Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
JohnnyTheWolf

Why was the Assault Rifle cut?

Recommended Posts

Why did id Software replace the alpha Assault Rifle with the Pistol, yet did not update Doomguy and the Zombieman's sprites accordingly?

Did the developers ever explain their decision somewhere? I would be curious to know, but the Doom wiki does not provide any quote in that regard and a Google search gives me mostly Doom 2016 results.

Share this post


Link to post

Doom was not a polished game, it doesn't seem weird to me that they didn't care about the player's spriteset. Even if they created a pistol wielding spriteset, it would still mostly be wrong. Who uses the pistol in multiplayer?

EDIT: Oh, you meant the zombieman spriteset, my bad

Share this post


Link to post

The zombieman having a rifle doesn't bother me as I figure its the weapon they use; they are zombies and too stupid to use it as a full auto or anything.
Doomguy having a rifle as his spritesheet was also meh to me as it wouldn't matter what gun you gave him, they would be wrong for every other weapon. I will say though it is more aesthetically pleasing seeing him with a bigger gun than if he was running around with just a single pistol.

Share this post


Link to post

Its a lot easier to see an assault rifle in Death match over a pistol. Plus it saves time spriting the arms and body placement.

Share this post


Link to post

I've read somewhere (and found it highly plausible) that they changed the original weapon sprites to better distinguish the weapons from each other. The original sprites made all weapons looking too similar to each other - even the melee-only bayonet could be easily mistaken for a ranged weapon. The new sprites clearly conveyed the key features of each one - that the fist is a melee-only weapon, the pistol is a weak ranged weapon, the shotgun is a strong ranged weapon, the chaingun is a rapid fire weapon, etc.

Share this post


Link to post

Maybe the assault rifle was too good for a starting weapon? Do mind that weapon balance is one area where Doom excels.

Share this post


Link to post
printz said:

Maybe the assault rifle was too good for a starting weapon? Do mind that weapon balance is one area where Doom excels.

No, it functioned exactly the same as the pistol did. Also on the subject of the sprites, the muzzle flash looked kind of horrible.

Share this post


Link to post

It was always a normal rifle, there was an assault rifle for weapon slot 4 but it wasn't the starting gun.

I'm pressed for time but there's a not too old thread comparing the 0.4 Alpha guns to the retail ones and it clearly demonstrates how they were too "samey".

Share this post


Link to post

I refer to the starting weapon as the Assault Rifle because that is how Doom wiki calls it.

If it has a different official name, I would like to know. Maybe it could help me in my research, hopefully by reducing the number of Doom 2016 results.

Share this post


Link to post
JohnnyTheWolf said:

I refer to the starting weapon as the Assault Rifle because that is how Doom wiki calls it.

If it has a different official name, I would like to know. Maybe it could help me in my research, hopefully by reducing the number of Doom 2016 results.

That's very odd, the starter weapon is very clearly a normal rifle with a bayonet. The HUD in the alpha also refers to it simply as 'rifle'. Does anyone know if the Alpha documentation (erroneously) refers to this weapon as an assault rifle anywhere? (edit: Just checked, it seems to be called "machine pistol" sometimes, oddly enough?) If not, the wiki should be edited accordingly as an assault rifle IS present in the Alphas however it is labeled as 'mac' and 'mgun' both of which are short for Machine Gun.

Share this post


Link to post

I think it was a good idea to keep the rifle. The player sprites don't change when equipping weapons, so having an AR is like saying "I've got a big gun, mothafuckas!", which is true most of time. It's kinda like having an all purpose weapon(i did something similar using the shotgun frames for all the other weapon sprites, madness XD), if you get what I mean. When Doomguy fires his rifle, it could be anything, but at least it would be justified, because the rifle is a big gun.

But if its a pistol, it would seem strange, aesthetically. Doomguy raises his pistol, BFG ball comes out O.o thats one heck of a pistol.

Tbh, a lot of things in Doom are strange. The extra pistol frames, the pinky death sound, jumpy offsets, etc.

I don't know if this will help, but why not have a go at reading Masters of Doom? id Software was depicted back then as a company that made games which no else made: games they always wanted to play themselves. They were also a bit "wild" back then.

Share this post


Link to post
Avoozl said:

I get the feeling that the assault rifle was going to be semi-auto.


Can you imagine a weapon without semi-auto functionality in Doom? With a manual reload/rearm button after each shot? Yikes.

TBQH a bolt-action rifle would look ridiculous and out of place in Doom, especially with the pace and setting the game actually ended up having. Especially if a single-shot/long delay "rifle" was meant as the most basic and weakest weapon, it would feel as if Doomguy tried to battle the Hordes of Hell with nothing more than a small Flobert-style rifle.

Maybe with a mod that gives the player the same stats (and weapon) as a zombieman. Now, THAT's a challenge: try completing the game while moving at a turtle's pace, shooting weak, inaccurate rounds, and dying with a single Imp's fireball *wink*

Share this post


Link to post

What I mean by semi-auto is that by Doom's logic a semi-auto weapon such as the pistol compensates for the lack of reload by firing slowly, and I am guessing that the pistol was originally supposed to be the AR and work the same way as the pistol as if it was semi-auto kind of assault rifle.

Share this post


Link to post
Maes said:

Can you imagine a weapon without semi-auto functionality in Doom? With a manual reload/rearm button after each shot? Yikes.

TBQH a bolt-action rifle would look ridiculous and out of place in Doom, especially with the pace and setting the game actually ended up having.


Is that not Knee Deep in ZDoom's BFG replacement in a nutshell, though?

Share this post


Link to post
Maes said:

TBQH a bolt-action rifle would look ridiculous and out of place in Doom, especially with the pace and setting the game actually ended up having.

I dunno. When you consider that your main weapons are going to end being a. a pump-action shotgun with wood grip and stock and b. a break-action double-barreled shotgun with wood grip and stock, a hunting rifle doesn't really seem that odd.

Share this post


Link to post

Consider this:

You have limited space for sprites and stuff. You're a rockstar videogame maker in 1992 so you don't think about this too much at the moment.
You make the starting weapon an assault rifle and draw the player sprites to match. Later on you change the assault rifle to look like a pistol because hey it fires pretty slowly for an assault rifle anyway. A pistol makes a bit more sense considering how it works.
You notice that you don't have quite as much disk space to use now because you got all this other cool shit implemented. Several player sprite sets depicting the player holding each weapon in the game simply doesn't seem as important anymore. Especially since they'd only be seen in multiplayer.

So the sprite set with the generic looking assault rifle thing? That'll do. It's close enough.

Share this post


Link to post

I kinda like that the player sprites weapon is just an ambiguous gun. The only time I think its a little silly is when the chainsaw or fisties are involved. Everything else seems pretty ok for the most part.

Share this post


Link to post

The Assault Rifle looks like a very old weapon and not something that a high technology company like the UAC would bring in space. It's not a powerful weapon for its size either.

Share this post


Link to post
axdoom1 said:

The Assault Rifle looks like a very old weapon and not something that a high technology company like the UAC would bring in space.

So does an half of official Doom's weapons.

Share this post


Link to post
scifista42 said:

So does an half of official Doom's weapons.


It's like they were trying to do futuristic stuff, like when you see people wearing aluminium clothes in old movies about the future. At the end, it just looks silly and they changed it to more conventional weapons so it still looks great nowadays.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×