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-sourcing, as opposed to the
sector-based static lighting used in games of the past. It was also the
first game to really kick-start 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 this 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 computer 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.

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.)

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 same PC
as the server gets a substantial advantage due to essentially zero lag.

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, cut-down version of the computer language C. The QuakeC code
runs on the game server alone.

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 mideval 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 2 seperate 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. Although well
recieved by some because of its internet deathmatch play, others derided its
bland pallete, its basic gameplay, and felt that internet play was too
idealistic and in practice too choppy.

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 becaused it was much more friendly to those with high
pings (also referred to as High Ping Bastards or HPBs).

The populate Quake mod, TeamFortress, 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

   * Quake

Games using a modified Quake engine

   * Hexen II
   * Half-Life (Includes portions of Quake 2 sourcecode)

Replacement Quake I Engines

   * GQ
   * TomazQuake
   * DarkPlaces
   * Tenebrae
   * QuakeForge