Quake Turns 15; Carmack & Hollenshead Speak
If you remember the days of qtest and the original Quake "shareware" demo, then you're getting old too.
It's hard to believe that id Software's classic FPS Quake hit retail shelves fifteen years ago on June 22, 1996. The Gothic FPS promised to revolutionize PC gaming and indeed delivered on its promise without a flinch. To celebrate the grand occasion, Bethesda posted a blog playing host to comments from id Software president Todd Hollenshead, and co-founder and programmer John Carmack. There's also a video of the QuakeWorld Launch Event from 1996 sporting a boyish-looking Carmack still riding the waves of money washing in from DOOM and DOOM II.
Also marking the 15-year anniversary is a fan-organized Quake Expo 2011 which launched last week. The online expo features virtual "booths" containing a fan-made art book, Quake Live commentaries, a Quake revitalization booth, the Future vs. Fantasy mod, Quake Dodgeball and more. For those who were PC gaming back when id software released qtest, then the demo, and then finally the retail product packed with Trent Reznor's soundtrack on the install disk (meaning use -nocd to boost the game's performance), it's a trip down memory lane.
“One of my all time best game moments is still grabbing the rune at the end of the first episode and awakening the lava monster," said Hollenshead when asked to recall his feelings about the original Quake. "I’m sure that level also inspired the USMC commercial with the Marine fighting the lava demon. Compare the screenie to the video."
"I could write an awful lot about Quake, but since we are in the final crunch for Rage right now, I’ll have to settle for just a few random thoughts," Carmack said although he ends up writing around eight paragraphs.
"I have a bit more subdued memory of Quake than many of our other projects, because the development was so tough," he admitted. "It was the first project where I really had to grapple with my personal limitations; I had bitten off a little more than I could chew with all the big steps at once – full 3D world, 3D characters, light maps, PVS calculations, game scripting, client / server networking, etc. No matter how hard I worked, things just weren’t getting done when we wanted them to."
"My defining memory of the game was fairly early in development, when I no-clipped up into a ceiling corner and looked down as a Shambler walked through the world with its feet firmly planted on the ground," he went on to say. "This looked like nothing I had ever seen before; it really did seem like I had a window into another world. Of course, as soon as he had to turn, the feet started to slide around because we didn’t have pivot points and individual joint modifications back then, but it was still pretty magical."
To read his full letter posted on Bethesda's blog, head here.
Last week brought reports that id Software may reboot the Quake franchise and focus on the Gothic world that started it all. "We are at least tossing around the possibilities of going back to the bizarre, mixed up Cthulhu-ish Quake 1 world and rebooting that direction," Carmack said. "We think that would be a more interesting direction than doing more Strogg stuff after Quake 4. We certainly have strong factions internally that want to go do this. But we could do something pretty grand like that, that still tweaks the memory right in all of those ways, but is actually cohesive and plays with all of the strengths of the level we're at right now."
For many, the original Quake seemed to throw the gates of PC gaming wide open, offering a polygon-based 3D world backed by a new thing called a GPU. At the same time, the Internet was beginning to snake its way into homes nationwide, provoking the studio into dumping loads of time into ironing out the TCP/IP bugs so that, for the first time without having to use a gaming service, eight to sixteen players could gib each other in deathmatch sessions across the nation. The studio even gave fans a set of tools so they could create custom maps, mods and total conversions. We saw incredible material ranging from Capture the Flag to Alien Quake, to Future Vs. Fantasy and Painkeep.
Thanks, id Software, for that classic gem. And happy birthday to the Scrags, Ogres, Grunts, Shamblers, Shub-Niggurath and the rest of the Quake gang for giving us a fraggin' good time.
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wow that brings back memories, carmack and mcgee, so young back then
Good old times... I still remember how awesome the BFG was in Quake 2, tearing through the walls and stuff =)
I recently purchased this on Steam to relive the good ol' days. I remember playing DOSquake and being pretty impressed and then my head exploding when I picked up a 3Dfx Voodoo Rush for GLQuake. I worked all damn summer for that Voodoo Rush...
I vote for The Seal of Nehahra storyline.
I remember Quake very well. It was that game everybody was talking about while I was playing this other FPS nobody knew, called Duke Nukem 3D. 15 years later, I still play Duke Nukem 3D from time to time, and the last time I played Quake was more than 10 years ago.
No Quake for me. Come back... 15 years!
After CnC (the first one.) my friend and I play Quake. For a really long time. I mean really long. We switched briefly to Half life, but he couldn't use WASD + mouse so I killed him a lot. We went back to quake. Problem was we had played other games and HL for so long that quake caused our eyes to water. Now he plays consoles and I stay with my WASD + mouse. I will forever remember "Gibbing" him on that final map. I learned the spawn order and could send a rocket to his next spawn area when I heard him tap the keyboard.
Awesome video. I miss the 90s.
I love all the air time that one girl gets in the beginning. Looks like shes in some room alone.
Wow, 8 whole comments on Carmack the has been.
quake 1 and 2 were the only good ones quake 3 was one of those "WTF did they do?" games
^ Silence!
Quake 3 was great, especially if you don't try to link it to Q1 and Q2. Best multiplayer FPS of all times.
quake 1 and 2 were the only good ones quake 3 was one of those "WTF did they do?" games
quake 3 was awesome, i agree it in somewhat regard as it was so different being purely a deathmatch style game. It should have just been called Quake Arena minus the "3" as it really didnt have a lot to do with the first two.
Damn, shareware, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time, back when PC games were the schizz before Consoles turned up and ruined everything...
Yeah. I missed out on 3 days of calc in college just to rule the Quake 2 world of fraggin fun on the internet.
Wow! Oldschool.
"Quake was already kinda pushing it market wise saying we're requiring a Pentium"
Makes me chuckle a little. That badass 486DX4 running at 100 MHz just isn't enough.
Interesting fact. Back in the day, Intel 486 processors were capable of addressing up to 4 gigabytes of physical memory and 64 terabytes of virtual memory. By those standards shouldn't we be A LOT further than where we are now?
Ah the 90's back when PC Games,Applications and Windows were not horribly infested with draconian DRM crap unlike today and getting most software involved going to a brick and mortar retail store.Copy protection just involved a meager Product Key Code if that (Many PC Games didn't even have any form of (very light) copy protection).
I still cherish my old software and games well because it will always still work.
Thank you ID! Now release Rage!
I remeber at college downloading a glide patch ( it might have been opengl, correct me if I am wrong) and taking it home to a friends house on the weekend. His computer had a Diamond monster 3d add on card. WE were totally blown away the difference it made. We spent an hour shooting rockets down corridors just to watch the lighting effects on the walls. We were playing Quake, interstate 76, and tomb raider pc with full 3d acceleration it was one of fondest memories of gaming till this day.
Quake 1 is still in my top 3 games of all time. I actually go back and play my way through it a couple of times every year.
My favorite mods were Rune Quake and Headhunters. Death spots, Gravity Wells and Freeze spots were just so cool! And I still remember my awe the first time I saw someone running across a level with 15 heads attached to their body. Does anyone still run Quake servers? I wanna play!!
Glide was for 3DFX Voodoo boards only, but GL Quake was pretty awesome if you had enough video ram. I played with Glide until I upgraded my Voodoo Banshee to an Nvidia card. Still have the Banshee in it's original box.
I remeber at college downloading a glide patch ( it might have been opengl, correct me if I am wrong) and taking it home to a friends house on the weekend. His computer had a Diamond monster 3d add on card. WE were totally blown away the difference it made. We spent an hour shooting rockets down corridors just to watch the lighting effects on the walls. We were playing Quake, interstate 76, and tomb raider pc with full 3d acceleration it was one of fondest memories of gaming till this day.
The jump between software renderer to full 3D hardware acceleration was insane! The fact that Quake looked so much better and ran much faster was a quantum leap.
Also, from the video, totally rooted for the guy with the joystick in the beginning and Carmack makes a Professor Fink "Glaven" noise at 7:58. Gotta love the guy and all the things he's done for the gaming industry.
Aaaah, the original Quake 1 was my favorite. Didn't like any of the others after the 1st incarnation, that being said I didn't know why the look of 2 and 4 was so different. IMO the game went in the wrong direction with 2 and 4, I liked the original dark world and setting of Quake 1.
Years later I ended up buying the quake 1 CD for no other reason than the sound track. IMO one of the creepiest sound tracks ever produced, Trent Reznor is a god!
My greatest moment in the game was walking into an open area under the sky and freaking out when seeing a pulsating shadow on the ground. (nothing was above!)
I remember seeing the Id gang working on Quake before it launched when
I visited them in late 1995. Ironically, Carmack was the one guy I didn't
get to meet - guess he was busy. Great buncha guys though! Some decent pics
of the original crowd on my page btw, but apologies, none of Carmack.
Ian.
yes, back to the roots man! groovy. can't wait for the next games:rage, doom, quake.
Ah, remember though, Doom was not a 3D game. It uses what one could call a 2.5D engine, with
simulated height, like a stretched flat map - no two objects in Doom can occupy the same coords.
IIRC, the original Quake didn't use fewer tris when objects were far away. Probably fixed in Quake2.
Quake is a whole different experience in a CAVE btw. 8) So much fun to be able to remain
crouched and just raise one's arm to fire above a wall or something (separate motion trackers
for the CrystalEyes and the controller/gun).
Ian.