Difference between revisions of "Plasma gun"

Revision as of 10:01, 30 October 2007

The plasma rifle being used in deathmatch play on GothicDM.

The plasma rifle is a weapon that fires blue-white balls of plasma. It shares the player's stock of plasma cells with the BFG 9000. Each plasma ball inflicts 5-40 points of damage.

The plasma rifle first appears in the level E2M1: Deimos Anomaly in a secret area, and in fact appears in all the levels of The Shores of Hell. It first appears in a non-secret area on E2M5: Command Center. When picked up, it contains 40 cells (80 on the I'm too young to die and Nightmare! skill levels).

Due to its high damage rate (three times that of the chaingun), the plasma rifle is effective against nearly any opponent. A continuous barrage will stop an Arachnotron in its tracks, and even reduce a Baron to about half his normal movement speed and attack frequency. Attacking flying monsters in open areas can be inefficient, however, as the first few hits push the enemy rapidly backward and to one side of the stream.

Although the plasma rifle does not inflict blast damage, firing it in close quarters demands a certain amount of concentration owing to its "auto-aiming" feature, which may steer the plasma a few degrees away from center, and possibly right into a wall, if the nearest monster is not directly in front of the player. For example, using the plasma rifle on the Cyberdemon in E4M2: Perfect Hatred, without placing oneself in his line of sight, requires aiming at a point slightly to his left.

Notes

In the Doom press release beta, the plasma rifle fired green and orange plasma balls, alternating between the two colors. This was similar to the BFG 2704, which fired 40 of the same projectiles at once. Before the final release, these plasma balls were made blue, and the gun sprite also changed slightly.

Like the shotgun, the plasma rifle was created from an existing toy gun. [1] The link shows a dart-shooting, M60-like toy that was popular in the early 1990s (back then, it was tan). The area in front of the bipod could be detached to use as a separate weapon. The designers simply turned the detachment around so that it was shown backwards. The resemblance is most apparent when the Doomguy lifts the weapon at the end of a volley.

The weapon is called the "plasma gun" only by in-game messages. It is referred to as the "plasma rifle" everywhere else, including the keyboard reference, instruction manuals, and Hank Leukart's FAQ. However, Quake III and Doom 3 go back to the name "plasma gun".

The rapid fire of the plasma rifle often requires many sprites to be rendered simultaneously. This has been known to cause lag during multiplayer games or on older machines (see also BFG 2704).

Data

Damage done by each plasma rifle round

Appearance statistics

The IWADs contain the following numbers of plasma rifles:

See also

• Rocket passes through the player who fired it
• Plasma gun (Doom 3)