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First Person Shooters (Games) Graphics Software

The Art and Design of Quake 4 335

Posted by Zonk from the double-kill dept.
Gamespy has a feature discussing the upcoming first person shooter Quake 4. More details about the title are revealed in an interview and screenshots provided by some of the folks at Raven. From the article: "I think we have a lot of diversity throughout the entire game. We have some dark areas, and we have outdoor areas that are brighter. I think how diverse everything is will really go a long way. We didn't really set out saying, 'This game is going to be dark, this game is going to be light' -- we set out to make a cohesive environment where you go through different extremes and you'll see a bunch of different stuff."
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The Art and Design of Quake 4 More

The Art and Design of Quake 4

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  • I always thought (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheKidWho ( 705796 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:03PM (#12463311)
    Quake 2 was the best one single player wise.

    Maybe this one will be as good?(although that's not saying much heh, better then doom 3 I hope though)

    • Re:I always thought (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I liked Q1 most, myself. The weapons were nice, the patterns for killing enemies without receiving damage were pleasant, the physics had a nice "feeling," and the gothic setting felt much less like a bad SciFi movie. Playing it co-op was fun, too.

      I never much liked the artwork for Q2, nor the weapons for the most part. The change in the game physics was also sort of disappointing.

      If Q4 is all SciFi-ish like Q2, I'll only really be into it if it has had zero art contribution from id. Raven has good artists
      • Quake 1 was a bit meh for single player - superb multiplay, but not great otherwise. Q2 seemed to go a bit the other way, pretty good single player, but that was about it.

        Quake 3 on the other hand had a great multiplayer and the engine was taken to a whole new level for single player games. Even Wolfenstein, if you ignore the annoying zombie bits...
    • really ? I finished it on Hard in two evenings.

      Quake 1 was much better imho (those shamblers!), with Half-Life 1 as teh daddeh

    • Re:I always thought (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      Quake I with the Team Fortress or Navy Seals mods was really great. The Navy Seals mod had the best weapon feel of any FPS I've ever played. I liked the plain Quake I weapons a lot more than the Quake II ones as well. Especially the grenade launcher -- that one's always been my favorite :-)
    • ...as Doom 3 so aptly demonstrated. We need more games like System Shock 2. I want cool 3D tech and great art, but really, deathmatch and rocket launchers are boring and inexcusable in this modern age.

      I hated Quake 2 and Unreal; I didn't even bother with Quake 3 and UT (or whatever it is now). The fact that the developers are claiming they loved Quake 2 doesn't raise my expectations very high.

      • Quake 2 was OK as far as it went, but for me the peak of multiplayer FPS was still the original Quake, when the "clan" idea was first taking off and there were some excellent deathmatch maps where genuine tactics and communications were necessary to win a team game.

        The problem with a lot of the more recent incarnations, at least those I've played, is that while huge, wide-open maps give a much more visually impressive game for the first ten seconds, they also mean lots of wandering around without seeing a

    • ATTENTION: SECRET INSIDER INFORMATION (Score:5, Funny)

      by drsquare ( 530038 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @06:25PM (#12464335)
      Don't ask how I know this, and don't tell anyone about it, but the word on the grapevine is, this new Quake 4 will involve moving around a corridor in a first-person perspective shooting things with fantasy guns.

    • Quake 2 was the best one single player wise.

      I am afraid I will disagree about Quake2. Though I have every id Software 3DFPS, I would say the original Quake was the best and most revolutionary. It had both a medevil theme as well as a futureistic theme. The monsters were classy and diverse, and certainly the supernail was an amazing weapon.

      The sound was also an amazing feat of its own. The music and sound by NIN had a very raw and interesting feel. The sound was very "brave". Now most games have a

  • Who said innovation is dead ? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    i can't wait for Super Mario 54 turbo special edition, Quake 4 is just a stepping stone !

    • "I can't wait for Super Mario 54 turbo special edition, Quake 4 is just a stepping stone !"

      That might have been funny if you picked on Sonic the Hedgehog instead.

      In other words, compare the first 3 Mario games to the first 3 Quake games.

  • One of my pals... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PsychicX ( 866028 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:04PM (#12463314)
    One of my good (internet) friends is a programmer on Quake 4, and I know a few other guys on the Activision tech team and such. The story is a continuation of Quake 2, but you can expect Q3A style multiplayer awesomeness as well. It's going to be a great game.

    • Re:One of my pals... (Score:5, Informative)

      by PsychicX ( 866028 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:10PM (#12463341)
      I forgot to mention that they've made a lot of heavy modifications to Doom 3's engine. It's not like a Doom 3 mod. There's been seriously major changes just in the technology...I won't be specific since I don't know exactly where NDA boundaries lie, but the Q4 engine sounds like it stands to be even more powerful, capable, and beautiful than Doom 3.

      And it'll be less dark from time to time. That's always nice.
      • I don't know exactly where NDA boundaries lie

        Well, your friend had better hope that they lie the other side of whatever he's told you. Assuming that they do, you can tell us everything you know. Assuming that they don't, you probably shouldn't have said this much...
      • I forgot to mention that they've made a lot of heavy modifications to Doom 3's engine. It's not like a Doom 3 mod.

        You mean its not all going to be dark?! That one can actually see things? That it might actually look a bit like, say, Unreal Tournament!? Wow, can't wait for that.
    • Excellent...although I have Halo/Halo2, and Unreal Tournament (all Xbox) I keep going back to Q3Arena on my PC for multi-player gaming.

      Looking forward to 3....2....1....

      FIGHT!
    • Hm , in that case . Do you or your freind have any idea if they will be bringing out a linux port of the binarys anywhere around the release date. It would be great to have a linux native version on the CD , its using a modified Doom 3 engine( as is my understanding) so im sure there is some hope of this.

  • Not Brown?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chaos_Thoery ( 797173 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:09PM (#12463331)
    Quake not dark and brown? Blasphemy!

  • Diversity? (Score:5, Funny)

    by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:09PM (#12463334)
    we have a lot of diversity throughout the entire game

    Just what we need; a politically correct multicultural FPS!

  • Cooperative mode needed! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cmburns69 ( 169686 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:11PM (#12463348) Homepage Journal
    Cooperative mode makes "single-player" games better!

    I'm not a solitary gamer, and as such, never make time to play single player games. However, if I could have my wife (and/or our friends) play with me, it would make the game much more appealing!

    I understand the difficulties in providing content that is achievable by both single and multiple players, but that's why I pay for games-- for innovation!

    Am I the only one who thinks like this, or are there other people out there who have been disappointed by the lack of a coop mode in most games?

  • Finally, ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by *themotterfukker* ( 720134 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:11PM (#12463349)
    ... the name quakenet will make sense again!

  • Better bring new gameplay elemenets... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jackie_Chan_Fan ( 730745 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:11PM (#12463352)
    ... or its just the same game we've already played, with nicer moving pictures.

    Just once, i would like to see an FPS multiplayer online game that takes into account good animation and movement. I want to see cool stuff while i play, not just run around and see others running simply with silly guns we've all played with a thousand times already. Bring more stylized movement into the game, more theatrics and less of the old "run and hop" movement.

    • Re:Better bring new gameplay elemenets... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ezzzD55J ( 697465 ) <slashdot5@scum.org> on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:21PM (#12463399) Homepage
      Bring more stylized movement into the game, more theatrics and less of the old "run and hop" movement.

      I think it would become boring quickly, if it's just eye candy and doesn't add to the gameplay. Counter-strike isn't much to look at but has good gameplay, and that is the reason it's still popular.

      • Bring more stylized movement into the game, more theatrics and less of the old "run and hop" movement.

        I think it would become boring quickly, if it's just eye candy and doesn't add to the gameplay. Counter-strike isn't much to look at but has good gameplay, and that is the reason it's still popular.

        On the contrary, I think it could make all the difference. Some of the best parts of Doom3 were the animations and movements of the imps climbing walls and ceilings etc. Now imagine if creatures, charact

  • Can't wait (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:11PM (#12463354) Homepage Journal
    I think this game will be great, and the people saying it might be like doom3 are part of the problem with doom3. Doom3 wasn't bad, it was just overhyped as the game of the millenium

    Hopefully this game won't be expected to entertain you, run your life, cook your meals and generally rule the universe like Doom3 was

  • I know it's cliche.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by capillary tube ( 861062 ) * on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:14PM (#12463361)
    Are the lighting subcontractors in the Quake universe as horrible as those in the Doom 3 universe?

  • Aquaphobia for Quake 2 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:14PM (#12463364)
    I'm hoping to have my massive 32/64-player Quake 2 DM level, Aquaphobia, done before Quake 4 comes out. I only been working on it (on-and-off-but-mostly-off) for the last six years.

    Aquaphobia Project Page [creimer.ws]

    After I get done with Quake 4 single player, I'll start working on some new levels for that game.
    • Well, convert it to Q4 when it's done, and then perhaps touch it up to use the new engine.

      I've done something like that to Doom -> Q2 maps many years ago, and it was a matter of a completely different way of describing the world. Sectors which could take any shape, be non-convex or even disjoint had to be cut into a number of convex polygons -- negating the world and making it 3D are easy steps. Compared to this, converting a set of convex polyhedrons to another one should be a matter of a simple scri

  • let's hope it's better than Doom 3 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dioscaido ( 541037 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:17PM (#12463379)
    Doom 3 was a poor game. It amounts to hours and hours of running down cramped hallways, encountering monsters that other than visually don't really differ much. It gets really boring really quick.

    The game feels more like one long technology demo, than something built to provide compelling entertainment. And even being a technology demo, the results are less than impressive. The vast, lush environments in HL2 make the cramped environments in Doom 3 look quaint in comparison, even if the Doom 3 engine, with its real time lighting, is ultimately more advanced. I wonder if Doom 3 can even handle environments that have the same scope as HL2. The portions of Doom 3 that take place on the outside of Mars look really bad. Hell ends up being a bit more impressive, but it quickly reverts back to the familiar small enclosed envirnoment.

    Hopefully the Quake 4 team will be able to make a more compelling game.

  • The Heart? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bleckywelcky ( 518520 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:26PM (#12463418)

    The Heart [gamespy.com] - blatently stolen from Natural Selection's hive [kiez-clan.de].

  • Continuation of Quake2 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KrugalSausage ( 822589 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:28PM (#12463430)
    The best thing about quake2 in my years of playing it definitely has to be the movement:

    Strafe jumping

    double jumping

    sliding around on ice and up ramps

    and just the sheer speed of it all --if you can master it.

    I don't expect Q4 to have these fun aspects though because I just can't imagine models like this : http://pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/article/611/61 1006/440Building_B_Marines06_1115438005.jpg [gamespy.com] moving around so unrealistically like in q2.

    • How about the railgun? (strange that they've mentioned lightining gun (from Quake1) and not railgun... hmm...)

  • Summing up the last 5 years in graphic development (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mmmm.. High resolution nipples! [gamespy.com]
    • It appeals to the under-aged crowd that's not supposed to be playing this Mature-rated game. No doubt that some government body will try to ban this game while using Duke Nukem 3D as an example of nipple artwork.

      I wonder if they will have the easter egg from Quake 2 where two Strogg chicks were blowing a Tank Commander on a throne. Hmmm... Gotta love it when a game appeals to the little boy (or dike for the chicks) in us.

      • MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drsquare ( 530038 )
        There are no nipples in Duke Nukem 3D. All the strippers have these tassles over the nipples, and they don't take them off no matter how much money you give them. No wonder all the aliens were pissed off.

  • Oh, just what we need, another FPS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Control42 ( 579348 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:29PM (#12463438)
    Seriously, i wonder wyh these games enjoy such great success. I remember getting my first one, Alien Breed 3D, back on the Amiga. I played it for a couple of hours, then switched back to something more interesting. Over the years, I've had a couple of goes at about ten or so more modern ones, but apart from the graphics, nothing ever changes. No FPS has ever been able to fascinate me like i.e. Civ I-III or a good RPG.

  • It does't matter if your dark or light.. he hee (Score:3, Funny)

    by stephenisu ( 580105 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:38PM (#12463480)
    Light this, dark that..

    These guys did the design work for the Jedi Knights games right? They know all about dark sides and light sides.

    Good choice for a game that has an amazing lighting engine I would imagine...

  • Binary diversity (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:41PM (#12463501)
    We have some dark areas, and we have outdoor areas that are brighter.

    Wow!! They have both bright AND dark areas! You can't beat that binary diversity! A pinnacle of innovative game design, I tell you.

    I've heard rumors that your character will also be able to move both left AND right, but shhh, you didn't hear it from me, I don't want to get sued for releasing trade secrets.

  • Gamplay (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zkn ( 704992 )
    Am I really the only one thinking: "screw the lighting and effects, I'm turning them off anyway" For me Quake is about gameplay not graphics. Even when running the lowest possible graphicsmode(Wich I alwas do) it still fun. How are they going to change the gameplay? more open areas in the standart mappack isn't going to do it. People moved away from quake to Counter Strike because of the different and more tacticle gameplay. Will Quake4 try to be a little more tacticle and less "chaotic"? How is it differe
    • "Am I really the only one thinking: "screw the lighting and effects, I'm turning them off anyway" For me Quake is about gameplay not graphics."

      If they have actual shadows in the game, no, I'm not turning them off. Quake isn't just about game play, it's about environment.

      Truth be told, I'm baffled as to why everybody's making generalizations based on this story.
  • Yeah like uh, the game is gonna be, like, innovative and stuff because, like, its gonna have light AND dark areas, so like it will be different and stuff.

    Cripes, can one get any more inarticulate without being a deaf-mute?

  • I think id should break the mold this time (Score:5, Funny)

    by craXORjack ( 726120 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @03:50PM (#12463552)
    Id software really needs to do something different this time. Their old recipe is getting boring. I would like to see Quake 4 in a more festive environment like maybe a circus with lots of clowns and bright colors everywhere. Instead of shooting weapons that explode monsters, maybe the first person character could walk around and give flowers to people. Or casually listen in on the conversations of strangers in the crowd until they can tell when one of them is going to go to Hell like a Catholic or a Jehovah's witness. Then you could score points by proselytizing them to evangelical christianity and saving as many of their souls as you can before the game ends with the Rapture! But look out for those evil mooslims in the crowd or they may blow you up before you finish God's work. Family fun for everyone!
  • "I think we have a lot of diversity throughout the entire game. We have some dark areas, and we have outdoor areas that are brighter. I think how diverse everything is will really go a long way. We didn't really set out saying, 'This game is going to be dark, this game is going to be light' -- we set out to make a cohesive environment where you go through different extremes and you'll see a bunch of different stuff."

    Sounds an awful lot like Marathon 2 to me....
  • How the hell are they going to run this on the Doom 3 engine? We already know you need a freaking super computer to run it, how the hell are they going to do HUGE areas full of monsters? The thing which rocked about Quake 2 was you'd comeout of some annoying jumping puzzle to find ten guys staring you in the face with shotguns and some bastard enemy mixed in with them just to make it worse.

    From what we've seen the Doom 3 engine can't do huge areas with the current technology.. so we lose the Quake feel and

    • Re:erm (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Prof.Phreak ( 584152 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @05:04PM (#12463982) Homepage
      It's kind of weird, but -lots- of what the doom3 engine -can- do wasn't in the game. If you look through the SDK, there's plenty of stuff that seemingly didn't make it into the game (like support for vihicles, etc.) They could've made it FPS for part of the game, then have the player ride a tank like in UT2004, then fly around, etc. Dunno why they didn't do it.

      Oh, and the engine can support huge open maps (just like Team Arena terrain maps).
  • Haven't heard anything about Prey in years. If you remember, the Prey engine was supposed to be uber-advanced, but then just died off.

    Now it looks like 3DRealms is going to do a Prey game using the Doom3 engine.

    DNF anyone?

  • Outdoor Lighting (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tony1c ( 610261 )
    This is using the Doom 3 engine, correct? One of the problems with that engine is that it didn't support (or didn't use) any kind of indirect lighting (radiosity, etc.) in order to calculate all the lighting dynamically. That just doesn't work well in outdoor environments. Is Q4 going to support some kind of indirect lighting for those outdoor areas? A static/dynamic hybrid might be interesting -- precalculated radiosity with real-time dynamic lighting "layered" on top.

  • Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @06:09PM (#12464265)
    One thing to note about Raven is that they're very art-focused. They concept out everything -- maps, levels, weapons, monsters, and so on.

    I wish someone would hire some architects to design the levels, not your run-of-the-mill artists. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks level design has been subpar for years now. Bring back levels that are well-designed by people who know how to make them and think broad architecture, not what this scene or that scene will look like.

    We play these games, you know---interact with them, explore them---we don't just watch them.

    • Most architecture... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MMaestro ( 585010 )
      Is either overly simple and designed for pure function or overly fashionable.

      Look at the interior of most modern museums. For the most part their big rectangle rooms with chairs in the center with paintings on the wall. Sure its great when you have 500 different tourists trying to cram into a room designed for 300 people, but its god awful ugly for video games.

      Same thing with modern day airports. Why build restaurants, newspaper stands or bookstores into the design? Isn't the goal supposed to be streamli

      • An architect designing a museum or an airport is working under an entirely different set of restrictions than someone designing levels for a video game. There are plenty of architects out there who would be absolutely terrible at level design, but there are also plenty who would be very good at it, and bring to the table some extra talents. Things like a solid awareness of spacial qualities, good lighting (especially with the newest/future engines), and a developed understanding of the importance of scale.

  • What about the music? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @06:40PM (#12464401)
    Who's going to score this game? NIN, I hope...
  • That article acts as if there was never a Quake 3 released. Everything is from the attitude of "well, what kind of great things await fans of Quake 2 in this new Quake 4?". WTF? I know Q3 was largely a loss for single player, but surely there's some things worth bringing from Q3 into Q4?

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