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MrGlide

Let's talk about Quake 1!

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10 hours ago, Albertoni said:

Other than one of the voice actors, everyone is under 25, probably under 18.

Actually all voice acting was done by the same single person. And while the cutscenes are not individually skippable, they can be disabled altogether with a console command.

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Playing Quake 1 for the first time ever and I'm really liking it so far. After reading Masters of Doom it makes me appreciate it more considering how shaky things seem to have been during the development.

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33 minutes ago, Red said:

Playing Quake 1 for the first time ever and I'm really liking it so far. After reading Masters of Doom it makes me appreciate it more considering how shaky things seem to have been during the development.

The crazy thing is Romero pulled it all together in the end and didn't even get paid for any of the money it made. lol.

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1 hour ago, Red said:

Playing Quake 1 for the first time ever and I'm really liking it so far. After reading Masters of Doom it makes me appreciate it more considering how shaky things seem to have been during the development.

 

Personally speaking, when it comes to Quake, I always liked Episode 3 the most.

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After playing through this game a second time, with a proper source port and music, I'm surprised how much I ended up enjoying it. Besides the obvious quad-damage slaughters, the best parts to me were Fiends, Voreballs, and that moment you ricochet a grenade down a corridor. The mission packs were even better, with SoA having the slight edge over DoE. But after witnessing the splendor and caliber of some painstakingly crafted custom levels/episodes, I've been left feeling that Quake really is an equal to Doom on some levels, and even superior in a few others.

 

An unexpected appeal I found within this game is bunny hopping, something that's almost become a preoccupation itself. They're just so inexplicably enticing to do. I can't really pinpoint why, but I know Quakeguy's soothing jump voice plays a big factor in it. I'll occasionally load 100m whenever the urge arises and the current level is unable to satisfy said cravings.

 

 

 

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On 8/1/2017 at 2:07 PM, Jon said:

The Lovecraft influence was driven by Sandy Petersen, who has since spent a lot of time on Lovecraft inspired board games. He was fired (or left) early in Quake 2 development so there's very little of his work in that. I think there's a Shub texture somewhere in the Citadel at the end. I often wonder if there's some early quake 2 prototype work, or design work, that shows more Sandy influence, that we have never seen.


I would love so much if some sort of Lovecraftian Quake 2 prototype existed. Even as a kid I remember being disappointed at Quake 2's bland aesthetic. What is the Shub texture in the Citadel?

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Quake 1 is one of my favorite games, though the original Doom slightly eclipses it.

 

I've always hated enormous Doom II style slaughtermaps where you have to quicksave thirty times or else die a frustrating death and go all the way back to the start of the slog. If a map has more than 70-100 monsters in it I don't really ever have fun playing it.

 

Given that Quake had a lesser number of monsters per level, but used them creatively and more threateningly than the normal Doom fare of "place a bunch in the room to slowly advance across it and see what the player does", I loved pretty much every level.

 

Given that I'm an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist when it comes to games, though, I ran into a few gripes, mostly related to monsters and weapons:

  • Grunts could infight. They were the only monster that could do this with each other.
    • Also, they only appeared in a few levels. Since they're basically Quake's zombiemen (and zombiemen have remained my favorite Doom monster of all time), I didn't get why they were so rare, especially when Doom had them in pretty much every level.
    • And they only ever had the Shotgun. Seeing a few with at least a Super Shotgun or Nailgun would have been cool.
  • The nailgun was lame; it was hard to see the nails and nail ammo seemed to be very rare. I'd have liked it much better if they had simply stuck to having a submachine gun as the rapid-fire weapon.
  • The Enforcer never dropped his laser rifle.
  • The Shotgun was totally eclipsed by the Super Shotgun, and so was the Nailgun to the Super Nailgun. It's the same behavior that Doom had with the pistol and chaingun- that is, why even bother making the shotgun/nailgun when they were going to become useless after about one level?
  • You didn't have a BFG-analogue. The Thunderbolt was closer to the Plasma Rifle really.

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Grunts are a classic case of hitscan, so naturally the rules abide that hitscanners can hurt themselves in a crossfire (unless it's Wolf3D). The Grunts are also themed around the base levels, but Hipnotic and Rogue used them like regular monsters in the mission packs to good effect and I think they should be used as such more often.

I thought nails were extremely plentiful, but the nailgun is outclassed by the Perforator before long as while it uses 2 ammo per shot the rate of fire and the damage is exponentially increased making it a more worthwhile use of the nail ammo.

The single shotgun has its use but it's mainly long range and to soften up medium-sized targets like Ogres and Vores, it's also good against the regular Knights.

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19 minutes ago, cyan0s1s said:

Grunts are a classic case of hitscan, so naturally the rules abide that hitscanners can hurt themselves in a crossfire (unless it's Wolf3D). The Grunts are also themed around the base levels, but Hipnotic and Rogue used them like regular monsters in the mission packs to good effect and I think they should be used as such more often.

I thought nails were extremely plentiful, but the nailgun is outclassed by the Perforator before long as while it uses 2 ammo per shot the rate of fire and the damage is exponentially increased making it a more worthwhile use of the nail ammo.

The single shotgun has its use but it's mainly long range and to soften up medium-sized targets like Ogres and Vores, it's also good against the regular Knights.

Fair point with the Grunts, though I've never liked that hitscanners can infight with one another in any id game. Given that they nerfed Grunts compared to Doom hitscanners (in that Grunts' crosshairs lag a bit behind strafing players, unlike perfectly-accurate Shotgun Guys...), I think that's enough to justify removing self-infighting.

 

The nails are fairly plentiful but given that you're using a Nailgun- a rapid fire weapon- they dry up astonishingly quickly compared to the shell-firing weapons. The Nailgun is absolutely worthless once you get the Super Nailgun; perhaps if they had made the Nailgun a hitscan machinegun type firearm, it would have remained useful even with the Super Nailgun around.

 

The basic Shotgun is worthless, period. The Super Shotgun is fairly accurate and in the vast majority of Quake engagements it's at its sweet spot in terms of range. Even if you find a monster on the other side of a long bridge, literally all you need to do is jet up to it and blast it to death.

 

If they had retained that nice manual-loading animation from Doom II, the Super Shotty would have been a lot less of a flat upgrade (though then they'd also have to boost its power a little).

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2 hours ago, cyan0s1s said:

The single shotgun has its use but it's mainly long range and to soften up medium-sized targets like Ogres and Vores, it's also good against the regular Knights.

I find myself using the normal shotgun any time a non-vore enemy is medium to long range since it has a tighter shot spread than the double barreled shotgun - assuming I don't have any nails or a rocket launcher, that is.  Its somewhat fast rate of fire also makes it nice, easily much nicer than Doom's pistol in terms of your starting weapon.  Using it to take down vores, fiends, or shamblers doesn't feel nearly as much of a chore as taking down a baron with a pistol or a cyberdemon with a normal shotgun does.

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I pretty much only use the double barrel shotgun at close quarters. The default shotgun seems to have better DPS at any other range.

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On 02.08.2017 at 0:07 AM, Jon said:

The Lovecraft influence was driven by Sandy Petersen, who has since spent a lot of time on Lovecraft inspired board games. He was fired (or left) early in Quake 2 development so there's very little of his work in that. I think there's a Shub texture somewhere in the Citadel at the end. I often wonder if there's some early quake 2 prototype work, or design work, that shows more Sandy influence, that we have never seen.


Engine improvements aside, I think the gothic/lovecraftian atmosphere of Quake 1 has dated better than Quake 2, the theme of which has been bettered since.

Actually, Quake 2 was originally supposed to have nothing to do with Quake, but they couldn't use the name so they used Quake 2 instead.

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11 hours ago, elsaltaccount#9999 said:

Actually, Quake 2 was originally supposed to have nothing to do with Quake, but they couldn't use the name so they used Quake 2 instead.

 

That doesn't contradict what I said. Some in ID pushed for a project that had nothing to do with Quake, and ended up being the Quake 2 we have today. Others (Sandy) wanted something else, and ended up leaving.

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Joining in just to thank you guys for this discussion on quake, as I haven't played it in a while (hey I barely get to keep up with the dwmc) but I'll look into this when I'm back home as I love quake's dark gritty art style. Also using quakespasm, or direct quake, they're pretty similar,  but googling some discussions made me curious about quake epsilon (look it up) or this quake HD remix to enjoy the game with HD graphics, http://quakehdremix.blogspot.com

 

And thx for the various map packs linked here.  They're amazing for what this old engine can still do.

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I love Quake!  Just been playing through again on Nightmare, for inspiration for level design and entities, as I start on a game of my own that's quite inspired by Quake.  (It's codenamed "ROMERO" at the moment!  Hehehe.  The main character might be named Romero, I'm thinking.)

 

Man, it is such a wonderful game.  The OGRE is certainly one of the best enemies ever made.  The Grenades were a real highlight of the game, both to shoot off yourself, and also to jump and dodge away from when Ogres fling them at you.

 

Here's a little video of my game I'm working on - obviously I'll have to pull out any Quake sounds that I was using for prototyping!  

http://muzboz.blogspot.com/2018/02/romero-dev-video-4-reach-to-radio-tower.html

 

I want it to be hard and fast, punishing, and quick to retry.

 

I also want it to have some immersive sim elements in it, like some special abilities that cost power, and so must be used sparingly.  I want to keep it all "in world" though, and avoid having the player have to choose abilities from a menu, as I think it pulls you out of the game.

 

I was playing with a bullet-time ability, which I want to have in there.

http://muzboz.blogspot.com/2018/03/romero-dev-video-5-slow-mo-bullet-time.html

But I keep going back to Quake for inspiration, because it's so damn good. 

* I love the creative level design, they're always putting pressure on you, with monsters placed in a way that they'll see you before you see them. 
* Dropping down walls with monster traps in them, to keep the level alive even after you think you've cleared an area.
* Interesting verticality in the levels, with thin overhead walkways or supported platforms.

 

But I want my levels to be a bit more of a contiguous location, like a Thief level, where you can skirt around it looking for the best way in, perhaps some degree of stealth (where enemies can't detect you if you're deep in shadow), but we'll see.  Just planning things out properly now, hence delving into old Quake screenshots and messageboards, etc, for inspiration.

It's interesting going back to Quake actually, and I thought I was going to enjoy the arcade rompyness of it, but in actuality, it honestly has a lot of the Immersive Sim properties I love in (some) games that followed, where the levels often are fairly contiguous (where you can double back through the level in different ways, and the spaces are connected, etc), and the monsters are actually "kind of" quite smart, the player has to improvise quite a lot, etc.

 

[Apologies for bumping the thread!  It's just how I was drawn here, kinda via some sweet Mayan Quake level posts by Breezeep.]  

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Quake is good. Doom is better. Doom gets better maps and mods, and the Quake enemies just felt too meaty to me.

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I have never actually played it, internet did not even existed yet when i was playing Doom, or had yet to reach my country, so i played a lot of Wolfenstein, Doom shareware, Doom 2 and Marathon Durandal in my family loved and old Mac. I am currently playing Heretic which is as great as the classic Dooms and i plan to play Quake 1 and 2 and Hexen when i am done. I finished Quake 3 in its time and Quake 2 in the psx too.

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Quake's one of those games that I appreciate more and more as the years go on. Nothing has come close to capturing the atmosphere of its setting, and I don't know many games where I think pixelated textures and choppy animations actually add to the experience. It just feels so...otherworldly. And for better or worse (I'd say worse) its gunplay defined the PC FPS for years.

Edited by Dragonsbrethren

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Let's talk about Quake, Babee – let's talk about Chton and mee....

 

I'm afraid I'm not particularly a fan of Quake, but there are some things I do like about it, so before I go into the things I don't like, I'll talk a little about the things I like first.

 

Opening map: Having the Difficulty and Episode selection made into an actual map you can explore was a really creative and cool way to start the game. Outside of the mission packs and some custom map packs, I don't remember having seen something like this in a game before or since Quake came out and I kinda wish to see it again. Love it.

 

Lovecraftian theme: I'm not an H.P.Lovecraft buff by any means, but I do love the creativity and imagination put into the Mythos and the atmosphere it can evoke.

The idea of exploring ancient eldritch realms of timeless and unspeakable horrors and madness seems really appealing to me and has a lot of really cool potential. More of that please.

 

Atmosphere sound effects: I do remember taking my time to just listen to the sound of the wind, the crackle of the torches and other environmental sound effects in the game and thinking it was pretty neat, which it is.

 

Monster design: I believe the Quake monsters are the best designed enemies in any Id game, possibly any FPS I've played (if you ignore the pathfinding issues and such). To the unaccustomed player, they are vicious and frightening to encounter, but you can learn to deal effectively with them relatively quickly and with maybe one exception (Spawn/Tarbaby) never feel cheap or unfair.

But even with experience, they shouldn't be underestimated. They also have a lot of personality that makes them instantly memorable. Some of my favourite sound effects in this game comes from the monsters; most of them sound awesome.

 

Cthon: I really like how the Bosses in this game are puzzle based and cannot be harmed with conventional weapons. It really sets them apart from something like Doom (You still had to shoot rockets at the Icon of Sin, even if it was puzzle-oriented). Cthon in particular, I think works very well; it's a tense, adrenaline-filled battle and the Boss is rather big and intimidating.

 

And now for the things that turn me off in this game:

 

The main issue: When I look at Id games released after Quake, I basically see “yet another rehash of Doom” with shotguns and rocket launchers, techbases and some Doomy-type Hell elements.

Quake appears to have set that unfortunate precedent and, it would seem, encouraged Id Software to basically stick to doing “another Doom game in a 3d engine” whenever it was time to develop a new game, and then to Hell with creativity and pushing gameplay ideas forward.

 

When Quake came out, it basically hit me that Id were turning their back on originality with the move to just go back to Doom's “Sci-fi Marines vs. Space Demons” motif and sadly, this would prove very true, because Quake 2 and Quake 3 Arena drew far more heavily on the Doom influences than Quake 1 did and did even less to advance the gameplay formula, besides mostly polishing what was already there.

 

And no, I do not consider “just polish” to be good enough – as a consumer, I expect game developers to push gameplay design as well as technology. Just pushing the tech forward and having gameplay design revolve mostly around compromising in favour of the tech doesn't sit right by me.

 

I have a long laundry list of other, minor, problems I have with Quake 1, but a lot of them just tie directly into my perceived “lack of originality” problem or would have been otherwise negligible if not for the whole “it's basically Doom, but not feeling right for Doom” issue that tends to put my mind in a rather negative state so I start mentally harping on things I normally would ignore in favour of just enjoying the good stuff.

 

I can mention one thing I consider relevant to try and illustrate my point a little:

 

Too much reliance on Doom's visual style: I mentioned that I like the Lovecraftian influences. Well, the problem is that they're limited to being just “influences”. To give one example, This guy and several like him give the game a very strong Doom vibe and I feel it ruins what could otherwise have been a very strong visual theme independent of Doom's thematic style. I'd much rather have seen murals of Chtulhu or other Lovecraftian eldritch horrors to make the game feel more confident in itself and less like a boring cop-out.

Instead, I'm left feeling that I'm fighting a bunch of extra-dimensional aliens that worship Satan, which actually makes them come across as inferior to Doom's demons (and less unique), when they should at the very least be their equal (or superior?). I dunno, it just makes me care a lot less about the game's universe, which is a big turnoff for me.

Basically a case of: “The devs apparently didn't give a shit about a game they're charging money for, so why should I?”.

 

Now I'm a bit more aware of the development troubles that caused this “cop-out” to happen, which eases it a little, but not enough to prevent me from getting grumpy about the creative situation it caused, which still hampers my ability to enjoy the game's more positive sides.

 

As a closing comment, I figure I could perhaps get behind a Doom-like shooter in which Lovecraftian horrors from beyond the gulfs of space took centre stage as the villain you're up against, in which you travel to many strange (and varied) eldritch dimensions, in which it'd be very apparent that the majority of the team (if not the whole team) were 100 per cent into the game they were creating and in which the gameplay would feel fresh and new enough to not hit me in the face with a depressing, tiresome feeling that I'm playing a cop-out.

 

Sadly, Quake 1 is not really it.

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I've edited this comment out because after having played through a little over half of Dissolution of Eternity, it's an opinion that I no longer adhere to. 

Edited by Ajora

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