clueless1 wrote:

I'm a sucker for good in-game music (hence why I can fall in love with Might and Magic: World of Xeen but not with Eye of the Beholder), and the music in Unreal contributed at least as much to the mood as the graphics.

So...all that needs to happen is I hear the music, and I'll be transported back to 1998. 😊

True, the music was good stuff. I remember Unreal Tournament's soundtrack being particularly catchy. Fun times. 😀

Shponglefan wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

I'm a sucker for good in-game music (hence why I can fall in love with Might and Magic: World of Xeen but not with Eye of the Beholder), and the music in Unreal contributed at least as much to the mood as the graphics.

So...all that needs to happen is I hear the music, and I'll be transported back to 1998. 😊

True, the music was good stuff. I remember Unreal Tournament's soundtrack being particularly catchy. Fun times. 😀

Doom soundtrack has several song with good cymbal rolls, which sounds like nirvana on my JBL 120Ti.

Hexen and Heretic are one of my favorite games of all times along with Dark Forces 1. ) And about true 3d shoters - both parts of Dark Forces II in my opinion are much better than Quake series... But I haven't yet tried the Unreal)

Shponglefan wrote:

Azarien wrote:

There is a plot for Quake, and it's basically the same as in Doom: humankind experiments with portal technology, and bad things came out of it.

I remember there being a plot for Quake 2. Don't remember one for Quake though. 😒

You begin (E1M1) in a Slipgate Complex (ie. teleport research facility) and find that all the soldiers have been turned into evil zombies. You enter a slipgate at the end of the level and fight hellish monsters you find there.

If you have the manual for Quake 1 (or even it's .TXT version) you can read the tiny plot blurb in it.

1I. THE STORY
2A. Background
3      You get the phone call at 4 a.m. By 5:30 you're in the secret
4   installation. The commander explains tersely, "It's about the Slipgate
5   device. Once we perfect these, we'll be able to use them to transport
6   people and cargo from one place to another instantly.
7
8      "An enemy codenamed Quake, is using his own slipgates to insert death
9   squads inside our bases to kill, steal, and kidnap..
10
11      "The hell of it is we have no idea where he's from. Our top scientists
12   think Quake's not from Earth, but another dimension. They say Quake's
13   preparing to unleash his real army, whatever that is.
14
15      "You're our best man. This is Operation Counterstrike and you're in
16   charge. Find Quake, and stop him ... or it ... You have full authority
17   to requisition anything you need. If the eggheads are right, all our
18   lives are expendable.."
19
20B. Prelude to Destruction
21      While scouting the neighborhood, you hear shots back at the base Damn,
22   that Quake bastard works fast! He heard about Operation Counterstrike,
23   and hit first. Racing back, you see the place is overrun. You are almost
24   certainly the only survivor. Operation Counterstrike is over. Except for
25   you.
26
27      You know that the heart of the installation holds a slipgate.
28   Since Quake's killers came through, it is still set to his dimension.
29   You can use it to get loose in his hometown. Maybe you can get to the
30   asshole personally. You pump a round into your shotgun, and get moving.

DracoNihil wrote:

If you have the manual for Quake 1 (or even it's .TXT version) you can read the tiny plot blurb in it. […]
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If you have the manual for Quake 1 (or even it's .TXT version) you can read the tiny plot blurb in it.

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1I. THE STORY
2A. Background
3      You get the phone call at 4 a.m. By 5:30 you're in the secret
4   installation. The commander explains tersely, "It's about the Slipgate
5   device. Once we perfect these, we'll be able to use them to transport
6   people and cargo from one place to another instantly.
7
8      "An enemy codenamed Quake, is using his own slipgates to insert death
9   squads inside our bases to kill, steal, and kidnap..
10
11      "The hell of it is we have no idea where he's from. Our top scientists
12   think Quake's not from Earth, but another dimension. They say Quake's
13   preparing to unleash his real army, whatever that is.
14
15      "You're our best man. This is Operation Counterstrike and you're in
16   charge. Find Quake, and stop him ... or it ... You have full authority
17   to requisition anything you need. If the eggheads are right, all our
18   lives are expendable.."
19
20B. Prelude to Destruction
21      While scouting the neighborhood, you hear shots back at the base Damn,
22   that Quake bastard works fast! He heard about Operation Counterstrike,
23   and hit first. Racing back, you see the place is overrun. You are almost
24   certainly the only survivor. Operation Counterstrike is over. Except for
25   you.
26
27      You know that the heart of the installation holds a slipgate.
28   Since Quake's killers came through, it is still set to his dimension.
29   You can use it to get loose in his hometown. Maybe you can get to the
30   asshole personally. You pump a round into your shotgun, and get moving.

Reads like someone wrote it while on bad acid.

I suggest watching Seal of Nehahra if you want a more elaborate opening story.

I did have a Pentium machine when Quake was released. But Doom impressed me more. Even now, I could re-play DOOM I and II, but not Quake. I also find Duke Nukem 3D more interesting than Quake.

Despite having the first mouselook in a FPS game in Terminator Future Shock and Terminator Skynet, most magazines missed this point and were praising Quake's "true-3D mouselook". And yes, I enjoyed Future Shock and SKynet more than Quake. 🤣

Yeah, maybe it's just personal preference, and I didn't like the brownish Quake with more obvious pixelated boxes of weapon effects and blood effects in it. Plus the enemies were uninspiring for me.

Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage and Blood also are quite interesting. Despite the limitations of the Build engine, it was utilized to express very different environments as shown by these games.

I spent some time playing the original Unreal Tournament. Was quite interesting with the bots those days. Once games started to continue focusing more on competitive deathmatch (Quake 3 A & TA, UT 2xxx)- multiplayer or vs bots, I started losing interest..

Forgot to mention Heretic and Hexen. My favorite of these two is Heretic.

Perhaps the problem with Quake is that is has lame weapons, but playing it with Navy SEAL mod feels great --real-life military weapons and realistic damage. Now, if there's a way to use Navy SEAL weapons in Scourge of Armagon....

Quake weapons are designed with DM in mind though..

I think we all have the advantage of hindsight now, and that makes it easier to see Quake's limitations. But I distinctly remember the first time I saw Quake 3D accelerated, it was the most amazing gaming moment of my life up to that point. The visuals alone made the game atmospheric and creepy, and a great gaming experience.

I find Quake scarier and charmier when the framerates are low (*cough*486s*cough*) and when a mouse driver isn't loaded/can't work (*cough*crappy 486 boards*cough*) 😀

appiah4 wrote:

DracoNihil wrote:

You get the phone call at 4 a.m.
[...]
You pump a round into your shotgun, and get moving.

Reads like someone wrote it while on bad acid.

Actually it's a self-ripoff of Doom.

1        In DOOM, you're a space marine, one of Earth's toughest, hardened in combat and trained for action.  Three years ago you assaulted a superior officer for ordering his soldiers to fire upon civilians.  He and his body cast were shipped to Pearl Harbor, while you were transferred to Mars, home of the Union Aerospace Corporation.
2        The UAC is a multi-planetary conglomerate with radioactive waste facilities on Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos.  With no action for fifty million miles, your day consisted of suckin' dust and watchin' restricted flicks in the rec room.
3        For the last four years the military, UAC's biggest supplier, has used the remote facilities on Phobos and Deimos to conduct various secret projects, including research on inter-dimensional space travel. So far they have been able to open gateways between Phobos and Deimos, throwing a few gadgets into one and watching them come out the other. Recently however, the gateways have grown dangerously unstable. Military "volunteers" entering them have either disappeared or been stricken with a strange form of insanity--babbling vulgarities, bludgeoning anything that breathes, and finally suffering an untimely death of full-body explosion.  Matching heads with torsos to send home to the folks became a full-time job.  Latest military reports state that the research is suffering a small setback, but everything is under control.
4        A few hours ago, Mars received a garbled message from Phobos.  "We require immediate military support.  Something fraggin' evil is coming out of the gateways!  Computer systems have gone berserk!" The rest was incoherent.  Soon afterwards, Deimos simply vanished from the sky. Since then, attempts to establish contact with either moon have been unsuccessful.
5        You and your buddies, the only combat troop for fifty million miles were sent up pronto to Phobos.  You were ordered to secure the perimeter of the base while the rest of the team went inside.  For several hours, your radio picked up the sounds of combat: guns firing, men yelling orders, screams, bones cracking, then finally silence.  Seems your buddies are dead.
6        Things aren't looking too good.  You'll never navigate off the planet on your own.  Plus, all the heavy weapons have been taken by the assault team leaving you only with a pistol.  If only you could get your hands around a plasma rifle or even a shotgun you could take a few down on your way out.  Whatever killed your buddies deserves a couple of pellets in the forehead.  Securing your helmet, you exit the landing pod.  Hopefully you can find more substantial firepower somewhere within the station.  As you walk through the main entrance of the base, you hear animal-like growls echoing throughout the distant corridors.  They know you're here.  There's no turning back now.

I love Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Tuork, Blood, etc, but can't see the attraction in Quake. I just found it tedious and un-enjoyable. I'm only talking about the single player in all these games, really. But Quake was dull, I thought, with levels that all looked the same, had no interactive scenery, and whose sole plus point seemed to be that the engine was genuinely 3D. But I much preferred say Duke Nukem 3D's visuals, as even though the enemies were 2D sprites and the graphics warped when you looked up or down, at least the levels looked varied and interesting. But even leaving aside the graphics, Quake was just no fun to play, I thought.

But the magazines of the time loved Quake, and gave it tons of publicity whilst largely ignoring the DN3D, Blood, etc, scenes. And most PC gamers seemed to love Quake, so I am in the minority there, I know.

As regarding 2.5D vs 3D FPSs, I don't prefer 2.5D FPs as such, but I prefer their ideology to the ideology of FPSs released in the last decade, as the best 2.5D FPSs, along with many of the best 3D FPSs of the first half of the 2000s, are designed with replayability in mind, so there are secrets to find, are not too linear, and want you to find your own way through the levels instead of giving you a single linear path to follow.

If only Doom had bouncing grenades, I'd probably enjoy it more than Quake.

Don't the grenades in the Skulltag additional content bounce?

DracoNihil wrote:

Don't the grenades in the Skulltag additional content bounce?

Never tried it, does it have grenade?

IIRC, not even the grenades in Delta Force bounce. 😵

You have to either summon them yourself or used PWAD's with them placed but yes they bounce on the walls and floor. It's a very weird bounce too.

Zandronum should have the skulltag weapons too considering it's a spiritual successor to the engine.