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[PROTOTYPE]

Terminator Future Shock...Quake prototype?

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I found something that intrigued me.Rumor is that,a few months before Quake was to be released,this FPS call Terminator:Future Shock came out.What really stood out about it was the impressive capalities that it'engine had.

I mean,come on,it had mouselook,true 3D,models,and so on.Nearly,if not all of Quake's capabilities.But it faded out just like any other obscure FPS a la Depth Dwellers.Why wasn't it popularized?Could have it been possibly caught in the whole Quake fanfare,and that's what caused it to flop?

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I wouldn't say Future Shock or SkyNET for that matter were obscure. AFAIK people generally regard them as the best Terminator-themed games ever.

The engine, in true Bethesda fashion, was buggy as hell.

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FutureShock and SkyNET use the same engine (Xngine) as Daggerfall. It's ridiculously buggy at times. I had a copy of Future Shock in the 90s because my friend bought it for himself and it was so unstable on his computer that he installed it on mine and played it at my house instead.

It can do things Quake can't do: vehicles, 3D automap, huge outdoor environments, etc. I don't think they ever licensed the technology, which is really too bad. Too many companies were building DOOM-engine stuff for a couple years after Future Shock was released.

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Quake 1 was never based nor "inspired" by Future Shock. They're two separate games with two different game goals. Quake 1 was meant to push 3D graphics to the limits with current PCs, while Future Shock was supposed to be a slower-paced FPS based on the Terminator franchise.

I figure Q1 became the one that made 3D the standard because of how famous iD was at the time and because Quake 1 was pure 3D. If you look at Future Shock videos, the only things that are models are the enemies. Everything else uses sprites. I don't think people at the time would've considered a game who's only 3D aspects are 3D enemies that slowly walk or hover to you to be revolutionary.

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[PROTOTYPE] said:
Why wasn't it popularized?


It wasn't popularized because it wasn't made by id or 3D Realms.

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[PROTOTYPE] said:
I mean,come on,it had mouselook,true 3D,models,and so on.Nearly,if not all of Quake's capabilities.But it faded out just like any other obscure FPS a la Depth Dwellers.Why wasn't it popularized?Could have it been possibly caught in the whole Quake fanfare,and that's what caused it to flop?

By this logic, Descent is a prototype for Quake. It had true 3D levels (though making them is a lot messier than Quake), polygon models for robots, some weapons, reactors, and even the little building you see at the end of a level is a polymodel. Its mouse control was honestly probably one of the best implementations for its time.

There's probably more to why it vanished than just the graphics and basic controls alone.

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It wasn't as easy to mod, the engine (although very impressive) was accident-prone, it was never open-sourced, and since it's a licensed franchise deal it stopped being sold when the license expired.

There's also the fact that games based on "foreign" franchises (movies generally) tend not to be as successful as "native" franchises. Compare Doom with Dark Forces for another example. When you look at the best-selling games of all times, you'll see most of them are their own franchises instead of being derived from some blockbuster movie/comic/tabletop game/whatever.

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InsanityBringer said:

By this logic, Descent is a prototype for Quake. It had true 3D levels (though making them is a lot messier than Quake), polygon models for robots, some weapons, reactors, and even the little building you see at the end of a level is a polymodel. Its mouse control was honestly probably one of the best implementations for its time.

There's probably more to why it vanished than just the graphics and basic controls alone.


It wasn't made by iD Software and it wasn't a FPS.

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Darkman 4 said:

it wasn't a FPS.

It was first person. You moved around through levels shooting stuff. How exactly is it not an FPS?

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yellowmadness54 said:

I dont count decent as an FPS, either.


Well I've never heard of Decent, so I guess I'll have to take your word for it.

:P

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Marcaek said:

Well I've never heard of Decent, so I guess I'll have to take your word for it.

:P


Whatever Im on a phone.

Its a flight game. For flight.

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Yeah, but from a first-person perspective, and the focus of the game is shooting. FPS'es don't have to be from the POV of a person\robot\something else with 2 legs.

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[PROTOTYPE] said:
I mean,come on,it had mouselook,true 3D,models,and so on.Nearly,if not all of Quake's capabilities.


Those features aren't really that impressive. After all, Ultima Underworld had mouselook, slopes, true 3D, and primitive models (pretty much only used for bridges)... and was released two months before Wolfenstein 3D.

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NiGHTMARE said:

Those features aren't really that impressive. After all, Ultima Underworld had mouselook, slopes, true 3D, and primitive models (pretty much only used for bridges)... and was released two months before Wolfenstein 3D.


System Shock 1 had some 3D models in game and a completely 3D cyberspace area you could access with 360 degree movement, but you don't hear anyone saying that Quake 1 stole SS1's title as the first 3D game or whatever people say about Future Shock.

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yellowmadness54 said:

Its a flight game. For flight.


Descent: the only flight simulator in which your plane can hover and strafe, and you're flying in a maze full of monsters that you shoot.

Saying Descent is a flight sim, not an FPS, is like saying Rage is a role-playing game, not an FPS. Yeah, there might be a few elements borrowed from a different genre, but it's still solidly FPS at the core.

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Descent is obviously an FPS game.

Future Shock is a great Terminator themed game (best one I've ever seen actually), but it doesn't have anything going for it in terms of mainstream appeal. The engine is buggy. Gameplay is slow, which actually works quite well coupled with the setting as it feels more like a survival horror game than the run and gun FPS standard of its time. The maps are HUGE and take a lot of time to explore which I suppose isn't much fun if you're bored by the gameplay in the first place.

I let all of the problems slide because I was instantly immersed in the devastated cities and creepy atmosphere that the game delivered. That and I loved how the basic shotgun was the best weapon in the game :P

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Darkman 4 said:

System Shock 1 had some 3D models in game and a completely 3D cyberspace area you could access with 360 degree movement, but you don't hear anyone saying that Quake 1 stole SS1's title as the first 3D game or whatever people say about Future Shock.


Selective butthurt concern over plagiarism always makes for a fun flaming discussion. Like e.g. those people claiming Angry Birds specifically copies Crush the Castle...while forgetting that they both copy Worms, which in turn copied GORILLAS.BAS, which ripped off Artillery, which probably ripped off WWII analog artillery computers, which ripped off mediaeval catapults, which ripped off the javelin-throwing Bushman, who ripped off the stone-throwing caveman.

For fun, imagine if the first ever incarnation of a concept, game or technology was NEVER enhanced or improved upon, for fear of appearing a "ripoff": there would be a proliferation of prototypical appliances, programs, games, ideas, etc. but none of them would get refined to the point of being marketable or really useful. Someone would e.g. make the first Artillery game and leave it at that. Someone would make the first CUI OS and leave it at that. MAYBE someday someone would have the idea for the first GUI OS, make it, and then leave it at that, until maybe 50 years later someone invented the touchscreen out of the blue. What a great world to live in....

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Future shock was impressive. But the bugs made it hard for me to get anywhere with it.

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Maes said:

Selective butthurt concern over plagiarism always makes for a fun flaming discussion. Like e.g. those people claiming Angry Birds specifically copies Crush the Castle...while forgetting that they both copy Worms, which in turn copied GORILLAS.BAS, which ripped off Artillery, which probably ripped off WWII analog artillery computers, which ripped off mediaeval catapults, which ripped off the javelin-throwing Bushman, who ripped off the stone-throwing caveman.

For fun, imagine if the first ever incarnation of a concept, game or technology was NEVER enhanced or improved upon, for fear of appearing a "ripoff": there would be a proliferation of prototypical appliances, programs, games, ideas, etc. but none of them would get refined to the point of being marketable or really useful. Someone would e.g. make the first Artillery game and leave it at that. Someone would make the first CUI OS and leave it at that. MAYBE someday someone would have the idea for the first GUI OS, make it, and then leave it at that, until maybe 50 years later someone invented the touchscreen out of the blue. What a great world to live in....


And that's why arguing who did something first is a waste of time. Who popularized it is more important. You can argue about who added 3D models into a game first, but everyone knows that Quake 1 was the game that got everyone to switch to true 3D on PCs.

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Gez said:

It wasn't as easy to mod, the engine (although very impressive) was accident-prone, it was never open-sourced, and since it's a licensed franchise deal it stopped being sold when the license expired.

Actually, Descent was open-sourced, just not under a free software license. This is how we have ports like DXX-Rebirth and D2X-XL.

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Aliotroph? said:

It can do things Quake can't do: vehicles...

Quake can do vehicles,as much as I know.There was a level in the first expansion pack that had a moving boat...

Anyway,bottom line:Quake can do moving sectors,so I guess it can improvise some form of vehicles as well.

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yukib1t said:

Actually, Descent was open-sourced, just not under a free software license. This is how we have ports like DXX-Rebirth and D2X-XL.


As you could have guessed from the talk about franchise and license, I was talking about Terminator: Future Shock. The Xngine was never open-sourced, regardless of license.

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[PROTOTYPE] said:

Quake can do vehicles,as much as I know.There was a level in the first expansion pack that had a moving boat...

Anyway,bottom line:Quake can do moving sectors,so I guess it can improvise some form of vehicles as well.


My view is that something is only a vehicle if you have 360 degree control over it. Otherwise, it's just a set of brushes rigged to give the impression of a vehicle via func_traintrack or whatever the equivalent of it is in other games.

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Darkman 4 said:

My view is that something is only a vehicle if you have 360 degree control over it. Otherwise, it's just a set of brushes rigged to give the impression of a vehicle via func_traintrack or whatever the equivalent of it is in other games.

Doesn't Quake have an equivalent to Hexen's ACS Scripting that would make this 360 degree control possible?

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[PROTOTYPE] said:

Doesn't Quake have an equivalent to Hexen's ACS Scripting that would make this 360 degree control possible?


There's a few Quake 1 mods that has vehicles with 360 degree control, so it would be possible. It's just not in the default game nor expansion packs.

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Darkman 4 said:

There's a few Quake 1 mods that has vehicles with 360 degree control, so it would be possible. It's just not in the default game nor expansion packs.

Got it.

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Marcaek said:

AFAIK people generally regard them as the best Terminator-themed games ever.

Which isn't saying much.

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