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I actually have the original CD-ROM somewhere... but I'm reasonably sure
if I dug it out, I'd find it doesn't run on Windows 7. The version
purchased through Steam, however, runs just fine. Well... almost. It
doesn't seem to "understand" about wide-screen, so the graphics has a
slightly weird aspect ratio. But other than that, it works great.
Ah, Quake II. The first 3D game I ever played, way back in the 1990s. Of
card.
(Remember, back in the day, when you had separate 2D and 3D graphics
cards, and a pass-through cable? And when you launch the game, the
GlideFX logo would appear, and you'd hear the mechanical KLUNK of the
relay switching video source to the 3D card?)
Well, without a 3D card, there's no texture filtering, and no coloured
lighting. And with a 233 MHz Pentium I with MMX technology, you had to
turn the resolution down fairly far to get sane frame rates. So running
at something like 640x480 with a boarder (remember that feature?), the
display was *very* grainy.
One feature I distinctly remember is that you could tell when you're
about to get shot, because the video would freeze and the audio could go
into a 1-second loop, while the virtual memory system desperately tries
to page the gunshot sound back into RAM. After about 45 seconds or so
(which is *way* longer than it sounds!), the game would unfreeze. By
this point, you've had plenty of warning that danger is coming. You just
gotta guess from where. (Given that this usually happens just as you
walk through a doorway, not too hard...)
Another feature was that loading the next level used to take about 25
minutes. I assumed this was *normal*... And then, when we got our next
PC, it had an ATI Rage128 3D card, and something like 64 MB of RAM. And
suddenly, loading the next level took about 3 *seconds*! o_O But the big
difference, of course... high-res graphics! Texture filtering! Coloured
lighting!!
Playing this again today, what an eye-opener... The game originally came
on CD-ROM, but Steam informs me that I need 370 MB of disk space to
install the game. Wow, that's small! I was expecting it to take most of
the size of a CD-ROM. I guess the rest was used for the in-game music.
(Quake II had a system where you can't play the game unless the disk is
in the tray. In a time before CD-R existed, this meant you could install
on unlimited PCs, but only *play* one copy at any one time. The CD-ROM
had data on track 1, but the other tracks would play music on a normal
CD player.) Interestingly, the Steam version doesn't seem to include the
music. Which is fine with me...
When it comes to actually playing the game... I seem to recall it always
used to let you choose between Glide and OpenGL. (Remember Glide?) Seems
to default to OpenGL now. As I said, can't seem to get the aspect ratio
right, but hey.
This is a game from a simpler time. Today, if you load up Batman: Arkham
Asylum, you have to sit through several pages of studio logos, then a
loading screen, and then you get to the fancy menu page, where you have
to hit the "play the game" button, and then another loading screen...
and now no doubt a dramatic opening cinematic. Heh.
Load Quake II, and the id Software logo appears for about 4 seconds, and
then the game goes into demo mode. Like it's an arcade machine or
something. You get to watch a pre-recorded demo of somebody running
around level 3 making a meal of taking out a handful of lightly-armoured
guards. Press Escape, and a minimal menu system comes up. Start a new
game, and you can watch a whole tonne of debug output flash past on the
developer console (remember that?), before... the opening cinematic.
Heh, some things never change. ;-)
(I actually quite *like* this particular cinematic. Although it's grainy
as hell! What is that, CinePak?!)
When the game actually starts... heh. Forget anisotropic filtering; this
thing doesn't even have trilinear filtering! It's bilinear only. :-D And
the "sky box" is *literally* a 2D image. (Really low-res too.) Oh how
spoilt we are today.
I recall how when I went from Quake II to HalfLife (reportedly powered
by the same game engine), the jump in graphical quality seemed fairly
large, and the major thing it took time to get used to was the
requirement to *reload*. Yes, that's right. In Quake II, you never need
to reload. If you have 700 bullets, you can just fire all of them. I
find myself constantly pressing the reload button, which of course does
nothing here. Cannot unlearn.
Mind you, according to Wikipedia Quake I (which I've never seen) didn't
even have the ability to crouch, so...
When I first played this, it took me several months to complete the
game. (How much of that is due to extreme lag I don't remember; I think
I was probably just bad at video games back then.) This time, I perhaps
made a mistake playing on the lowest difficulty setting. It only took me
a few days to complete the entire game end to end. In fact, it wasn't
until I was several levels in that I came across any remotely
challenging enemies. I collected no end of quad-damage and
invulnerability powerups, and never used any of them!
Ah yes, and that's another thing from the arcade game heritage. In
FarCry, you can take drugs with supposedly sharpen your senses or speed
the healing process or whatever. In Quake II, there's a magic floating
symbol which, if you collect it, makes all your weapons 4x more lethal.
Take THAT, plausible reality! :-D
Water effects? What water effects? Oh, you mean the wavy texture that
move from side to side in a sinewave, and seems unaffected by gravity?
:-P It's actually kind of hard to tell what's harmless water, and what's
toxic waste that kills you on contact. At least the (ubiquitous) lava is
easy to recognise.
In most games, you walk up to a keyboard and press the "use" key to make
something happen. In Quake II, you must kind of press your face into it,
and it activates. Doors open when you walk past them, elevators go up
when you touch them. Switches are huge cubes on the wall that sink in
when you mash your face into them.
Given how many decades since I last played this game, it's astonishing
how many of the rooms I still remember. Considering the meagre graphical
capabilities, they managed to give each area a reasonably distinct feel
to it. (Although not quite to the extent that HalfLife did.) Each time a
new enemy type appears, it's like "oh yeah, I remember this..." And the
sounds too.
Quake II is also the only game I've ever made a map for. I made a grand
total of 3 maps, and in the process discovered that I really, really
SUCK at making maps! :-( The first one was about 12 feet across and had
nothing in it. The second one was a huge cube, with waterfalls that you
could climb up. (No physics here!) Most of the enemies killed each
other, without my help. The final map was a giant brick cube with
multiple floors, each divided into a grid of corridors... it turns out I
have absolutely no imagination at all! I suspect I would also be
terrible at architecture...
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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
>
> I actually have the original CD-ROM somewhere... but I'm reasonably sure
> if I dug it out, I'd find it doesn't run on Windows 7. The version
> purchased through Steam, however, runs just fine. Well... almost. It
> doesn't seem to "understand" about wide-screen, so the graphics has a
> slightly weird aspect ratio. But other than that, it works great.
>
> Ah, Quake II. The first 3D game I ever played, way back in the 1990s. Of
> card.
>
I still have Quake II on my computer!
I had to check the files to see when I downloaded it, 2001 was the oldest date
I could find. I remember that I bought it at the bargain bin at Walmarts.
The other day while trying to come up with mt next game making project. I
downloaded a few programs that deals with Quake II maps and graphics.
I've check out several of the maps. They so friggin big. It is amazing how they
can get all that and more into such a small space.
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On 20/01/2016 06:05 PM, Leroy wrote:
> I still have Quake II on my computer!
> I had to check the files to see when I downloaded it, 2001 was the oldest date
> I could find. I remember that I bought it at the bargain bin at Walmarts.
> The other day while trying to come up with mt next game making project. I
> downloaded a few programs that deals with Quake II maps and graphics.
> I've check out several of the maps. They so friggin big. It is amazing how they
> can get all that and more into such a small space.
As I say, at one point I had the necessary tools to build maps. (I seem
to remember precomputing the lighting took *forever*!) It turns out I
really suck at designing maps... But then, I suck at polygon modelling,
so... I have no idea how the pros do it.
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On 1/20/2016 6:13 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 20/01/2016 06:05 PM, Leroy wrote:
>> I still have Quake II on my computer!
>> I had to check the files to see when I downloaded it, 2001 was the
>> oldest date
>> I could find. I remember that I bought it at the bargain bin at Walmarts.
>> The other day while trying to come up with mt next game making
>> project. I
>> downloaded a few programs that deals with Quake II maps and graphics.
>> I've check out several of the maps. They so friggin big. It is
>> amazing how they
>> can get all that and more into such a small space.
>
> As I say, at one point I had the necessary tools to build maps. (I seem
> to remember precomputing the lighting took *forever*!) It turns out I
> really suck at designing maps... But then, I suck at polygon modelling,
> so... I have no idea how the pros do it.
You both might be interested in this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35343089
Wolfenstein 3D was the first 3D game I played.
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 20/01/2016 07:05 PM, Stephen wrote:
> You both might be interested in this:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35343089
>
> Wolfenstein 3D was the first 3D game I played.
You might be interested in this:
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/15/wolfenstein-in-600-lines-of-code/
Somebody reimplemented Wolfenstein... AS AN AWK SCRIPT!
The actual HELL?!
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On 1/20/2016 7:26 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 20/01/2016 07:05 PM, Stephen wrote:
>> You both might be interested in this:
>>
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35343089
>>
>> Wolfenstein 3D was the first 3D game I played.
>
> You might be interested in this:
>
> http://hackaday.com/2016/01/15/wolfenstein-in-600-lines-of-code/
>
> Somebody reimplemented Wolfenstein... AS AN AWK SCRIPT!
>
> The actual HELL?!
I'm lost for words. Brill!
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 20/01/2016 07:48 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 1/20/2016 7:26 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> You might be interested in this:
>>
>> http://hackaday.com/2016/01/15/wolfenstein-in-600-lines-of-code/
>>
>> Somebody reimplemented Wolfenstein... AS AN AWK SCRIPT!
>>
>> The actual HELL?!
>
> I'm lost for words. Brill!
Yes. Why... WHY would you do this?! You turned a text-processing engine
into a 3D game by way of VT-400 escape codes? Are you nuts?! IN 600 LINES??!
Respect.
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Am 20.01.2016 um 20:56 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
> On 20/01/2016 07:48 PM, Stephen wrote:
>> On 1/20/2016 7:26 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> You might be interested in this:
>>>
>>> http://hackaday.com/2016/01/15/wolfenstein-in-600-lines-of-code/
>>>
>>> Somebody reimplemented Wolfenstein... AS AN AWK SCRIPT!
>>>
>>> The actual HELL?!
>>
>> I'm lost for words. Brill!
>
> Yes. Why... WHY would you do this?! You turned a text-processing engine
> into a 3D game by way of VT-400 escape codes? Are you nuts?! IN 600
> LINES??!
That's spelt "nerds", not "nuts" :-P
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> Well, without a 3D card, there's no texture filtering, and no coloured
> lighting. And with a 233 MHz Pentium I with MMX technology, you had to
> turn the resolution down fairly far to get sane frame rates. So running
> at something like 640x480 with a boarder (remember that feature?), the
> display was *very* grainy.
I think I had a P166 with 16MB RAM ... and then I bought a 3Dfx card for it.
> (Remember Glide?)
It's where I learned 3D graphics programming :-) The separate cards for
2D/3D was actually really useful, as it allowed me to have a TWO SCREEN
setup! IIRC if you didn't open a full-screen window in your program, you
could still use the 2D Windows interface at the same time the 3D was
running on the 3Dfx card. Useful for debugging or providing some simple
Windows-based UI for controlling the 3D.
> Quake II is also the only game I've ever made a map for.
I was a Duke Nukem guy rather than Quake II, I used to waste my summer
holidays with my sister over serial link on that. When we got bored we
made maps - mine were usually full of hidden tunnels and secret ambush
points :-) The editor was very buggy though, and would periodically get
completely corrupted and you'd end up with several walls going through
the middle of all your rooms and extending 32km into the distance. That
was a sure sign it was about to crash and you better reload the last
backup (or the one before that...).
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On 21/01/2016 07:55 AM, scott wrote:
> I think I had a P166 with 16MB RAM ... and then I bought a 3Dfx card for
> it.
Ah, the days when 3D cards cost *money*. I think my step brother paid
Mind you, remember when a graphics card with better than 256 colours
cost money? (There's an expansion card for the Amiga called Picasso,
which gives you true 24-bit video, as opposed to the 256 colour graphics
>> (Remember Glide?)
>
> It's where I learned 3D graphics programming :-)
Heh. I never learned 3D programming. Well, I did read the OpenGL book
almost from cover to cover. But that's an older version; the current one
costs money.
I've never looked at DirectX though. (Or should that be Direct3D?)
The only time I "learned 3D programming" was when I wrote cost in
Borland Turbo Pascal to draw a spinning fireframe cube. And then added
surface illumination, which dropped the framerate to a crawl. And then a
rotating torus, which required me to implement the painter's algorithm
for correct surface occlusion. (Back-face cull is sufficient for a cube,
or any other convex solid I suppose...)
Oh, and that time I built a ray-tracer and thought I was the only person
in human history to have ever achieved such a feat...
> The separate cards for
> 2D/3D was actually really useful, as it allowed me to have a TWO SCREEN
> setup!
Interesting...
>> Quake II is also the only game I've ever made a map for.
>
> I was a Duke Nukem guy rather than Quake II, I used to waste my summer
> holidays with my sister over serial link on that. When we got bored we
> made maps - mine were usually full of hidden tunnels and secret ambush
> points :-) The editor was very buggy though, and would periodically get
> completely corrupted and you'd end up with several walls going through
> the middle of all your rooms and extending 32km into the distance. That
> was a sure sign it was about to crash and you better reload the last
> backup (or the one before that...).
I didn't have any problems with crashes, just that I suck at level design!
I do recall though that my dad ordered a computer from a local computer
company, and when I tried to play Quake II, the graphics were slightly
messed up. In certain areas of the map, it looked like a paintball fight
went wrong; weird splotches of highly-saturated random colours all over
the walls, like they're glowing. When me dad took it back to the shop,
they told him they "accidentally fitted the graphics card back to
front". Which is so obviously nonsense, you have to wonder... But
anyway, when the PC came back, the graphics worked fine.
One of my graphics cards developed an interesting fault where after a
while, it would start rendering polygons that extent to infinity along
one of the coordinate axies. Makes it very hard to play CS:S when you
can't actually see where you're going!
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