What are the limitations of a direct hit?
The direct hit is not limited by the same parameters as the blast area. There is no range limit, and the damage does not decrease with distance. The hard part is that the BFG’s plasma ball travels at a fixed speed, and can be avoided by an alert deathmatch player. The reference number for the BFG ball’s speed, as stored in the .EXE file, is 25. For comparison, rockets travel at 20 and plasma gun shots travel at 25. If it seems like this is too fast, and would not be easy to avoid, remember that the plasma gun fires in a continuous stream. The BFG can only be fired once every few seconds. The BFG’s green ball is also very bright and large on the screen. All of those factors make it generally easier to avoid in a deathmatch game. A direct hit in a deathmatch (against good players) is usually the result of luck, or the result of a player that did not know the BFG ball was coming towards him. See section 4 for details of a trick that can help you achieve the latter scenario. The direct hit
