Quake

I haven't really been interested in Quake, but I played the shareware earlier this week and decided to but it off of Id's site. It's nice that they decided to include DOS quake along with Winquake and GLquake, and there's also a PDF copy of the manual to go along with it. It's quite a big change gameplay-wise from Doom, it's slower and with less monsters but more powerful ones. I'm up to E2M5 at the moment on Normal skill, and I'm getting pounded pretty badly. I kinda suck at FPSs but it doesn't stop me from enjoying them :P I'm just playing using the standard WinQuake, because my preference for software renderers has carried over from Doom to Quake and GLQuake is really broken, presumably because I'm using a Intel integrated graphics card. WinQuake works pretty well and I don't see a need for a sourceport because I prefer the vanilla feel anyway. It's basically what Doom95 should have been - a port to windows that wasnt horribly broken.

What are your thoughts on Quake? Sourceports? Control schemes? Good maps for it?

I thought Quake was amazing when I first played it because of all the polygons and neat tricks they did with them. Now it's pretty old and busted. Never got into its mods or levels, but I hear Team Fortress is awesome.

Some things that still bother me in Quake:

- the shotgun sound (umph umph umph instead of pop pop pop). This can be fixed without QuakeC!!
- the partial autoaiming (you falsely feel under control of your aim, when you're NOT)
- hard to achieve music (bad drive letter, no CD in, CD music doesn't work...) and limitation to the few CD entries
- lack of any significant and coherent symbolism to make it stand out against other games

The themes in Quake are a little muddled... But I'm still enjoying it even with it's flaws. The player's pain sounds sound dumb though.

printz said:

- lack of any significant and coherent symbolism to make it stand out against other games

What do you mean by that?

arrrgh said:
What are your thoughts on Quake?

It might be my 2nd favorite game after DOOM and DOOM II. I played through it some time back, not too long ago.

Sourceports?

I use WinQuake when I do play (the ID levels, rather casually and only once in a while) or to watch demos. Also QuakeWorld, for some DM demos. I did install JoeQuake but haven't really needed, it, given what I do. I have ezQuake too, which can get me online and is good for watching compressed demos or those in some newer format.

I'm like you in respect to visuals, and even run the engines at 320x200. It took me some fiddling around but I managed to get ezQuake to look just like WinQuake or QuakeWorld, too (no OpenGL, no wobbling pickups, no extra kill messages, and so on.)

Control schemes?

Much like in DOOM. WESD for movement, and the mouse for turning, shooting and jumping, with +mlook in my autoexec.cfg.

Good maps for it?

I'm not dedicated enough to get into mods like I do with the DOOM games. I do check demos, though. Particularly speed runs on the vanilla levels and DM demos in the vanilla levels (DM2-DM6, mostly.)

I hopped onto a QW server two or three weeks ago, which I hadn't in a long time. It was fun, but I got smeared all over the walls by some guy who used to be a pro player in the old days.

Krispavera said:

What do you mean by that?

Wolfentein is Nazis and processed humans. Doom is demons and hell. Quake 2 is Stroggos and more processed humans and beasts. Quake 3 is deathmatch forever with all the most famous characters in a shiny futuristic Vadrigar world. But Quake is some dark murky place which I can't know whether it's an outer (horror) world, a hell with demons, or an alien planet, with runes whose meaning I don't get to know, and the use of a letter symbol in a fancy font without any indication of another meaning doesn't help.

myk said:

It might be my 2nd favorite game after DOOM and DOOM II.

Actually it's the 3rd, unless you insist that Doom and Doom 2 are the same (technically they are). They're different products anyway, but I'm getting pedantic.

As for resolution, I like hi-res in Quake, because I like how polygons appear without any pixellation whatsoever. That and when running vanilla Quake some bug appears that makes the game too fast when there isn't time to spend on drawing.

myk said:

Much like in DOOM. WESD for movement, and the mouse for turning, shooting and jumping, with +mlook in my autoexec.cfg.

Ditto, assuming you meant WASD :P

myk said:

I'm not dedicated enough to get into mods like I do with the DOOM games. I do check demos, though. Particularly speed runs on the vanilla levels and DM demos in the vanilla levels (DM2-DM6, mostly.)

I'm probably going to try making some maps for Quake. It'll probably be more fun than in Doom because of the true 3D and all that.

edit: I'm sticking with higher resoulutions because I like nice crisp edges to my huge pixels and it lets you see far things better.

printz said:
That and when running vanilla Quake some bug appears that makes the game too fast when there isn't time to spend on drawing.

Yeah, that happens to the DOS executable on Windows, I believe. That's why I switched to WinQuake, instead.

arrrgh said:
Ditto, assuming you meant WASD :P

Hah, I really mean WESD, see here (I still use what it says there, only that since then I've put that Q key back in its usual place).

Never heard of that setup before, but whatever suits you I guess :P

printz said:

Wolfentein is Nazis and processed humans. Doom is demons and hell. Quake 2 is Stroggos and more processed humans and beasts. Quake 3 is deathmatch forever with all the most famous characters in a shiny futuristic Vadrigar world. But Quake is some dark murky place which I can't know whether it's an outer (horror) world, a hell with demons, or an alien planet, with runes whose meaning I don't get to know, and the use of a letter symbol in a fancy font without any indication of another meaning doesn't help.

Ah, I understand.

There were a couple of things about Quake that I didn't particularly care for. One was obviously the lack of color. The other is the lack of interesting monster deaths. Everything just falls over. Oh sure, when you gib 'em, chunks go flying everywhere and that's cool, but I mean, in Doom, the monsters had unique and satisfying deaths. The mancubus collapses and explodes under his own weight, the archvile falls to pieces, the chaingun zombie basically splits in half, etc. All very gory, all satisfying, all making you feel like you actually killed the monster. In Quake, they pretty much just all all over, which is not particularly rewarding.

myk said:

Hah, I really mean WESD, see here (I still use what it says there, only that since then I've put that Q key back in its usual place).

Heh, I find any such 'bent' positioning of directions painful to the hand.

Vores are giant, all-pervading pains in the ass. When I first saw one and it fired its homing ball thingy I was like "Ok, I'll just pop around the corner like with Renevants" and then I saw the ball TURN AROUND THE CORNER. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

printz said:

Wolfentein is Nazis and processed humans. Doom is demons and hell. Quake 2 is Stroggos and more processed humans and beasts. Quake 3 is deathmatch forever with all the most famous characters in a shiny futuristic Vadrigar world. But Quake is some dark murky place which I can't know whether it's an outer (horror) world, a hell with demons, or an alien planet, with runes whose meaning I don't get to know, and the use of a letter symbol in a fancy font without any indication of another meaning doesn't help.

It's supposed to be cthuluesque, but yeah, the monsters seem to be fairly random.

This (from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) reminded me of the fiend:

If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate abomination, Willett was destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor and cracked whining he discerned only the brick-faced top of a cylindrical well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and devoid of any ladder or other means of descent. As the light shone down, the wailing changed suddenly to a series of horrible yelps; in conjunction with which there came again that sound of blind, futile scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer trembled, unwilling even to imagine what noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss, but in a moment mustered up the courage to peer over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full length and holding the torch downward at arm's length to see what might lie below. For a second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy, moss-grown brick walls sinking illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and foulness and anguished frenzy; and then he saw that something dark was leaping clumsily and frantically up and down at the bottom of the narrow shaft, which must have been from twenty to twenty-five feet below the stone floor where he lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he looked again to see what manner of living creature might be immured there in the darkness of that unnatural well; left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors had taken him away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred wells whose pierced stone covers so thickly studded the floor of the great vaulted cavern. Whatever the things were, they could not lie down in their cramped spaces; but must have crouched and whined and waited and feebly leaped all those hideous weeks since their master had abandoned them unheeded.

Originally the game was going to be fantasy themed, and you can see that in the ogre, the knights or the medieval environments. Petersen also (maybe later) introduced the Lovecraftian orientation, which can be seen in the fiend or the slimy flying things. Add to that tech weapons so that it would play more or less like DOOM. That mix makes the game's theme. I think it worked pretty well to create a weird but absorbing environment for an action game.

The mishmash of themes is my favorite part of Quake. Just about any subject and level can be covered in it: Tech base? Definitely. Medieval castle? Yep, we've got plenty! Nightmarish hellhole? There's an entire episode dedicated to that! Strange, metallic mechanical abode? Sure, why not.

It's the only other game besides Doom that can pull of different level and episode themes so well. Wolfenstein and Quake 2 are both stuck with their respective themes while Doom and Quake are free to be anything the author wishes. Most of that is because the original level designers made levels that tickled their fancy rather than sticking with a specific theme.

Is the setting in Quake as strong as id's other games? No, but the game feels more like a playground for map designers than anything else. If you want a series of levels with a coherent setting, there are plenty of third party maps and mods that fit the bill.

Quake is actually pretty scary. Whenever I see a fiend I jump.

Loved it then.



Still love it now.

I played some deathmatch not too long ago, and I had forgotten just how brutal original quake deathmatch can be. High movement speeds combined with the instant weapon change and the high damage of most of the weapons (especially the RL) make deathmatch a pretty crazy experience.

I think Quake is great. The murky design is really one of it's kind that I never really seen in any other game. (There has been brown games, but none of them did it with style like Quake)

I found the game play slowish at the start when I got the game. But these days I am blasting through the maps in it with a vengeance, gibbing zombies left and right.

Favorit weapon is definitely the Supernailgun because of it's sweet booming sound.

If you are interested in Quake maps. There's a lot of quality to be had.

Rapture is a classic:
http://tronyn.planetquake.gamespy.com/o_quake_ep.htm

also here's a list of authors that Aardappel recommends:
http://strlen.com/maps/authors.html

EDIT: These days I am mostly playing Quake Live though. That really is the best Deathmatch game I've ever played. (Sorry Doom)

I suppose this would be an appropriate time to bring up the Quake story I wrote a while back.

I love Quake though, disjointed and unsaturated, it feels the way it looks and plays.

I hate Quake.

It's boring, slow, easy, un-atmospheric and un-cohesive. Romero was off Doom deathmatching and not leading the project so everyone made their own different art and levels. A Lovecraftian-hell medieval castle techbase just doesn't gel in my books.

The sounds annoy me, the visuals annoy me (as if an FPS needed to be any browner after Doom 2), the whole game just makes me go "eww".

Like many here have said, I like Quake. That's what I've been playing recently (besides Saint's Row 2). The conflicting mishmash of themes feels right to me in Quake. It's fast, frantic, somewhat disorienting at times, and the foes (I felt like) really have you on your toes. Save for a few of them, I'm pretty weary about going around a corner because there could be a Vore or a Shambler there, so my tension is always up.

As for ports, at the moment I'm using FitzQuake and DarkPlaces as well as WinQuake.

As for maps, I get all my single player Quake goodness here:

http://www.quaddicted.com/

I recently got Quake for the first time and beat the first episode. I really enjoyed it. Can't wait to get around to playing the rest.

I love the game, it really immersed you into a whole new level of eerie when it came out, the sounds, music, disturbing imagery and nasty monsters gave the whole package a great presence. I got into some light mapping and played quite a few user-made levels back in the day, but didn't move very far from the original episodes. Would love to check out the mission packs sometime.

I like Quake, and as far as sourceports go, TyrQuake is where it's at.

I also love this run.

I was 16 when this game came out, and I had only played the shareware version until recently. Everyone was drooling over the full 3D aspect but it didn't really result in funner gameplay. Don't get me wrong; it's a great game. But I always felt let down about it. I remember back in the mid 90's id talking about this game in magazines, and putting images in my head of a Thor-like protagonist in a game with incredible physics, graphics, and imagination to spare. I guess they decided to go in a more generic (read: brown) direction, though.

I finally bought the full version for like three bucks, and I got MY ASS HANDED TO ME in the 2nd episode. I will go back to it someday.

bimlanders said:

I guess they decided to go in a more generic (read: brown) direction, though.

They had no choice. Like Doom 3 they spouted off more devices and mechanics then tey had built for the game. This led them to miss the release date and begine settling for omething more cose to reality.

Carmack and McGee were making this game from the start. It was Romero who tried to add those missing elements but sadly he was busy being id's poster boy. One of the big reasons Quake has this disjointed bizarre feeling was because every staff member was working on their own vision.

In saying this I wouldn’t want it any other way. I also would like to mention Trent’s awesome sound track. I remember Romero commenting on the score. If he had it his way it would have sounded something like Quake 2’s (Sonic Mayhem?).

Quake has a perfect atmosphere, great medieval and surreal maps, great monsters, great sounds, great music, and great gameplay in both SP and MP. A wonderful and beautiful game with a setting and feel that is utterly unique, something that is very rare indeed.

The blue textures are especially fine.

printz said:

- the shotgun sound (umph umph umph instead of pop pop pop). This can be fixed without QuakeC!!

Then replace sound/weapons/guncock.wav

printz said:

- the partial autoaiming (you falsely feel under control of your aim, when you're NOT)

sv_aim 2

printz said:

- hard to achieve music (bad drive letter, no CD in, CD music doesn't work...) and limitation to the few CD entries

DarkPlaces can support 'fake OGG cd tracks' and even tracker modules so you don't necessarily need the CD for music.

printz said:

- lack of any significant and coherent symbolism to make it stand out against other games

The lovecraftian inspiration, rocket launcher and the Shub stand out pretty symbolic to me.

arrrgh said:

What are your thoughts on Quake? Sourceports? Control schemes? Good maps for it?

Sourceports? DarkPlaces for almost everything (DP can sort of be vanilla-looking). For Vanilla, it's either TyrQuake or WinQuake. For Quakeworld (which I rarely play since everyone just CHEAT TO WIN) I use Zquake.
There is no chocolate quake port. There are several differences between dosquake and winquake, most notably a differing sound attenuation range, tweaked VGA video modes, no endoom, memory, etc.

Good maps? I recommend:
- Beyond Belief. linky
- Prodigy Special Edition (HINT: A certain CASALI worked on this!) linky
- Zerstorer: Testament of the Destroyer. linky
- After the Fall. It's an early ambitious TC. linky
- buying the two official Quake mission packs. They also have their own CD soundtracks done by Jeehun Hwang.
- buying Malice. Closest Quake equivelant to Hacx you could say.


I also recommend sitting back and spending a few hours watching the entire Nehahra movie, in Darkplaces, with r_letterbox 32.