
Happy 20th Birthday, Quake - miiiiiike
http://rome.ro/news/2016/6/22/happy-20th-birthday-quake
======
JoeAltmaier
My family played way, way too much Quake. One son played it thru entirely with
1 health, using only a laptop with scratchpad (no mouse) just to prove it
could be done. Had to cheat - but only because there were some health packs in
doorways that couldn't be avoided, so he went thru, then cheated to set his
health back to 1.

~~~
JTon
Awesome story. I hope he played it on the hardest difficulty too :P Er.. but
you do mean using a touchpad right? Unless a scartchpad is something
different?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Of course! Most games must be played on hardest difficulty. In fact when very
young (6-8) the boys liked to play only in God Mode - the young are very
conservative. I challenged them: win level 1 of Descent I at Insane level, and
I would buy Descent II. Got a call at work 2 days later! And they never
resorted to God Mode again.

------
malbs
I bought Doom before I owned a PC. I bought the game, and sat it on my bedside
while I saved up the money to buy a PC to play the game. I would go to the
retail stores and install Doom on the demo PCs there just so I could play it.

Finally I had enough money for a PC to play Doom, my brother and I played Doom
for a couple of years on our home lan. I played dialup doom with friends. I
played Doom with the mouse and keyboard because it was the only easy way to
strafe kill someone "easily". and then Quake came out.... I went to a friends
place and they were playing DM. I hadn't even heard of Quake. I was like "What
is this game" "Oh its Quake, by those guys who made Doom". I had to get it. I
had a 486. Wasn't ever going to fly. It ran like shit. You couldn't run out
and buy a AMD cpu to play it on either because of the FPU. You had to have an
Intel. So I bought a second hand Pentium 60, and off I went! I still remember
the day I got the Pentium 60 and 8mb of ram and now I could also run Windows
95 too.

Quake was a genre changing game, probably one of the most influential games
ever. id loved to make modifiable games, and Doom had quite a solid mod
community, but Quake was really the Internet's child. The Quake servers that
came online initially were dark foreboding places for anyone not on a fixed
line connection. You'd be dead before you knew what happened, so then Carmack
created QuakeWorld, with the predictive movement, and suddenly online gaming
FPS on a modem was a whole new experience.

So many game sites spawned from the advent of Quake that are still around
today. Entire media companies popped up around it.

People have mentioned in other threads why didn't more people use SVGA mode.
The answer is because no computer could run it at an acceptable speed. What
came of that? GLQuake. Then people were buying shitty (not at the time!)
Voodoo 3dfx cards to play GLQuake, with the broken GL implementation Glide,
and thus the video card arms race was born.

I got my first real job because of my affiliations with the Quake community.
My first true love (who I met through Quake), "Internet friends" that I made
playing QuakeWorld that I am still friends with today.

I don't believe any other game has had anywhere near as much influence on my
life, or gaming in general.

~~~
mstade
I was fortunate and privileged enough to have a father who very much liked
computers and made sure we always had them, even though he's never been all
that savvy. So while I never had difficulty in procuring either the hardware
or the software, I do very much recognize pretty much all the rest of your
writing – down to the first real job and everything. I'm still very much
friends with my old clan members today. Feeling very nostalgic right about
now!

I remember as well when QW came out and my friends would refuse to play it,
considering it cheating. So they only ever played LANs, or university
connections – since some were studying at the time – which were usually super
fast. (At the time, if nothing else.)

So many great memories.

------
rndmio
I know there's a lot of nostalgia involved, but in my mind this was a pivotal
moment in gaming. The step up from Doom (and alikes) to Quake was huge. Not to
mention how well designed and balanced the game was. I wasted so many hours
playing it originally and even now it still thrills, in a way I just haven't
had for a long time.

~~~
zorked
That was a beautiful moment in time when the technology was starting to reach
high levels of realism but the aesthetic of realism still hadn't become the
oppressive norm of mainstream gaming.

~~~
zanny
I don't know if this was intentional, but eevee just made a blog post about
this yesterday:

[https://eev.ee/blog/2016/06/22/graphical-fidelity-is-
ruining...](https://eev.ee/blog/2016/06/22/graphical-fidelity-is-ruining-
video-games/)

Probably to coincide with the anniversary.

~~~
Kristine1975
It was/is being discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11959444](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11959444)

------
WA
The obligatory mention: If you haven't yet, go ahead and read _Masters of
Doom_. It's the story of id Software, really well written and worth your time.

~~~
angersock
Seconding this. _Master of Doom_ was one of the reads that inspired me to be
interested in startups.

------
qrybam
Everything from Wolf3d to Quake3 has a special place in our household's
hearts. My dad brought the original iD games to mine and my sister's attention
when we were still kids. The first time we played co-op Doom as a family on
LAN is one of those memories that's been seared onto my brain - taking down a
Cyberdemon together was too much fun!

Quake had a similar impact because that's when we migrated from keyboard to
mouse for looking around - given it was truly 3D and all. But I have to say
that the Cyberdemon > Shambler, despite how cuddly the Shambler looked.

Happy Birthday Quake!

~~~
Kristine1975
_> that's when we migrated from keyboard to mouse for looking around_

I did one year earlier in Descent ;-)

~~~
DiabloD3
Descent and Descent II is why I owned a flightstick.

Ahh, multiplayer was so much fun.

~~~
talmand
Descent is why I broke a flightstick hat switch. Customer service knew what
was up as soon as I described the problem.

------
bluedino
I remember when QTest hit the internet, it was beta of sorts to help test
network play (and the whole engine, I guess). Even though it was only 3
levels, I was blown away by the lighting of the players weapon when you
rotated, the SVGA modes...

Did they release screenshots in 320x200 because that was the lowest common
denominator resolution? Windows 95 was out at the time so I know people would
have been able to view 640x480x256 screenshots.

~~~
joakleaf
Quake was build for 320x200 (VGA) as primary resolution target.

I think, they initially wanted to release it for high powered 486s (66 Mhz or
higher), where VGA was really the only option.

The perspective correct texture mapping used a divide per 8 pixels, and this
required a high-powered 486.

In the end they more or less dropped 486 support, because they did perspective
mapping using the FPU, which allowed for parallel processing of pixel output
and the perspective divide on the Pentium (averaging just a few clock cycles
per pixel), but caused slower processing on the 486DX which had a much slower
FPU.

I still preferred VGA over SVGA on my Pentium 133Mhz, because it was
significantly more smooth.

~~~
mhd
> Quake was build for 320x200 (VGA) as primary resolution target.

Wasn't it Mode X, i.e. 320x240?

~~~
bluedino

        vid_describemodes
    
        Lists all available video modes, built-in and VESA.
    
        vid_mode #
    
        Switches the video mode to mode #.  Quake has 11 built-in modes:
    
        0:  320x200
        1:  320x200
        2:  360x200
        3:  320x240
        4:  360x240
        5:  320x350
        6:  360x350
        7:  320x400
        8:  360x400
        9:  320x480
        10: 360x480
    
        0 is the default mode.  Modes above 10 are not built in, but are VESA
        modes which may be supported by Quake and your hardware.  Use
        vid_describemodes to see the available VESA modes.

------
cm3
This and Unreal were the last great software rendered 3d game engines before
GPUs became mainstream.

EDIT: I should have mentioned the BUILD engine too, written single-handedly by
one developer for Duke Nukem 3D.

~~~
bluedino
>> written single handled you one developer for duke nukem 3D

Ken Silverman was a prodigy of sorts. I always wondered what he would have
done if he had ended up staying in the industry.

[http://advsys.net/ken/build.htm](http://advsys.net/ken/build.htm)

~~~
cm3
He's building stuff at Voxiebox now:
[http://www.voxiebox.com/team/](http://www.voxiebox.com/team/)

~~~
philjackson
He looks so young. Please don't let me fund out he built Build while I was
ogling the stripper sprites in Duke Nukem and barely managing my CGSE maths
homework...

~~~
psuter
From [1]:

> 08/24/1993: Ken signs employment agreement with Apogee Software Productions.
> A special provision on the contract says that Apogee cannot interfere with
> Ken's education.

Inferring from the first entry in the timeline, he must have been 17 or 18
then.

[1] [http://advsys.net/ken/build.htm](http://advsys.net/ken/build.htm)

------
balls187
I still remember playing multiplayer deathmatch (more than 1v1) over modem,
with ~200 ping, and still feeling how crazy responsive it was. That was as
transformative of an experience much like seeing SuperMario 64 for the first
time.

Quake multiplayer was where I had to abandoned playing "closed style" on a
keyboard and instead adopt the WASD mouse and Keyboard style.

Also remember when GameSpy was QSpy, and PlanetQuake was just a fan site?

And the fun of playing Threewave CTF with the grappling hook.

~~~
malbs
I reckon you're talking about QuakeWorld. Because Quake on a 200+ ping was
ice-skate-mode.

~~~
balls187
I can't recall exactly when I made the switch to Quakeworld, but I'm pretty
sure when I first fired up Quake1 over modem, it was still quite responsive
even with the original netcode.

------
wodenokoto
Compared to everyone else here, my impression of quake back in the day was
quite different. Back then I honestly couldn't appreciate the added 3D, but I
found the art direction beyond boring, especially compared to the vibrant,
changing and funny environments in Duke Nukem 3D. I found quake incredibly
uninspiring and stuck with Duke for a long time.

Today I can appreciate how much more advanced quake is.

Does anybody know why it was called quake instead of doom 3?

~~~
noonat
The earliest concepts for the game were quite different than Doom. You were
supposed to be playing a Thor-like character named Quake, who wielded a giant
hammer.

~~~
agumonkey
Stomping the ground to cause Quakes ?

~~~
frenchie14
The name Quake came from Carmack's D&D character, who was an inspiration for
the original game design

------
ComodoHacker
Is there a modern engine with hi-res support capable of running Q1 and Q2
WADs?

~~~
zanny
For Quake 1 its Darkplaces[1] or Quakespasm[2] (the former emphasizes more
features, but has been dead for some years, the later is meant to be a more
honest upgrade).

There are HD texture packs like Quake HD[3] and Epsilon[4] on moddb that work
with either. All HD modpacks for both games are just like any mappack.

For Quake 2 I use Yamagi[5], but there is also KMQuake2[6] which is like
Darkplaces from Quake 1. For HRT packs the only one I know of / have used is
Berserker[7].

I think all those moddb packages are prebundled with Windows executables. You
can just take the data directories and use them with your engine of choice.

[1][https://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/](https://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/)

[2][http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/](http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/)

[3][http://www.moddb.com/mods/quake-hd-pack-
guide](http://www.moddb.com/mods/quake-hd-pack-guide)

[4][http://www.moddb.com/mods/quake-epsilon-
build](http://www.moddb.com/mods/quake-epsilon-build)

[5][http://www.yamagi.org/quake2/](http://www.yamagi.org/quake2/)

[6][http://www.markshan.com/knightmare/](http://www.markshan.com/knightmare/)

[7][http://www.moddb.com/mods/berserkerquake2](http://www.moddb.com/mods/berserkerquake2)

~~~
ComodoHacker
Oh, thank you! I'll try them all.

------
strictnein
> "I'm going to share a document created by Joost Shuur"

Didn't Joost have a Quake site? I feel like he did.

Time to reminisce: Ran my own Quake levels site back in the day.
Meccaworld.com/quake with a lot of the files hosted at
quakemecca.simplenet.com because simplenet offered "unlimited" bandwidth.
([http://web.archive.org/web/19970217185506/http://meccaworld....](http://web.archive.org/web/19970217185506/http://meccaworld.com/quake/)
)

If you're looking for some quality Single and Multiplayer Quake levels, most
of the links work still (thanks to the magical way way back machine).

edit: to answer my question, yes -
[http://home.pages.de/~jschuur/](http://home.pages.de/~jschuur/)

~~~
pimlottc
Yep, Joost ("rhymes with toast") Shuur started Aftershock, the first major
Quake news site, during the pre-release days. Other sites like Blue's,
Redwood's and sCaryname's took over after the game was actually released.

Sometime after that, Joost, ran a directory (remember those?) of Quake-related
sites called Slipgate Central for a while.

Here's an old interview with him at the time:

[https://www.quaddicted.com/webarchive/hosted.planetquake.gam...](https://www.quaddicted.com/webarchive/hosted.planetquake.gamespy.com/spq2/quake1/int_joos.htm)

(Man, sure brings back a lot of memories, and not just of Quake; the 'net sure
was a different place back then...)

------
ConnorG
Was really expecting a longer post. Still pretty interesting though.

PS Really happy Romero set his URL like that.

------
excalibur
1996 was definitely a landmark year for 3D gaming.

[http://fortune.com/2016/06/23/nintendo-64-20-years-
old/](http://fortune.com/2016/06/23/nintendo-64-20-years-old/)

------
daurnimator
Dopefish lives....

------
smcnally
Wasn't a big player 20 years ago though many colleagues and employees were --
many occasions finding the "LAN guys" holed-up in the darkened data center at
Prodigy frag-festing. Been playing OpenArena for the past several months. It's
a lot of fun, and there are a lot of available mods.
[http://openarena.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page](http://openarena.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page)

------
kwijibob
I remember being on the main irc channel when both qtest and the quake 1
official shareware was released.

It was absolute insanity and great fun.

Such an exciting time.

~~~
wj
Yup. I believe it was EFNET #doom and I remember the release was delayed at
least a few hours while they were uploading it to their server. I think I
stayed up just long enough to start the download which probably took all night
on my 56k modem.

Also, I recall the main news site covering it had a brick background but
cannot remember the name.

------
haddr
Quake multiplayer was a really big thing!

I remember playing it on some 486 PCs, now unimaginable, but then it was
really great!

There was even a ~700KB (!) version, stripped down to the most necesary:
TCP/IP multiplayer with only 1 level, but man, you could bring it to the
classroom on a 1,44MB floppy!

------
revelation
Why are the screens so incredibly dark? Was the real game like this? I
honestly can't remember.

~~~
ekekekekekekl
The game was dark. These (doom, quake) were 256-color games which needed to
burn substantial portions of the available palette just to facilitate shading
and shadows atop colored textures. The dreary look of the game is somewhat
forced by the limitations of VGA.

~~~
Kristine1975
I don't think that's true. Doom also used 256 colors with the same technique
for shading and was much more colorful and brighter.

In some ways Quake started the "real is brown" trend.

That's not to say its visual design isn't really good, though!

~~~
ekekekekekekl
No, really, as these games progressed from the simpler wolf3d-style rendering
where there was no attempt to shade things, which allowed a much more diverse
set of colors, their colors became progressively less diverse.

Just look at the Quake palette:
[https://quakewiki.org/wiki/Quake_palette](https://quakewiki.org/wiki/Quake_palette)

Note how much of it is wasted on gradients, this is to get the more realistic
3d shading out of relatively few colors. Of course they made some choices in
designing Quake to better position itself for a successful result working
within these limitations, but it's the limitations forcing their hand.

~~~
Kristine1975
The Doom palette looks very similar though:
[http://zdoom.org/wiki/palette](http://zdoom.org/wiki/palette) So I don't
think Quake's style was necessitated by technology.

~~~
ekekekekekekl
They're not that similar in terms of how much space is spent on dark shades.
In the doom palette the gradients don't go down to full blackness, and there's
a technical reason for that; it's inappropriate for doom's engine.

The engines are very different in this regard, doom had no lighting. In quake
you had lighting, and potential for dark shadows. The lighted colors needed to
have range to blackness throughout, since they may occur in textures which get
cast into full shadow. By limiting the full intensity of the colors chosen,
smaller steps are achieved from black to full intensity across the 16 slots
each color gradient was given. Those smaller steps improve the rendering
quality, but the lower peak intensities contribute to the generally muted
color-space of the game.

Doom and Quake do not use the same techniques as you mentioned above, that's
incorrect. Quake was a major improvement over doom, doom more closely
resembles the faux-3d "raycasting" of wolf3d. Quake is more like a traditional
texture-mapped 3d engine, hence its 3dfx-accelerated readiness.

In the past I experimented with RGB direct-color modes in Mode-X (320x240x256)
using a 332 format, to have the full color cube available and not have to
preselect a fixed palette. This allowed a diverse color-space in a real-time
3d simulation, but the quality of the output was terrible due to the very few
shades given to each color from full darkness to full brightness. This is why
a game like Quake which would obviously benefit from a direct-color mode still
ends up opting for a palette of dramatically constrained colors; it's just to
improve the quality of the output.

In the world of 256 colors, the more advanced the 3d engines became the worse
the colors got.

The very thing that made Quake so impressive at the time was the 3d with
lighting and shadows on our 256-color displays. Nobody was doing that,
probably because everyone assumed direct-color was a requirement, and with the
VGA the only direct-color you could do was 8-bit "332". So while everyone was
waiting for PC graphics hardware to mature a bit, id came along and gave a us
a game full of browns, greens, and grays, and we loved it.

------
aidos
Before I purchased the box / CD I was given a copy of the demo by a friend. He
zipped it across 8 floppy disks and it took 2 painful attempts to get the
zipping process to work without corruption. Those were the days!

------
xufi
I was pretty young to play the original Quake but when I got around to play
with it and DOom 95 (in the mid 2000s ), I realized what a amazing game it was
and was hooked

------
russdill
So weird seeing these screenshots again. I remember seeing these 20 years ago
when they were first released.

------
rayvd
LAN parties!

