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Quake was released 20 years ago today June 22, 1996

Just yesterday I finished Quake 1 with the Dark Places engine+Ultima mod. It really helps the 15fps animations by making them run at 60fps. Some parts really stressed my aging PC, but I could play it fine for the most part.

And it was my first time playing it with the original soundtrack... It really makes the game a lot more creepier.

https://youtu.be/gLCHrTRjvdQ

Really really really for reals yo!

Not to be that lame guy. But I hate all the added effects. Is there a way to play the PC version in hi-def, with a controller on PC. Is there a sort of vanilla Quake out on Steam?
 

Daingurse

Member
Not to be that lame guy. But I hate all the added effects. Is there a way to play the PC version in hi-def, with a controller on PC. Is there a sort of vanilla Quake out on Steam?

You can get the original Quake on GoG now for $5. You can mod it and play it any way you like. I've been playing the game using Quakespasm down-sampled from 4K. Some textures are obviously a bit stretched, but it holds up better than I ever anticipated hahaha:

quakespasm_2016_06_01cwrpw.png



I got the Dark Places mod too, but feel like I need to play the game looking somewhat like it originally did first, in order to appreciate it. It will be fun to revisit the game with the modded visuals.
 
Which games in the series are worthwhile for single player? Haven't played any and always associated the series with multiplayer like Unreal.
 
What I hate about it was that they basically abandoned the world of quake, with all further Quake games being based off Quake 2.

Q1 was a dang fun, and influential title.
 
I was there day 1. Used to play at home Pentium 200 vs 486. For me it was my first LAN game, first online game, first mods. So damn good...
 

KKRT00

Member
One of the greatest and most influential games ever made.

Respect.

I loved it to death and MP was the best.
Besides normal Quake i loved mods. Harpoon in Quake World was so awesome, also Fragtown maps were godlike!

I think this game has the best level difficulty 'screen' in any game ever. I love its concept to death, what a pity that more games didnt used this idea.
 
You can get the original Quake on GoG now for $5. You can mod it and play it any way you like. I've been playing the game using Quakespasm down-sampled from 4K. Some textures are obviously a bit stretched, but it holds up better than I ever anticipated hahaha:







I got the Dark Places mod too, but feel like I need to appreciate the game looking somewhat like it originally did in order to appreciate it. It will be fun to revisit the game with the modded visuals.
Thanks for the tip! That looks more like it!
 
Absolutely love the original Quake. Great game!

Even though I was more into Duke Nukem 3D back then, Quake 1 still holds a soft spot for me. I had so much fun with the multi-player back then and all of the mods that was made for it. I remember hacking off my friends limbs with the axe melee weapon and watching his character bounce around with no arms are legs. It was hilarious. The single player is a bit underrated too, the game isn't as run and gun as Doom, and does focus more on platforming, puzzle solving and vertical movement. But it did have a feel of its own. I love the atmosphere in the game, it is a weird mix of technology, medieval and Lovecraft designs. The Trent Reznor is a mix of industrial and ambiance. It hit so hard when listed to with a nice set of headphones. The game had its own charm that id could only ever really produce.


Random screenshot of the game running at 800x600 with software rendering mode on my real Windows 98se machine:

iMpKeua.png


Quake 1 was such an influential game that it brought OpenGL to the masses. Quake was the first IBM-DOS PC game to use OpenGL with its MiniGL driver, it really forced video card manufacturers to support the API through their drivers. Eventually the Khronos Group was formed to maintain OpenGL as a standard and OpenGL is still used in a large capacity today, especially with Android and iOS supporting various offshoots of it.

It was also the first game to use light maps, which is noteworthy as well. Considering that almost every 3D game uses light maps now.



Interesting to note; Mario 64 was released on June 23 1996 in Japan, a day after Quake. The evolution of 3D gaming happened with two epic games that were released one day apart from each other.
 
I feel like I first discovered Quake on a zip disk with Marathon 1 at my Dad's work (where the good PC lived). Unsure how reliable my memory is on the Quake part is but Marathon was 100% there but I've never figured out how or why it would be since my parents have never been gamers.
 

F!ReW!Re

Member
I really liked Quake 1.
But for me personally Quake 2 will always be the one I loved the most.

The SP was awesome, the music, the weapons and tbh the multiplayer was god-tier, I even rate the MP over Q3A.

There's just so many fond memories:
- Rocket jumping all over the place
- Playing rail-road (or rail arena) variants (railgun only, lower grav).
- Casema servers (I'm from the Netherlands).
- the mods whose names I can't remember but the addition of the "runes", quake 2 ctf with a grappling hook (one version had a seperate grappling hook as a weapon, the other shot out a grappling "beam")

I had so much fun with that game.
(To this day I can't decide if Q2 or Unreal Tournament is the GOAT when it comes to MP)
 

spats

Member
Played the Q1 shareware to death as a kid. Just an awesome shooter.

I was recently on a trip and found the N64 version of Q1, so been playing through that for the past few days. It's not even that terrible! (apart from the visuals...)
 

d3vnull

Member
Quake and Quakeworld will always have a special place in my heart. The memories...

Such a good game.

Sure, Quake Champions looks great but I would have hoped for a Doom style remake of the original one and only.
 

Shoogoo

Member
This game blew my mind when I first saw it played multiplayer. I remember looking at 3 computer screens, slowly realizing that the people playing were actually fighting each others. The graphics were insane, too.

2 months later after begging my parents for a computer, I was hooked, and still am 20 years later!
 

F!ReW!Re

Member
This game blew my mind when I first saw it played multiplayer. I remember looking at 3 computer screens, slowly realizing that the people playing were actually fighting each others. The graphics were insane, too.

2 months later after begging my parents for a computer, I was hooked, and still am 20 years later!

After reading this, I realize that Quake was the first time I ever played online multiplayer. It blew my mind that I was playing against someone on another continent (played versus some Americans)
 

Truant

Member
I like Quake 1 for the single player. Fantastic level design, reminds me a lot of the new Doom in terms of how they handle backtracking etc.
 

Wollan

Member
Remember playing Quake on the junior highschool computers across LAN. My first encounter though was the shareware version with a friend which was mindblowing.
We had a family computer in the early 90's and the very late 90's (CS Beta era) so I didn't end up owning Quake but I bought a sealed copy a couple of years back.
 

Tunesmith

formerly "chigiri"
Love me some Quake, I recently got my old copy signed by Romero. Now I just need to finagle my way to meet Carmack.

CiQKhT_XEAEarxu.jpg:large
 
I had this disc in my computer when I was playing the shareware version. That album also turned 20 a week or two ago.

Wonder whether anyone else here has the same connection.
 

JackelZXA

Member
I actually like running quake at the lowest resolution that still fits 16:9 screen. Having everything be really blocky kind of adds to the tension because you can't really make things out at a distance so you feel more nervous at points. I also think low resolution helps games with repeating texture walls help make them look more varied visually, because the pixels don't display perfectly, it looks more like a believable surface in that. Getting the music working in the steam version is very important because that soundtrack is so oppressive and great.

I usually play it on normal and I've beaten it on hard before but I think I actually really like the changes to monster spawns on Easy. The game feels more horror focused because there's less ogres and shamblers and more fiends, which are fun to fight and force you to dodge more, rather than hiding from lightning/grenades during every fight.

It makes the game feel more varied because the enemy types get spread out more as a result of using a fiend or zombies in place of the bigger enemies in parts of the levels. You still have to be on your toes, but it feels like you're bobbing and weaving more with the low to mid-tier enemies than the higher tier ones. I kind of wish the spaceport enemies showed up in the hell areas sometimes just so they could mix in with the other types, but maybe that wouldn't have worked out well?

I feel like Vores and Shamblers are the cyber demon/spider mastermind of this game, and could have been "bosses" for early eps that show up later, and I feel they got overused in the normal difficulty. Ogres kind of get placed around pretty leisurely too. I like them being used more sparringly so the lower tier guys get used more. (They're sort of like the hell knights/barons of hell of this game) In some ways you can feel the frustration of the team when they were making quake. You could probably reshuffle things about the campaign to get a more interesting singleplayer experience, though it'd probably be a lovecraft variant of doom's plot anyways if you redesigned the enemy encounters and stages per episode.

Speaking of bosses, Chthon is interesting on easy because they modify his fight so you only do the lightning trick 1 time. Because it's a gimmick fight the 3 time loop never felt that great. Only doing it once feels appropriate to what that "fight" is. I think he should have been the boss of the third realm, and let shambler be the first realm boss, with vore as the second realm boss (With shamblers showing up more commonly in realms 2 and up, and vores in 3 and up). I loved doom 1's (and the end of doom 2) emphasis on having a boss get a real boss stage before they became normal dudes. Big moments like that were cool.

I don't like Doom or Doom 2 on easy but Quake's layouts and horror themes actually kind of work. (Plus with less ogres you have less rockets/grenade ammo drops) It's kind of cool and something I never played before and I bet most players never touched it.
 
Getting the music working in the steam version is very important because that soundtrack is so oppressive and great.

This is why I recommend the GOG version over the Steam one, because the GOG release had the original soundtrack. But it is not enabled by default. Still, it's not hard to find the soundtrack for the Steam version and there are some good help threads on the Steam forums on how to enable it.
 

robin2

Member
feels better than 99% of the shooters out there: the speed, the inertia, are perfect.
unparalleled level design.
and THAT thundering rocket launcher, 20 years later still the best (game has overall great sounding weapons).

also the original graphics is imo better than any of the "enhancements".
 

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
I've yet to play the game to the end, but I always remember when I first played it and used the antimatter grenade for the first time. The way monster would just be sucked inwards and vanish was so cool. Also, the fact that zombies in the waters just wouldn't die without the grenade launcher. So tense.

Probably the most influential game ever made.... almost single handedly created the game industry we have today.

Er... It's extremely influential to be sure, especially on the PC side, but... Pong ? Pac-Man? Super Mario Bros.? Tetris? Its dad, Doom? Ultima? Warcraft? Those are at least as influential.
 
I
Er... It's extremely influential to be sure, especially on the PC side, but... Pong ? Pac-Man? Super Mario Bros.? Tetris? Its dad, Doom? Ultima? Warcraft? Those are at least as influential.

Given the role it's played in the birth of online multiplayer, it's an argument that could be made.
 
Er... It's extremely influential to be sure, especially on the PC side, but... Pong ? Pac-Man? Super Mario Bros.? Tetris? Its dad, Doom? Ultima? Warcraft? Those are at least as influential.

Quake set a lot of standards that are still in use today. Quake was the game that really established OpenGL for hardware acceleration in gaming. OpenGL was originally regulated to high end SGI workstations, but Quake brought the API over to the IBM PC space and things evolved from there. OpenGL ES is still heavily used in mobile devices and is the graphics backbone for OSx and Linux (even though that is changing). PC video card manufacturers were using Quake as the definitive benchmark for their products. The engine itself was a gold standard for its day that inspired companies like Epic to create their own competing engine called Unreal. The engine was also the base for Valve's GoldSrc and still exists in some degree in the Call of Duty games. Quake also really established online e-sports with competitive game play.

Quake brought a lot of its own innovations to gaming and hardware as a whole.
 

Moff

Member
yup, I remember that
graphics and sound blew me away

still playss o good, replayed it a few years ago, the leveldesign and gameplay still holds up
 
But we haven't seen anything from Quake Champions?

The CG trailer strongly hinted at it being multiplayer only with weird abilities ala Overwatch. I think it's highly unlikely that we'll see a singleplayer campaign resembling Quake 1 in tone. Furthermore, this must have been in development before they saw the immensely positive reaction to the Doom '16 singleplayer campaign, so that hasn't had a chance to affect any of their decisions in that regard either.
 

Kilrogg

paid requisite penance
Given the role it's played in the birth of online multiplayer, it's an argument that could be made.

Quake set a lot of standards that are still in use today. Quake was the game that really established OpenGL for hardware acceleration in gaming. OpenGL was originally regulated to high end SGI workstations, but Quake brought the API over to the IBM PC space and things evolved from there. OpenGL ES is still heavily used in mobile devices and is the graphics backbone for OSx and Linux (even though that is changing). PC video card manufacturers were using Quake as the definitive benchmark for their products. The engine itself was a gold standard for its day that inspired companies like Epic to create their own competing engine called Unreal. The engine was also the base for Valve's GoldSrc and still exists in some degree in the Call of Duty games. Quake also really established online e-sports with competitive game play.

Quake brought a lot of its own innovations to gaming and hardware as a whole.

I'm not arguing that Quake wasn't influential. I watched that RetroAhoy retrospective - so good -, and I agree, it's one of the most instrumental games in shaping the market. You would have to be a fool or ignorant to argue otherwise.

I'm arguing that it's not "THE most influential". Come on. For one thing, it's hard to quantify those things. And for another, there are many games, including those I mentioned, that could make that claim. For specific things, Quake might be the most influential game (like online multiplayer and modding) but not as a whole.
 
I'm not arguing that Quake wasn't influential. I watched that RetroAhoy retrospective - so good -, and I agree, it's one of the most instrumental games in shaping the market. You would have to be a fool or ignorant to argue otherwise.

I'm arguing that it's not "THE most influential". Come on. For one thing, it's hard to quantify those things. And for another, there are many games, including those I mentioned, that could make that claim. For specific things, Quake might be the most influential game (like online multiplayer and modding) but not as a whole.

Certainly, and it's especially difficult to make the argument because it's such a secondary thing; a service or technical matter (the mp being online). But (on the other hand) the reason why it's not that weird a thing to say is because the importance of online multiplayer today. It's where most of the money seems to be made: the most profitable, biggest games are online multiplayer games. Though again, that's admitting this would be discussing 'influential' in a purely economical sense.
 

lazygecko

Member
I remember before I knew about enabling permanent mouselook in the config file, I bound mouselook to Home and then put a tiny rock on it to permanently keep the key pressed down.
 
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