Could this be the actual toy gun used for the BFG?

I was expecting the first gun to be the main source, but with extra details added in from either the other side of the gun, or from another source. But it looks like they didn't do much more than just flip the gun, mirror it, add a couple of things (like the muzzle in the final sprite) and clean it up.

What have I done

Plot twist: The toy is a replica inspired by the BFG.

I dont want to be that guy, but don't discredit the possibility. Guess determining the age of that toy would help narrow down any speculation... thus far, know that its at least ~10 years old from comment a few posts up.

Buckshot said:

Plot twist: The toy is a replica inspired by the BFG.

I dont want to be that guy, but don't discredit the possibility. Guess determining the age of that toy would help narrow down any speculation... thus far, know that its at least ~10 years old from comment above.

It's from 1991. perfect time frame.

Speaking of which, what happened to that guy who was collecting most of the toy guns that were used in Doom's development process?

Csonicgo said:

It's from 1991. perfect time frame.

Agreed. Was just making sure everyone did their fact checking before wild speculation.

Csonicgo said:

AND - to make it even better, there are THREE manufacturers to this gun: Creatoy, Royal Condor, and Fuyaco! What a mess! It was also sold as the "Roargun".

Add a fourth one, Creative Merchandise Corp, with the year 1992. Mine is in pretty bad shape, but I can't believe it's a base for the BFG.

Indeed, all of these have micro-variations and mine's like the one you described in the other thread. Even has the FIRE voice sample, among other weapon sounds.

buttspit said:

Add a fourth one, Creative Merchandise Corp, with the year 1992. Mine is in pretty bad shape, but I can't believe it's a base for the BFG.

So the only non-toy weapons in doom were:

Fist, Chainsaw (someone out there has it signed and as a keepsake), the pistol (beretta 92fs [m9]), and the DB shotgun.

The rest were all toy inspired, correct? Even the shotgun if I remember correctly.

I spy with my little eye

Kaiser said:

I spy with my little eye

That's badass. THAT IS BADASS.

Somehow, every texture in the game is from this prop toy, lol. I'm sure if you zoomed into the picture in some weird fractal-Mandelbrot zoom, you'd find every texture for every id game, ever.

Prolly even Daikatana, too.

So the TEK textures are a mish-mash of sections from a toy gun and circuit boards? I always thought it was some crazy artist that drew it all. Not to speak any less of their talents.

SYS said:

So the TEK textures are a mish-mash of sections from a toy gun and circuit boards? I always thought it was some crazy artist that drew it all. Not to speak any less of their talents.

They still had to color it and shade it to fit. that took a lot of work then.

I will always respect Adrian Carmack for actually drawing the entirety of the Icon of Sin by hand and then scan it for Doom. Regardless if MAP30 is shitty or not, you gotta recognize the effort that it went into it

http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/25159130_1991-the-machine-gun-by-royal-condor-battery-operated

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STAR-WARS-1991-The-Machine-Roargun-Battle-Action-Sounds-Royal-Condor-/221723622803?nma=true&si=7xsWABXjbZBkpFzOcqAOfsYsEic%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
Ended...with no bids

Without a photo at the proper angle it's impossible to align it correctly, but this is 100% the model, or some other very similar toy gun off of a very similar mold

I'm tired...but I tried! :D

FuzzballFox said:

I'm tired...but I tried! :D

You know, in a way, this is starting to hurt a little on the inside. Not that's it's anything sort of pure genius... but those textures, always seemed so, well, highly detailed and almost real in a completely metallic tech sense. They were very immersive and atmospheric.

Seeing them come from something so simple kind of unravels the magic and illusion of it, like most Hollywood effects when you see "behind the scenes" featurettes.

Kind of felt the same way about DOOM's weapons once I found out they were all toy props.

A trip to a 90's toy's-r-us provided all the textures and models.

Definetley had me fooled.

...well they used those toys to make art.
Art that has stuck over 20 years. C: Think of the imagination the crew did with their photos and art...and what they turned them into!

FuzzballFox said:

...well they used those toys to make art.
Art that has stuck over 20 years. C: Think of the imagination the crew did with their photos and art...and what they turned them into!

No, No. I'm not mad about it. Doesn't change my opinion on the matter. It's pure genius and inspiration in each texture. How they morphed it from something so simple into something so alien and lifelike.

But, it's that same feeling when you found out Santa wasn't real. A real "ah-haa!" moment that you appreciate and feel more grown up now knowing, but kind of mourn for the days when you still didn't know any better at times. You can't "unsee" it.

I know~ But it's still amazing to think of things like that- like...
"See that toy there? Let's make textures of out it!" :D

Hey, they had no 3d models :-D

So they had to use actual ones to help with creating those frames in several angles. That's why the artists also messed with clay models.

But did those toys exist before Doom was created?

Avoozl said:

But did those toys exist before Doom was created?

We have definitive proof of this - these were made in 1991.

Edit: I'm repeating myself. Oh well.

No clearly they went forward in time...saw the future of what we were doing and what their game would turn into...and picked up some things on the way back!

...just a theory...Maybe Carmack is even smarter than we realised!

I didn't know of them being made in 1991, I merely figured the toy company might've copied the designs of game graphics for their toys. :P

Anyway I didn't notice a few of the above replies, whoops.

Csonicgo said:

They still had to color it and shade it to fit. that took a lot of work then.

I've been slowly doing research into ancient pixel art techniques, and it's possible they had access to filtering and layering effects similar to Photoshop! A few of the images in the thumbnail archive suggest this, such as this one and this one. I have yet to confirm or figure out how they might layered images, however.

In any case, I believe Romero said that they used Deluxe Paint II for DOS. If it's anything like the Amiga version, it's possible to take any part of the canvas and then turn it into a brush. That brush can then be manipulated in a number of ways. You can also remap colors within a palette on the fly, allowing for easy recolors. That would explain why the BFG is a nice grey color similar to the toy they took photos of, while the tekwall textures are greenish brown.

While it would have still required a lot of work, the tools they did have access to were pretty powerful. In some ways, they're better than the tools we have now, especially for indexed or paletted images and sprite art.

Edit:
Here's a better series of images illustrating what I mean:
hell13 hell10 hell9

This is entirely conjecture. I'd have to ask Romero what their software was capable of.

Snarboo:

SGI had a layering opacity tool on some of their indy workstation irix tool sets. No reason to think NeXT didn't since it was a major SGI & Sun competitor at the time. Even some older DOS paint apps (corel, and there was another one that I can't remember off the top of my head) had tools very similar to the Deluxe Paint brush effect you mention... though clearly your pics show layering transluceny/opacity. Look at them closely. Brown wasn't brushed over the rocks.

So.. Does this mean it's officially possible to start collecting the Doom guns? Is there a list somewhere of every toy that every gun is based on?

Buckshot said:

SGI had a layering opacity tool on some of their indy workstation irix tool sets. No reason to think NeXT didn't since it was a major SGI & Sun competitor at the time. Even some older DOS paint apps (corel, and there was another one that I can't remember off the top of my head) had tools very similar to the Deluxe Paint brush effect you mention... though clearly your pics show layering transluceny/opacity. Look at them closely. Brown wasn't brushed.

I've been meaning to track down a copy of DPII for that reason! I'm curious if it could do blurring or opacity effects, like the ones seen in the thumbnails. Most of these images look like they were done in DPII directly, but they could have done post processing in another program, such as one for their NeXT workstation.

Snarboo said:

I've been meaning to track down a copy of DPII for that reason! I'm curious if it could do blurring or opacity effects, like the ones seen in the thumbnails. Most of these images look like they were done in DPII directly, but they could have done post processing in another program, such as one for their NeXT workstation.

Unless DPII had some sort of advanced VESA extension support that ran within its own graphics shell like a windows enviornment, there's no way opacity that would have been possible simply due to the 16-bit DOS graphical limitations.

Especially prior to major 3d accelerators in PC's at the time. I think even GLquake was a huge exception to that due to 3d acceleration from '96 forward. I bet it was a bitch and a half to get any 3d acceleration to function prior to 32-bit Windows driver enviornments. I'm sure even GLquake was still heavily limited due to DOS.

Here's a list of games that used 3D acceleration if available in DOS, but again, that was pretty much '95 (at earliest) on...

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=33483