So the first game ever where Rocket Jump was possible is Heretic?

Rocket Jumping has become quite popular quirk in FPS games, including Doom. However in the original vanilla Doom, rocket jump was not possible due to absence of possibility to look up and down. I am just wondering what was the very first game, where rocket jumping was technically possible, and what was the game that made it really popular and well-known trick.

My thinking is that the very first game with rocket jump technically possible was Heretic. (In Doom it is kinda possible too, but you can only shoot horizontally so you can help accelerate and "jump" over slightly wider hole in floor than you could with walking or SR). In Heretic you actually have Phoenix Rod, that behaves like a rocket launcher, but most important is, that you can look down and shoot against floor, so you can actually launch yourself into air and make real "jump".

Nevertheless, I played through Heretic for many years during my childhood, but I do not remember I ever utilized Rocket Jumping. Maybe I just did not know about this possibility for many years, maybe I kinda knew about it, but never thought about actually taking advantage of it and jump into places which were not accessible directly. One possible reason was that I was losing lot of health when doing rocket jump, which I did not like. It was possible I could make shortcuts in some levels or even access keys out of strict yellow-green-blue sequence, but I never tried. Even nowadays when I play through Heretic, I avoid doing this as I consider it "cheating".

So what was the first game that made rocket jumping really well-known and popular style of gameplay? Was it Quake? And what was your experience with rocket jump in Heretic?

For rocket jumping you need one more thing - vertical thrust from explosions. Heretic did not have that.

3 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

For rocket jumping you need one more thing - vertical thrust from explosions. Heretic did not have that.

 

This is applicable only to Vanilla? Because I use GZDoom and I can rocket jump there in Heretic...

Yeah, GZDoom’s default settings add a lot of new features to the game’s physics. If you switch to strict vanilla compatibility, vertical thrust will be switched off.

The first game with such an ability is actually Marathon, which does have vertical thrust.

Oh ok, thanks. I did not know that, haven't played vanilla for so many years. So it also explains the question why I do not remember rocket jumping in Heretic from the early times - it was simply not possible, one reason I guess was that it would enable more cheating by skipping some level parts or getting into inaccessible places.

The first game i performed a rocket jump in was Rise of the Triad. But it was nothing like the Quake-style rocket jump. I had to jump backwards to perform the RJ.

1 hour ago, Hisymak said:

Rocket Jumping has become quite popular quirk in FPS games, including Doom. However in the original vanilla Doom, rocket jump was not possible due to absence of possibility to look up and down. I am just wondering what was the very first game, where rocket jumping was technically possible, and what was the game that made it really popular and well-known trick.

If you look at rocket jumping from a simplified mechanical perspective, then it's really just "damage boosting" at its very core. And it turns out that this particular kind of damage boosting was not only already possible in OG Doom, but actually intended. The secret exit on E3M6 was always intended to be reached by way of damage boosting with a rocket. To be fair, there's no vertical boost involved when you play under vanilla conditions, but the idea of "reaching a location that is otherwise impossible to reach by way of damaging yourself with a rocket" still applies. You can of course argue that this isn't actual rocket jumping because there's no vertical thrust involved, but that might be at least slightly arbitrary.

3 hours ago, InDOOMnesia said:

The first game with such an ability is actually Marathon, which does have vertical thrust.

And also Rise of the Triad. Both games (shareware version in case of RoTT) were released on 21st Dec, 1994.

3 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

If you look at rocket jumping from a simplified mechanical perspective, then it's really just "damage boosting" at its very core.

Yeah I get your point, but with "Rocket Jump" I really mean vertical thrust, as how most people commonly imagine what rocket jump is.

By the way, there are even more ways of "damage boosting" in Doom and Heretic. In Doom it's Archvile's attack, which makes you jump into air. I always thought the attack behaves the way that rocket-like explosion happens on floor under you, which will cause the vertical thrust. From this, I deduced that if I shoot a rocket from rocket launcher under myself (if it was even possible by looking down), it would cause vertical thrust as well. And there are some cases (in custom megawads) where you need to take archvile attack to jump onto a secret place, for example reach a secret exit. Something like this was present in Requiem and Plutonia (2?).

In Heretic the damage boosting is taking Iron Lich's tornado attack. It thrusts you into air, and by exploiting it, you can reach some places or skip some parts of map, the most significant example is E3M1.

45 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

3 hours ago, InDOOMnesia said:

The first game with such an ability is actually Marathon, which does have vertical thrust.

 

And also Rise of the Triad. Both games (shareware version in case of RoTT) were released on 21st Dec, 1994.

Well, did not know about ROTT, I played the game a bit, but I did not like it that much in order to fiddle with this. And never played or seen Marathon.

Still, what is the game that mainly popularized Rocket Jumping? Was it Quake?

5 hours ago, Hisymak said:

Rocket Jumping has become quite popular quirk in FPS games, including Doom. However in the original vanilla Doom, rocket jump was not possible due to absence of possibility to look up and down.

Well...

2 hours ago, Hisymak said:

Still, what is the game that mainly popularized Rocket Jumping? Was it Quake?

Yes.

Rocket jumping? In Doom?

No, I'd say more like rocket boosting.

Rocket jumping is a thing in doom the same way that jumping over gaps in doom isn't called "running over gaps." Requiring vertical thrust to be called a "jump" is heavily splitting hairs on an engine which isn't coded for that capability.

Quake is the game that popularized rocket-jumping and grenade-jumping.

E4m4 in Quake has an intentional grenade launch boost jump. You're supposed to place a grenade into a small hole and get boosted into a teleporter in the air. This, like e3m6 in Doom, is a a Sandy Petersen map. The teleport teleports you to a secret area. Just as on e3m6, there is an invulnerability pretty close by.

Using weapons to let the player move around in new and novel ways is an effect Sandy seems to love to play around with. This screenshot is from a quake wiki.

I think Sandy once mentioned that Carmack was the one who recommended the idea of using damage thrusts as a mechanic for e3m6, but I need to find the source on that again. I believe it was mentioned in one of his Q&A threads in an AoE2 forum back in the late 90s.

The final level of ROTT indicates the possibility of doing a rocket jump, having a low wall, asbestos armor, and a missile weapon right next to it, and you need to get to that area for the true ending, though I think it's also possible to get the flight powerup on that level? I wonder who's idea that one was...

10 hours ago, zokum said:

E4m4 in Quake has an intentional grenade launch boost jump. You're supposed to place a grenade into a small hole and get boosted into a teleporter in the air.

Aaah! During all the time I played Quake during my childhood, I NEVER EVER figured out this. I very barely remember, as a small kid, I just wondered what was this very strange teleporter about, I thought it was an exit teleporter I would fall from.

Generally, as a kid, I remember not figuring out rocket jumping mechanics and exploiting it at all, I remember discovering it later when internet became a thing.