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Quake First Person Shooters (Games)

Quake 4 Announced 310

Posted by michael from the dust-off-the-railgun dept.
Warrior-GS writes: "This just in from QuakeCon in Texas: Id Software and Raven Software will be joing forces on Quake 4. Id and Nerve Software are also going to working on some unspecified game. Carmack is giving his talk right now. GameSpyDaily has all the details."
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Quake 4 Announced More

Quake 4 Announced

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  • *yawn*

    *goes back to Galaxian on his Apple II+*

  • a bad game EVER that I can recall. Maybe there is HOPE for the Quake series. Q3 was a poor 2nd place to UT in almost every facet. Hopefully they won't depend entirely on BOTs :)

  • Do what he wants. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 )
    Everyone has always complained that the Quake games seriously lack the gameplay in order to make it worth playing over and over. In that light, here is what I think id should do:
    1. Make a bunch of maps using the doom engine.
    2. Add in one more weapon to the Doom2 engine (How about a triple shotgun, to go on that 1-2-3 punch?)
    3. Make a couple of monsters out of sprites, and make their AI crummy.
    4. Instead of midi covers of Alice in Chains, do FM synth versions of "Baby One More Time" and "Genie in a Bottle"
    5. Include a picture of Carmack in the game box, with a shirt that says, "Shag off: I can do what I like."

    Call this game Quake 4 just to screw with people's heads. Then come out with this Über-engine called Doom 3, and sell it to everyone.

    HAH!

  • Yawn... (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 )
    Hasn't this genre been played out yet?

    Where's the innovation?

    Dancin Santa
    • Planetside looks to me like an innovation. Some might say it's a whole new genre, I say it's the next step. So wait for that.
    • Counterstrike seems pretty different from most other FPS's?

    • Re:Yawn... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by boaworm ( 180781 )
      Hasn't this genre been played out yet? Where's the innovation?

      I fully agree with you. Quake [1] was a totally revolutionary game, that set a whole new standard, freelooks, gaming with mouse, network games to the large masses. Quake 2 followed up the success with a more advanced 3d engine, and some new features. Perhaps the ability to write mods (actionquake, ctf, tf) was what made Quake 2 great...

      But Quake 3 ?.. what's that but just Quake2 in 32bit color with jumppads instead of ladders ?
      Dont get me wrong here, i admire what johnc does, and no game has executed so many bogomips on my cpu's as Quake2. I just hope Quake4 brings something more then just a bunch of new colors. I really would like Quake to be my first game of choice again :-)

      • Quake [1] was a totally revolutionary game, that set a whole new standard

        Yep. It ws the start of the end for FPS games. It emphasised graphics and the technological prowess of the engine over and above gameplay. And the rest of the industry followed suit. It wasn't until what, 5 or 6 years later, that gameplay became important again. UT was an immensely playable game, and although Q3A surpassed it in some areas, overall, I think most people agree that UT is the better game. But the real winner is Serious Sam. It's the first game I've played since Doom that really gets your heart racing due to the sheer quantity of bad guys all out to get you all at once. It's just a shame it took so long to get there after Quake came along...

    • Re:Yawn... (Score:2, Informative)

      by iamblades ( 238964 )
      The graphics are the main innovation. FPS games are usually the graphical leaders of computer games. Another attraction is the sheer fun value, which is immeasurable. Basically it's like how people still like tetris. Even if it might be played out, there will always be people that enjoy certain types of games...

      • Re:Yawn... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by grammar nazi ( 197303 ) on Friday August 10, 2001 @09:13PM (#2112062) Journal
        Here is a list of many of Q3's substantial innovations over Q1, Q2, and pretty much every other game to date:

        Volumetric fog. This was not done in a video game before Q3

        Delta packets - Q3 was designed from the ground up to be a networked game and innovations such as delta packets resulted from this.

        Ballistic parametrics - Instead of bullet positions being relayed over a network, Q3 relays position, velocity, acceleration. Remember physics? This is enough to describe the entire trajectory, making for a large bandwidth saver.

        Linux (thank you Loki) - It took a *long* time for Q1 and Q2 to be playable in Linux. Loki accomplished this quickly

        What else did I miss?

        • Re:Yawn... (Score:2, Insightful)

          by SumDeusExMachina ( 318037 )
          You missed a few...

          SMP support

          Full-screen 32-bit color rendering

          Curved 3D surfaces

          That's just about all that I can recall besides what you mentioned.

        • You really believe delta-compression was invented with Q3, don't you? :-\

          Sorry, but this is getting boring. Technically the engines are great, but... Wolfenstein, Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3/Quake 3:TA, "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", Doom 3, Quake 4... it's getting a little bit repetitive.

          The Looking Glass people did it right with Thief. Red Storm [redstorm.com] built Rainbow Six around good gameplay, but a crap engine and the worst netcode I've experienced (well, that's a lie -- I'm not counting Operation Flashpoint [flashpoint1985.com] since I consider it Beta). Couldn't ID take their tech to the tactical level?

          I've been waiting for ID to whip up a real good CRPG using a state-of-the-art 3d-engine for some time now... I hope those people over at ID can enjoy games from some other genre than just straight action-FPS, or they'll fade away... I'm not seeing myself buying any of their FPS anyhow. <shrug>.

          Ah well, guess we have Bioware [neverwinternights.com] and Gas Powered Games [dungeonsiege.com] to refine and put out some great gameplay for us.

          Chris Taylor and John Carmack teaming up, now that could be interesting. Or maybe Jane Jensen doing another Gabriel Knight [sierrastudios.com] using Carmack-o-tech. Anything BUT ANOTHER FPS!

        • Re:Yawn... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Aphelion ( 13231 ) on Saturday August 11, 2001 @01:59AM (#2147217) Homepage
          Delta packets have been around since Q1. See console command "cl_nodelta".

          Ballistic parametrics have been employed in large-scale multiplayer since Subspace in 1996.

          Q1 was playable in Linux using an anonymous binary named squake, presumably from leaked source code (before the source code was stolen from cracked crack.com servers.) It worked flawlessly, and far better than the official ports.

          So yeah, volumetric fog was a pretty big thing. I think they used it to cover up some bad floor textures.
        • I find it interesting that the "innovations" you list have NOTHING to do with game play. I like modern games, when they contribute to innovative game play. I also still play Tetris, sometimes even choosing to play it over The Sims, which btw is very innovative. Quite frankly, as pretty as Q3 is, compared to Q2, it's not innovative in any way gameplay wise.

  • Fools.. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Dr. Fred ( 473161 )

    I can't believe how ignorant some of you are. If you had read closely, you would probably know by now that Quake 4 is to be developped by Raven Software and merely supervised by id Software, pretty much like Return to Castle Wolfenstein was done with whatever company is developping it.

    Raven Software is not only a great games company, but it's also very good at making single player games. Remember Hexen, Soldier of Fortune, Elite Force? Raven are probably one of the best companies out there, and I'm pretty sure Quake 4 will rock, seeing as with id's (well, mostly johnc's) talent in making impressive game engines, and Raven's talent in making impressive and well-designed single player games. Q4 will most certainly be much more than just a 3d card benchmark, or an engine demo.

    The fools here who hastily read the announcement and only bothered to think "Oh yay another benchmark, id suxxx ass l0l" should be shot. id Software is good at making engines, as some of you pointed out, but not very good at making single player games. They seem to have realised this, and both Wolfenstein and Quake 4 are a good example of this. The new Doom project is a big question mark at the moment, but Quake 4 (and Wolfenstein, for that matter), certainly aren't.

  • DOOM? (Score:1)

    by lhaeh ( 463179 )
    What happened to DOOM3?

  • I'm really looking forward to this. The trip back to the Strogg universe is a good thing for people like me to enjoyed Quake II + Expansion Packs. While I love Quake III, I really do enjoy the single-player "one-many-army" games, a la Half-Life.

    Better yet would be a trip back to the types of levels we saw in the original Quake - the kind of medival architecture and enemies that made me afraid to play the game alone at night. :)

    • Re:Single-Player (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Mr. Sketch ( 111112 )
      enemies that made me afraid to play the game alone at night. :)

      I think you must be thinking of doom. That game had some enemies that would make me afraid to play with the lights off. Even after I stopped playing I could still hear the snarlling crackle of an imp right behind me. I haven't had the same reaction to any other fps I've ever played, doom was just a classic. I sure hope doom3 returns to the origional doom style in terms of gameplay and setting, and isn't too quakeish.
    • "Better yet would be a trip back to the types of levels we saw in the original Quake - ..."

      I agree it had great moods (enhanced considerably by Trent Reznor's soundtrack), but its contemporary, Duke Nukem 3D, was much more fun in single-player. If you're talking about level design I partially agree, but in general, I (and, I think, most people) didn't find Quake's single-player to be all that much fun.
  • ...a beowulf cluster of these? Carmack obviously can.
  • Or wait, wasn't it "The New Hope"?

    I'm all confused...


  • there will be no Quake 4
    -- Tim Willits

    So, I guess he was wrong, eh? :)

    -jfedor
  • Screen Shot [degraeve.com]. However, it is not real :). Saw this on Shacknews [shacknews.com].

  • Dumbentia Called It (Score:3, Funny)

    by bonzoesc ( 155812 ) on Friday August 10, 2001 @08:29PM (#2144821) Homepage
    http://www.dumbentia.com/pdflib/quaker.pdf - PDF link [dumbentia.com]

    I'm looking forward to Quake 4: Quaker.

  • Full name.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by abischof ( 255 ) <alex@NoSpAm.spamcop.net> on Friday August 10, 2001 @08:24PM (#2147315) Homepage
    I still think they should call it "Quake 4: The Voyage Home".

  • The true question is... (Score:4, Funny)

    by sheetsda ( 230887 ) <doug.sheetsNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday August 10, 2001 @08:04PM (#2153211)
    where are they going to put the fourth nail in the logo?
  • I hope they put more focus on the "fun" part, because they dropped the ball on Quake III. It's been all Unreal Tournament for me for the last 18 months.

    Oh yeah, and they better make it run faster on an the Athlon than the P4, or all the /. armchair CPU architects out there are really going to be pissed :-)

    • Have you tried this mod?

      http://www.planetunreal.com/u4e/

      awesome...

      Jaysyn
    • I hope they put more focus on the "fun" part, because they dropped the ball on Quake III. It's been all Unreal Tournament for me for the last 18 months.

      Agreed. Really unfortunate, because Q3 has a MUCH better quality engine. With UT I keep seeing miscellaneous display glitches.

      Example: on the CTF map with the two big towers and just a couple paths between them, you can go up on the top and grab a sniper rifle. Go up there are zoom in on the top of the enemy's tower - if someone's up there, and they start walking around, it won't display correctly. Looks like they're walking in the middle of the wall or something.
    • Oh yeah, and they better make it run faster on an the Athlon than the P4, or all the /. armchair CPU architects out there are really going to be pissed :-)

      That's a difference in compiler optimizations. By the time this is released, id might be using a compiler that allows the P4's deep pipelining to be a good thing.
  • Contrary to many a naysayer who says that 'Quake 1/2/3 is dead', people keep playing, and our q2 game servers are actually enjoying a bit of a resurgance (sp). Why? Because it is still one hell of alot of fun to play. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING can compare to the q2 physics. It had an excellent combination of good graphics, excellent multiplayer code, and physics that allowed to game to be fast paced, but not too fast paced where it seemed too unreal (no pun intended). Counterstrike, one of the most popular multiplayers games at this time, is based on the q2 engine (heavily modified by Valve), so this says something about the enduring appeal of q2, and its associated engine.

    Q3 was cute, and had excellent eye candy, but I found it to be entirely unplayable. I did not enjoy the levels (even thou they were beautiful), nor did I enjoy how my character handled. It was too 'soft and squishy' for my tastes. It was obvious that ID wrote it not to sell it as a game itself, but to sell the engine to mod builders.

    I can only hope that ID learns from its previous games, and can somehow capture the strong points of all their titles.

    Imagine, a game that has the fear factor of Doom, the physics of Q2, and the eye candy of Q3. I can hope, can't I?
    • It's all what you're used to. I started out playing Q1 in 320x240 software mode and even when I got a voodoo card I still played in software mode. Why? Because GLQuake felt the tiniest bit different and threw off my timing a little bit. At that time I was playing enough ( read: day and night) that I would notice even the slightest difference.

      When Q2 came out I *HATED* it (still do in fact). It just feels all wrong.

      So like I said, it's all what you're used to.

    • I gotta agree with the "Q3 player control was too 'soft and squishy'" comment. I really enjoyed Q1 and Q2 (*especially* Q2) though. The other thing that sucked about Q3 was that just about every server I got a good ping to seemed to be infested with complete dorks with no sense of respect for anyone else playing (not that online dorks were id's fault [hmmm, though the player-kick bug that could be foiled by rapid name changing certainly DID contribute]).
    • Imagine, a game that has the fear factor of Doom, the physics of Q2, and the eye candy of Q3. I can hope, can't I?

      You aren't the only one hoping buddy. If they could create a game like that, it would be the first fps I've bought since Doom2. I've played Quake2 and it was fun, but not enough for me to actually go out and buy it. Fun to play every now and then at a friends house, but not enough to actually buy.

      The fear factor of Doom is what made me love it, and the quake series just hasn't had that. Doom is the only game that can make me jump 5 feet out of my chair and cause me physically look around.

    • Re:I hope they model it after q2 and not q3. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Polo ( 30659 ) on Friday August 10, 2001 @10:27PM (#2134442) Homepage
      Imagine, a game that has the fear factor of Doom, the physics of Q2, and the eye candy of Q3. I can hope, can't I?

      You might want to give Serious Sam [croteam.com] a shot.

      My first time playing it I found myself chuckling *uncontrollably* while shooting *hordes* of oncoming monsters. Lots of monsters. Some of them hundreds of feet tall. (I was playing a network game cooperatively with a friend). I was rolling on the floor when I first picked up a cannon.

      The only thing that could be improved would be to add some more levels... say 200 or so... Yeah, 200 levels... that's a nice round number...

    • Counterstrike, one of the most popular multiplayers games at this time, is based on the q2 engine (heavily modified by Valve), so this says something about the enduring appeal of q2, and its associated engine.

      Actually, Counter-strike is just a modification for Half-Life, which itself was originally based on the Quake 1 engine, but Valve heavily modified it (skeletal animation, scripting, etc) and rolled in some updates from Quake 2 as well. Thus, the Half-Life engine is really an amalgam of Q1 and Q2, with a lot of Valve thrown in as well. Which, btw, would explain why it's also very dated-looking (which doesn't have to be such a bad thing, as long as the games are still fun).

      • No, actually, HaLFlife was based on the quake 2 engine, heavily modified. (not the grandparent)
        <br><br>
        --</i>cheers</i>

        • No (Score:4, Informative)

          by crisco ( 4669 ) on Friday August 10, 2001 @09:43PM (#2117622) Homepage
          No

          Take a look at id software's corporateQuake engine licensing page [idsoftware.com]. Second paragraph under 'The GPL'd Quake Engine'.

          Remember this engine is the foundation for what Valve did with Half-Life, and the software and OpenGL rendering is still as fast as it ever was.
          For some reason this is a common misconception, maybe because Half-Life came out after Quake II.

          It is an important point because Counterstrike, a mod of a game based on a five year old engine, is the most popular online 3D shooter (based on number of servers).

          • It is an important point because Counterstrike, a mod of a game based on a five year old engine, is the most popular online 3D shooter (based on number of servers).

            And according to GameSpy stats [gamespy.com], number of players aswell. Even if you assume only a tenth of Half-Life's players are playing CS (which I know isn't nearly as high as the actual number).

  • Quake 4, which will take a trip back to the Quake 2 Strogg universe.

    Hopefully a sign of the return of the single player game. As much as I love mowing down 13 year olds with a prediliction towards the word "j00", a tripped-out futuristic blast-fest with a decent story sounds great :)
  • What I've noticed is that all these hot FPS games only hold my(and a few others') attention for several months at a time.

    First it was me playing TFC for a while. Got bored with it.

    Then I played Counterstrike for a while. Got bored with the SAME maps over again. Let's play cs_dust one more time!

    Then I played Firearms. TONS of maps. Got repetetive, and not even the big selection of guns could hold my interest. Too many maps had small choke points where mortars and grenades kept exploding.

    Then I played Tribes 2. It locked up after 10 minutes. Played tribes 2 again. Download weekly patch. Locks up after 10 minutes.

    It'll be an interesting toss-up to see if Castle Wolfenstein or Quake 4 will be the next "Trendy" FPS.
    • Oh, but they're designed that way. It's a one-shot consumer product. If there was a game that you never got sick of and played for years, forsaking all other games, how would design houses make money? There are a finite number of people in the world that want a particular game, and they are, for all intents and purposes, an indestructible non-decaying product. You don't typically need to buy multiple copies of the same game, so they have to make multiple games to stay in business.

      The sad part of the game industry is how all the small shops are folding. That's our (the gamers) fault. Our demands for production value are so high these days that the overhead associated with creating even a modest game is staggering. You need artists, $10k/license 3d modeling packages, specialized motion-capture equipment, powerful workstation-class PCs, shop licenses for Visual C++ and the DirectX SDK, kickbacks to hardware mfgs to get reference HW to test your code on, tons of marketing, junkets for reviewers, and so forth just to be competitive in the market, which has grown to the level of having games in the middle of the aisle in Wal-Mart.

      Gaming's become as diversified and complex a business as movies or TV. And like the movies, mainstream gaming is distilling down to a few large publishers (Infogrames, Sierra, MS), and mostly puts out crap. The gems still come from the independent guys who somehow get picked up by a big studio. Bioware/Black Isle and Interplay comes to mind.

  • In other news:

    Israel and Palestine continue to have disagreements.
    Bill Gates has officially gone on record saying that open-source "promotes ulcers".
    The stock market had a disappointing week.
    Eric S. Raymond has published his newest essay, "The surprising connections between closed-source software and ingrown toenails".
    Richard Stallman has published the definitive list distinguishing between "free", "inexpensive", "costly-but compatible with free", and "immoral" software licenses.
    ...and finally, a heated argument took place at a college between two students debating the merits of vi and emacs.

  • q4@raven... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nemof ( 470259 )
    I think it's great that raven are dev'ing q4. They've built themselves a reputation for fine games over the last couple of years but tbh they've really got their work cut out for them on this one. I'm damned suprised that Q4 follows on from q2 and not q1. I was betting on a continuation of quake1 for a long time; I never felt that Quake2 single player worked. It will be interesting to see what it runs like on a good rig as they stand at the moment, with the news that doom3 will run at about 30fps on a geforce 3 I'm wondering how much Raven will use q3's landscaping features that were introduced with q3ta; Damn, I really wanted a continuation of quake. Ah well can't have everything. as John Carmack said a while ago: "There will be no quake4". laterz

  • I had a cigarette with ken Hoekstra today (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TotallyUseless ( 157895 ) <totNO@SPAMmac.com> on Saturday August 11, 2001 @03:32AM (#2166173) Homepage Journal
    I believe that is how his name is spelled. He is one of the major badasses at Raven software. Saw him when we went outside to have a smoke, so he was on the receiving end of our little quiz (as well as picture taking session). At this point, the only thing done for Q4 is the contract, and a few possible ideas. Thats all. They dont know how gameplay will be. They dont have the story fleshed out. They just have a piece of paper with signatures. So, speculate all you want, nothing is decided.

    That being said, i think raven will do a great job with the project, judging from previous and upcoming work. Soldier of fortune 2 looks amazing, and is a lot of fun to play. They added a lot of value to the Q3 engine, and Im sure they will do the same in their own way with Q4. They plan on pretty much finishing up SOF2 before starting heavy duty work on Q4. Part of the reason for this is just to finish SOF2, and another reason is to let the Doom3 tech get a bit more mature before they start tweaking it for their own purposes.

    one more quick thing.. the footage used to show off the work on the doom3 engine... amazing... and chilling. I cant say how Doom3 will turn out in the end, but I can say that it has all the potential that the original did, as far as edge of your seat action goes. Add to that interaction you never dreamed of with the old doom, some nice AI (understatement) and you have a real potential winner again.

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