Pretty sure it’s brown with ray tracing now!
I’ve told the story a few times on here I think, but I was playing Quake via Qspy on id’s OG servers back in the very beginning. The first time I connected to a server there were only four of them. Over the next couple years, I met a bunch of folks playing online daily and eventually we formed a clan and even participated in some clan matches. It was heady days.
I was also a keyboard only player for at least the first nine to twelve months I played the game. Someone I ended up 1v1ing with on the E1M1 map very late at night was rolling me with rocket jumps and just plain old amazing feats so I finally asked him how he was pulling a lot of that off and he introduced me to mouselook (and rocket jumping) and when I went back to practice with the clan a week later I made them all look pretty silly. Everyone took up the mouse after that.
I still love the game and can sit down and play through a bunch of levels just for the hell of it.
Keyboard only? So you didn’t even use the mouse for aiming left and right? Did you play Doom that way too?
I’ve never tried keyboard only, so I’m having a tough time picturing how that would even work.
Yes. All keys. Two hands. Strafe with one hand, turn and move with the other. I don’t recall the specifics of which keys I used although I believe it was all defaults. It was essentially the way you’d use a gamepad today but without analog function. In DOOM or Duke 3D it’s totally fine as the game adjusts for elevation with your shot automatically. In Quake, it eventually became untenable and a disadvantage although I was still damn good without using a mouse.
I could circle strafe with the best of them. It was just that Quake adding so much to the vertical plane, there was no way to be fast enough with keys to look up and down and hit targets quickly.
Love Quake 1. I was also in the OG Quake Amish Clan w/ the leader (I think a 14 year old) Hostile Carrot. I think I used the nick Grinder at the time. Also stayed up late to download qtest on my modem, and have completed the single player at least 6 times.
I have the Quakespasm front-end w/ the original NiN soundtrack as a fixture on my game drive.
I need to see if this Google WiFi mesh router supports port forwarding, and host some DM/ Co-op games.
LMK. I’d be up for Deathmatch for sure. Probably my favorite mod was Headhunters. Holy hell that was fun. Loved being dead and having the perspective still be from my severed head on some dude’s belt. :D
I think I played Doom recently keyboard-only. It’s easy since there’s no Y axis to worry about. I’d have a hard time playing Quake without mouselook.
My pinball team spent a few nights playing Quake & Quake II early on in the pandemic. I’m still dreadful at Quake II, but I always loved the mechanics of rapid movement + rocket jumping in the original. For whatever reason, my copy never installed the textures properly, so I had all the geometry and lighting with sterile, solid colors. Honestly, it was an improvement in some ways. I’d say it’s harsh to judge the graphics of the first true 3D FPS, but DOOM’s aesthetic was memorable where Quake’s was just muddy. I’m not sure how to replicate the error, but I do recommend it.
If someone gets a QT3 server going, I’d definitely join in.
My friend the other day said he thinks they’ll bring Quake back after the Doom reboot, and my response was ‘I want that grimy brown swamp nail gun medieval shit from the first game though.’ Which is weird because at the time I wasn’t that wild about the game itself. I loved the aesthetic (even though my computer could barely handle SVGA so it was all big chunky pixels) but I think Duke3D and GoldenEye a year later made me realise I was losing interest in just pure shooting. In '98 Thief came out and, well, that was that. I’d like to go back to Quake now though, especially with mlook fully ingrained.
The Quake logo/icon is still one of my favourites.
That is an intriguing premise. What would a Quake Reboot look like today?
I didn’t play the original Quake campaign through until after I played Quake 4, which had been my favorite game in the series up to that point. But playing Quake with mouselook made it my favorite even after playing Quake 4. There’s a lot of points throughout the campaign where the level design is just really good. They force players out of their comfort zone again and again and again throughout the campaign.
So I started playing this again for the first time since I was a kid and with Quakespasm it runs beautifully. The NIN soundtrack is locked and loaded and just fantastic. I used this excellent blog post to get the classic look (hard, crisp and chunky pixels) but with modern niceties (high resolution, anti-aliasing, 120fps, scaled UI, transparent water slightly transparent swamp water etc.)
I blasted through about 3 or 4 levels then quit out, thinking it’d auto-saved. Uh oh. ‘Save’ is under ‘New Game’. When I fired it up to start again I realised I’d been playing on Easy because I went through the left-most portal and missed the message prompt. That’s why I blasted through those levels. Hard is hard! Easy is sleep-inducing so I’m really glad I cranked it up because Hard is so much more engaging; a real fight for survival. Shamblers are nasty.
Quake was a revolution, and it changed my life. Fond memories of video card upgrades, the evolution of mods (superheroes!), deathmatch, capture-the-flag, and so much more.
I prefer Doom overall, but I played a lot of QWCTF back in the day. Did the clan thing, even organized a tournament. mIRC, 90s music, multiplayer gaming. Good times.
I remember first playing Quake deathmatch (and Duke Nukem) on the ten.net. I think it was $19.99 per month. At the time I had a 28.8 modem and my pc was just under the minimum requirements. I always had a 600-800 ping and always came in last but it was simply amazing. Imagine that playing games over the Internet!!! I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that sense of wonder and amazement since.
My personal wonder moment was Doom on a local BBS, but decent on-demand Internet multiplayer was pretty amazing too. I was running 200-300 ping though!
Playing Quake again, the early sections I remember clearly but it gets fuzzier deeper into each chapter. I bet as a kid I was dipping into the different chapters out of order and not getting very far. I vividly remember levels like Ziggurat Vertigo and The Necropolis however, and even using the Thunderbolt.
I recall seeing Chthon (maybe in a magazine or on the box?) but whether I faced it is another matter. That was a lame fight though. I was expecting to go ham but instead it was just pressure plates all the way. The early double Shambler drop in The Necropolis was way tougher and scarier.
I’m having an absolute blast with this though. I think it was wasted on me as a kid. I need to find a better way of selecting weapons though. 1-4, fine, 5 and beyond is always horrible in a pinch. This applies to most shooters on keyboard and mouse.
Move the weapon binds around so the guns that are actually good are 1-4 and the others further down. Also, mouse wheel up should select your best gun*, and wheel down should select its best complement, which will free up a couple of keyboard binds. Though given the age of Quake it probably doesn’t recognise the wheel; you may need to play through some modern wrapper or use something like X-Mouse Button Control to rebind the wheel to keyboard inputs while it’s open.
* ‘Best’ being somewhat up for debate. ‘Most used’, may be a more useful way of thinking about it.
Yeah, Quakespasm allows for mousewheel but there’s no in-game options for mapping specific weapons. Oh… hang on, I remember seeing in a config file a list of number keys. That might be the ticket!
Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff in Quake hidden in the console and config files from what I remember. Bind is what you’re after.
bind q "impulse 1" for axe on your q key.
See also unbind q.
I don’t think it’ll write console inputted binds anywhere though, so you’ll lose them when you exit out. You’ll need to text edit the .cfg file and save it to store them permanently.
Yeah I think this is under the ‘Id1’ folder. Thanks fox!
I forget about the axe. I’ve used it, usually by accident to kill something weak, but otherwise I do wonder why the hell it’s in there. I suppose it’s if you run out of ammo…