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Quake is 10

cyclomedia writes "Late on 22nd June 1996 Quake was uploaded to cdrom.com's archives in the form of 7 1.44MB floppy disk images. Though it wasn't until the 23rd that everyone realised (or at least, that's my excuse for being a day late with the news submission). Cue much aggravation on the newsgroups as eager downloaders experienced glorious 2 FPS gameplay."

78 of 405 comments (clear)

  1. Old schoolin' by Pope · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hell, I remember going to a vending machine at a local mall to buy Doom! Had to supply my own 3.25" floppies and everything. What a crazy way of getting software, and IIRC it was $18 in 1 dollar coins.

    --
    It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
    1. Re:Old schoolin' by stupidfoo · · Score: 4, Funny

      3.25" floppies? Crazy. Where'd you get those from?

    2. Re:Old schoolin' by Mercano · · Score: 4, Funny

      AOL used to send me 3.5" flopies in the mail all the time for me to reformat and use for whatever. Now all I get is read-only coasters. Sigh, can't get good swag anymore.

      --
      #include <signature.h>
    3. Re:Old schoolin' by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 3, Funny

      Oh, metric floppies, yeah. 1.44 litres instead of the standard 1.2 quarts or something.

      --
      Just junk food for thought...
    4. Re:Old schoolin' by Skraut · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Heh, that's how I supplied myself in college. Found a website where you could request an AOL disk. I put everyone in my dorm in, then sat a box by our mailboxes which said "Don't want your AOL disk, drop it here" As I recall I ended up with over 80, more than my CS needs, I ended up selling them.

      --
      Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
    5. Re:Old schoolin' by kirun · · Score: 2, Informative

      Floppy disks are metric! 90x94mm amd not actually 3.5"

      --
      I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
  2. The Size was incredible by neonprimetime · · Score: 3, Insightful

    quake091.zip is nearly 9MB in size

    Oh how times have changed.

    1. Re:The Size was incredible by rblum · · Score: 5, Funny

      Times haven't really changed - quake091.zip is still 9 MB in size.

    2. Re:The Size was incredible by shish · · Score: 4, Interesting

      cough. 1% of quake 1's filesize, and much better graphics too... It makes me wonder -- WTF are today's multi-gig games doing with all that space?

      --
      I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
    3. Re:The Size was incredible by lofidan · · Score: 2, Informative

      And all by having massive system requirements and being made 10 years later than Quake! Amazing.

    4. Re:The Size was incredible by NCraig · · Score: 2, Funny
      1% of quake 1's filesize, and much better graphics too... It makes me wonder -- WTF are today's multi-gig games doing with all that space?


      Umm... status bars?

      life: 050
      ammo: 096
      weak ass hud: priceless
  3. 10 years! by uberjoe · · Score: 5, Funny

    Insert Ob "My God, now I feel old" comment.

    --

    The days of the digital watch are numbered.

    1. Re:10 years! by doti · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Specially if you realize that today's multi-giga games don't offer much more, neither in fun, gameplay, and even content.

      --
      factor 966971: 966971
    2. Re:10 years! by Professeur+Shadoko · · Score: 4, Funny

      As long as he does not claim that Doom has turned 10. When THAT happens, I'll feel really old.

    3. Re:10 years! by stratjakt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Oh bullshit.

      Quake 4, Half Life 2, etc.. All the fun and more, with a healthy dose of jaw-dropping graphics.

      Quit trying to get cred by waxing nostalgic for graphics that sucked.

      I remember Quake fondly, one of my first University projects was to write a report analysing the usage of a particular language, and while most of the class jumped on the shiney new Java, or latest iteration of Visual Basic, and I did QuakeC. Got like a 97% on the project too, dragged down by a couple stupid typos.

      It was fun pissing my roommate off by playing various Quake mods all hours of the night, and when he'd complain I could retort with "I'M RESEARCHING MY PROJECT ASSFACE"

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    4. Re:10 years! by Moofie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's such a tired argument. I enjoyed Half Life way, way more than I enjoyed Quake. Your mileage may vary, but it's silly to argue that games were better in the Good Old Days.

      Remember Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is crap. You only remember the good stuff.

      --
      Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
    5. Re:10 years! by jsnipy · · Score: 2, Informative

      yes. TeamFortress started off here as well.

      --
      -- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
  4. ah the memories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have a 486 Dx2/80 with a Diamond Stealth 64 2120
    > video card and I get 6.2 fps in the start. While in Duke 3D, I get well
    > over 30+ fps. Why is Quake so slow compared to Duke 3D?



    Ahh... the last time anything besides Windows Vista got compared to Duke Nukem.

    1. Re:ah the memories by dreamlax · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Duke Nukem 3D's engine used billboarding. If you remember back to your old Doom days, some things on the map would look the same no matter what angle you looked at it [a good example of this is the trident shaped candle holders right at the end of episode 1 map 1]. It was similar for Duke Nukem in a lot of ways. The enemies were all billboarded onto the screen, but they drew side-on and rear (possibly more) angles of the enemies so they don't always look at you. In Quake however, just about everything is 3D, including the rockets you shoot... even the nails I believe. I can't recall anything that was billboarded in Quake (but then again I haven't played it for a good 7 years or so). Billboarding was a simple tactic to speed up 3D environment rendering. It looks great until you get close or the angle changes quickly. So main difference: Duke Nukem 3D: Not entirely 3D Quake: More 3D than Duke Nukem 3D (if not fully 3D)

    2. Re:ah the memories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
      I have a 486 Dx2/80 with a Diamond Stealth 64 2120 video card and I get 6.2 fps

      Don't use a three year old S3 chipset video with a two year old Cyrix/AMD -- it is 1996 and Intel owns games.
      That 80MHz machine is no better than an i486/33 which is barely a shade better than AMD's i386/40.
      And Gateway2000 has had an under $2000 Pentium for 18 months now.
      Go back to your two year old, 64 bit Atari Jaguar.

  5. Still my Pentium favourite by saskboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used to run Quake I on a 486DX 80MHz with 8MB of RAM. It was fantastic when I upgraded to 12MB then 20MB. It was THE reason to get a Pentium computer.

    In recent years Unreal has replaced it as my favourite. I got my screenname [used on Slashdot now too] from playing Quake on dialup, and P2P with another local kid.

    --
    Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
  6. Happy Birthday! by Thrymm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This game alone changed my gaming habits! Countless nights after the bar a friend and I would go out onto pubs and frag or try to frag all drunk! Or would just dial each other for 1 on 1 DM!

    Fun times!

  7. I can still remember Quake 1 being released by phaetonic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1) Quake 1 was released for $9.99 as shareware with the full soundtrack. It was able to be unlocked with a code, and so of course, keygens came out and enabled you to play the full version for $9.99 with the awesome Trent Reznor soundtrack in all it's glory. 2) When QuakeWorld came out, you could play with others anywhere at 600 ping and still be o.k with it. There was a few seconds delay, but you would essentially predict what you wanted to do. I remember I would turn, grapple against a wall, let go, and shoot hoping I was able to hit something. I don't remember broadband back in the day. I wonder what the next innovation will be that redefines video game playing.

    1. Re:I can still remember Quake 1 being released by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Been there, done that. Hey, I was a poor college student!

      Coincidently, I still have the soundtrack on my mp3 player. Which, interestingly enough, has more horsepower than the machine I bought to play Quake (with a student loan, I might add).

      I was playing qtest1 for weeks before the official release. My first real-world program was a utility that queried servers for the people playing on them. God, I miss that game.

  8. Your excuse by aborchers · · Score: 5, Funny

    (or at least, that's my excuse for being a day late with the news submission)

    I thought it was because you were using that Procrastnatr calendar thingy...

    --
    Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
  9. Still have flashbacks ... by Average_Joe_Sixpack · · Score: 5, Funny

    I like to think of the original Quake as my own personal Vietnam

  10. Re:2 FPS? by PoderOmega · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It was playable 486DX2/66 with 8 megs of RAM

  11. Not Quake, but GL Quake! by 9Nails · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For me, the game wasn't on until a little later a company called 3DFX released the Voodoo graphics card. Which you could install a front end called GL Quake to play Quake with arcade quality graphics. That, was a true game revolution for me. The full 3D engine, and liquid smooth graphics. I love it!

    Now hurry and get people to help out at http://www.quakeremix.com/ !!!!!

    1. Re:Not Quake, but GL Quake! by spyrochaete · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I remember seeing GLQuake for the first time. It really blew me away. The thing that convinced me that 3D was the way to be was the effect where rockets became their own light source. I seem to recall reading that this effect was coded in 30 minutes on a bet.

  12. Quake still has a feature no other FPS has... by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...it's playable with 32 players on a single server when all the players (though not the server of course) are on modems. Quakeworld rocked my world then, and it still does. Let's also not forget how easy it was to mod; sure there were doom mods, but quake was the game that catapulted us into the wide world of modding.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  13. Classic quotes by Robotron23 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Some quotes for our own amusement and wistful recollection :);

    "Still have 486? Get a Pentium immediately!"

    "I have a 486 Dx2/80 with a Diamond Stealth 64 2120 video card and I get 6.2 fps in the start."

    "Am I the only person who just can't /stand/ things like heretic/duke's look up/down?"

    "Well over 30+ fps at start of Duke3d ? Thats top DX4-100 speed....actually I haven't seen a DX4-100 that tops 28."

    "There's an option, r_fullbright (1/0) which turns off all lighting effects and speeds up the FPS tremendously."

    Those were the days - further I can recall back to is the Voodoo 2, anyone have any further fond memories of the mid 1990s GPU situation?

    1. Re:Classic quotes by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Informative

      There were no GPUs in the mid 90s, the Voodoo/Voodoo 2 didn't have GPUs, they were mere rasterizers. The first GPU was nvidia with the GeForce 256, Aug 31 1999. It took a long while for it to really catch on, since it's just as easy to do the 3d to 2d conversion in memory (CPU).

      The 3D engine used by Quake and Quake 2 was pure software, the CPU did all the heavy lifting geometry wise (and still does, for the most part). AFAIK, the 3d geometry part of it is still mainly CPU based, you can't just send every polygon in the world up to the GPU and expect it to sort the shit out in a timely fashion. BSP trees and face culling and all kindsa nifty hacks abound for such things.

      We had no fancy hardware T&L business or programmable pixel shaders, and that's how we liked it.

      I remember walking uphill 40 miles in the snow just to frag newbies with my nailgun.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    2. Re:Classic quotes by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 2, Informative

      My first 3d accel card was a Diamond Voodoo Banshee. Top of the line card, for $150. Playing GLQuake with it was incredible.

  14. Revolutionary Game and GPL'ed Engine by aymanh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Happy birthday Quake!

    And thanks to Id for releasing its source code under GPL, because of this, the game is still being played and mod'ed after 10 years of its initial release, check Tenebrae for example, which adds modern rendering techniques like per-pixel lighting and stencil shadows to the original game.

    --
    python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
    1. Re:Revolutionary Game and GPL'ed Engine by stratjakt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What would be extra cool would be for them to release the original PAK files (ie; the full version game) for free, it can't be worth anything to them at this point.

      Tenebrae was what I was thinking of when I posted a link to DarkPlaces, but it's another good version of Quake with fancy new graphics.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  15. Re:2 FPS? by fistfullast33l · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yeah I seem to remember playing quake in Windows 95 with those hardware specs. And someone was complaining about TCP/IP in that mailing list, but I seem to remember playing Quake over the internet on dialup. Fun times. I miss the custom Quakeworld skins myself. And I think there was AirQuake as well that rocked.

  16. Indeed by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 2, Informative

    The single-player was fun, but the real accomplishment of Quake is bringing in the era of deathmatch.

    And it's still alive and.. well.. ok, so it's just twitching. I got this game the week it came out (wow, I was 10yo then) and havn't stopped playing since. Connect to oc9.org with your QuakeWorld client for some fun :)

    It's the arcade-ish physics meant to run on 10 year old cpus that differenciates the game from modern ones, and actually makes the game more fun to play. Your skill in multiplayer depends a lot on mastering the physics that will let you go 10x your normal speed if you let it (there is no spoon!). Be sure to check out QdQwav if you havn't already seen it.

    1. Re:Indeed by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The single-player was fun, but the real accomplishment of Quake is bringing in the era of deathmatch.

      To me the major accomplishment was that it had co-op play. Unfortunately, it totally failed to usher in an era of co-op. Playing Quake with two or three people (or Doom for that matter - it's not like Quake was the first FPS with that feature) was just riotous fun. I have played Q2 with the co-op mod, but it's buggy. Or it was then...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Indeed by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yup, back with Doom the serial cable was god! The endless co-op games of Doom and Quake were awesome - no matter how many times you'd gone though the game, it was still fun if you had a buddy plastering baddies guts next to you. That ended with Quake, though. Quake 2's co-op felt somehow lacking.

      I wish ID would go back to their roots and stop making these single player tech demos :(

    3. Re:Indeed by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Informative
      Unfortuntally we never got it to connect at 56k, so image doom at half speed.

      56k modems don't support sending at 56k (or, actually, 53k as per the FCC.) They can only receive at that speed. I'm not sure if they can send at 33.6k, or if it's only 28.8k, but that's the peak, so they're not going to send THAT fast, either.

      Even when you do connect to a proper host device, like a PRI-connected Ascend Max box or something, you don't get to send at 56k. You send at 33.6kbps IIRC, and receive at 53k. Again, these are both maximums. You'll probably never see a perfect connection in your life, statistically. Certainly I haven't.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Indeed by donscarletti · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I remember back in highschool, every day we played quake co-op at lunchtime. We had 8 people playing through it on nightmare difficulty. Eventually we got to the point that everyone had an exact role to do and path to follow on each level. We managed to consistantly get through it in 40 minutes or so after a few months of doing it every single day. There's just something that co-op has over everything else, the level of screaming sitreps and orders across the room, the level of everyone thinking that they are elite SAS commandos. There is just nowhere else you can find that stuff, not even in Battlefield 2 (a damn good game though).

      I think the edge Quake had was it wasn't designed for coop, but had just enough coop friendly features (late arrivals doors etc) to make it still fun to play. That way we were able to exploit it, wait at certain doors, hit buttons in certain orders and split up into certain sized fireteams in places to thoroughly beat the system. Most coop games make the mistake of making the game linearly harder with more players, that is stupid because you don't feel your buddies are helping you, it would be no harder to be there on your own. If nightmare becomes easy in co-op, you owe a lot to your team and feel connected.

      --
      When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
  17. Perfect time to re-install and re-play by shoolz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I still play the original Quake. Nothing has every really come close to the "arcade-y" feel of Quake. The controls were tight, and the game was pure fun. I encourage you to honor Quake's 10 year aniversary by re-installing it and playing for an evening.

    Put it on nightmare, type +mlook into the console and let er rip. Not many games can be enjoyed 10 years after their initial release, but Quake stands above the crowd.

    1. Re:Perfect time to re-install and re-play by stratjakt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Better yet, play it with this.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    2. Re:Perfect time to re-install and re-play by shoolz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes! Serious Sam : The Second Encounter (not to be confused with Serious Sam 2) was a fantastic game... A game I play at least once a year and would highly recommend to any fast-paced FPS fan. Played on 'Serious' difficulty, it's one of the toughest FPS games ever (but really fun!)

  18. 88mph by linvir · · Score: 4, Funny
    I was about to post a reply in that thread, you know, to send a message back and boast about how good our computers are here in the future or something, but apparently...
    Sorry...
    You cannot reply to this topic because it is more than 30 days old or has been closed by a moderator.
    Please return to the main page.
    And I was gonna get so much cred with my 'amazing' Pentium III laptop... anyone know when Google will be implementing this feature?
  19. Re:Anyone Remember... by gauntlet420 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Indeed I do. Doom I and II, Final Doom, Quake, Heretic, Hexen and Wolf3d ... and the miracle of qcrack.exe...

  20. 3.25" floppies by artemis67 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Basically, you had to buy some 3.5" floppies and then trim .25" off of one edge with the scissors before they would fit in the vending machine.

    1. Re:3.25" floppies by aquabat · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't trim the side with the write-protect tab.

      --
      A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
  21. Re:Still have it... by stratjakt · · Score: 2, Funny

    Probably because about 8 people worldwide actually paid to unlock it. I know I didn't.

    I warezeded it, so kudos to the real heroes: CLASS.

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  22. Next you'll be telling kids to get off your lawn by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, what is it with the grouch crowd on Slashdot that lvoes to hate on any game newer than 1980s? Look man, I'm big on old games, really big. I play onld NES and SNES games all the time, I've worked hard to get my DOS emulator working well on XP-64 so I can play X-com, Castles, Darklands, Epic Pinball and such. I really enjoy classic gaming. However, I play new games too, and let me tell you, there's been major improvements.

    There are plenty of great new games, if you haven't found them it is because you are being willfully blind. Some are nothing more than updates of old games, but wonderful ones at that. Civilization 4 is a good example. As the name implies it's the 4th in the series. Each game is just the old one made anew. The fundimental premise of the game doesn't change. However each one is a worthy successor. The gameplay and mechanics take a huge step up, as well as graphics and sound. Some are more orignal, such as Knights of the Old Republic. Jedi Knight meets NWN.

    Also, I think you'll discover that if you take off the rose coloured glassess of memory you'll find that many of those great old games, well, aren't. I've found that games that I just loved as a kid are not nearly as good now. I remember how tought Final Fantasy used to see, how a group of us would get together on the weekends and play it as a team. Now it's trivial, formulaic even. If enemy if type X, do strategy Y, etc. Still cool, but no comparison to, say Baldur's Gate 2. Of course I doubt I'd have liked BG2 as a kid, too high level, too much reading.

    So please, let's stop with this "new games don't bring anything to the table". Yes they do. They aren't all great, of course, but you would be positively amazed at the utter crap released for old systems. Ever play Captian Novilon? I thought not, it was an SNES game about diabeties. Yes really. A huge pile of shit and it's just one of a massive list.

    There are plenty of new, good games. There are plenty of resources to help you find them, or you can ask on Slashdot. However if you can't find any good modern games, the problem is not the state of games, the problem is you.

  23. Descent. by KDR_11k · · Score: 5, Funny

    I grew up on Descent instead of Quake. Now I'm immune to motion sickness.

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    1. Re:Descent. by mrorange764 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      im not old enough to remember the original quake but me and my buddies would play descent 3 on the computers at school at lunch (it was one of the good games that we could find that would run on the school macs) and once you got that bugger running with 16 players it was just pure insanity bottled up into something that would make the newbs run screaming at the sight of the entire world spinning around with missles whizzing by their faces. it was magic

      --
      "and thats all i have to say about THAT" -2 the ranting gryphon
  24. Re:blah blah by stratjakt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    blah blah blah slashdot mods are fags blah blah blah everybody knows this blah blah blah karma is just a game to play blah blah no meaning blah blah blah kiss some linus ass and get your karma back blah blah browse at -1 for the good comments blah blah

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  25. Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law by arivanov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is nothing wrong with the slashdot crowd.

    In fact everything is right with the slashdot crowd.

    The slashdot crowd is absolutely bloody right to expect that 10 years later something with the visuals of Quake and the level of game AI complexity of Nethack should have been written released and shipped.

    And that has not happened. The monsters in the newer quakes, dooms and the likes are as daft as in the original. There is no random or even pseudorandom level generation.

    It is the same old grind. Granted it is with very fancy visuals, but in 10 years I would have expected the industry to come up with something moderately more engaging.

    So the slashdot crowd is entitled to bitch and it surely does.

    When it is not engaged playing Nethack. Where the f... did that storm giant go... I need to kill it and eat it as I am missing the intrinsic...

    --
    Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
    http://www.sigsegv.cx/
  26. blah blah stupid mods blah blah RTFA blah blah by spun · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is funny in the context of the article. RTFA before you mod, m'kay?

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  27. Re:2 FPS? by Myself · · Score: 2, Informative

    And a lot more playable on a 486DX40, also with 8 megs. The difference is that the DX2/66 clocked its bus at 33MHz, whereas the 40 was a real 40MHz bus. I was running a Trident 9400CXi in a VLB slot, and while only rated for a 33MHz bus, it did fine at 40.

    Since the video card wasn't doing any of its own processing, moving the CPU-->Video data as fast as possible was the best thing you could do for that game. And you didn't need gobs of RAM either, if your hard drive was also sitting behind a fast VLB controller.

  28. Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Name one thing that is in an FPS game that isn't in current quakeworld engines. Note that quakeworld has been opensourced for a long time now and has had time to evolve purel based on peoples desire for a better engine, no desire to try to be able to sell polished crap. Whether you're a visual junkie(Specular lighting, 24bit textures, Luma textures, Bloom lighting, Weather effects, Per pixel shadows, particle explosions/trails, etc), a Tech junkie(MD1/2/3 model support (thats quake1 through quake3 and everything between), BSP1/2/3 (Again, q1-3 and every game based on it), PK3 support(the compressed archive q3 uses to store its files), even so far as to support Quake3 QVMs, which is pretty much a .dll that is the entirety of a mods game-code, Direct encoding from ingame to an avi (xvid+mp3), etc)

    And then theres the stuff for gameplay. Fully customizable hud. Arbitrarily re-coloring text(makes for good teamplay scripts), Regular expression triggers for console text(so you can match "someone stole your flag!" and play a sound for example), TCL scripting(I don't like it, but to each their own), Advanced scripting (if/then blocks, variables, math), etc.

    It's not that games havn't improved since 1996, its that while companies are busy trying to add a few new features to their engines so they can hype it up, we've all been sitting here playing with the best christmas present anyone ever got us--Quake's source.

    Of course I only focused on the engine (whats important-- as a good mod has its balls cut off by being on a bad engine), but for gameplay just look at stuff like CustomTF, RocketArena, MidAir, ClanArena. For that matter, I've yet to have a better co-op experience than quake right out of the box.

    --
    Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
  29. Re:2 FPS? by plague3106 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Um, bullshit? 486s did have the option of a FPU. I had a 486DX (which means I had an FPU). Was rid of it by the time Quake came out though, so I can't say if it played ona 486... but if it couldn't it certainly wasn't because of lack of an FPU.

  30. Quake beta by Kedjoran · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ah, Quake was a classic. My brothers had gotten their hands on the beta version of it before it had been released. The Twist? It had no enemies in it. Imagine how fast it became boring.

  31. Quake Done Quick by Denny · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This seems like a good time to mention something I ran across again a few days ago - Quake Done Quick. These guys finish the whole of the original Quake, on Nightmare difficulty, in 12 minutes and some seconds. Incredible.

    Check it out: http://clanservers.multiplay.co.uk/?p=/ftpfiles.ph p%3Fpid%3D%26fid%3D953 (BIG .avi)

    --
    Police State UK - news and
  32. Attention, Mac users by Stormwatch · · Score: 2, Informative

    Quake and Quake II updates for Mac OS X --- Fruitz of Dojo.

  33. Re:2 FPS? by Craig+Davison · · Score: 3, Informative

    486DX - has an FPU.
    486SX - no FPU. (you could buy an add-on called a 487)

    This is not to be confused with the 386 series, which all needed a 387 to do hardware FP.
    386DX - no FPU. 32-bit wide external bus.
    386SX - no FPU. 16-bit wide external bus.

  34. You /still/ have 486? by ilyanep · · Score: 4, Funny
    blah blah blah only lamers have 486s
    blah blah blah blah blah...


    Still have 486? Get a Pentium immediately!
    You remind me of those people who complained
    that DOOM was slow on their 386 when DOOM
    came out the first time.


    Wow I love reading old technical newsgroups...
    --
    ~Ilyanep
    To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
  35. Quake was the pinnacle of games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Few reasons: 1) Required the players to know how-to do crap. To play it, to mod it, to run it but was accessable enough to not be overly complex. Keybindings for example. Also look at the current playerbase of todays games compared to Quakes and it's mods(ctf/tf). Sure you had a few assfucks but not like there is with todays frontrunners.
    2)No keep the dam cd in the drive even though we have 3 other layers of copy protection/account validation required, hello EA mfer's. 3) The game was fun to replay over and over. You know that thing called singleplayer. 4) Gameplay was king, not oh look at our water/terrain/multi-k poly count while the mechanics blow chunks. 5) Always was and always will be better than any Unreal based game. 6)It had a grenade launcher.

  36. Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law by BobNET · · Score: 2, Informative
    There is no random or even pseudorandom level generation.

    SLIGE, SCUDD, SLUMP.

    Okay, so they don't make breathtakingly amazing levels. But they're still better than 90% of the user-made Doom levels out there...

  37. Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law by flithm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sure there are some good new games. But I think there's something to what the grandparent said.

    Typical gamers that grew up with the current generation are really looking for flash and instant gratification. A large percentage of modern games focus primarily on graphics, and tend to throw gameplay out the window.

    Older games had to focus on gameplay simply because no matter how good the graphics were they still were just a series of low FPS, low-res, 2d, pixelated images.

    It's not that I'm against awesome graphics, I just think that gameplay has to come first, which really doesn't happen all that often any more... and I understand why. It's because most of the people who are driving the game market want flash over substance.

    And just so you know I do agree with that in some ways the game industry has made significant advances. Racing simulation games are absolutely awesome these days. TOCA 3 is probably one of the best racing sims ever made.

    On the other hand... I spend a lot more time in xmame than I do utilizing my fancy 3d graphics card. Why? Because they just don't make em like they used to.

  38. God, yes by metamatic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I couldn't understand why nobody wanted to play co-op. To me, co-op is the only interesting kind of multiplayer game. Yet even now, the emphasis in online games is on deathmatches.

    Me and a bunch of friends against a seemingly unstoppable horde of alien scum--that's what I want in a game.

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  39. In fact, Quake sucked by metamatic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I was a big DOOM player, and I was very disappointed in Quake. Not only were the monsters just as dumb, but the rest of the gameplay was dumber than DOOM--the idea of levels you had to puzzle out had apparently disappeared.

    I'd naturally assumed that Quake would improve the gameplay, monster AI, and co-operative play. Instead, they dumbed those down and just improved the graphics and deathmatches. And thus began the tendency of FPS games to develop in exactly the opposite direction to the direction I'm interested in.

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    1. Re:In fact, Quake sucked by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I was a big DOOM player, and I was very disappointed in Quake. Not only were the monsters just as dumb, but the rest of the gameplay was dumber than DOOM--the idea of levels you had to puzzle out had apparently disappeared.

      One of my favorite aspects of Quake is that they removed the retarded "puzzles" that were all over Doom. Having to run around trying to find a switch that you can barely see because the whole game looks like dogshit is not my idea of a puzzle.

      The criticism about the monsters is entirely valid though. They couldn't make them smarter, so they made them able to fire around corners (spider demons anyway) so that the game would be hard with stupid enemies.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  40. And today Sonic is 15 by ESqVIP · · Score: 2, Informative

    In a slightly off-topic note but which might interest many here, Sonic turned 15 today (born on June 23, 1991) according to IGN.

  41. OT: mod comment by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why is that a troll? Its a dis of t10+myear old hardware. Its really funny. Its like calling a Model T a POS. It doesn't even have any air bags! I think only an idiot would respond to that "troll" in a serious manner.

    --
    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  42. Quake Done Quick With a Vengeance by necro2607 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or even better, view the entire thing in the actual Quake 1 engine using the recorded demos (.dem)

    http://qdq.planetquake.gamespy.com/qdqwav.html

    Full collection of Quake 1 demo files for the run.

  43. Re:quake on a dual ISDN by Some_Llama · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Good stuff, having 10ms pings to most other college servers."

    Oh man I hated you guys soooo much!!!! I couldn't afford an ISDN or 2 56k connections back then (you could use this special modem from Diamond MM that would aggregate 2 modem connections).

    So I would kick everyone's butt except for those creeps with the sub 100 pings, zipping around with your rocket launchers, grabbing the pentagram of protection before I could.. arrgh!!

    I remember thinking that once I had sub 250 pings i would kick anyone's butt, then when dsl was finally affordable CS was all the rage and I had another year of losing before i got some skills...

    Bah.

  44. Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law by cgenman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The slashdot crowd is absolutely bloody right to expect that 10 years later something with the visuals of Quake and the level of game AI complexity of Nethack should have been written released and shipped.

    You mean, something with the visuals like This?

    In the 10 years since Quake, you've had engaging story elements added by the likes of Half Life, high player interaction with plot in Deus Ex, an MMPOFPS Planetside, the FPSRTS Savage, The whole counterstrike phenomenon, Goldeneye, an FPS platformer in Metroid... There have been a lot of great FPS games released in the 10 years since quake. To say that there was quake and then there was nothing ignores huge swaths of game development.

    You don't want smart monsters and you don't want random level generation. Trust me. Or don't. Smart monsters hide out of your cone of vision, and bury an axe in your back when you turn around. Smart monsters headshot you through the wall. Smart monsters are those 13-year-old fu$%ers who camp spawn points with sniper rifles. Random level generation, on the other hand, A: is very difficult to do, B: is very difficult for AI's to navigate, and C: the player loses the ability to "learn" an area, which is one of the most satisfying parts of playing an FPS game.

    The latest Dooms and Quakes are exactly like the old Dooms and Quakes because they're bloody sequals. Branch out a little, and you'll find all sorts of original fps games in the world.

  45. Vivid memories of the music by neltana · · Score: 3, Funny

    If I remember correctly, it was either Quake or Quake II that played its music from the CD while you were playing. Of course, if you happened to have a different CD in there, it would play that music instead.

    I vividly remember playing when my kid had left one of his CDs in there. I'd move into a some section of the map and it would suddenly trigger "Do You Want to Buy a Bunny" or something equally horrifying. It really added flavor to the game.

    Even better was that it would repeat the song over and over until you left the section. I'm not really sure why I never took the CD out...I guess it gave me incentive to keep moving.

  46. Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law by sgtrock · · Score: 2, Informative
    Name one thing that is in an FPS game that isn't in current quakeworld engines.


    Wide open spaces. :)

  47. Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law by Dirtside · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The slashdot crowd is absolutely bloody right to expect that 10 years later something with the visuals of Quake and the level of game AI complexity of Nethack should have been written released and shipped.
    Nope. Top-notch visuals, in practice, do not come about without a paid development team of professional artists and designers; the complexity of Nethack was evolved over two decades by geeks in their spare time. Companies will not take two decades to create a game (DNF notwithstanding), and geeks in their spare time do not have the resources to create top-notch game artwork.

    It is, in fact, entirely unsurprising that this hasn't happened.

    There is no random or even pseudorandom level generation.
    There's a very good reason why you rarely see random level generation: It's extremely limited. (As a game designer, I've had a good deal of experience with the problem of randomly generating game content.) "Preposterous!" you say. "Random level generation means exponentially increased variety for only slightly more effort!"

    While this is technically true, the problem with randomly generated content is that it's very easy for humans to recognize the patterns and elements of the random set. Anyone who's played Diablo or Diablo II enough is familiar with this. At first, the random levels are pretty neat, each time you go into the cathedral it's a different layout... but after a few times, you begin to recognize certain elements (a room shaped a certain way, a certain set of prison cells arranged just so), and after a while, you see enough permutations that even if the level isn't one you've exactly seen before, it's similar enough to all the others you've seen that it's basically the same.

    Even if you create 100 distinct rooms for your dungeon that can be arranged in 100 billion unique ways, there's still only 100 basic elements, and you'll begin to recognize them pretty quickly. Randomly generated content also violates the precept that games are a form of storytelling; and randomly generated stories are not interesting. Notice that even in a game like Diablo II, with randomly generated levels, the quests are always exactly the same and the dialogue is always exactly the same -- because you really can't randomly generate a good, original story.

    but in 10 years I would have expected the industry to come up with something moderately more engaging.
    I've played plenty of engaging games since Quake came out; if you haven't been "engaged" at all since then, that's your problem.
    --
    "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
  48. Pretty useless as coasters or "clay pigeons" by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 2, Informative

    Now all I get is read-only coasters.

    They are pretty useless as coaster, zero water absorbancy. The water just beads and rolls off as you pick up the coaster.

    They are pretty useless as clay pigeons as well. They launch just fine from the skeet launcher but they move way to fast since they are so much lighter. Worse, they present too low a profile and are a b*tch to hit while in flight.

    They are so so as sihlouette targets for plinking with a .22. They prop up and get knocked down just fine, but are too easily disturbed by wind and there is no satisfying "plink". Personally I'm sticking to bright red Coca Cola cans.

    I can't really find a damn useful thing to do with AOL CDs.