail models anywhere?

They are not models, they are texture replacements. I also gave the the names for them in the earlier reply, use .tga or .png format when saving. The texture needs only to be 1*1 sized if you don't want it to have anything other than single color.

Q3 plasma projectiles are the same size as Q1 nails, 0u x 0u x 0u. What makes it more effective is the speed, 2000ups vs. Q1's 1000ups. The damage is only 2pts difference & the splash damage is pretty insignificant.

In jawnmode I increased the nails speed to 1800 after toying around with speeds a bit. 2000 increasing it's utility a fair bit but made it hard to dodge, which spoils a great dynamic of projectile weapons: Prediction aiming vs. target's dodging. We don't need another rapid-fire hitscan weapon (like the LG).

I started thinking about using the Enforcer's projectile model too. Not just for visibility, but also to make them visually distinct from NG projectiles.

Increasing the size of the nails isn't possible nor desirable. Unless things have changes since I fell off the map, the next biggest bounding box size is 16u x 16u x 56u. Even if you could make them say, 4u x 4u x 4u, they become more prone to obstructions like doorways & corners.

jawn knows his shit

FL_ITEM makes things bigger without affecting how they clip solids. By about 15 in the x+y directions.
I wonder how that would affect nails...

Ultimate spam machine.

You don't need to see the nails, you just need to see the enemy. ;>

ps. ppl don't use SNG? since when? ;<

czit dla plugawego kolorowego KWAKa ....

cheat dlya gadkogo cvetnogo KVAKA .... // just translation for one who don't get it

tuoppi? nm, just random association...

I think people "don't use sng" because it's not a hitscan weapon, not because the nails are hard to see. I disagree that it is "much more powerful than sg" at medium range, I mean say you are stood at quad on dm3 and shooting at an enemy at ring tele exit. SG is hitscan so you can pick them off fairly easy, but with sng, unless they stand fairly still it is very hard to get high accuracy with sng (unless you are very lucky). There are also cases when you want to take advantage of the more powerful knockback on the shotguns (sng does 18 damage so has less potential 'stopping power' from a single hit than sg (24) and ssg (56), e.g. when people are jumping across and you want to knock them down.

Essentially SNG is most effective in tight spaces where it is difficult for the enemy to dodge. Narrow tunnels and stuff like that. In big open areas it is very hard to use effectively (other than spam/supression purposes) at anything other than close range.

Going back to the point about hitscan, another reason is that on maps with plenty of cover, shooting sng at a fleeing enemy can be a waste of time, because by the time the nails get there, the enemy will be gone. If your foe is about to go round a corner, a quick quad sg blast from medium range is going to be a lot better than a flood of nails that will simply rattle into the walls.

Obviously, ping plays a factor too. At higher pings, hitscan weapons will be less effective so there's a bigger case for sng there.