This marker began as a collaboration between a few associates of mine, who wanted to resurrect a Quest-like marker to run off the success of the 4B bolt kit, which we designed and sold under the company Thin Air Sports. Development for the new marker unofficially began in Spring 2008, starting off as a combination of ideas from some of my past designs. Here are some of the original concept teasers created for promotional purposes during the investment process: (obviously the designs have changed since this time)
The new concept marker (which would come to be known as Zealot) features all the classic performance items needed to comprise a high-end marker. Balanced spool valve bolt (with forward bias when firing), frame-routed air supply, internal LPR, bi-directional foregrip regulator (later removed), rebuildable ball detents, feature-packed electronics, easy fieldstrip, nice frame ergonomics, shutoff tank adapter, and others.
My higher-developed prototypes are all designed with reliability and user-friendliness placed above all other concerns. Marker technology has reached the point where the outdated standards by which we judged markers (weight, max firing speed, efficiency, etc.) have become less and less important as field and tournament rules continue to change, and player interest points toward new goals for marker performance. To reflect this I turned most of my designs inside-out in 2008-2009, concentrating more on the broad layout and how the internals were arranged, rather than developing new markers with very similar firing systems that didn't offer anything unique. I continuously listen to items people want on the side of the field so I know where time needs to be spent and what features are more important than others. My job of repairing markers for years and years lent me the unique perspective and awareness between "what works and what doesn't" which is personified in most of my work, paintball or otherwise. One of my large goals is to make markers that, after breaking in some way, can be quickly and easily fixed yourself without having to send off to the factory or an airsmith like me to do it for you. There are no stupid custom seals, no custom screws, minimal custom parts; just logical components that fit together and are arranged such that the complexity is reduced as far as possible for the end-user.
Why isn't this done with other markers? The easiest answer is because it's very expensive to create marker components with that goal in mind. A balance has to be found between making something easy to use and cheap to produce. Regardless, even the best-performing marker ends up being quite useless when it goes down for repair.
Prototype verion 1.19 (2010)
Prototype verion 2.28 (2011)
Prototype verion 3.51 (2013)
I designed every aspect of this marker, including but not limited to the firing assembly, frame and general ergonomics, regulators, majority of the electronics hardware, all mechanical interactions between any nearby components, all manufacturing and inspection tolerances, and nearly everything else that goes into this. I don't do advanced electronics programming, and the specifics of items like USB and display screens, so that work is sent out to experts in the field.
Ultimately, development for this project involves months of time and tens of thousands of dollars spent on tooling, materials, fixtures, retrofitted test parts, outsourced machining, and other endeavors. Marker prototyping spans all the way back to 2010 when the project was in early stages.
Project update:
The latest version of the marker (v3.51) was completed in 2014. I began working on some revisions to the prototype regulators but was never able to finish them. Unfortunately support to develop the refined components died off in 2015 so I never finished the new internals. Many people have asked for the reason behind this; the answer is complex but can be reduced down to a central paintball market problem for high-end markers such as this. When the project began, high-end markers were still going fairly strong, but sales figures were already on a downward trend for expensive markers, so the prospect of selling Zealots in 2015 had become VERY unlikely. Justifying the production cost for an entire batch of markers is difficult unless sales are guaranteed. The best-case-scenario was that Zealots would trickle out into the hands of players in very small numbers, but this isn't enough to justify the production cost. Another option was for a large distributor to take over, but this would increase the MSRP price by another layer of "markup" which would make Zealots even less likely to sell, and TAS would make even less per sale, leading to the same limited market.
The second issue is that the advanced electronics all but force the marker to have a high pricetag. Removing the electronics would still leave behind a very complex machined marker design, which would be overly-complicated and offer very few benefits past that of a mid-range marker. Alternately, redesigning the marker to remove those complex features would essentially mean starting the project over from scratch, and would end up being a modern version of a Quest (or a Vanquish, or Renegade ZR1). While there's something to be said for "putting the marker out there" for those that are interested, again the low level of demand unfortunately isn't enough to justify the production cost.
Ultimately, for these reasons and others, the plug was pulled on this project. Naturally I would like to revisit the prototypes someday in the future but I can't guarantee this will ever happen since there are many other projects on the table at any given time, so it's difficult to justify making time for completing this project (which will likely never be sold).