DF Retro: Quake - The Game, The Technology, The Ports, The Legacy

[Music] when you step back and consider the history of video games as a medium there are precious few titles which have truly helped shape the course of the industry but quake is one such game it's simple and streamlined but its technical underpinnings influence on game development and its lasting impact on gamers today ensure that quake will never be forgotten quake also holds a very special place on this channel this 5 minute 19 second video featuring the sega saturn conversion of quake served as the catalyst for df retro thus today the next chapter of df retro begins and with it it's time to give quake its due in this episode we'll explore the history of quake examine the game running on a wide range of vintage pc hardware including the rendition verite powered v-quake and discuss its console conversions we'll also dive into the four key reasons i believe quake has earned its spot as one of the most important games ever made so let's get started [Laughter] [Music] when doom arrived in 1993 it changed the game in landscape forever now that might sound hyperbolic but think about it for a second first person shooters had already started gaining traction due in part to id's own wolfenstein 3d true but there's a reason why the doom clone label was applied to first person shooter titles that would follow in its wake it changed the perception of what a pc game could be and everyone wanted to taste doom also basically invented the death match while empowering the modding community with tools and technology necessary to create new content for the game it of course also fueled controversy while making its creators the folks at id software world famous but how do you follow up such a successful technically impressive masterpiece such as doom the expectations for whatever id software would tackle next were growing that game would become quake first teased here in commander keen as the fight for justice this overly ambitious blurb of text nested away in the game's main menu suggest an experience beyond what would have been possible at the time in the hammer wielding quake this was a lead named after john romero's dnd character it's clear that quake is something that it had wanted to create for a long time while teased for years the public was given their first taste of quake in early 1996 with the release of q-test it features just three maps designed for death match there's no main menu here no a.i to battle as romero noted in the readme file the q test was not intended to be a demo but it kind of served that purpose q test is interesting to revisit today much of the artwork and sound effects are different compared to what would ship months later in the final game and its lack of a main menu also demonstrated a feature that would become a staple in the world of pc gaming specifically the command line interface or console it's one of many firsts which quake brings to the table press the tilde key or escape in the case of q test and a window swoops down from above with a command line ready for user input the console itself serves as an event log for things happening within the game but also an interface for manipulating game variables and everything from rendering to gameplay to audio could be adjusted here q-test was a nice taste but there were still a lot of unanswered questions and pc gamers waited patiently for the day when they could experience it properly that day would arrive just a few months later the shareware version of quake would arrive in june 96 with the final game appearing just one month later with its dimly lit corridors abstract geometry and industrial soundscape quake certainly delivered something unique the thing is if you weren't playing pc games during this era you might not fully grasp just how important quake was at the time of course on the surface it's a deeply atmospheric fast-paced action game quake features vast complex true 3d levels showcasing visuals unlike anything on the market at the time it builds on the artistic influences which served as a foundation in doom while introducing a new dark industrial and lovecraftian theme to the mix it's chaotic but it works at the same time quake also streamlines certain features found in doom the use button is now absent for instance buttons and doors open by approaching them now the difficulty menu from doom has been replaced with this hub world where you walk through the appropriate portal to select your challenge level with the hardest difficulty hidden away near episode four and the four main episodes are also accessed via this same hub rather than selecting them from a menu again like in doom quake features a perfect mix of weapons then you have staples such as the double-barreled shotgun and the rocket launcher but it also features new weapons such as the nail gun grenade launcher with grenades that actually bounce by the way and the thunderbolt they don't look like much but they feel absolutely incredible in practice the particle trail that follows in the wake of the launcher combined with the dynamic lighting and enemy giblets remains remarkably satisfying what defines quake for me then is this perfect mix of tight level design taking full advantage of the new fully 3d engine and the more visceral combat while reviews were generally positive at the time there was this lingering sense that quake was simply an extension of doom and in fact duke nukem 3d with its more interactive realistic cityscapes was often considered more impressive for its day but i believe this simplicity is exactly why it stands the test of time and why it was such a success at the time even decades after their original release both quake and doom remain remarkably satisfying to play in the years that followed games would attempt to push interactive narratives and expand design possibilities in interesting new directions but few remain as directly engaging as the original quake quake was and still is an achievement quake was also highly demanding for its time i know i tried to play quake on a 486 dx266 going against the official requirements the result a game that ran at five frames per second in the smallest window yeah quake helped usher in the era of the pentium processor it also features a unique collaboration a partnership with trent rezner of nine inch nails trent was apparently a big fan of doom and insisted on producing the soundtrack and sound effects for quake while doom was known for bobby prince's riff on 80s metal music quake was something different with its distorted guitars and industrial soundscape there really was nothing else like it at the time in the game space unlike doom before it though the music and quake was stored as cd red book audio that played back as he played through the game but each level had a specific track assigned to it that would loop when it reached the end of the track it's a perfect fit for the grungy visual design of quake at the time quake was everywhere you saw it in retail stores you talked about it online there were magazines packed with pages covering quake articles showing people how to build a machine that could actually run the game well it was a huge deal at the time and it was good it played well it may not have reinvented the wheel so to speak but what was here was phenomenal but what really makes quake special what has allowed it to stand the test of time so to speak is something much deeper [Music] quake was an impressive game at release but as someone that was playing it at the time it wasn't entirely clear just how much of an impact it would have on gaming as a whole but an impact it would have allow me to present the four pillars of quake four areas where i believe quake influenced and pushed the medium of games to the next level the first pillar quake helped push the boundaries of 3d technology in the pc space the release of gl quake specifically which we'll talk about in much greater detail soon expanded the burgeoning graphics card market everyone wanted to play 3d accelerated quake and every graphics card manufacturer wanted their card to run it the needs of gl quake directly influenced the 3d graphics card market and in that sense while 3d acceleration was ultimately an inevitability geoquake was exactly the game that the industry needed to increase adoption speed it's also one of the reasons i believe the 3dfx voodoo graphics became as popular as it did it was the fastest card at the time for playing 3d accelerated quake again we'll dive into the specifics of gl quake shortly but the point is quake made 3d cards popular and 3d cards would indeed become the future of pc gaming the second pillar its impact on game development the quake engine popularized the licensing and utilization of third-party developed technology to build games games including hexane 2 sin half-life dai katana soldier fortune jedi knight 2 and even call of duty all have their roots in some derivative of id tech now precious few ended up using the original quake engine of course but it was quake that demonstrated the viability of such a model and that model is standard today of course quake wasn't the first to be licensed but i do feel it was the most important and influential this ties directly into the third pillar then the modding community while user-created content was nothing new id's own doom and games such as zzzt offered tools to the players that could be used to create their own content but quake is kind of an important point where mod creation really took off i feel a prime example of this is something like team fortress released the same year as quake itself its legacy persists to this day in the popular team fortress 2 it all started with quake there's also plenty of other releases from this era including stuff like quake rally which brings combat racing to quake or something like aliens quake which is well aliens meet quake and that's not even getting into the map creation aspect like doom the community was quick to create countless maps and map packs for many players to enjoy and even today with updated tools such as the phenomenal trench brew folks are still building quake maps the final pillar then also kind of feeds back into pillar 3. multiplayer quake was designed from the beginning to support networked multiplayer matches but it was the release of quake world specifically that really allowed it to come to life this update to quake was built for speed allowing networked multiplayer action over modems of the day in many ways quake world is the catalyst from which all modern online gaming originates this was the first truly popular widely played internet multiplayer sensation and a legendary community was formed from it so quake accelerated the rise of 3d graphics cards influenced the modding and game development scene while also popularizing internet gaming it's an impressive legacy to be sure but let's step back a moment and discuss some of the technology what is it that made quake so impressive for its day [Music] when you think quake you think 3d graphics this was one of the biggest promises the developers gave to players that it would be a true 3d world but consider this 3d polygon rendering was already a big thing at the time quake released developers had dabbled in it for years but most efforts were either built for expensive arcade hardware or ran kinda slowly that is until the mid 90s 3d was starting to look more realistic new consoles capable of handling reasonably fast 3d graphics had arrived and the pc was receiving new games pushing that visual envelope games such as parallax's descent offered players an opportunity to explore a completely three-dimensional environment and it even ran on a 486. what id software wanted to deliver though was a little more ambitious a game featuring massive environments and enemies constructed entirely of 3d and most importantly with realistic lighting delivering all these elements while maintaining the speed doom was known for was a challenge but the efforts of john carmack and michael abrash ultimately delivered so how did they pull it off well we can't go into every detail here it's a broad subject but let me touch on some of the basics first there's the pre-processing element the map geometry visibility information and lighting are all pre-calculated before being used within the game at runtime visibility in fact was one of the largest problems faced during development of quake the issue how do you determine which surfaces to draw given the location of the game camera it simply wasn't feasible to render everything all the time the solution then involves building a binary space partitioning tree or bsp tree generating this tree is one part of the pre-processing step once complete you have a leafy bsp with the leaves populating this tree representing a convex grouping of polygons the key to its speed however involves pre-calculating the visibility information by going through each leaf of the bsp this produces what's known as the potentially visible set or pvs pre-calculating this information was slow at the time but is highly performant when that data is used at runtime think about it as solving all the difficult math equations before it's actually needed during gameplay you can basically see it in action here note that the wireframe view shows objects behind other objects but only when a particular chunk has the potential to become visible from the player's position as you move geometry is cold and therefore not drawn saving on resources this part of the process is key to quake's ability to draw such large complex maps while still running quickly on hardware from this period now of course there's more to this process but this should give you the basic gist of that part the next major innovation though lies in world lighting specifically the game's use of something called light maps essentially this is a pre-calculated texture map applied to polygon surfaces which represents lighting information for that particular level this is key to the visual design of quake designers could place a light into the scene and the map processing step would then calculate the behavior of the light producing properly lit and shadowed results this was of course not possible in real time yet but it represents a quantum leap in representing light and shadow within a 3d video game environment as of 1996 but quake also featured dynamic lighting any number of objects can project light which influences the world from rockets fired by your launcher to fireballs dancing around the scene dynamic lighting is a huge part of the game's visual appeal amazingly this is something that almost didn't make it into the game in fact q-test released just a few months before the final game hit store shelves lacked dynamic lighting entirely this feature involved combining dynamic light contributions from the right light maps then rebuilding the surface to reflect the change basically an early method for projecting light across the scene even if it's not entirely accurate it looks really nice in motion i think quake also introduced a number of visual changes to improve the atmospheric rendering in the game the sky system for instance is rather memorable i think rather than using a static image like doom quake instead relies on moving parallax textures to give the illusion of moving clouds basically the thing is it's not an open sky it's ultimately just applied to these sealed boxes designers place into the world but i think it was rather effective water also looks great compared to doom with a lovely swirling texture and a full screen view warping applied while swimming and speaking of swimming this is another key change from doom in fact the full 3d nature of quake kind of allowed the designers to go nuts with level layouts creating these often massive multi-tiered environments that were a joy to explore the 3d nature of quake was genuinely used to improve the overall gameplay entities are also critical to quake all enemies are rendered entirely in 3d using keyframed animation there's no interpolation or skeleton system here and rendering is a fine so textures warp visibly at close proximity and the enemy animations themselves appear rather choppy at least in original versions of quake but even still it was rather impressive for its day keep in mind that at the time most other shooters being released were still relying on sprite-based characters to handle the enemies now at the time of release quake was still designed primarily for play within ms-dos it uses a software-driven scanline renderer with support for a wide range of rendering resolutions as noted earlier quake was demanding and relied on specific strengths of the pentium processor to run as fast as it did 486 owners were left in the dust while users of cyrix amd and overdrive processors were met with rather slow performance in comparison to the best intel systems i might even argue that intel owes some of its success during this period to quake after all just a couple years earlier they had been struggling with the floating point unit bugs that plagued the earliest pentium processors but now everyone wanted a pentium to play quake so yeah in terms of technology quake was very impressive at the time of release its engine definitely lived up to expectations but as the year came to a close things would finally really begin to heat up by late 1996 months after the release of quake 3d acceleration had become the hot new buzzword until this point 3d computer games were driven primarily by the cpu in software but these new cards promised a revolution by offloading calculations to dedicated silicon that would not only increase performance but also greatly improve image quality but things were off to a slow start with middling support in a fractured market but quake would help ensure that things would change i mentioned gl quake earlier in the video when discussing pillar one but geo quake was not the first accelerated version of quake that honor belongs to v quake [Music] v quake is a hardware accelerated version of quake designed for the rendition verite v1000 line of graphics cards released sometime in the second half of 1996 the rendition verte was widely considered the first desirable 3d card on the market something that would quickly be spoiled with the arrival of the faster 3dfx voodoo graphics shortly after this version of quake is the work of a partnership between rendition and id software keep in mind that in 1996 direct3d and even opengl were still very much in their infancy so many games were being created using proprietary apis targeting specific graphics cards v quake is no exception having been created using the speedy 3d api designed specifically for ms-dos games v-quake just happens to be the only official version of quake with hardware acceleration released for ms-dos v-quake offers bi-linear texture filtering 16-bit color dithering edge anti-aliasing and faster performance at higher resolutions it's also interesting to see it here today because v-quake itself is uniquely inaccessible today you can't emulate it you can't run it through a virtual machine you need an actual rendition verite graphics card running in a period-appropriate pc to play it now what's interesting about the verte is its approach to the 3d problem it basically uses a fully programmable risk cpu rather than a series of fixed function pipelines like other cards on the market it is in essence the first consumer facing gpu if you will but of course it could be argued that this approach was not exactly the right move for 1996 when computers in general were still relatively slow the fixed function approach used by 3dfx while more limited was a lot faster at accelerating key features required by modern games v-quick then is a weird hybrid of sorts the image is rendered similarly to the software mode but the hardware is leveraged to bring about these key improvements one of the most impressive and somewhat unusual additions for the time is edge anti-aliasing enabling this feature cleans up polygon edges and can even filter particles with the correct setting v-quake also closely replicates the original underwater warping effect used in the software version of quake in fact it arguably looks even better though it is demanding the water surface texture also retains its animation though appears slightly different in that sense v-quake feels rather true to the original software version of quake in a way that geo quake really doesn't unfortunately this unique approach to hardware design ultimately handicapped the rendition cards it lacked a hardware accelerated z-buffer making depth compares a slow process a lot of design choices made in quake ties specifically to these limitations and this is also perhaps why the next generation rendition cards the v2000 series didn't perform noticeably better in v quake still it was an exciting time for pc gaming and quake was at the forefront with the verite installed then perhaps it's time to make use of another feature which quake helped pioneer and make popular the time demo basically quake allowed you to record demos from the command line and then play them back in real time if you choose to play these demos using the time demo command then the game returns an average frame rate after running that demo so how can we use this well by testing v quake we can get an idea of how this card fares against other cards of the era in our next section where we discuss gl quake firstly i should note that when i actually play v-quake i prefer to use 320x240 resolution with the edge anti-aliasing enabled not only does this boost performance significantly but it produces a very pleasing smooth looking image despite the low pixel count at least on a crt 640 by 480 is obviously sharper and that's what we're going to use for these tests but there was another option 512 by 384 was also viable problem is i can't actually show it here as it does not work with my capture setup still if you didn't want to drop all the way down to 240p 512x384 was a good option as it still looked remarkably sharp but it runs noticeably faster than actual 640x480 so let's go ahead and run the time demo on v-quake at 640x480 without anti-aliasing enabled the game runs quickly through demo 1 which we're using as a base and the result just 24 frames per second not exactly blazing fast cinematic perhaps but not fast still for the time it was reasonable considering the resolution if we drop that resolution to 320 by 240 though we see a significant boost in performance up to 50.6 frames per second making it much more pleasing to use i can't show 384p as noted but that one also averages out above 30 frames per second now enabling anti-aliasing in any resolution seems to cost around three frames of performance at 240p this is actually very reasonable and i recommend using it for that reason at 640x480 though that drags the average performance down to around 20 frames per second which just doesn't feel great but yeah overall i'm a big fan of v-quake it has this gritty look that's more reminiscent of the artistic vision present in the software render but still offers significant improvements over what was possible to do in software at the time it's a very nice solution to this problem it's an interesting relic then from a very different time in pc gaming but we all know how this story goes enter gl quake [Music] following the work on v-quake carmack and abrash made the decision to move to a card agnostic api and attempts were made to port quake to both opengl and direct3d if you were reading dot plan files during this era though you might remember what he said about direct3d at the time i started porting gl quake to direct 3dim with the intent of learning the api and doing a fair comparison well i've learned enough about it i'm not going to finish the port i have better things to do with my time the decision to go with opengl then was significant and it directly impacted graphics card vendors of the day when gl quake first arrived on the scene in early 97 one of the only consumer level cards that actually fared well with quake was the voodoo card from 3dfx and this was due to its mini gl driver which was tuned specifically for gl quake in time other vendors would also release their own mini gl drivers which by the way are essentially opengl drivers that are designed to handle just the subset of features used by quake rather than the full opengl standard geoquake itself is certainly interesting then it brings to the table many of the key improvements first pioneered in v-quake bilinear filtered textures higher color depth higher resolutions but there's also some noticeable differences as well for starters by default geoquake uses this new feature known as gl underscore flash blend this basically draws an orange sphere around dynamic lights rather than influencing the light map as is done in software and in v-quake the reason at the time is that loading textures in and out of memory via opengl was still relatively slow so using this flash blend technique served as a performance boost thankfully you can disable this and instead use a method which resembles the original version but it was slower on hardware of that era shadows and reflections are optional features as well that can be enabled though they're not really designed for the maps that shipped with quake even transparent water was implemented at a later date but required adjustment to the visibility data to account for transparent surfaces with new potentially visible areas annoyingly the gamma function is broken and geoquaken was never really fixed instead relying on display drivers to correct it something that wasn't always possible back in the day believe it or not still gl quake was very popular for its time and certainly helped drive the demand of 3dfx voodoo cards but how does it actually compare against v quake and of course software quake this is where it gets interesting first i should note that the most immediate difference visible here lies in the gamma issue i mentioned earlier the 3dfx by default produces a brighter image and i left it at those defaults this varies per card of course and requires driver level adjustment to correct but as we look at different cards here they all look slightly different in geoquake due to this issue in fact visual quality in general within gl quake is widely determined by the display characteristics of the card being used yes the mini gl drivers were all designed to support as many features as possible used by geoquake but the implementation in hardware definitely seemed to vary and the results were not always the same the results on 3dfx though were generally quite impressive but there are some noticeable differences in how gl quake handles certain visual features firstly there's the water underwater warping is handled completely differently in geo quake in fact it almost seems as if the game now adjusts the vertices of the underwater areas to give the effect of warping water rather than directly impacting the viewport as seems to be the case in v-quake and software quake it just looks really different in practice the texture surface itself also differs in software mode a math function is used to manipulate the liquid texture giving it this warping effect in gl quake however it seems this function was not supported in hardware and an alternative method was devised instead which i feel reduces the quality of water surfaces in fact this is my general takeaway from geoquake it's clear that numerous techniques employed in the software renderer or in beak quake simply weren't possible to implement in gl quake as of 96 97 so while it does offer numerous benefits and improvements due to hardware acceleration it doesn't completely match the artistic look of the original quake it's even evident in things like the way particles are drawn in geoquake they introduce these more rounded filtered versions of particles where in software and v-quake they're perfect squares instead personally i prefer the original look for the particles still it's worth considering the importance of bilinear texture filtering at the time in addition to increased performance and resolution these days i do prefer the non-filtered textures for quake but in 1997 these were extremely desirable features beyond that for this video i captured the software version in 640x480 using this pentium 3 processor something that wouldn't be available until 1999. that means that the cpu users would have been using in 96 or 97 would have been far less capable of reaching these frame rates at such a high resolution however this cpu does hold some value for the upcoming comparisons as it basically eliminates the cpu bottleneck from the equation instead we get to see the full potential of each graphics card and for the time the voodoo did very well it could deliver highly playable frame rates at a full 640x480 resolution unlike the verite though the voodoo only supports two resolutions 640x480 and 512 by 384 there was no option to drop below that to say 320x240 nor was the anti-aliasing option from v quake a technique that was actually patented available in g-quake so by early 97 there were effectively three key ways to enjoy quake there was the software render of course then geoquake with a voodoo graphics or some other workstation focused gl card and then v quake with a rendition verte now obviously geoquake was made to be used on any graphics card capable of supporting it and its release started an arms race of sorts not only to support geoquake but the upcoming quake 2 as well as other announced games using the quake engine so for this next section we'll examine gl quake running on several cards from 1997 and one from 1998 to get a better idea of how they compared each of these cards received their own mini gl driver for quake engine games first though as a reminder if you tried to play geoquake without an accelerator card using windows 98's own gl driver this is what you experienced it was impossibly slow so keep that in mind as we get into these tests as far as i can tell then the first two arrive were the power vr pc x2 based cards in the spring of 1997. i owned this card myself back in the day when it was sold as the matrox m3d and its support for gl quake and low price are what pushed me in this direction initially at 640x480 gl quake performs admirably on the power vr with performance similar to a voodoo graphics on this pentium 3 system unfortunately the card is heavily reliant on cpu speed so my slower amd k623 from 1997 did not fare nearly as well with the power vr with enough cpu grunt say anything from a pentium 200 mmx up you can achieve very smooth performance in geo quake on the power vr it's also worth mentioning that geoquake is extremely dark on the power vr and the matrox m3d drivers have no option for adjusting gamma curiously enough it looks pretty good on the crt i have to admit but it does look really dark in these captures the main drawback here seems to stem from texture blending geoquake uses two passes for rendering its surfaces one pass for the base texture and a second pass for the light map it seems that the blending of these two is handled less elegantly on the power vr with visible block artifacts presenting across surfaces the power vr was a reasonable choice for quake engine games then if you had the cpu grunt to support it and it would be supported by future quake and quake 2 engine games next up released sometime in the summer of 1997 nvidia unleashed its first big graphics card the riva 128. keep in mind in 1997 nvidia was kind of an underdog having come off the failed nv1 experiment but the reaver 128 is what helped put them back on the map unlike the voodoo and power vr solutions the riva 128 is an all-in-one card with support for both 2d and 3d graphics and of course it also supported gl quake with the power of the pentium 3 behind it though i was surprised at just how fast a performance was in this game noticeably faster than any prior card i've tested close to 60 fps in many cases visually speaking it handles all of gl quake's features as well with excellent image quality of course by this point more games were supporting 3dfx's proprietary glide api so it wasn't necessarily an easy sell in comparison to voodoo but it was clear that the competition was starting to catch up the next card of interest that i decided to test here is a little different it's the 3d labs premedia 2. it just so happens that 3d labs was among the first vendors to be involved in the consumer 3d card space having the first card in the market back in 1995. problem is these cards fell short of expectations and their next chip the premedia 1000 was not really much of a gaming card though it did support geo quake i must say the premedia 2 though was a more capable card overall offering both professional gl support as well as reasonable performance in games unfortunately while it is definitely faster it isn't quite fast enough for a late 97 card it's slower than most of the other competing cars when running gl quake but at least it could still run the game reasonably well and the visual quality is excellent of course for good measure in 1998 3dfx unleashed the successor to the voodoo graphics the voodoo 2. this was after the release of quake 2 even but geoquake was still being played and enjoyed and thanks to dual texture memory units and increased clocks the voodoo 2 crushes gl quake with super fast performance easily hitting and exceeding 60 frames per second at 640x480 but it is interesting to consider just how much the landscape had shifted just one year after the release of gl quake in early 97 the market for 3d accelerator cards was relatively limited with only a couple viable options for consumers but one year later such cards became the centerpiece of any serious gaming pc that's how much had changed in just that short span geo quake undoubtedly contributed to this rise and the promise of future quake engine games pushed hardware vendors to ensure that their cards could deliver the features needed and demanded by the quake engine so yeah this is just a small taste of what the market was like in 97. there were other boards being released of course that i didn't get to test such as ati's 3d rage pro but 3dfx was basically still on top again due primarily to glide support from game developers the 3d effects just worked but the competition was definitely making headway so yeah hardware accelerated quake was a big deal and hopefully this section has provided some insight into what it was like back in the day but of course the pc would not be the only place to enjoy quake after the release of doom publishers everywhere wanted to bring a version of doom to the various consoles and many different conversions were created but things were a little different with quake you see by this point the next generation had arrived and there were only really three major players left in town sony sega and nintendo beyond that quake itself was significantly more demanding so bringing it to these consoles would require greater engineering efforts in the end just two official console conversions were released one for nintendo 64 and the other for sega saturn let's begin with the version i've yet to discuss the nintendo 64 version of quake from midway by the time quake was announced for n64 it was already becoming well known for first person shooters games like turok and of course goldeneye double 007 but quake was coming from a different place it was a pc game first and foremost after all so there was some skepticism in the console space but in general previews leading up to release were overwhelmingly positive in many ways the n64 is a great fit for quake it supports many of the features we've already seen in gl quake and has the horsepower necessary to run the game reasonably well but also has limitations that you didn't encounter on the pc firstly the entire game is now completely linear the level selection hub has been eliminated and you simply play through the stages one after another most of the pc stages are here but it's missing a handful of them cooperative play is also absent but you can play in split screen mode for a little deathmatch the soundtrack is also completely original having been crafted by aubry hodges of doom 64 and doom playstation fame take a listen [Music] it sounds pretty good right but really what's most surprising to me is how nice the game looks first and foremost this version runs at 320 by 240 and offers users an unusual choice the option to disable the full screen filter common in most other n64 games this lends it a sharper look than is typical of the system but also reveals color banding in texture surfaces in the process the real standout feature here though is the higher color depth and inclusion of colored light maps yes fully colored lighting is used in quake 64 but only for static lights yes dynamic world altering lights from the pc version are absent instead replaced with the spheres similar to gl quake's flash blend option what's great about the new light maps though is that the color does influence entities within the area of influence so enemies and your weapon are lit correctly the sky of course has also been completely reworked with these beautiful new textures that look just awesome i think plus water holds up as well being handled in a way similar to the software version of quake now the memory situation on n64 has an impact though with much lower resolution textures throughout and reduction in scene complexity check out the gate at the end of this stage for instance it's reduced to almost nothing on n64 it's just a square room at this point you'll spot a lot of changes throughout each stage if you look closely it feels as if the developers had to rework every single map to reduce overall complexity to fit within the confines of the n64 vaulted ceilings are almost always replaced with these flat surfaces for instance and once detailed structures become basic cubes and doors are mostly squared off now the texture work though is interesting it's actually not bad by n64 standards and from the normal plane perspective it looks solid enough but it's clearly a huge step down from the pc version both in terms of resolution and variety also if you look closely at enemies they can be almost unrecognizable at time just a blob of pixels slathered across these low polygon models but that's the nature of console conversions and honestly i feel midway made a lot of right choices here it runs at a relatively stable 30 frames per second offers nicely customizable controls that feel great and it looks surprisingly good in fact i'd argue that it holds up very well for an n64 game it's one of the smoothest looking and playing games in the system it's a shining example of what was possible when it came to difficult pc to console conversions of this era which brings us to the next version the sega saturn version of quake this is the game that inspired me to begin df retro in the first place but it's been five years since that last video so how does it hold up today this version of quake was developed by the legendary lobotomy software the crew behind the seminole power slave john carmack once remarked that it would be impossible to run quake on the sega saturn and he was likely correct because this game does not use the quake engine which is why lobotomy software opted instead to use their own technology first featured in powerslave sure the frame rate isn't remarkably steady but it's very impressive considering the hardware this time though i wanted to include additional comparisons with the pc and n64 versions in this case i feel that it makes sense to compare primarily against the software render rather than geoquake in that this is the look that lobotomy itself was likely aiming to match there are obvious differences to behold right away the baked light map solution used in quake appears to have been replaced for a completely different method of lighting the scene it's surprisingly dynamic and even lights up the environment when firing your weapons with beautiful blasts of colored lighting similar to power slave it can be especially effective in areas such as this the red glow on the saturn version is simply beautiful even today the sky system is also entirely new and likely relies on vdp-2's infinite plane system but the different layers of clouds scroll in opposing directions compared to the original quake level detail is also fascinating as each map was likely recreated to resemble quake this means that the scale of certain areas feels a little different and certain structures were placed to reduce visibility and increase rendering speed but what really surprised me about this redesign is how much closer it gets to matching the pc original compared to n64 so check out this room the saturn retains the vaulted ceilings of the pc original that are absent on nintendo 64. and this is something you'll see throughout or what about this scene again remember on n64 this beautiful archway was replaced with this box-like room in basic squared off door well on sega saturn they actually attempted to replicate the original design of the pc version it's still reduced in quality but it gets surprisingly close the basic gist here is that the rendering quality on n64 is superior with its bilinear texture filtering perspective correct textures and generally improved lighting but the saturn version features higher resolution textures and comes closer to matching the geometric complexity of the pc original heck you'll even find things like this where the glowing eyes on this texture are animated on saturn but in no other version also since i love to talk about water here's how these stack up as i mentioned the n64 manages to warp the water surface using a math equation similar to quake or v quake while also using a full screen warping technique below the surface on the saturn they use a completely different method for rendering the water surface it's rather chunky i have to admit but at least it's smoothly animated but what's really interesting is when you go below the surface they use lighting to simulate the effect of water caustics in a rather crude fashion so again it has a look quite unlike any other version of quake also unlike n64 the saturn version features the level selection hub though the difficulty section has been modified and simplified also note that on saturn the weapon itself is represented as a sprite rather than a 3d model as in all other versions of quake and on top of everything the saturn version includes trent rezner's cd audio soundtrack just like the pc original [Music] but what's really interesting is how the game plays on saturn it's significantly more challenging than playing on the pc due in part to the clunky controls but also the way the checkpoint system works and this also kind of applies to n64 though i find that version easier overall basically when you die in this version of quake you're sent back to the beginning of the level and because the game is clunkier to play it's a lot easier to die as well so it basically requires the player to be much more cautious while exploring the stages and i found this rewarding in its own way it's a slower paced game on the saturn but still a lot of fun so yeah both console releases demonstrate why i find this era of graphics rendering so darn interesting the vast differences in hardware necessitates completely different approaches to design while neither console version is a match for the pc original they come remarkably close in many ways and heck pcs were rather expensive back in the day so if you had an outdated machine that couldn't play quake these were great alternatives unfortunately quake never received another official conversion to a major console sure there was the pocket pc version released in 2005 which seems interesting but i've not had a chance to sample myself and that goes doubly so for the conversion to the brazilian zebo system but that's kind of it but of course no such thing was really needed thanks to a very smart move on the part of john [Music] carmack [Music] as had become tradition john carmack lived up to his promise and released the source code for quake in late 1999 two years after quake 2. earlier in the video i discussed the four pillars and what they meant to the games industry in relation to quake but the release of the source code is something i feel is especially critical to its legacy since the release of this code quake has received countless source ports some aim to deliver a tried and true quake experience with quality of life improvements and expanded options while others focus on pushing new visual boundaries this has allowed creators to build and release so much unique content over the years quake and quake adjacent work is still being done to this day so if you own a modern pc the best way to experience quake today is with one of the many source ports available some of my favorites include mark v quake spasm and dark places each offers something unique that allows you to expand the quake experience on modern machines of course i've played a lot of great maps over the years as well such as beyond belief but one of my absolute favorites remains the relatively recent arcane dimensions a massive community undertaking featuring some of the finest quake map design and techniques you'll ever see an absolute beast of a pack that you absolutely need to play stuff like in the shadows also demonstrates how quake can be used to create something entirely different as well or quake 1.5 which aims to enhance the original quake experience in a multitude of ways i'd be remiss then if i didn't mention the official add-on packs as well quake mission pack one and two both of these feature an engaging set of levels for the original quake complete with new soundtracks and the developers behind them would go on to do great things hypnotic the crew behind the first mission pack would become ritual entertainment and develop sin on the quake 2 engine the mission pack for that game then would be developed by a studio called 2015 the same studio that would later create medal of honor allied assault before developing call of duty so yeah there's kind of a legacy there quake mission pack 2 then was done by rogue entertainment who had previously developed strife and would go on to create american mcgee's alice another it adjacent production if you will it's fair to say there is a lot of quake content waiting for you but of course it's also fun to jump in and create your own maps trench broom is an amazing level creation tool that i often play around with it can be time consuming to create something genuinely interesting but it's fun to learn working with brushes as opposed to the more modern static meshes makes for an interesting time as you can basically carve up anything you'd like for this video i spent some time creating this small map just toying around with the editor again and also created this sequence for the introduction but really that's just a hint of what's possible here it's a great way to get into mapping another part of the quake legacy then lies in things like speedrunning here's a great example a group of speedrunners perfected quake on nightmare difficulty getting 100 kills and secrets in every stage i love watching these guys play it's nearly a work of art in its own right just beautiful to watch everything unfold so yeah it's fair to say that there's still a lot of people playing quake and there's no reason why you should not too whether it's playing through the hundreds of classic maps and mods that exist building your own maps or toying with an old 90s pc quake will never let you down thus for what quake achieved starting in 1996 all the way up through the modern era i believe it to be one of the most important games in the history of our media hopefully over the course of this past hour i've demonstrated just a few reasons why quake remains so interesting now and also what made it so influential in its day this is the quake legacy and thus we've reached the end of another episode of df retro and yet despite the long run time i still feel as if there's a lot left unsaid quake is just one of those topics that could be discussed for years to come and in many circles it still is so what if you want to learn more about quake well firstly i'd recommend checking out the graphics programming black book from michael abrash which includes a lot of technical information relevant to building games in the 90s it's extremely interesting to read today and i also urge you to check out fabian sunglart's fantastic website which goes into great detail on many quake adjacent topics as well beyond this if you're simply looking for more quake maps go check out quadicted a vast repository of quake goodness for you to enjoy but that's all from me for now thanks for making it all the way to the end and be sure to never stop playing quake [Music] you

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 313,480

Keywords:

Id: 0KxRXZhQuY8

Length: 57min 30sec (3450 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Danielo944]

Hell yeah, I still play this one and prefer it to Quake 2, the gameplay feels faster and the amount of maps available through modding is mind-boggling.

If anyone likes Quake, go play Arcane Dimensions!

[u/pikanrikan]

I would love a modern day remake of Quake like they did with Doom 2016. But not the sci-fi themed Quake that started with Q2, I mean the original dark, medieval-themed Quake.

[u/caraamon]

I still sometimes miss Quake Wars. For a good 6 months, I was the highest ranked tank user. I still remember figuring out how to pick fliers out of the air with the main gun, or hopping out to repair it in between their strafing runs.

Good times.

[u/Jointtimelineiscanon]

Still to this day the best FPS ever made. If I were to describe it in two words they would be effortessly fun. The first three episodes are level design porn.

[u/CENAWINSLOL]

I know everyone loves DF for their tech analysis or comparisons of modern games but personally I've always preferred their retro stuff, especially videos like this were they look at all the ports of a classic game. They did one for Doom too which I recommend.

[u/ContributorX_PJ64]

It annoys me that there are no modern (and official) versions of Doom nor Quake that offer the Aubrey Hodges soundtrack as an option.

[u/Fob0bqAd34]

At 12:51 is that a Panther XL?

[u/Generic-VR]

If you want a much more stylistic and dramatic presentation, ahoy covered Quake years back. (DF probably focuses a tad more on the technical details though, and I love them for it).

I love DF, but ahoy’s videos are definitely worth a watch too. If you already like DF retro you’ll probably love his stuff too.

[u/BassCreat0r]

A new quake would be amazing. Another older game in the same vein that I would love a remake of is Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, had so much fun with that game as a kid.