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hardcore_gamer

Why wasn't Quake ported to the PlayStation?

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scalliano said:

TBH The Saturn does an admirable job of running Quake (better than it runs Doom anyway), what drags the game down for me is the controls. Even with the Saturn's analogue pad it's a mess. Unless you play southpaw, of course.


Quoted for truth. In fact, it was the Saturn controller and Lobotomy's ports of Duke 3D/Quake that made me a southpaw gamer on consoles, something I've only recently been able to get 'over' and adapt to default console FPS controls. Muscle memory can be a fucking bitch to overcome, I tell ya.

Of Saturn Quake though, the all-new secret levels really were something. E1's was forgettable and E3's was gimmicky. E2's is one of my favourite Quake levels ever, coming across like an Ewok village in space; and E4's submerged hellhole? Yeah, loved it -- even if it was barely-playable with the southpaw/freelook controls because it nerfed the swimming.

Still, great version in my eyes.

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Not entirely on topic, but why does GL Quake--and consequently, Quake 64--use static lighting? I remember being so disappointed that muzzle shots from weapons (and indeed all objects emitting light) were reduced to ugly orange balls. I also found it curious that Quake 64 lacked the episode hub. The texturing was also unfortunate, because clearly the lightmaps were part of the VGA palette when they should have taken advantage of the N64's higher color depth.

Quake 2 N64 was surprisingly fun. The missing features (ducking, carrying items, hubs) made it play like a Quake 1 mod, and yet this gave it a unique charm, seeing as the maps (except the first) were exclusive to the console.

EDIT: Oh, and what do you guys mean by southpaw?

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GoatLord said:

Not entirely on topic, but why does GL Quake--and consequently, Quake 64--use static lighting?

You can enable back dynamic lighting in GLQuake by typing 'gl_flashblend 0' in the console. Early accelerators were probably too weak for this feature.

GLQuake has many other shortcomings though.

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ComicMischief said:

Of Saturn Quake though, the all-new secret levels really were something. E1's was forgettable and E3's was gimmicky. E2's is one of my favourite Quake levels ever, coming across like an Ewok village in space; and E4's submerged hellhole? Yeah, loved it -- even if it was barely-playable with the southpaw/freelook controls because it nerfed the swimming.


Never had a problem with the controls. I use the digital pad on the analog controller however, the analog stick felt too 'floaty' in Lobotomy's games. E1 secret level Purgatorium is awesome! It's creepy and well thought out, and I love that spooky new sky to death. Don't forget Dank and Scuz (with a guest appearance by Doom Guy), a hidden little sprite-comic like thing in Saturn Quake (and of course Death Tank).

Erza Dreisbach is seriously one of my favorite people in the 32bit era. His engines ran beautifully on Saturn and I'm shocked developers didn't toss their cookies at the high level of special effects and speed that thing could pull off. I never saw anything that looked as good or ran as fast as Powerslave/Quake on any other system at that time.

Scet said:

The N64 has a 64x64 texture limitation along with forced texture filtering. I prefer the Playstations jagged pixels over the N64s pixel barf.


I literally laughed out loud when I saw the N64 running the first time. Even it's 'best' games still look terrible.

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scalliano said:

That said, I did buy a PS mouse to play Q2 with, due to game game seemingly consciously sidestepping the most obvious controller layout.

Yeah, it's kind of bizarre that they didn't think to include a few more options for using both sticks and swapping triggers, but at least the digital schemes offer a decent aiming scheme. If "modern" console FPS games hadn't ruined me the both sticks option would be perfect since that's pretty much what every 90's FPS was using. I can totally see why they went with that.

Mouse support was a brilliant inclusion, too, particularly since the game had schemes that worked well with it, unlike Final Doom.

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Use3D said:

I literally laughed out loud when I saw the N64 running the first time. Even it's 'best' games still look terrible.


That's a ignorant statement. Lots of it's games look better then most Playstation games. Star Wars: RS is a good example of what was at the time one of the best looking console games around.

Super Mario 64 also looked awesome, and actually doesn't look so bad even today considering how old the game is.

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It's not a very eye-pleasing game in the first place. Why make it uglier by porting it to inferior platforms?

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Use3D said:

I literally laughed out loud when I saw the N64 running the first time. Even it's 'best' games still look terrible.


Doom 64. Take that back.

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GoatLord said:

Like what?

Lack of overbright lighting, fullbright colors, support for non-power-of-two textures, mipmapping looks entirely different (probably a good thing). Also software Quake uses a colormap like Doom, so lighting can look different, but Quake's colors are mapped more linearly, so it's not nearly as noticeable as it is in Doom.

http://www.quaddicted.com/engines/software_vs_glquake

GLQuake is a product of its time and you're much better off running software or a modern hardware rendering engine.

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DooM_RO said:

It's not a very eye-pleasing game in the first place. Why make it uglier by porting it to inferior platforms?

Because visuals are the only reason anyone would want a game on a different platform, right?

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Dragonsbrethren said:

Because visuals are the only reason anyone would want a game on a different platform, right?


Whether you like it or not, graphics and art direction MATTER.

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Use3D said:

I literally laughed out loud when I saw the N64 running the first time. Even it's 'best' games still look terrible.

Compared to 3D PC games of the same era, the difference is fairly negligible unless you're a total nerd.*

*Just to clarify, I can see the difference between PC Quake 2 and N64 Quake 2, or even PSX Quake 2 and N64 Quake 2. It's pretty obvious if you care about these things. But I wouldn't use this knowledge as a platform for conversation with anyone outside of a gaming forum. Know what I'm sayin'?

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I remember my friend at the time -- a full-on PC Master Race Graphixxx Whore -- saw Goldeneye for the first time and said, "That's it, I need to get an N64!" when he zoomed in on some far off textures using a sniper rifle. Even with the intense aliasing and texture flickering, the game looked damned good at the time. At least for those of us who[s parents] could only afford a 'decent' cutting-edge PC.

Also, I know that games like Quake 2 did so-called "soft-skin texturing" (where polygons would bend with animations around the pelvises and shoulders of a models (unlike in Blood 2 and SHOGO, for instance), but I'd never seen it done so beautifully as in Banjo Kazooie.

N64 was really, really impressive when it came out.

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hardcore_gamer said:

Super Mario 64 also looked awesome, and actually doesn't look so bad even today considering how old the game is.


So you and most others claim, but I wasn't impressed then and it certainly hasn't improved with age. But of course, 'tis just my opinion.


DoomUK said:

Compared to 3D PC games of the same era, the difference is fairly negligible unless you're a total nerd.*


Negligible? Haha, that's nonsense.

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Use3D, I want to know what the Hell you could've been playing back then that would've made such a difference. I had a 19" flat-screen monitor and a RIVA TNT2, and I was spoiled, but I still thought the N64 did graphics more beautifully than my cutting-edge PC.

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schwerpunk said:

N64 was really, really impressive when it came out.

Especially for a system which costed a fraction of what a decent gaming PC would.

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I love N64 games. I love the N64, because of the games.

I'm not going to defend the graphics though; it looked like every texture was painted on wet paper by a retarded quadriplegic child who held a paintbrush in his ass to do them.

And he was blind. And the art director who dictated to him what the textures should look like had a speech impediment. Plus the paintbrush-sandbag was deaf.

That filtering went a long way to rendering some games many times more ugly than they deserved to be.

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DooM_RO said:

Whether you like it or not, graphics and art direction MATTER.


Absolutely. Anyone who claims graphics don't matter should ask themselves how much they'd still enjoy their favorite games if the engine remained the same, but the artists were uncreative, sloppy and unskilled. Having a really nice engine alone won't cut it, evidenced by the bland, uniform look of hyper-detailed war games as of late.

Another example is Super Mario World versus Sonic the Hedgehog, both released in 1991. The former had a larger color palette and more powerful hardware, but the latter focuses its attention on a plethora of micro details that give it the appearance of having a larger palette.

Team Fortress 2 is another good example. Its engine is totally inferior to say, CryEngine 3 or Unreal Engine 4, but it visually holds up because the cartoony style and consistent aesthetic is very memorable and professionally executed.

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GoatLord said:

Sonic the Hedgehog

I would rather say that it was overdetailed and messy. My eyes hurt from even the memory of what it looked like.

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Blasphemy. Those games had some of the best sprites and parallax scrolling of the 16-bit era. Sonic CD and the cancelled Sonic Crackers did look messy, however.

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GoatLord said:

Those games had some of the best sprites and parallax scrolling of the 16-bit era.

Maybe. But I'd prefer backgrounds that actually let you clearly see the character under your control.

Spot the hedgehog!

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r_init: getpostnumberforname: post not found!

Edited by Justince

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Justince said:

PROTIP: Sonic spends 98% of his time in the very center of the screen.

Thanks. It will surely help a lot of people.

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DooM_RO said:

Whether you like it or not, graphics and art direction MATTER.

It's the 90's, you don't have a PC and you have a PlayStation. Graphics and art being slightly lower quality don't mean shit to you since you can actually play the game now.

Look at the Saturn version, which was ported by the same studio that would have done to PSX version. Sure, you can point out changes, but it does't look bad at all. In some regards, it actually looks better.

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GoatLord said:

Quake 2 N64 was surprisingly fun. The missing features (ducking, carrying items, hubs) made it play like a Quake 1 mod, and yet this gave it a unique charm, seeing as the maps (except the first) were exclusive to the console.


A friend of mine gave me an n64 along with quake 2 (score!) and I've been playing it thinking that it will suck compared to the PC, but no. I'm actually really liking quake 2 on the N64. And I can play it like a modern shooter (Dpad: move/strafe, Stick: look/aim). Quake 2 is a port done right, unlike quake 1.

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