Have you ever noticed that the size of chaingun's barrel is so huge, it literally could be a grenade launcher?

Just look at it's barrels, the size of this beast is outstanding, so in order for this gun to function properly and shoot accurately, it must have rounds of exact same size as the caliber of the barrel. It shatters me to think for what exact purposes such huge rounds for such weapons were invented in the future, and what for. I still wonder how it's possible that the chaingun and the pistol share the same ammo type, considering that the pistol is your standard 9mm Beretta 92.

Seriously, there are only two options, either chaingun has rounds so insanely huge, they are literally the size of grenades, considering each barrel is of a size of a 40mm grenade launcher, like M32's, and with the help of Demonic Magic the ammo turns in to 9mm for the pistol; OR the chaingun is so tiny that it's of a size of a small revolver barrel and he's holding the gun near his eyes, because UAC are so greedy and wanted to cut the ammo cost on chainguns.

Possibly, the chaingun indeed is 9mm and is so huge at the same time. It's size comes from the fact that 9mm barrels are covered by water cooling thicc barrel jackets (like on Maxim, Vickers or Lewis guns), but has a muzzle flash enhancer mounted on each of its barrels, which explains its huge muzzle flash. Thus, each time you fire your chaingun, you'd scare the hell out of a monsters by a mere fake firework show.

Perhaps the most rational answer is: Doomguy is actually augmented Gatlinguy and has a small chaingun in his mouth.

Basically, a BFC...
Big Fucking Chaingun. End of story

It's an interesting point. I am no expert and I doubt the weapons designer for id gave it much thought. But just speculation for fun it may have something to do with stability and/or heat. Thinner barrels would heat up more quickly which can cause accuracy issues (if chainguns can ever be called accurate), and they would also weigh less so it might create instability as the mechanism is spinning. Heavy barrels would in theory absorb the heat generated better, and also help the rotating mechanism be more stable. The real life equivalent of the Doom chaingun looks comparatively thinner but the barrels are much longer, so the weight would come from length rather than thickness. This lends credence to the stability hypothesis I think.

11 hours ago, Murdoch said:

I am no expert and I doubt the weapons designer for id gave it much thought.

So, like, whoever made the run to Toys R Us that day?

10 hours ago, Captain Ventris said:

So, like, whoever made the run to Toys R Us that day?

lol that's right. I forgot about that heh.

or Doomguy is just holding it right up to his face

Yuh, it would be more of an oversized and dramatically lower RPM minigun (and no minigun can shoot straight up without spinning up first). A real chaingun would have one barrel and would be different on the artwork, both player, sprite drops and chaingunner.

With the noise it makes it could be a 40k bolter, I know its uses pistol bullets as a gameplay mechanic but I've always head cannond it firing large calibre rounds. 

I'm sure this topic is kind of tongue-in-cheek, but the choices artists make for games fascinate me. 

Doom has the same perspective on the weapons as Wolf3d, and Quake as well. When Wolfenstein was in development I'm sure there were precious few other examples of FPS games to take examples from, and it seems that this style continued up until Quake 2.

By now we've seen games with weapons that take up the whole right 1/3 of the screen or whatever hehe.

Doomguy is an attack helicopter ^{couldn't resist}

2 hours ago, reflex17 said:

Doom has the same perspective on the weapons as Wolf3d, and Quake as well. When Wolfenstein was in development I'm sure there were precious few other examples of FPS games to take examples from, and it seems that this style continued up until Quake 2.

This made me wonder if Wolfenstein 3D was the first game ever with a little graphic of a hand holding a pistol at the bottom of the screen. I've always assumed that Id were at least aware of 3D role-playing dungeon crawler games like Dungeon Master and The Bard's Tale - which had flick-scroll 3D - but off the top of my head they didn't give your character hands, instead they turned the mouse cursor into a sword or whatever.

Or was it Ultima Underworld? That came out a few months beforehand and was a lot more advanced. I have a distinct memory of playing Doom for the first time and thinking that the pistol looked odd, because it was square-on with the camera and not offset slightly.

There must have been an 8-bit game in a first person perspective with a little graphic of a gun at the bottom of the screen, but I can't think of one. I suppose Id could have left it out, but apart from looking awesome it's also a quick way of showing which weapon you have (I remember that other early 3D games tended to bombard the player with icons and controls, as if they were flight simulators set on the ground).

wait I just got a mod idea brb

1 hour ago, Ashley_Pomeroy said:

Or was it Ultima Underworld? That came out a few months beforehand and was a lot more advanced. I have a distinct memory of playing Doom for the first time and thinking that the pistol looked odd, because it was square-on with the camera and not offset slightly.

Before Ultima Underworld was Catacomb Abyss which showed the player's hand, but only when actively attacking/casting, then it would drop down out of view again. The only FPS games I can think of that predate Catacomb are games like hovertank or arcade machines that had vector graphics.  

You know what's bigger than the Chaingun's barrels?

..

..

..

..

THE ALMIGHTY POWER OF THE SUPER F*CKING GODDAMN SHOTGUN, BEIBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry.

I hate the simple fact it's called a chaingun.  A real chaingun only has 1 barrel. 

Let's think of it as a Riot Gun :p :

On 10/2/2019 at 2:35 AM, leodoom85 said:

Basically, a BFC...
Big Fucking Chaingun. End of story

Wouldn't that be BFCG?

Doesn't matter. Don't state acronyms seriously. Ever. 
Add a 69420 if it's not enough for the BFC o/

1 hour ago, leodoom85 said:

Doesn't matter. Don't state acronyms seriously. Ever. 
Add a 69420 if it's not enough for the BFC o/

Well, I actually would like a BFcG, a chaingun bfg that shoots bfg balls at the speed of chaingun fire rate.

On 10/5/2019 at 12:47 PM, leodoom85 said:

Doesn't matter. Don't state acronyms seriously. Ever. 
Add a 69420 if it's not enough for the BFC o/

Acronyms in the real gun world are annoying enough let alone in the video game gun world.