super shotguns

[Captain Red]

Something I have wondered about the super shotgun in doom II that I was hoping someone here could clear up.

dose the super shotgun blast do more damage then two shotgun shots? I sure we're all aware that the super shotty is very effective agents demons and specters. but have you noticed that you can kill a demon at fairly close range with a super shotgun (at a guess, 4 meters) yet two shots from a normal shotgun will only kill a demon at point blank range? the spared don't seen to be any wider for either weapon (I think).

[Fredrik]

Well the shotgun fires 7 pellets and the super shotgun fires 20, so one super shotgun shot is obviously much more powerful than two shotgun shots.

[Captain Red]

Fredrik said:
Well the shotgun fires 7 pellets and the super shotgun fires 20, so one super shotgun shot is obviously much more powerful than two shotgun shots.

according to the Official doom FAQ, (that thing that came with my doom and Doom 2 CD) It only fire 14. Mind you, it wouln'd be the first time it was wrong about something.

did you get 20 from the source code?

[Fredrik]

Yeah, I got it from the source code.

From A_FireShotgun:

for (i=0 ; i<7 ; i++)
    P_GunShot (player->mo, false);

And A_FireShotgun2:

for (i=0 ; i<20 ; i++)
{
    ...
}

The actual firing code is different for the SSG fire action, but I think that is related to calculating the randomness of how the pellets get spread.

[Quasar]

Fredrik is correct.

The shotgun fires 7 pellets that do random damage between 5 and 15 points each (I believe its rnd%3 * 5, but somebody might wanna verify that as my memory escapes me at the moment). It uses a relatively tight angular spread with virtually no vertical adjustment at all -- ie all the pellets are shot at the same height.

The super shotgun fires pellets that do damage in the same range, but fires 20 of them, and fires them both in a wider horizontal spread, and also adds a random (possibly negative) amount to the vertical slope as well. The SSG spread tends to be diamond-shaped on the average, whereas the shotgun spread is more like a really narrow box (use suprwep8.deh and fire at a wall over and over to see this very well).

So the real answer to the question is, the shotgun can potentially do more damage than the SSG if the dice fall properly and not enough tracers actually hit what you're aiming at. Its a matter of range and accuracy through and through.

Go play with Eternity's new CustomPlayerBullets code pointer to make your own weapons. You can set the damage range, number of bullets, accuracy, and the sound it makes ^_^

[dsm]

Ct_red_pants said:

according to the Official doom FAQ, (that thing that came with my doom and Doom 2 CD) It only fire 14. Mind you, it wouln'd be the first time it was wrong about something.

did you get 20 from the source code?

You must've read an outdated FAQ, the FAQ I have says that the db shotgun fires 20 pellets, so fwedowik is right.

And I knew that it was more than twice as powerful as the regular shotgun the first time I used it against a large group of pinkies - by then, I was already so skilled with the sb shotgun that I knew exactly how it worked.