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The Art and Design of Quake 4
Gamespy has a feature discussing the upcoming first person shooter Quake 4. More details about the title are revealed in an interview and screenshots provided by some of the folks at Raven. From the article: "I think we have a lot of diversity throughout the entire game. We have some dark areas, and we have outdoor areas that are brighter. I think how diverse everything is will really go a long way. We didn't really set out saying, 'This game is going to be dark, this game is going to be light' -- we set out to make a cohesive environment where you go through different extremes and you'll see a bunch of different stuff."
Quake 2 was the best one single player wise.
Maybe this one will be as good?(although that's not saying much heh, better then doom 3 I hope though)
i can't wait for Super Mario 54 turbo special edition, Quake 4 is just a stepping stone !
One of my good (internet) friends is a programmer on Quake 4, and I know a few other guys on the Activision tech team and such. The story is a continuation of Quake 2, but you can expect Q3A style multiplayer awesomeness as well. It's going to be a great game.
Quake not dark and brown? Blasphemy!
Just what we need; a politically correct multicultural FPS!
Quake 1 had by far the most engrossing atmosphere I've ever experienced in a video game. Just that sense of hopelessness. The environment just felt dark, hostile and uninviting.
Cooperative mode makes "single-player" games better!
I'm not a solitary gamer, and as such, never make time to play single player games. However, if I could have my wife (and/or our friends) play with me, it would make the game much more appealing!
I understand the difficulties in providing content that is achievable by both single and multiple players, but that's why I pay for games-- for innovation!
Am I the only one who thinks like this, or are there other people out there who have been disappointed by the lack of a coop mode in most games?
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
... the name quakenet will make sense again!
... or its just the same game we've already played, with nicer moving pictures.
Just once, i would like to see an FPS multiplayer online game that takes into account good animation and movement. I want to see cool stuff while i play, not just run around and see others running simply with silly guns we've all played with a thousand times already. Bring more stylized movement into the game, more theatrics and less of the old "run and hop" movement.
I think this game will be great, and the people saying it might be like doom3 are part of the problem with doom3. Doom3 wasn't bad, it was just overhyped as the game of the millenium
Hopefully this game won't be expected to entertain you, run your life, cook your meals and generally rule the universe like Doom3 was
Business Voyeur
Are the lighting subcontractors in the Quake universe as horrible as those in the Doom 3 universe?
I'm hoping to have my massive 32/64-player Quake 2 DM level, Aquaphobia, done before Quake 4 comes out. I only been working on it (on-and-off-but-mostly-off) for the last six years.
Aquaphobia Project Page
After I get done with Quake 4 single player, I'll start working on some new levels for that game.
Doom 3 was a poor game. It amounts to hours and hours of running down cramped hallways, encountering monsters that other than visually don't really differ much. It gets really boring really quick.
The game feels more like one long technology demo, than something built to provide compelling entertainment. And even being a technology demo, the results are less than impressive. The vast, lush environments in HL2 make the cramped environments in Doom 3 look quaint in comparison, even if the Doom 3 engine, with its real time lighting, is ultimately more advanced. I wonder if Doom 3 can even handle environments that have the same scope as HL2. The portions of Doom 3 that take place on the outside of Mars look really bad. Hell ends up being a bit more impressive, but it quickly reverts back to the familiar small enclosed envirnoment.
Hopefully the Quake 4 team will be able to make a more compelling game.
The Heart - blatently stolen from Natural Selection's hive.
Strafe jumping
double jumping
sliding around on ice and up ramps
and just the sheer speed of it all --if you can master it.
I don't expect Q4 to have these fun aspects though because I just can't imagine models like this : http://pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/article/611/61 1006/440Building_B_Marines06_1115438005.jpg
moving around so unrealistically like in q2.
Mmmm.. High resolution nipples!
He puts the er in gamer baby, yeah!
I mean, grr in...ah, forget it...
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Seriously, i wonder wyh these games enjoy such great success. I remember getting my first one, Alien Breed 3D, back on the Amiga. I played it for a couple of hours, then switched back to something more interesting. Over the years, I've had a couple of goes at about ten or so more modern ones, but apart from the graphics, nothing ever changes. No FPS has ever been able to fascinate me like i.e. Civ I-III or a good RPG.
By diversity, he means the enemies will come in Asian, Black, Arab, etc. The demons will of course use affirmative action to recruit more minority demons.
These guys did the design work for the Jedi Knights games right? They know all about dark sides and light sides.
Good choice for a game that has an amazing lighting engine I would imagine...
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
We have some dark areas, and we have outdoor areas that are brighter.
Wow!! They have both bright AND dark areas! You can't beat that binary diversity! A pinnacle of innovative game design, I tell you.
I've heard rumors that your character will also be able to move both left AND right, but shhh, you didn't hear it from me, I don't want to get sued for releasing trade secrets.
Am I really the only one thinking: "screw the lighting and effects, I'm turning them off anyway" For me Quake is about gameplay not graphics. Even when running the lowest possible graphicsmode(Wich I alwas do) it still fun. How are they going to change the gameplay? more open areas in the standart mappack isn't going to do it. People moved away from quake to Counter Strike because of the different and more tacticle gameplay. Will Quake4 try to be a little more tacticle and less "chaotic"? How is it different gameplay wise, that's the important question. Not if whether brighter or darker.
Yeah like uh, the game is gonna be, like, innovative and stuff because, like, its gonna have light AND dark areas, so like it will be different and stuff.
Cripes, can one get any more inarticulate without being a deaf-mute?
I have a dream...that one night, this engine will load up, and live out the true meaning of its code: "We hold these lines to be self-commenting, that all beasts are created equal."
I have a dream that one day in the black mazes of Quake the sons of former players and the sons of former cheaters will be able to sit down together in a game of Deathmatch.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Id software really needs to do something different this time. Their old recipe is getting boring. I would like to see Quake 4 in a more festive environment like maybe a circus with lots of clowns and bright colors everywhere. Instead of shooting weapons that explode monsters, maybe the first person character could walk around and give flowers to people. Or casually listen in on the conversations of strangers in the crowd until they can tell when one of them is going to go to Hell like a Catholic or a Jehovah's witness. Then you could score points by proselytizing them to evangelical christianity and saving as many of their souls as you can before the game ends with the Rapture! But look out for those evil mooslims in the crowd or they may blow you up before you finish God's work. Family fun for everyone!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
It appeals to the under-aged crowd that's not supposed to be playing this Mature-rated game. No doubt that some government body will try to ban this game while using Duke Nukem 3D as an example of nipple artwork.
I wonder if they will have the easter egg from Quake 2 where two Strogg chicks were blowing a Tank Commander on a throne. Hmmm... Gotta love it when a game appeals to the little boy (or dike for the chicks) in us.
"I think we have a lot of diversity throughout the entire game. We have some dark areas, and we have outdoor areas that are brighter. I think how diverse everything is will really go a long way. We didn't really set out saying, 'This game is going to be dark, this game is going to be light' -- we set out to make a cohesive environment where you go through different extremes and you'll see a bunch of different stuff."
Sounds an awful lot like Marathon 2 to me....
How the hell are they going to run this on the Doom 3 engine? We already know you need a freaking super computer to run it, how the hell are they going to do HUGE areas full of monsters? The thing which rocked about Quake 2 was you'd comeout of some annoying jumping puzzle to find ten guys staring you in the face with shotguns and some bastard enemy mixed in with them just to make it worse.
From what we've seen the Doom 3 engine can't do huge areas with the current technology.. so we lose the Quake feel and get another tech demo?
I like muppets.
the most recent evolutions of the Quake 1 server are awesome. in CTF ('Catch The Flag') mode those servers convey the usual coherency and ultrafast heartbeat of the Quake 1 universe, a helluva set of maps... and graphism is very pleasant with modern clients. check http://customtf.com/, soon with a ready-to-use client package
...as Doom 3 so aptly demonstrated. We need more games like System Shock 2. I want cool 3D tech and great art, but really, deathmatch and rocket launchers are boring and inexcusable in this modern age.
I hated Quake 2 and Unreal; I didn't even bother with Quake 3 and UT (or whatever it is now). The fact that the developers are claiming they loved Quake 2 doesn't raise my expectations very high.
What I want to know is how is Raven going to do the in game Physics ? Will we get Quake2's fantastic movement/jumping feeling ? The thing I love most about Quake2 and what still keeps me playing it (ActionQuake) is exactly that :)
Haven't heard anything about Prey in years. If you remember, the Prey engine was supposed to be uber-advanced, but then just died off.
Now it looks like 3DRealms is going to do a Prey game using the Doom3 engine.
DNF anyone?
You're just not looking. For a start, the sims - almost entirely new concept.
I am trolling
I'm willing to bet they'd do a HELL of a lot of work on the Doom 3 engine. It's not like "Hey, we'll make some maps and models on the doom3 engine and call it quake 4." They're putting alot of effort into making sure that the engine will be stable with alot of enemies and open areas i'm sure.
Society never gets more or less violent, the definition of violent just keeps changing.
This is using the Doom 3 engine, correct? One of the problems with that engine is that it didn't support (or didn't use) any kind of indirect lighting (radiosity, etc.) in order to calculate all the lighting dynamically. That just doesn't work well in outdoor environments. Is Q4 going to support some kind of indirect lighting for those outdoor areas? A static/dynamic hybrid might be interesting -- precalculated radiosity with real-time dynamic lighting "layered" on top.
Raven Games? Isn't quake made by Id Software?
Now honestly if you're going to knock this title and every other FPS that came out in the last 2 years please save us your 'Wisdom' or go flame DNF for not being done yet ya unoriginal bastids!
Raven won't botch this one they reliably create great games, but they always seem to time their releases concurrently with something truely awesome that blows them out of the water. (For instance Heretic 2 and Half-Life came out roughly the same time)
1) Thief. Note that Thief 1/2 are considered better than Thief 3. True stealth gameplay: outsmart guards, be a ghost or knock out everyone, leaving them lying around in compromosing positions for the Lord of the Manor to find. As little violence as you want. At highest difficulty level, the game forbids you from killing anyone.
2) Deus Ex (1, not 2). Near-future nanotech conspiracy fun. Ignore the comparisons with The Matrix. Very high replayability, it's a game about making choices, both practical as ethical. Even on your 5th way through you'll discover new ways to achieve your goals. The locations are great too.
3) System Shock (2 is on Home of the Underdogs, 1 might be hard to get running). Another shooty RPG, like Deus Ex, but on a creepy spaceship. Amazing atmosphere, great sounds (the monkeys are after me), fascinating story, easy to use interface too.
Each of these takes a while to get in to, but once you're there you're hooked. And they are all fun. The graphics are a bit dated, but this is only noticable for the first 5 minutes.
And if you really don't like FPSes anymore, try Fallout. Awesome post-nuclear RPG: if you're tired of Wizards, Elves and Dwarves this is for you. Great sense of humor too. Doesn't treat the player like an idiot.
Each of these is several years old, but still refreshing and unique.
Sims came out when? 2000? 2001?
But your right. People playing as real people who are themselves boring is a game-play innovation.
Not that I didn't waste hours on that.
Angband roolz. Quake is great too. I played a lot more 'bands than Quake though. Quake 1 - 100 hours, Quake 20 - 20 hours; Quake 3 - 3 hours. Angband - 250 hours, Zangband - 100 hours. Is there a pattern here? I have to restrict my 'band playing to semester breaks though ;-)
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
But aren't Quakers pacifists?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I wish someone would hire some architects to design the levels, not your run-of-the-mill artists. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks level design has been subpar for years now. Bring back levels that are well-designed by people who know how to make them and think broad architecture, not what this scene or that scene will look like.
We play these games, you know---interact with them, explore them---we don't just watch them.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Don't ask how I know this, and don't tell anyone about it, but the word on the grapevine is, this new Quake 4 will involve moving around a corridor in a first-person perspective shooting things with fantasy guns.
Who's going to score this game? NIN, I hope...
Theres this guy daryl mandryk, his art is so dark... i thinkg he should be in the art team...g ID=36
http://www.cgchannel.com/gallery/viewimage.jsp?im
dark, very dark, what you think, deserves to be in design or not?
For the love of monkeys! Do we really ... and I mean REALLY need another first person shooter? How can someone even feign interest in an overworked franchise in a saturated market of FPS clones?
Screw this, I'm going to go play pong.
Havoc Video
There are no nipples in Duke Nukem 3D. All the strippers have these tassles over the nipples, and they don't take them off no matter how much money you give them. No wonder all the aliens were pissed off.
That article acts as if there was never a Quake 3 released. Everything is from the attitude of "well, what kind of great things await fans of Quake 2 in this new Quake 4?". WTF? I know Q3 was largely a loss for single player, but surely there's some things worth bringing from Q3 into Q4?
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Tim Willits:
"It was much more of a continuation of Quake II more than anything else - We wanted to create a great single player experience that felt like a Quake style game. You'll find a lot of hard-hitting action in the title. You'll also find squad buddies that fight alongside you as well as vehicles that you can drive. And we also realized that we needed a really good multi-player as well, which is why we wanted to give it more of a Quake III feel rather than a Doom 3 multi-player feel."
"... We've also improved the buddy AI and the monster AI greatly. Monsters will be aware of others around them, as well as their surroundings, and will react differently based on how you play. As for the weapons, if you know Doom, you know there's no rail gun, but if you know Quake, you know there's a rail gun (which does return in Quake 4, with some modifications)."
"... For instance, you'll notice Gunners taking cover, reinforcing positions, coordinating attacks with other Gunners, and so on. The same will happen with your squad mates. This reinforces the greater sense of the war raging around you and the organized forces you'll fight with and against."
"Doom 3 was much more of a solitary experience where you were alone, whereas Quake 4 is much more of a war experience with buddies and additional forces around you. There are a number of outdoor environments, plenty of vehicles to fight in and around, and a definite mix of levels between indoor and outdoor levels. For instance, you may have to go inside a structure to perform a task, then return outside to be retrieved. Thanks to Raven's level design, there are a number of indoor levels that are so detailed they make Doom 3's graphics look plain."
Looks really promising.
I am afraid I will disagree about Quake2. Though I have every id Software 3DFPS, I would say the original Quake was the best and most revolutionary. It had both a medevil theme as well as a futureistic theme. The monsters were classy and diverse, and certainly the supernail was an amazing weapon.
The sound was also an amazing feat of its own. The music and sound by NIN had a very raw and interesting feel. The sound was very "brave". Now most games have an ultra-pristine and clean tone. Quake's raw sound better fits the world of violence and destruction.
I like everything id has done, and was just playing Doom3 a second ago. I will say that I really wish they would do something like Quake again. It really has magic.
Look at the interior of most modern museums. For the most part their big rectangle rooms with chairs in the center with paintings on the wall. Sure its great when you have 500 different tourists trying to cram into a room designed for 300 people, but its god awful ugly for video games.
Same thing with modern day airports. Why build restaurants, newspaper stands or bookstores into the design? Isn't the goal supposed to be streamlining the process of getting people to and from their airplanes? That sure as hell doesn't happen with all those distractions. A couple vending machines and advertising reminders over time can replace this old design.
Modern day architecture is EXTREMELY overly glamorous. Take a look at medieval castles: tight hallways means easy to defend, towers on the corners means maximum line of sight in 360 degrees, a wall where troops can stand on to defend against attacks either inside or outside the castle. Ugly as hell but it gets the job done with minimal waste of material.
Even in the original Unreal Tournament, when you saw other characters jump or dodge, they would do flips and other cool things. It is still in the newer UT games.
The expansion pack has a level just like you describe, only it's a carnival with clowns instead of a circus. The makers also aren't afraid to be very un-PC; in the first level you fight through a haunted orphanage, and have to destroy the spirits of evil children. Woo!
FPS's are all alike only if you compare the lowest common denominator - the fact that they're all FPS's. There are plenty of other dynamics - the story, the voice acting, the gameplay, the overall experience. The FPS genre is no more or less prone to stale unorigionality than any other type of game.
What I find interesting, is if an FPS gamer doesn't care for RPG's or sports games, he doesn't complain about how "stale" they are, he just doesn't play them.
Maybe look into MMOGs?
I play Dark Age of Camelot, and my guild's GM convinced his girlfriend to start playing long ago.
Now she plays more than he does...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
That was my biggest pet peeve of Doom 3. Every other enemy was locked in a closet somewhere. No wonder they were all pissed off and snarling.
"Hey Bob, how ya been? I heard you took a vacation on Mars."
"It was horrible Sal, once I got there, I got stuck in a closet for 10 hours. So I'm screaming and beating on the door like crazy, trying to get out. Finally, this guy let's me out. I go to thank him and then all of a sudden, he blows my head off with a shotgun. What the hell man?"
"That really sucks Bob. I'm glad I skipped out and stayed in Hell."
"Yeah, I've got such a kink in the neck... holy crap, it's that guy! I'm gonna go have a word with him. HEY YOU!"
BLAM BLAM!!!
"Bob?!!!!!! Noooooo!"
BLAM BLAM!!!
Seriously, try not to pack every single enemy in a fricking, hidden closet. Mix it up a little. Use a nook here, a cranny there, maybe even a crevice. Hopefully, Quake 4 will be better than that.
One of the most absurdly fun first-person-shooters to come out in recent years is Serious Sam. Instead of tacking on more and more boring realism, it takes the opposite approach and follows the bubble gum arcade logic.
The weapons are all supercool, especially in Second Encounter. The chainsaw chews through tens of melee enemies, the flamethrower fries hordes of ranged attackers, and nothing can beat the bowling-esque cannonball launcher for taking down giant mechs, herds of bulls, and machine-gun-toting scorpions.
And when I say "hordes of enemies", I do mean "hordes of enemies". You often find yourself facing upwards of 200 attackers at the same time. It is an absolutely incredible headrush.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
At least the MP which is all I bother to play anymore. You get a team together, set up a Ventrillo server and you can have a pretty good time (and still manage to have a wife and family unlike the Evercrack games).
Quack, quack.
With the Counter Strike Source elements I'd say eye-candy is definitely overlooked. I never played Counter Strike, but the models, sound sequences, textures and sprites used in the updated Source version are amazing.
Especially if you compare them to the HL2SDK (read: HL2DM) stuff.
If by 'bright areas' they mean Quake 4 is taking a hint from the terrible failure of the dark, corridor crawlers I think thats a good thing. Maybe Tribes 2 spoiled me with the wide open areas but getting stuck in a underground garage to 'fight' is really getting old.
Quack, quack.
I didn't care about this announcement and was going to post "bleah who cares." Raven has shown with Star Trek Voyager Elite Force that they are capable of taking an existing work and making something good with it. I just wish there was more to the Quake world for them to work with. Say what you want about Star Trek but it's a pretty detailed and full universe.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
He didn't said anything patriotic. It's very scary that christian == patriotic in so many peoples' minds...
Move along, no sig to see here.