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Quake

Quake is a first-person shooter (FPS) game that was published by id Software in 1996. It was revolutionary because it used 3D polygons not only for the scenery but also for all the players and monsters, and also incorporated the use of lightmaps and real-time light sources, as opposed to the sector-based static lighting used in games of the past. Many consider believe that it kick-started the independent 3D graphics card revolution, "GLQuake" being the first application to truly demonstrate the capabilities of the 3DFX "Voodoo" chipset at the time. The impact of the Quake engine is still being felt to this day.

The majority of programming work on the Quake engine was done by John Carmack. Michael Abrash, a program performance optimization specialist, was brought in to help make the software rendering engine feasible with regards to speed. The background music for the game was done by Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails.

Table of contents
1 The Story
2 Network Play
3 Modification
4 History
5 External links

The Story

The story to the game follows the usual format for id Software's FPS games: Portals to a realm of evil beings have opened up, and you are the only person who can journey through them to close the rift. In the specific case of Quake, the other realm is inspired by several influences, notably that of H. P. Lovecraft (the end game nasty being Shub-Niggurath herself).

Network Play

Quake includes a multi-player mode to play over the Internet with or against other humans. The network play uses a client/server model, where the actual game runs on the server only and all players "log in" there to participate. Different clients get different ping times - someone playing on the server PC gets a substantial advantage due to essentially zero lag.

Modification

The game itself can be heavily modified. Users created their own maps and models, and coded some changes to the game itself using QuakeC, an interpreted scripting language with a syntax similar to the C programming language. The QuakeC code runs on the game server alone. The ease of modifying the game led to the rise of "mods" such as the popular TeamFortress mod.

History

Quake was given as a title to the game that id software was working on shortly after the release of Doom 2. The earliest information released described Quake as focusing on a Thor-like character who wields a giant hammer, and is able to knock away guys by throwing the hammer (complete with real time inverse kinematics). Early screenshots showed medieval environments and dragons. The plan was for the game to have more RPG-style elements. However, work was very slow on the engine, since Carmack not only was developping a fully 3D engine, but also a TCP/IP networking model (Carmack later said that he should have done two separate projects which developed those things). Thus the final game was very stripped down from its original intentions, and instead featured gameplay similar to Doom 2. Praised throughout the gaming community, it quickly dethroned previous FPS titles and revolutionized the way multiplayer games were developed.

To improve the quality of online play, id software released QuakeWorld, a build of Quake that featured significantly revamped network code including the addition of client-side prediction. QuakeWorld soon became the platform most people played on because it was much more friendly to those with high pings (also referred to as High Ping Bastards or HPBs). The TeamFortress mod was based on the QuakeWorld platform.

The source code of Quake was licensed under the GPL in 1999.

Based on the success of the first Quake game, id later published Quake II and Quake III Arena; Quake IV is planned to follow in the future, utilising the DOOM³ engine.

It is also interesting to note that Quake was the game primarily responsible for the Machinima phenomenon of films made in game engines, thanks to edited Quake demos like Ranger Gone Bad and Blahbalicious.

Games using the Quake engine

Games using a modified Quake engine

Replacement Quake I Engines

External links