Quake II (1997) Blaster Research & Dimensions

Summary

Quake II is a first-person shooter (FPS) video game created by id software and released in 1997. It’s the sequel to Quake (1996) and while the games exist in very different universes I still love them both and played the heck out of them at the time.

In Quake II you are a space marine sent to an alien planet to attack the Strogg; aliens who are currently at war with humanity. During the invasion of the planet your landing pod is knocked off course and you land behind enemy lines. Most of your fellow soldiers are killed or captured leaving you alone to infiltrate the alien base and kill the Strogg leader.

You start the game with nothing but your standard issue blaster – this is the prop I wish to recreate.

Figure 1: The opening scene of *Quake II*

Reference

‘In game’ reference

To being I started looking for reference material. As it happens the Quake II demo was still available on Steam (it’s since been removed) so I was able to install it and view the blaster in game, as in the picture above. You can also find the demo elsewhere online, search for q2-314-demo-x86.exe.

EDIT: You can download the Quake II RTX demo from Steam – it’s 1GB update that adds raytracing and awesome lighting effects, but it still contains the 50MB pak0.pak file.

This brought back memories of when I was trying to mod Quake II, and found the tools were still available online. I downloaded MD2Viewer, an application that can open Quake II .pak files to view and extract their contents; this includes models, textures, sounds and maps.

Inside the .pak file there are two blaster models, one for multiplayer (to show on the player models) and one for the player view with an arm attached. Unfortunately, the multiplayer model isn’t textured – I assume it was never used in game – but the player view model is.

Figure 2: MD2Viewer with the blaster model loaded (multiplayer model)

Figure 3: MD2Viewer with the blaster model loaded (player view model)

Using MD2Viewer I took a bunch of screenshots for reference (similar to above) to use to create my own model in Fusion 360. While I was using the software I also extracted the .md2 model file(s) and the sound file BLASTF1A.wav.

Note: you can double click on the sound files in MD2Viewer to listen to them.

Other references

New assets

People have designed updated game assets with the release of RTX for Quake II.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/795362564838191541/B862250428C95D8909A7AF1F47F72E92B37C102F/?imw=637&imh=358&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=true

Re-imaginings

Others have re-imagined the blaster themselves:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/r84E6

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https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-print-models/games-toys/other/quake-2-blaster

Determining dimensions

It’s all made up anyway

It’s worth keeping in mind when replicating any prop from film/TV/gaming that what you see on screen isn’t necessarily what’s actually in use, or how it looks or feels. Props can be different from shot-to-shot, for example:

Hero prop for close ups
Special effects prop for specific scenes
Stunt prop for action scenes (generally made of rubber)

There’s a good chance none of these are exactly the same.

For the Quake II blaster in particular, there is this quote from Paul Steed on making the view-models in Quake II:

Creating the view model so that it appeared correctly in the world was sort of tricky. Because the game engine gives you a ninety-degree field of view (FOV), objects that are close up are severely skewed and seem stretched out. To adapt to this FOV limitation, we created the weapon models and then viewed them in a camera window approximating the same view of the game. The models also had to be squashed somewhat to compensate for the stretching effects on nearby objects in the FOV. Only after quite a bit of tweaking did we achieve the correct results.
https://dondeq2.com/2019/07/26/the-art-of-quake-2-by-paul-steed/

So even if we extract the model, it still isn’t ‘correct’!

My philosophy on prop making is that it should be recognisable as the prop and feel like the prop. I obviously want it to be as accurate as possible, but the feeling is very important.

2D tests

To begin with, I brought a reference picture into Fusion 360, created a rough 2D drawing of the blaster and printed it out at two sizes to test dimensions.

Figure 4: *Quake II* blaster size test 1 – it’s a bit big

Figure 5: *Quake II* blaster size test 2 – it’s a bit small

As you can see from the above photos the first was too big and the second two small. From these I decided to split the difference and make it about halfway between.

3D tests

After choosing a scale I then re-modelled the blaster in Fusion 360 (fairly straight forward as it’s made of simple shapes) and exported the model to import into Pepakura Designer. Using this software I was able to ‘unfold’ the model and create a flat design I could then cut out and fold up into the blaster.

From this test I determined that it was still a bit big. I feel the blaster should be a bit of a hand cannon, but this is ridiculous.

Comparison to modern weapons

The Quake II manual says the following about the blaster:

This is the standard issue rechargeable energy side-arm. It does not require ammunition. Useful for taking down Guards as well as exploding barrels and setting off shootable buttons and secret doors. Keep one on you at all times.

So how does it compare to modern sidearms? If we take some examples from this list of service pistols, the following are some dimensions:

Sidearm	Calibre	Length (mm)	Length (in.)
M1911 pistol	.45	210	8.25
SIG Sauer P228	9mm	181	7.10
MEU(SOC) pistol	.45	210	8.25
Browning Hi-Power	.45	210	8.25
Taurus PT92	.45	216	8.50
FN Five-seveN	5.7mm	208	8.20
CZ 75	9mm	206	8.12
AVERAGE		204	8.03

They’re all about 200mm (8 in.) long, which feels small if you scale the blaster to that length. However, if we scale the handgrip and trigger to these sizes, we get a better result.

Figure 8: The *Quake II* blaster with the M1911 in Fusion 360

This gives an overall length of 266mm (~10.5in.) which feels about right. I then exported that to Pepakura Designer again to create some more flat templates, to turn into another 1:1 scale model.

Final Dimensions

From the new Pepakura template I created this paper model.

Figure 9: The new paper model

It’s scale is much better. Frustratingly it’s very similar to my original dimensions that felt too small! I believe that’s due to the poor original drawing on my part.

Figure 10: All the blaster mock-ups so far

Here is a photo of the paper model as it would be seen in game, it looks pretty good!

Figure 11: Pepakura model v2 from ‘player view’

Here is an animation of the same image composited over the Quake II screen shot from above:

Figure 12: *Quake II* to paper model comparison

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results. It would be very hard to match the game exactly in this comparison – I think the game renders a 90 degree field of view as standard, to replicate that I’d need an 12mm lens which is very wide indeed. That also explains some of the distortions in the model.

So that’s decided, I’m going to roll with the blaster being about 260mm (10.5”) long. I think some shapes will change a little to better show how it looks in the game – the front a little smaller and the back a little bigger – but otherwise it’s looking good.

Next up, plan how I’m going to build the physical blaster, add some details to the model and get ready for fabrication.