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So... Quake...

BelisariuS.F

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The only game I can think of that really avoids any kind of popamole without simply removing cover as an option (either by open map design or spawning in enemies around you) is Unreal due to how incredibly fast and aggressive the Skaarj are. There's probably a few other examples but that's all I can recall at the moment.
In Phantom Pain if you were discovered and stayed behind a cover then the enemies started to drop mortar rounds on your head.
 

DraQ

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If anything I'd say it was the way most people played Doom on release. Bear in mind that we're talking about a default control scheme with tank control arrow keys, walk mode on by default, and being unable to aim while strafing. Actions like "open door, immediately back up and take cover behind the right side to clear out the left side of the room" are natural usages of cover.
Except if there is straight bit of corridor leading into the room or you ride a lift there backing out either doesn't provide much cover or prevents you from firing and seeing the enemy. And DOOM didn't have much elaborate geometry to hide behind.

The only game I can think of that really avoids any kind of popamole without simply removing cover as an option (either by open map design or spawning in enemies around you) is Unreal due to how incredibly fast and aggressive the Skaarj are. There's probably a few other examples but that's all I can recall at the moment.
Unreal is obviously a good bet, but you also had for example Half-Life where human grunts kept moving around and threw grenades if you stayed in one place too long, while aliens either rushed you or spammed you with hornets.

In general some sort of flush-out popamole solution is trivial, while decent and active AI combined with good level layouts (where you can't cover all routes to your defensible spot at once) can go a long way simply flanking you.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
By Richard Cobbett: http://www.pcgamer.com/the-legacy-of-quake-20-years-later/

The legacy of Quake, 20 years later
Looking back on one of the most influential games in PC history and the true arrival of 3D.

Twenty years ago, id Software released Quake. You’ve probably heard of it. What’s less known is that Quake was an idea that had been gestating since id’s early days, back in the era when it was best known for the side-scrolling Commander Keen series. The first Keen promised that coming soon as The Fight For Justice, an epic RPG starring Quake—“the strongest, most dangerous person on the continent,” who would explore an epic RPG world armed with a hammer in what id was already calling “The finest PC game yet.” Instead, it would take half a decade before Quake’s adventure came out, breaking both technical limits and id Software itself.

When Quake arrived, it was a true 3D action game—everything built in polygons. Until then, most games had just faked it. Wolfenstein 3D took place on entirely flat maps. Doom offered different heights, but everything was still drawn in 2D. It wasn’t possible to have rooms under rooms and the like. Duke Nukem 3D and other Build engine games, particularly Shadow Warrior, used advanced cheats to fake the effect. When you jumped into water for instance, you were actually invisibly teleported into another zone elsewhere on the map. Quake was truly 3D, doing things like spiral staircases and lava pits for real, and being as twisty and turny as it liked.

There had been full 3D games of course, like Descent, or the Freescape games that powered the likes of Castle Master even as far back as the ZX Spectrum. To do this, though, they typically had to choose between simple and slow. Quake didn’t. It was a technical showpiece and it moved like a greased-up ferret on a decent PC. No excuses. No compromises.

Or at least, no technical compromises. Of Quake’s three great achievements, the single-player game is easily the weakest. It’s not a terrible game or anything, but where Doom still stands up as a great campaign full of detail and wonderful design despite its simplicity, Quake is a largely bland and joyless experience whose memorable moments were almost entirely restricted to the first shareware episode. They were pretty cool, though. A main menu in the form of a 3D level, with each chapter’s area themed around the aesthetic to follow, forcing you to jump a lava pit to select hard mode and seek out the Nightmare mode in the small level beyond. Big baddie Chthon, hurling fire in his lava lair. The first time having your face eaten off by a Fiend. The low-gravity physics of the secret level, Ziggaurat Vertigo. They’re effective, as was the experience of being in a fast-paced 3D world full of action.

Players hoping for a constant stream of such innovation were disappointed. Despite the Lovecraftian influences, there was little to fear or any sense of anything great going on. There were no more giant, dramatic bosses, with the final one, Shub-Niggerauth, just being a static blob defeated with a cheap telefrag rather than a weapon. There was little sense of place. The levels were murky shooting galleries, where even Doom had tried to make its locations feel like real locations—to whatever degree of ‘real’ you can get from starbases slowly being taken over by biotechnology. Certainly players just coming in from Duke Nukem 3D and its real-world settings and constant variety couldn’t help but be disappointed, even if Quake has honestly aged much better. It’s still dull, but at least unlike Duke it’s not writing cheques its engine long stopped being able to cash, and much easier to take as a simple shooter rather than a bigger Experience.

The main problem was that after years of promises and expectation, to have a game that was basically Doom again—only set in a castle—was something of a letdown both internally and externally. All the RPG features, most planned new gameplay concepts, even the idea of a main character wielding a hammer, had been sucked out, mostly to get the thing out of the door. This led to a major schism within id. John Romero packed his bags to go start Ion Storm and create the more narrative/detail driven game that he wanted to make. (In a case of history repeating, his co-founder Tom Hall had done much the same over the original Doom, which he’d also envisioned as being much more of a story-driven experience than the shooter it ended up being.)

Luckily, multiplayer was a whole other matter. Here, the stripped down simplicity and full 3D allowed for fantastic arena design in genuinely atmospheric levels full of cubby-holes to camp and launch assaults from, and even the occasional gimmick, like hitting a button to slide back a level’s floor and drop unwary players into a pool of lava. It felt great. The weapons had real kick. Gibbing other players was a pleasure.

Outside the game, it helped that by 1996 online play was finally becoming viable for PC gamers across the world. While Doom had spawned a huge scene in its day, getting online in 1993 was a pipe dream for most players outside of universities. At home, gamers were lucky to have a null-modem cable to connect two PCs together, never mind enjoy the fun of epic LAN parties. Of course those who could got to enjoy a truly wonderful experience.

And so, people played Quake, and saw that Quake was good. The rocket jump alone took Quake to a whole new level. This wasn’t an id invention, but a discovery by fans, so of course the maps hadn’t been designed to handle it. The result? One of the net’s first famous speed-runs—Quake Done Quick, in which the whole game was obliterated in under twenty minutes with tricks like bunny-hopping to raise incredible speed, and rockets to hop through what were meant to be tantalising doors only intended to be accessed after collecting a key or going all around the houses.

Playing fairly or not, the raw sense of place and weight that 3D offered soon made the fakery of 2.5D untenable. It became impossible to ignore that sprites were just two-dimensional, and that when killed, their collapse was a totally canned animation rather than reacting properly to physics (though it wouldn’t be until Half-Life that games took the next step and made it standard to give characters skeletons instead of keyframed animation, ushering in the still ongoing ragdoll comedy era).

What all of Quake’s technology really empowered though was its community. It was the first game-as-platform, made possible by not just by the 3D engine, but Carmack including an interpreted language called QuakeC that allowed modders to do more than simply create their own levels and make the monsters look like Bart Simpson. They could completely bend the engine to their wishes.

And the modding community ran with this. When you bought Quake, you were buying into a whole universe of content online. Initially this was limited to simple-but-cool additions, like giving the player a grappling hook to scale and swing around levels in ways that had been impossible with previous 2D engines. Experiments gave way to full ‘total conversions’ like AirQuake, which swapped the players out for vehicles and turned deathmatch into a 3D vehicle combat game. Others proved that the sky wasn’t close to being the limit. A little game called Team Fortress, for example, began as a Quake mod, launching with the Scout, Sniper, Soldier, Demoman and Medic classes and building from there.

The ability to create stages, have polygonal characters, and have multiple people control them in ‘scenes’ also spawned machinima filmmaking. Quake’s early examples of machinima may be the Fred Ott’s Sneeze of the genre by modern standards, with celebrated stuff like Blahbalicious and Apartment Huntin’ now looking somewhat… yeah... in the era of Red vs. Blue and Source Filmmaker and whatever the hell people are doing to the Overwatch girls today. At the time though, they were often very impressive, especially when run live in-engine, and did pave the way for something new.

Much as the Doom mapping community still puts out new levels, Quake still has a modding scene. This month sees the release of Arcane Dimensions 1.5. Last month, a brand new set of gun models joined the fray. Also, Carmack open sourced Quake’s code in 1999, coders have been able to completely overhaul the old engine and bring it much more in line with modern standards. Darkplacesoffers real-time rendering of light and shadow, and likely Quake as you remember it looking if you haven’t played it for a while, while others, likeQuakeSpasm focus more on accuracy.

No game since has managed to replicate Quake’s spectacular level of success as a canvas for modding. Others have impressive modding communities, for sure, but not the same scale. With Quake, anything seemed possible—as long as it didn’t take too many polygons. Games like Second Life tried to replicate the phenomenon online, and of course, now would-be programmers can get their hands on the likes of Source and Unity and Game Maker for free or almost free, rendering modding less important—at least for making total conversions or a wholly new game out of the bones of the old.

However long it lasted, the Quake era was important—kickstarting many an industry career, as well as providing the kind of playtime that most games can only dream of supplying. Some mods even got a commercial release, though not necessarily fondly remembered ones. X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse, anybody? The answer, in case you’re wondering, is ‘hell no’.

Finally, the Quake story became… weird. After two official expansions (Scourge of Armagon, aka “The One Without The Dragon In It”, and Dissolution of Eternity, aka “The One WITH The Dragon In It”), id disappeared for a while and released Quake 2 as a single-player focused SF shooter in which you played a space marine fighting the unfortunately named Strogg. It was not very good. At all. Its main contribution to the world was, along with Unreal, teaming up with 3D accelerators to splash coloured lightning around the world whether it liked it or not. Then Quake 3 ditched all of that for a futuristic arena shooter starring characters like a giant cyborg eye… before Raven’s Quake 4 went back to the Strogg nonsense for another single-player focused game.

With the newly announced Quake Champions, it seems clear a new Quake game is no guarantee of a particular story or style, but rather a way for id to make use of owning the name. Despite that, close your eyes and picture ‘Quake’. What comes to mind isn’t just another game to be ticked off as completed, nor a technical achievement to be respected, but that rare game that blew past its limits. Quake lives on to some extent in just about every shooter that followed it, and made gaming a better, more advanced, and endlessly more exciting place for its existence.
 

skacky

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Stopped reading here:
Or at least, no technical compromises. Of Quake’s three great achievements, the single-player game is easily the weakest. It’s not a terrible game or anything, but where Doom still stands up as a great campaign full of detail and wonderful design despite its simplicity, Quake is a largely bland and joyless experience whose memorable moments were almost entirely restricted to the first shareware episode. They were pretty cool, though.
 

Riskbreaker

Guest
Bethesda envisioned MP-only future for Quake IP = PC Gamer pushes an article in which its author claims how Quake's singleplayer was never relevant, and he does so in a manner that implies how his claim is nothing short of commonly accepted wisdom.

When one reads such articles from the likes of PC gamer, RPS or Kotaku, one must never expect them to be results of writer's honest love for this game of which he writes, or products of his genuine experience with said game.
One is always dealing with a snake here, a snake that always has some kind of agenda in mind.
 

tormund

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I don't know if this guy in their comment section is joking or not, but this is how I imagine most of PC Gamer audience anyway

"Yep, good ol Quake-III on the Dreamcast...dial-up modem...man that was good for it's day. I couldnt begin to account just how many hours my bro and I sunk into that. "
:lol:
 
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Happy birthday Quake.

tumblr_o95g5kRjfl1s95hkno1_1280.jpg


tumblr_mv8rvk8gtb1s95hkno1_500.jpg
 

octavius

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Bethesda envisioned MP-only future for Quake IP = PC Gamer pushes an article in which its author claims how Quake's singleplayer was never relevant, and he does so in a manner that implies how his claim is nothing short of commonly accepted wisdom.

When one reads such articles from the likes of PC gamer, RPS or Kotaku, one must never expect them to be results of writer's honest love for this game of which he writes, or products of his genuine experience with said game.
One is always dealing with a snake here, a snake that always has some kind of agenda in mind.

Well, he does have a point about Quake's bland SP experience compared to Doom.
 
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Well, he does have a point about Quake's bland SP experience compared to Doom.

I would say that Doom is more like arcade game where you expect to maw tons of enemies between boss fights. Quake, while having smaller numbers of foes per map but they are more tough and they fight back more aggressively. I was dissapointed with the full release of Q back in the day, but after playing it once more I really like the change in atmosphere and level building. Trent music is also great. We are spoiled now with the shooters that are giving more elements to the whole plot thing. Quake 2 was first try at ID to make something of it, but it was just uninspiried and generic. Unreal killed the sp campaign of Q2 to me, and I can't force myself anymore to replay it. Come to think of it, it was named as sequel, but was intended at first to be a separate game. But, like always - brande recognition ! MP for Quake 2 was really cool, I remember some good bots for it, since I didn't even dream about modem then. Then Quake 3 came, and I came.
 

DraQ

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I can't fully agree about Q1 SP being meh - it had some cool maps, good enemies, some of which were creative and non-orthodox (tarbabies, immortal zombies), good dynamics, tons of atmosphere, cool powerups and a handful of good weapons (thunderbolt and RL mostly). Of course, there is this part where Q1 was mostly brown and didn't really have that much diversity between levels.

I also can't agree about that bit about Unreal, which brought much more to the picture than purty lighting and didn't actually need accelerator to achieve gorgeous graphics.

I did like, however, how it administered a swift kick to Q2's mutilated, catheter riddled, cybernetic nutsack.
:hero:
 

soulburner

Cipher
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Sep 21, 2013
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809
I find Quake single player to be one of the best if not the best first person shooter experiences in my life. I still replay it from time to time. The movement, the monsters, sounds, music... considering the development hell it's amazing how coherent the game world is, despite the seeming disconnection between sci-fi and medieval. Everything fits. Everything is near perfect. It's like it was all planned from A to Z.

I especially love the abstract level design. The areas don't try to look realistic, like having a function other than being nightmarish. It's a maze created solely for the purpose of letting someone in and hunting them. As if the monsters got bored of trying to get into other dimensions to hunt for prey but instead thought about inviting them to their world. Like test chambers in Portal or something.

I'm very afraid of how will the modern id Software destroy Quake if they decide to remake it after D44M. It will probably have all the stupid shit like weapon upgrades, armor upgrades, collectible plush Shamblers, player being The Chosen One right from the very first second of gameplay, shiny health and ammo falling out from monsters, cutscenes, characters talking shit, stupid plot (which should just be "you are here. Escape.") and arenas with neverending monsters and computer displays showing "Quake detected, locking all doors, sucker" :|

So... Quake. I'm gonna go play it for a bit now :P
 

DraQ

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I think a modern Quake (or Doom for that matter) should try to incorporate some of Tom Hall's original ideas for DooM as far as general plot and world are concerned, while sticking closely to the original's atmosphere and aesthetics (less so for Quake which could have been more varied) as well as overall gameplay dynamics.

Take note that early id protagonists (as much - or as little - as we can even consider them to be actual characters) weren't boastful, wisecracking asshole kind of badasses unlike, say, Duke Nukem.
They were, obviously badasses of humongous proportions, but they were just quietly doing their thing and none too happy about the whole ordeal which hit them hard, judging from the inter-episode texts.
Trying to make them DN's damages the atmosphere. Doom or Quake, despite their utterly derpy premise, were pretty serious about it (even though it was distsant second to the gameplay) and managed to make t work, largely by shutting the fuck up about it.
If nu-Dooms and potential nu-Quakes can't shut the fuck up, they'd better get themselves better premises and plots and what's better than something that was actual if somewhat abortive groundwork for the original Doom?
 

Naraya

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Gusy, Quake 1 pack on GOG for a mere 3 dolla. You can't beat this offer.

This GOG release also contains the two expansions for this first installment, “Quake Mission Pack No. 1: Scourge of Armagon” and “Quake Mission Pack No. 2: Dissolution of Eternity”, bringing even more interdimensional horrors and weapons to your PC. With the main game soundtrack composed by Trent Reznor, you’re in for one heart-stopping hell of a ride.
 
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Boleskine

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https://www.howtogeek.com/735446/how-quake-shook-the-world-quake-turns-25/

How Quake Shook the World: Quake Turns 25
benj_htg_headshot_1.jpg
Benj Edwards

Jun 22, 2021, 6:40 am EDT | 8 min read
quake_hero_1.jpg

id Software
After revolutionizing PC gaming with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, id Software pulled off a hat trick with Quake, released on June 22, 1996. Quake mixed polygonal 3D graphics, networking, and grunge into a groundbreaking hit with wide influence. Here’s what made it special.

A Gritty, Dark Fantasy World Created in Tension
In Quake, you play as an unnamed protagonist (later called “Ranger“) who must travel through dimensional gates to defeat an alien named Quake that has invaded Earth. Like Doom before it, Quake is a first-person shooter game where you explore levels, solve minor puzzles, and obliterate every monster that you see—ideally in a shower of bloody “gibs.”

quake_screenshot_2.jpg

Quake, as most people saw it in 1996, running in 320×200 (stretched to a 4:3 ratio here).
Compared to the technicolor violence of Doom’s universe, Quake felt relatively bland and dark, graphically speaking, and its single-player campaign was no showstopper. But it incorporated dark medieval imagery and H.P. Lovecraft influences that felt appropriate for 1996’s era of grunge music, grunge fonts, and grunge fashion. And its pioneering 3D graphics and networking support placed it head and shoulders above the competition.

id Software forged Quake in a contentious team effort due to a long period of technical development on the engine, with disagreements over game design eventually leading to id Software co-founder John Romero leaving the company.

Still, the Quake team pulled off a major win for id Software. John Carmack, Michael Abrash, John Cash, Romero, and Dave Taylor handled the programming. John Romero, Sandy Petersen, American McGee, and Tim Willits designed the levels, and Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud created the graphics. Romero did game design, production, created editor tools, and worked on sound effects as well.

Notably, Quake features a creepy and compelling ambient soundtrack composed by Trent Reznor of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor also voiced the sound effects of the main character. In tribute to Reznor’s services, which he reportedly provided for free, id’s artists put a “NIN” Nine Inch Nails logo on the nail gun ammo box in the game.

more at the link

https://www.pcgamer.com/were-running-a-quake-multiplayer-server-all-week-for-the-25th-anniversary/

We're running a Quake multiplayer server all week for the 25th anniversary
By Wes Fenlon about 1 hour ago

Celebrate Quake's big milestone with FFA, TDM, and CTF.

The PC Gamer Quake servers
We have three servers open for anyone to join, all based on the US west coast (sorry about your ping, UK friends). Here are the addresses:

  • 32-player FFA server: pcg.servegame.com:28501
  • 4v4 Team Deathmatch: pcg.servegame.com:28502
  • 8v8 CTF: pcg.servegame.com:28503
The FFA and CTF servers should be running continuously as players join, but the Team Deathmatch server requires all players to ready up before the match starts.

See below for advice on how to join. And let me know in the PC Gamer Discord if something's broken—these config files are tricky.

Happy fragging!
 
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