The Quake franchise celebrated its 15th birthday recently, having launched in June 1996. For many gamers lucky enough to have experienced this title when it first appeared on our gaming machines, it was a defining moment in the history of video gaming.

Id Software is credited with many advances in the FPS genre and the development of 3D engines used for gaming. The Quake engine was the first 3D engine to implement true 3D geometry and light maps. It used complex 3D rendering techniques such as Z-buffering (depth buffering), which manages depth coordinates in a 3D scene and reproduces correct depth perception.

Static lightmaps and 3D light sources were introduced to create realistic lighting effects. Gourard shading  was introduced to create smooth continuous lighting effects across moving objects. Quake was also the first game to pre-process and pre-render the 3D environment to reduce in-game processing times – this lead to the coining of the term ‘map’ as it pertains to a 3D level.

Despite these advances, Quake launched at a time when discrete GPUs were just beginning to gain traction in the gaming market, and the game was fully capable of being software-rendered. A look at the meagre system requirements shows how far we have come:

Quake system requirements

•    66 MHz Processor
•    Floating Point Unit (math co-processor, often not included in the CPU of older systems)
•    8 MB RAM
•    80 MB Hard disk space
•    1 MB Graphics card
•    IRIX 5.3 / Linux 1.3.88 / MS-DOS 5.0 / Solaris 2.5.1 / Windows 95

Quake is also credited with catalysing the era of competitive multiplayer FPS games, via LAN or the internet. Quake was one of the first games to be considered for the emerging concept of electronic sport, and the game produced gaming’s first professional gamers and gaming leagues.

Of the many greats that worked on Quake, many have gone on to become famous (or infamous) for their work within the gaming industry. Programmers John Carmack, and Michael Abrash (now working at Valve). Level designers American McGee (Doom, Doom II, Quake, Quake II, Alice); Sandy Petersen (Wolf 3D, Civilization, Doom II, Quake, Age of Empires expansions). John Romero and Tom Hall (flop of epic proportions Daikatana counterbalanced with 2000’s game of the year Deus Ex). id originals Tim Willits and Kevin Cloud remain with the company. Adrian Carmack claims he was forced out of the company due to a contract dispute; he is credited with coing the term ‘gibs’.

Another famous contributor was Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails who created the iconic soundtrack for Quake.

id Software co-founder and coding genius John Carmack has written a short letter to commemorate the 15th anniversary of this monolith on the gaming landscape:

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.

I have a bit more subdued memory of Quake than many of our other projects, because the development was so tough.  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. 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.

It seems silly now, but at the time we were very concerned that people wouldn’t be able to deal with free look mouse control, and we had lots of options to restrict pitch changes and auto-centre when you started moving.

The internet gaming aspect was almost an accident. I had moved from Doom’s peer-to-peer networking to client/server primarily to allow late game entry, and UDP was supported because I was still doing a lot of the development on NEXTSEP unix workstations. The idea of playing over the internet was always there, but I didn’t think it would be practical for many people due to the long latencies and variable performance of typical connections. When it turned out that people were doing it despite the low quality, it gave me the incentive to develop the alternative QuakeWorld executable with the various latency reduction mechanisms.

The other important alternative executable was glQuake, which played a significant role in the early days of 3D accelerators. 3DFX was the gold standard back then – Nvidia’s RIVA128 had poor subpixel precision and didn’t handle all the blend modes properly. In fact, almost everyone was under the incorrect assumption that blending was only good for alpha transparency, even companies like 3DLabs that should have known better.

Competitive deathmatch had gotten started with Doom, but the Red Annihilation Quake tournament was a high point, where I gave my first turbo Ferrari away to [Dennis “Thresh” Fong] for his dominating tournament win.

I look back at Quake as the golden age of game modding, before the standards rose so high that it required almost a full time commitment to do something relevant. I am very proud that many of today’s industry greats trace their start back to working with Quake.

The most important thing about quake for me was that I met my wife when she organized the first all-female Quake tournament. She still thinks Quake was the seminal achievement of Id, and she glowers at me whenever I bemoan how random the design was. 🙂

For a nostalgia inducing look at a golden age of FPS gaming, check out the video below, filmed during the QuakeWorld launch event in 1996.

RAGE

id Software has been going from strength to strength since the days of the Quake engine, ostensibly id Tech 1. We have seen id Tech 2 (Quake II, roots of the Valve Source engine); id Tech 3 (Quake III); and id Tech 4 (Doom 3, Quake 4).

id Software is now poised to launch their latest 3D engine – id Tech 5. Rather than spouting off a list of new features we will enjoy in the engine, it is perhaps best to allow an official video to speak for itself – part one in a six part behind-the-scenes series of RAGE.

Quake turns 15, RAGE continues id Software’s legacy << Comments and views