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[Mman235]

I'm sorry, but Half-Life was a "cinematic" remake of doom, that had more interest in story than gameplay. It was praised for it's immersiveness and I guess you could credit them with interactive objects, but that's more an evolution of tech than FPS.

But there were games that were solely about the cinematic experience, like Unreal(colored lighting), which predates Half-life. Half-Life lives on in counterstrike and TFC, though.

Beyond a few rare first-person set-pieces Unreal has nothing in common with Half-Life at all. Quake 2 also did coloured lighting before Unreal, and it's probably not the first either.

Among other things, Half-Life's first person storytelling, use of NPCs (which was far more advanced than prior attempts), Marine AI and semi-realistic settings and realism-biased weapon design (despite a few crazy sci-fi ones) has influenced almost every FPS since in some way. Counter-Strike itself sure wouldn't have existed in remotely the same form without Half-Life, and not just because it's a mod for it.

Hell, the Marine AI alone has had a ridiculously huge and obvious influence.

 

[Orayn]

Did Raven have close relationship with id at the time? I know they used their engines, because Heretic and Hexen were Carmack's dream come true, or was it just an evolution of tabletops and muds using an fps base?

Raven had previously worked with iD on Shadowcaster, an RPG that was also a precursor to Heretic and Hexen. The engine for that game was made by iD, and it was kind of a half-step between Wolfenstein 3D and Doom in terms of technology.

Wasn't Quake meant to be more of an RPG as well? I know Romero expresses frustration over it turning into a Doom-like shooter out of necessity.

Yeah, they wanted Quake to be an action-RPG before it settled into a Doom-like mould. Romero said that it would have been something like a 1996 version of Darksiders if his original vision had panned out.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

Gotta disagree. I see little of Hexen/Heretic in those games. The connections between Bethesda and Looking Glass are strong. Elder Scrolls: Arena is a pretty direct attempt to stretch Ultima Underworld out Into a huge world. Not a "sideways path".

UU is the top of the chain, with Elder Scrolls and similar RPGs on one side, and System Shock/Thief/Deus Ex on the other. With the odd steps back closer to UU itself like Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah. I don't see where Hexen/Heretic fit into this line, especially with the massive amount of staff overlap across these games (Doug Church, Warren Spector, etc.).

UU is a progression of games like Eye Of The Beholder; essentially turn based and tile based. They are primarily "RPG" games from the get go.
Hexen is a progression of Doom, with RPG gameplay elements added to it; it is primarily an action game that uses RPG elements.

The UU branch diverts into things like VTM:Bloodlines at one split, and something like Myst at the other. Fallout 3 played exclusively via VATS would go here too.

The "Hexen" branch would cater more to the action-ended side of things, IMO, where actions are still primarily mechanically driven rather than stats driven (although stats matter).

 

[atr0cious]

Raven had previously worked with iD on Shadowcaster, an RPG that was also a precursor to Heretic and Hexen. The engine for that game was made by iD, and it was kind of a half-step between Wolfenstein 3D and Doom in terms of technology.



Yeah, they wanted Quake to be an action-RPG before it settled into a Doom-like mould. Romero said that it would have been something like a 1996 version of Darksiders if his original vision had panned out.

Man it's crazy to read about this stuff. My mom worked for MSFT for a short while, so I would hang out in the office playing Heretic all day. I used to think iddqd was just a trick til I tried doom way later.

 

[Htown]

Beyond a few rare first-person set-pieces Unreal has nothing in common with Half-Life at all. Quake 2 also did coloured lighting before Unreal, and it's probably not the first either.

Among other things, Half-Life's first person storytelling, use of NPCs (which was far more advanced than prior attempts) and semi-realistic settings and weapon design (outside the Sci-fi ones) has influenced almost every FPS since in some way. Counter-Strike itself sure wouldn't have existed in remotely the same form without Half-Life, and not just because it's a mod for it.

let's not forget the enemy AI, either. Not anything special today, but fifteen years ago it was a revelation

It's one of those games where the genre has cribbed from it so much for so long that it's kind of hard to put yourself back in that 1998 mindset and realize how mindblowing it was then

 

[Orayn]

UU isn't turn or tile-based.

Right, UU is an offshoot of Dungeon Master and the handful of other real-time dungeon crawlers that had existed up to that point.

 

[HTupolev]

You really need to play Quake and watch some of its speed runs before continuing with this discussion, because its more than 'jumping over gaps'.

Its things like landing on geometry that was never supposed to be playable areas (like torches in the walls). Its rocket jumping 'under' a bridge, while side strafing to land 'on top' of a bridge. Its things that are literally impossible to do without an actual 3 dimensional space to move in.

I haven't played the original Quake, but I have watched speedruns. I've also followed things like the Halo tricking and trick jumping communitys, where people spend time platforming off of tiny moving objects. I've also sat back and watched Quake defrag videos. You don't need to lecture me on what fascinations exist in the world of FPS game funny business, I know exactly how crazy things can get.

I still maintain that it has absolutely nothing to do with the completeness of grenade jumping in its own right.

Is a trick jump onto a wall torch any more a trick jump just because the torch has empty space beneath it? If the the wall torch instead had a stand connecting it onto the ground, would the jump be any less a trick jump? Because you can certainly build little pillars into Marathon levels.

Is flying under a bridge all that conceptually different than flying under an archway? Maybe in some cases it is, because you can preemptively send explosives above the bridge to prepare for a subsequent jump, but that's a very specific situational particular, and you could certainly design similar things into a game with an older portal-based "2D" engine (by having the gap above a "bridge" be laterally offset from the gap over the "bridge").
By a similar token, is flying over a bright all that conceptually different than flying over a low wall?
Because you can certainly build archways and low walls in Marathon.

There's nothing about Marathon-like game engines that prevents them from having "out-of-level-ish" geometry that you can trick to. For instance, If I Had a Rocket Launcher I'd Make Somebody Pay has a raised area that's used to spawn enemies "out-of-level", which you can reach by rocket jump (and that network of "out-of-level" hallways is the only way to backtrack in that level, which means it has lots of practical use).

 

[Mman235]

let's not forget the enemy AI, either.

Yeah, I just added that. Kind of sad I nearly forgot when it's probably the most blatantly influential part of the game.

 

[Spazznid]

Perfect Dark added customization, and did everything Halo did, sans the truly competitive play.

Then Timesplitteres added even more customization and also a map editor.

 

[Orayn]

No, it doesn't play like DM at all. You look, walk, and attack freely. There aren't "ticks" for turns like DM (or Grimrock more recently), nor do you move locked to a grid. It is a slightly less interactive form of 3D interaction than System Shock.

Paul Neurath still cited Dungeon Master as a source of inspiration for Ultima Underworld. He liked the immersive audio/visual elements and "simulation" approach, but wanted to give it more immediacy.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

From what I've played of Titanfall, it feels more like Star Wars: Battlefront to me than either COD or Unreal. Obviously the game looks more like COD, but it just feels... Battlefronty to me. Its hard to explain.


Star Wars: Battlefront itself feels like a merger of Battlefield (which is obvious) and the Arean-style games. Very high-TTK, set weapons, classes, and abilities, vertical-oriented map and movement, simplistic gameplay, easy to learn/difficult to master, large open battlefields with vehicles yet also small confined maps. The thing that makes it hard to place is the ability to switch between first and third person. What does that make the game? Is it a first person shooter? A third person shooter? A hybrid?

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

UU isn't turn or tile-based.

Nevertheless, its where UUs spiritual predecessors started out.

In the same way that Borderlands predecessors are Diablo and Dungeon siege despite Borderlands not being click to move or isometric.

I haven't played the original Quake

Then you should; a fully 3D world offers gameply that 2D planes faking 3D cannot.

Quake doing something first in no way diminishes the things Marathon did first.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

As noted by Bethesda staff, UU and Legends of Valour were the two big inspirations for Elder Scrolls, so to get back to the earlier point, I don't see how Heretic and Hexen bump aside games like that for the roots of the series. If DocSeuss bumps into this thread he could easily throw down a thousand words in the topic.

I would argue that there is a difference in approach to TES games pre and post Oblivion.

Morrowind and earlier were still FPRPGs.
Oblivion and later are now just straight up FPs with numbers.

 

[Danne-Danger]

Star Wars: Battlefront itself feels like a merger of Battlefield (which is obvious) and the Arean-style games. Very high-TTK, set weapons, classes, and abilities, vertical-oriented map and movement, simplistic gameplay, easy to learn/difficult to master, large open battlefields with vehicles yet also small confined maps. The thing that makes it hard to place is the ability to switch between first and third person. What does that make the game? Is it a first person shooter? A third person shooter? A hybrid?

Yeah, hybrids are weird. Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 could also be played in first or third. But then again that would make Hitman a FPS (which it isn't). ArmA/DayZ is also first or third, mainly third really depending on who's playing.

So I guess it's down to a judgement call, from someone, somewhere.

 

[RooMHM]

Halo brought Fps to consoles on a mainstream scale if you want but it didn t change or make the genre evole at all. The hell, you ll have to explain that one to me.

 

[Orayn]

Halo brought Fps to consoles on a mainstream scale if you want but it didn t change or make the genre evole at all. The hell?

Whether or not it "evolved" anything up for debate, but a lot of the Halo's conventions have been copied to hell and back among console FPS.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Quake is the precursor of all FPSes that involve actual 3 dimensional space and physics based movement; apart from its contribution to staples like rocket and grenade jumping, its frictionless airtime led directly to intentional movement systems like bunny-hopping for increased speed and mobility, which then leads directly to systems like Tribes Skiing.

System Shock used a functionally 3D engine, and this was well before Quake came out. It wasn't true 3D, but it was functionally identical unless you're going to get super-nitpicky about the technical details. It also relied on physics-based movement, using an engine that's pretty advanced even by today's standards: How many FPS games have cottoned on to the idea that leaning round corners to shoot things is a cool thing to be able to do? There's also jumps, crouching, lying down, running, rollerskating, climbing ladders and weapon recoil; the only real difference is that SS doesn't have rocket jumping.

 

[Mman235]

Halo brought Fps to consoles on a mainstream scale if you want but it didn t change or make the genre evole at all. The hell, you ll have to explain that one to me.

Regenerating health and weapon limits. Regardless of if you think those things were for the better (and despite it not being the first game to have them) Halo was the game that everyone obviously ripped off when they became widespread mechanics in games.

 

[Unhandled Exception]

Any time I come into a thread and see a Tribes logo it's a good fucking day.

 

[HTupolev]

Then you should; a fully 3D world offers gameply that 2D planes faking 3D cannot.

I'm fully aware of what "fully 3D" engines offer, having spent the last two decades enjoying them like everyone else (in fact, the first time I played a "2D" portal-based FPS was in 2010, but whatever).

If you want to make the argument that trick jumping is somehow a bigger and more intricate experience than in Marathon, that's something I can understand, especially given how the Quake community has messed around with its series over the years. But claiming that trick jumping in its own right is somehow not fully implementable into 2D engines because the geometry on which trick jumping can happen is more limited still strikes me as bizarre. It's like claiming that those games also only had "partial" walking or shooting mechanics, because obviously it's not walking until you're striding across a sloped bridge while gunning down enemies on a far balcony. Yet nobody says that, because the mechanics were complete within their environments. Or that they only had "partial" graphics settings, because it's not 320p until you're rendering 320 lines of fully 3D geometry!

Or, here's an example, to illustrate how weird your argument strikes me. Suppose we have this geometry (rendered in glorious MS Paint), which is entirely realizable in an old portal-based engine:

Suppose that a player flies in at high speed under the far doorway, follows the impact with the ground by shooting their way up the wall with small explosives, and then immediately uses a big jump to speedily make their way to the far walkway:

According to you, this is only kinda/sorta not-really-ish physics-based trick jumping.

That seems weird to me. To me, that sequence of events would look like pretty damned full-fledged grenade/rocket/whatever-jump shenanigans.

 

[atr0cious]

This was posted in the Vietnam thread, but it's perfect for this conversation.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE6D63CBBEEF1DFA1

It's the history of fps games in video form, pretty amazing.

The original capture the flag game would make a perfect Wii U game.

 

[ichtyander]

This was posted in the Vietnam thread, but it's perfect for this conversation.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE6D63CBBEEF1DFA1

It's the history of fps games in video form, pretty amazing.

The original capture the flag game would make a perfect Wii U game.

It's interesting to see that Wolfenstein 3D and Ultima Underworld came out the same year. Wolf3D has introduced the fast paced FPS gameplay that would eventually evolve into Doom but UU looks obviously technically more advanced. I always thought UU came out much later.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

The tree should have many more branches:

Open World Military Shooter:
Delta Force, Operation Flashpoinr, Arma, Arma2, Operation Flashpoint 2, Arma 3

Hybrid:
NOLF, NOLF2, Stalker Series, Deus Ex 1- HR

Sandbox Shooter:
Halo CE, Far Cry 1-3, Crysis, Trespasser

Tactical Shooter:
Rainbow Six Series, CS

Horror:
Avp Series, Slender, Amnesia, SCP

Games like Amnesia and Slender are about as far away from "shooter" as you can possibly get and shouldn't really be included. I'd say the same for Ultima Underworld, but that has the benefit of influencing/predecessing actual FPSs like DOOM and System Shock.

 

[gabbo]

The MP is still following the same path for all of those. Would you then divide up MP and SP, since both modes could draw from different roots in the same game?

I actually would have separate branches of the tree from Quake1/2 for single player and multiplayer, since their influences are felt in huge ways for different reasons among the various branches

 

[Hypron]

Games like Amnesia and Slender are about as far away from "shooter" as you can possibly get and shouldn't really be included. I'd say the same for Ultima Underworld, but that has the benefit of influencing/predeceasing actual FPSs like DOOM and System Shock.

Yeah, this is a first person shooter family tree, not a first person family tree.

 

[atr0cious]

Some people are doing the lord's work:

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1KgYEVUDmDXJwooSw7GDzK6MzKr1SrDyp690fTaT2TQg/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Dictator93]

Some people are doing the lord's work:

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1KgYEVUDmDXJwooSw7GDzK6MzKr1SrDyp690fTaT2TQg/edit?usp=sharing

Natural Selection 2 branching off of Half life 2? WAT

It should branch off half life with its shooting mechanics... and then have some strange relation to an RTS tree.

 

[Creaking]

Battlefield 4 lets you do this on Xbox One through the Kinect integration.

There's an option to use the DS4 gyro for free leaning in the PS4 version as well.

 

[spanks]

Τurok 1 should be mentioned IMO.

It was the first fully 3D FPS with huge outdoor levels and fully polygonal enemies who had proper animation, unlike Quake's two-frame stop motion puppets.
.

Seconding this. Turok 1 & 2 were milestones in console FPSs, and the only real competitors to GoldenEye for the entire generation.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Some people are doing the lord's work:

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1KgYEVUDmDXJwooSw7GDzK6MzKr1SrDyp690fTaT2TQg/edit?usp=sharing

Wait, how does TF2 branch off of Half Life 2 and not Team Fortress? I see what they're doing, but that's like saying System Shock 2 branched off of Thief and not System Shock.

 

[DocSeuss]

EDIT: Disregard, I missed an earlier post somehow.

 

[Coreda]

Some people are doing the lord's work:

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1KgYEVUDmDXJwooSw7GDzK6MzKr1SrDyp690fTaT2TQg/edit?usp=sharing

Awesome update y'all.

 

[Ninja Dom]

TEAM FORTRESS 2 not mentioned once in the first 50 posts (page 1 for me).

What's going on, GAF???

 

[Jintor]

TEAM FORTRESS 2 not mentioned once in the first 50 posts (page 1 for me).

What's going on, GAF???

TF2 maybe a better arguement for F2P or fan participation mechanics than for shooters. Maybe?

Still relevant I suppose

 

[Zeknurn]

It's going to be interesting (or saddening) to see how basically every multiplayer fps released since COD4 is a codlike. I hope you have enough space to branch off that title.

 

[Unhandled Exception]

TEAM FORTRESS 2 not mentioned once in the first 50 posts (page 1 for me).

What's going on, GAF???

A fine game that doesn't have a whole lot to do with the lineage of FPS games at this point. Perhaps a few decades from now there will be more data to pull from.

 

[Poimandres]

What comes after STALKER on that particular tree branch?

 

[mclem]

There's a few interesting early games you might want to look at:

Midi Maze/Faceball : The ur-example of multiplayer FPS, possibly - it's from 1987, and I'm struggling to think of any earlier game that fits that model. Even had networked multiplayer - the original title referred to linking Atari STs through the MIDI port to play.

Strife: One of the more forgotten Doom-engine games, this was structured more like an RPG - it has aspects akin to System Shock there.

 

[Danne-Danger]

What comes after STALKER on that particular tree branch?

DayZ?

 

[atr0cious]

Here's a couple of the discussion branches on the tree.

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1KgYEVUDmDXJwooSw7GDzK6MzKr1SrDyp690fTaT2TQg/edit?usp=sharing

We have a 3d renaissance, modern, and arena breakdowns.

 

[Calabi]

Are you guys just talking about tracking ideas, like who came up regening health or in game cut scenes. Because something like that might be hard to track, some may have come up with the idea concurrently without looking at the earlier source. Its hard to be sure and any new ideas may not be connected to past ideas so its hard to see how mapping this would have benefits outsided its historical ones.

 

[LCGeek]

Is there a second analog stick on the N64 pad I overlooked? Does it play well on emulators with a dual stick pad or something? Are we getting existential here?

No he is being correct I also point out turok all the time was another game that encouraged the standard layout for most fps games before it became popular.

I like the IDEA op, my only issue being in to the genre is that most gamers who are not pc centric ignore what the modding community has brung to the table

Counter Strike should never be automatically lumped in as HL design. The game had it's start with action quake, as it was made by one of the people responsible for that game. If we are being accurate and giving credit where it's due that picture should be adjusted for how things within certain titles led to other things. You already do it for how quake led to HL. TheRedSnifit has already said the same for TF which anyone in to the game can tell was a Quake product first and foremost.

 

[theepicoftyler]

Why doesn't anyone give the PS2 port of Red Faction any propers when it comes to controls on console FPS? It came a ways before Halo and had a very modern first person shooter control scheme. I loved that game. Derivative of Half Life, but doing a lot of new things for console FPS. TimeSplitters also was doing good things with controls pre-Halo.

 

[LCGeek]

The same could be said for MOH on PSX. People love to cherry pick fps history, I don't bother to argue just point out when I can, where I can.

 

[BloodMoney]

I see no reference to No One Lives Forever....

 

[mkenyon]

I think Team Fortress for Quake was the first notable team and class based shooter. That's a landmark.

Tribes was the first online-only FPS.

 

[rakkadakka]

Strife: One of the more forgotten Doom-engine games, this was structured more like an RPG - it has aspects akin to System Shock there.

It had a hub world after Hexen but I'll be damned if it wasn't a revelation at the time.

 

[mkenyon]

TEAM FORTRESS 2 not mentioned once in the first 50 posts (page 1 for me).

What's going on, GAF???

Because a lot of people were playing the same game in 1996.

Spoiler

Yeah, I know it's not the same, but the essence is.

 

[Palmer_v1]

Is this strictly FPS? Cause I see no mention of SOCOM 1 or 2 anywhere. SOCOM 1 was the first online shooter for a lot of people, and SOCOM 2, was the near-perfect evolution of it.

 

[mkenyon]

Is this strictly FPS? Cause I see no mention of SOCOM 1 or 2 anywhere. SOCOM 1 was the first online shooter for a lot of people, and SOCOM 2, was the near-perfect evolution of it.

That means that it's only really important in terms of creating an audience though.