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But the Quake II team rallied behind one art style, one art direction and story. We had better design, and we were focused. Adrian Carmack did amazing concept work on the Strogg creatures,. Quake 4 is the true sequel to Quake II, continuing the Strogg vs. Humans storyline from the point where Quake II ended. The Strogg is an alien cyborg race which, much like the Star Trek Borg race from which they seem to be partly inspired, wander the galaxy conquering planets and wiping civilizations.

From DoomWiki.org

The BFG9000 firing a plasma ball in MAP32 of Hell Revealed

This article is about the weapon in the classic Doom series. For other versions of this weapon, see:

The BFG9000 is the ultimate weapon to be found in Doom. It appears as a large, silver metallic gun with a dark gray aperture similar to the plasma gun, and fires large spheres of green plasma. In general, it can be considered the most powerful weapon in the game; it is capable of destroying nearly any player or monster with a single shot, and can disperse damage over a wide area to multiple targets simultaneously.

The abbreviation 'BFG' canonically expands to big fucking gun, as explained in section 14 of the Doom Bible. Other expansions of the name were attributed to it before that document was made public, notably 'big fragging gun', which still retains some usage in settings which require less offensive language. Characters in the Doom novels refer to the BFG as a 'big freaking gun'. In the Doom movie, BFG is said to stand for 'Bio Force Gun',^[1] although Sarge refers to it with much relish as a 'big fucking gun'. It is also sometimes called the 'Blast Field Generator.'^{[citation needed]}

In the original Doom, the BFG was extremely rare, being only available in select levels in Episode 3: Inferno (as well as Episode 4: Thy Flesh Consumed in Ultimate Doom). It first appears in a secret area of E3M3: Pandemonium, or E3M6: Mt. Erebus outside of a secret. In Doom II, it is more common and appears almost twice as much than it did in the original Doom. In most versions based on the Atari Jaguar port, including the Sony PlayStation version, it makes its first appearance in MAP11: Refinery.

When picked up, the BFG contains 40 energy cell units, which doubles to 80 on the 'I'm too young to die' and 'Nightmare!' skill levels. It expends 40 energy cell units per shot. Its description in the instruction manual is as follows:

'BFG 9000s are the prize of the military's arsenal. Great for clearing the room of those unwelcome guests. Shoot it and see for yourself.'

1Combat characteristics
7Other appearances and homages

Combat characteristics[edit]

Classic Doom games[edit]

The BFG9000 appears in MAP04 of Hell Revealed

When the trigger is pulled, there is a pause of 30 tics (approximately 0.857 seconds) before a large, relatively slow moving green and white plasma ball is ejected. If this plasma ball hits a solid object, it explodes and randomly deals between 100 and 800 hit points of damage to the target, in round multiples of 100.

After a further delay of 16 tics (approximately 0.457 seconds), additional damage is calculated: 40 invisible tracer rays are emitted from the player in a cone-shaped volume (about 45° half-angle) in the direction the plasma ball was fired. If the player has turned around, the direction of the rays does not change — they are still traced in the direction of firing of the original plasma ball. If he has moved to another location, their origin moves along with him. Each of the rays causes random damage between 49 and 87 points if it hits a solid object within 1024 map units. Even cyberdemons and spiderdemons, which are immune to blast damage, are affected by these rays.

Therefore, the minimum damage of the weapon is 49 points if an object is hit by one ray and not the plasma ball. Hypothetically, the maximum damage is 800 + (40 × 87) = 4280 points, which assumes the plasma ball hits an object for full damage, and all 40 tracers also hit the object for full damage. However, even should all 40 rays and the energy ball hit a single target, this theoretical maximum damage can never actually be inflicted due to the periodicity of the simplistic pseudorandom number generator used by the Doom engine.

Contrary to section 3H of the BFG FAQ, the tracer code does not include horizontal auto-aiming (although, like any bullet attack, each tracer can auto-aim vertically).

Doom 64[edit]

The BFG in Doom 64, as seen in MAP17: Watch Your Step.

Doom 64's BFG pickup sprite, as seen in MAP28: The Absolution.

Doom 64 includes a slightly revamped version of the BFG. Because the game was based on the Atari Jaguar version of Doom, the timing for the attacks is slightly slower as a consequence of the internal logic of the game running at 30 tics per second instead of 35. Like in classic Doom, it takes 30 tics for the weapon to fire upon trigger pull, but the slower tic rate causes the weapon to wait exactly 1 second before firing the projectile. The tracer spray attack upon detonation takes 14 tics to be called instead of 16, which translates to roughly 0.466 seconds.

The damage calculations are mostly the same as in Doom and Doom II, but the way the tracers are projected differs slightly. The vertical angle the tracers can autoaim is taller, to account for the different vertical resolution the game is rendered at (200 pixels in PC Doom versus 240 in console Doom), and the origin point of each tracer is 12 units above the player's mid point instead of the original 8. Finally, the RNG calls used for damage calculation of the tracers use their own identifier, meaning that the BFG's P_Random calls will not affect the general RNG and are considered completely separate.

Tactical analysis[edit]

Despite its tremendous power, the weapon can only be used to its fullest effect with practice, due to its staggered firing sequence and the unique behavior of the tracer ray cone. The BFG FAQ includes an extensive section on deathmatch tactics.

Notes[edit]

The BFG9000 in the beta

As with the rocket launcher and chaingun, the full BFG sprite (after pickup) is slightly too large for the screen, and can only be viewed with a level or resource editor; the lower edge of the sprite includes a BFG logo.
In the Doom Bible, the section on weapons (14) describes the BFG 2704, a highly destructive weapon which would damage the wielder a bit, pushing him back. That same entry unveils the politically incorrect meaning of 'BFG'. Tom Hall later used the number 2704 as the year of the setting for his game Terminal Velocity.^[2]
By the press release version of Doom, the BFG was a functional, albeit completely different, weapon: each shot in that version releases 80 regular-sized green and red plasma balls (spending 40 cells per shot) which can bounce off ceilings and floors. This version was scrapped because, according to John Romero, it 'looked like Christmas' and severely slows the game down due to the large number of sprites on the screen. MBF, a source port that can play the press release levels, includes a working restoration of the press release BFG.
The BFG9000 has a 'safety catch' similar to the rocket launcher. When selected while the fire key is still pressed, the BFG will not begin firing immediately like other weapons, but only when fire key is released and pressed again. The safety mechanism was likely implemented to prevent the player from wasting 40 cells by accident.
To determine the damage of a BFG tracer, a random number between 1 and 8 is generated and repeated 15 times. This makes the total damage vary from 15 to 120 (due to the 'bell curve' phenomenon, the value is weighted towards the middle of the range). However, due to the pseudorandom number generator of Doom, this never happens in real gameplay, and the damage is limited to the range of 49 to 87.

Data[edit]

BFG9000 data
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