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barehoes

How does the BFG9000 work?

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Ok relax if this has been answered before but I cannot find any good tutorials on the way the BFG9000 works(in original doom).

I understand it fires a green ball, and at the point of the ball being shot your players position is kept track of by the game. When the ball hits something it does a ton of initial damage, and 40 invisible tracers are also shot.

This is where it gets confusing for me. Supposedly these tracers actually do more damage then the ball itself. Where are these tracers shot? I've seen people on youtube shoot the BFG before entering a teleporter, then after using the teleporter the enemies infront of the player upon entering the teleporter die by those tracers? Wtf?

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It kinda helps to imagine the bfg as more of a supershotgun that fires only after the bfg projectile collides with something.

I think that being within visual range of the projectile (such as if you were an archvile and the bfg ball was your target so to speak) during the point of collision is a factor but I can't remember off the top of my head. But yeah, basically its a rocket launcher followed by a super shotgun blast that fires simultaneously with the rocket exploding.

Enjoy your slaughtermaps :)

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40oz said:

It kinda helps to imagine the bfg as more of a supershotgun that fires only after the bfg projectile collides with something.

Yup, it was crazy learning that this is how it works. When I first played Doom I didn't think it was that great of a final weapon, but it's exhilarating to use once you comprehend how to maximize tracer damage. The first time you two shot a cyber, it's like a whole new world of possibilities becomes open to you.

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dobu gabu maru said:

Yup, it was crazy learning that this is how it works. When I first played Doom I didn't think it was that great of a final weapon, but it's exhilarating to use once you comprehend how to maximize tracer damage. The first time you two shot a cyber, it's like a whole new world of possibilities becomes open to you.

And you also realize how inefficient the plasma gun is.

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I always figured it worked like Quake II's 10k except the lasers aren't rendered in Doom, explains the seeking effect. But unlike that game you can safely abuse it at point blank range which greatly augments the damage done.

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I can attest to seeing the shot explode on a target being a major factor. Several times I've seen the BFG do almost no damage to weaker enemies because I wasn't looking directly at the projectile when it reached its target. I always thought that was a really crappy behavior to implement.

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VGA said:

And you also realize how inefficient the plasma gun is.

And yet speed runners use the plasma gun all the time even when they have the BFG...

GoatLord said:

I can attest to seeing the shot explode on a target being a major factor.

Lol? We have the source code. It is perfectly clear. There is no mystery here.

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Cyanosis said:

I always figured it worked like Quake II's 10k except the lasers aren't rendered in Doom, explains the seeking effect. But unlike that game you can safely abuse it at point blank range which greatly augments the damage done.

I never thought of it that way, I always thought that they used a new technique in Quake II.

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GoatLord said:

Several times I've seen the BFG do almost no damage to weaker enemies because I wasn't looking directly at the projectile when it reached its target.

Where you look at doesn't matter at all at that point. Where you position yourself does. I can highly recommend to read the BFG FAQ.

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The guide that Ling posted helped me out quite a lot years back. Pretty much covers any basics you'd need to know in game. Fragging loads of people in one room with a well placed silent-BFG shot is incredibly satisfying.

Also it bring my piss to a boil when a BFG ball decides to only do 100 damage.. But that variance makes for some interesting gameplay so in a way I'm glad it's there.

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When the BFG projectile explosion reaches its maximum power, it will release from its shooter a fan-like field of damage, in the same direction that the projectile was shot, regardless of where the shooter is currently looking and where he is located.

The BFG FAQ is correct on how the weapon works in general, but I suspect it has the blast damage wrong, i.e. much smaller than it really is.

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Avoozl said:

I never thought of it that way, I always thought that they used a new technique in Quake II.


I'm actually wrong in that regard, because Q2's is doing damage the moment the ball enters the world and Doom's doesn't do anything until it collides with something, but the effect is extremely similar.

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printz said:

The BFG FAQ is correct on how the weapon works in general, but I suspect it has the blast damage wrong, i.e. much smaller than it really is.



The values seem to be correct, but keep in mind that the BFG is far more prone to losing traces due to incomplete blockmap linking than any other weapon. You lose a good number of traces because they just pass through the targets with their center in a different block.

With that behavior fixed you can easily kill a Spider Mastermind with one shot.

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Those GIFs may be a little misleading. When the ball hits something, there's a short delay before the rape rays are released - about half a second (16 tics).

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I suspected that the gif was also wrong about the direction of the cone, which I thought should have been pointed from the player's position towards the current position of the bfg fireball when it had impacted, but then I tested it ingame and it turned out the gif was right and I was wrong, which kinda blew my mind, but whatever, I'm glad I'm out of the misconception that I believed in for so long, used the BFG with the assumption in mind, and even wrongly explained the mechanic to other people at occasions (for which I'm sorry).

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Linguica said:

And yet speed runners use the plasma gun all the time even when they have the BFG...


That's rarely a case for maxes.

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A way to make the BFG tracers' behavior a little more clear is to understand that the player doesn't directly emit the tracers, the BFG ball itself calls the function to release them when it explodes, with the BFG ball's direction aiming the cone, but the origin point for the tracers just happens to be set at the player's location.

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The way I always thought of it is that, when you shoot the BFG, you start carrying around a cone in the direction that you were facing when you fired the BFG, and when the ball detonates, the cone fills with tracers.

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Linguica said:

And yet speed runners use the plasma gun all the time even when they have the BFG...


Well, for single enemies that would take less than 40 cells each to kill, I can understand how the PL can be preferable, even in a speedrunning situation, especially if NOT at point blank range.

It's also the "simplest" weapon to use, among Doomguy's arsenal: literally a gun that shoots big, relatively heavy-hitting bullets that travel forward at high speed, a-la Action Doom or Metal Slug, in pure run'n gun style. There's no finesse, secret technique or special timing involved: just point and shoot.

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Maes said:

There's no finesse, secret technique or special timing involved: just point and shoot.

It has a cooldown delay you must watch out for. Quake 2's hyperblaster is quite similar. A simpler weapon is the Heretic hellstaff.

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