/vr/ - Retro Games

What do you mean underrated? It basically started the speedrunning scene

>>4075618
i also love fidget spinner games

I think Q1SP's best and most timeless quality is its level design, but good level design is difficult to appreciate unless you're looking for it. What happens with most people is that they only remember and appreciate things that pop out the most, such as visuals, set pieces or ostentatious and grand but ultimately static encounters, all things which Quake isn't good at and games such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Unreal and Half-life are better at. I think actually Quake has fantastic visuals, but most people can't look past the brown palette and their cynicism makes them draw idiotic conclusions from this, like accusing Quake of somehow starting the brown and bloom trend in fucking 2006 or so. Quake's lame boss fights also sours the experience for a lot of people.

I would say that the most notable merit of Q1SP's level design is its interconnected design (episode 3 is an exception to this), where the player can go through the rooms in varying order and from varying approaches and encounter enemies from different angles, having the encounter almost be completely different as a result while still remaining deliberately and meticulously designed, giving the player's courses of action have real consequences. This kind of thing is difficult to appreciate unless you specifically look for it and replay the map in a different way. Most people don't see that, they only see the brown palette, they only see how the double shotgun isn't as ever-powerful as Doom II's super shotgun, they only see the lack of cannon fodder-type enemies, they only see the half-baked boss fights.

Arcane Dimensions is what Quake should have been like.

It's not underrated at all. The multiplayer just happens to be even better.

>>4075618
The blend happens due to the nature of the color pallet.

Basically, Quake supports a 256 color pallet, and uses this pallet to create various shades of color for shadows. This adds a lot of depth to shadows and such, but the cost is that the pallet is limited to various shades of brown and blue, with a sparse amount of greens and reds and other colors, most of which are limited to two colors (A "fullbright," which is unaffected by map lighting, and a slightly darker shade that is). While all that was very technically impressive for the time, running in software mode at a great speed and providing a lot of depth for the colors shown, it was also very limiting.

I believe (Not sure 100%) that Half-Life had a similar thing going on with a the pallet, and opted for a greater range of colors at the cost of lighting depth (Or it had another way of handling lighting that I'm not sure of and could essentially extend the depth of the pallet that way).

>>4075760
Could've sworn the whole game has you going from room to room, not this whole place to explore as you say. It's kind of linear, but this is from recollection.

>>4075767
Most of the maps in the initial releases of AD are actually pretty crap. They're pretty, but they're linear and tedious. I would say that the only AD maps that had interconnected design and did Quake's levels justice are Ogre Bastille, Crucial, Zendar, Monstrosity and Sepulcher. Swampy made an effort but is just confusing and lacks a good and intuitive layout. The rest are linear shit that lack creativity in encounter design to justify their length.

>>4075618

Everybody loves Quake's singleplayer, what are you even talking about?

>>4075619
>>4075987
I only played the Quake single-player for the first time a couple years ago, and I'm huge on retro games and played Doom 1/2 dozens of times. It may not be "underrated", but I had literally never seen it discussed in person or online outside the context of speerunning.

>>4075760
I agree with this 100%. My only major complaint is some of the "gotcha" booby traps. I think the second or third level has a switch you press, that you think might be an elevator, and it just shoots a spike into you from behind for an instand kill. Fun!

>>4075780
Some levels are pretty linear, but most are linear with little branched "goodie" paths and secrets to explore that often wrap back onto the main path. There's also levels that are pretty "choose your own adventure", if only because you might not be sure where you have to go to find the keys in the order you need.

>>4076007
/vr/s FPS community is pretty weak you'll see more Q1-3 discussion on other sites and there's diehard fans still playing all of them online if you want a taste of that. Q2 is probably the most noob friendly in terms of community since only duel is still somewhat active for Quakeworld and it can be brutally unforgiving for new players.

I probably haven't played Quake since the 90s, what's the best way to play on modern PCs?

>>4076145

Quakespasm

>>4075618
You ever visit our Doom general? We discuss Quake 1 and Build engine games all the time there, even post content for it.

>>4076145
Quakespasm for SP, nQuake for MP. For Quake 2 I would say Yamagi Quake 2 and Q2PRO and for Q3A I use Quake3e.

>>4076145
DirectQ

>>4076148
>>4076158
>>4076164
Thanks guys

My problem with Quake is that it's not consistent about levels being designed to be completed from shotgunstart or not.
It was kind of an awkward period between Doom, where every level was made that way, and shooters with actual long-term progressiom. Some levels seem just like Doom, they give you weapons close by and enough ammo to kill everyone, but other levels you'd have to kill shamblers with an axe.

>>4076145
Quakespasm is filthy GL port, you have to configure the shit out of it to make it look halfway vanilla.
Modified WinQuake with mp3 support is best.

>>4076251
There hasn't been a reason to use software mode over openGL for more than a decade. All effects are present and non power of 2 textures are no longer resized.

>>4076245
Designing every map with pistol/shotgunstart in mind is lazy as fuck since you don't have to account for how much ammo the player carries over between levels.
Most people don't bother with it anyway.

>>4075618
The level design is great, but I love the atmosphere the most. I wish the game did more with it.

A Doom 4 style reboot of Quake 1 would be the tits.

>>4075618
Because only the first one had notable single player.

3 was all about multiplayer, and 2 was just "worse single player than 1, and worse multiplayer than 3" so it tends to be kind of obsoleted by the other two.

Plus Doom is just vastly superior, so it tends to be somewhat in that game's shadow.

>>4075618
>The only thing I don't like is how the levels tend to blend together due to how visually similar most of them are.
Eh, while most of Quake 1's single player is gothic castles, Episodes 2-4 each have their own tileset. Episode 1 does mix and match, though.

I actually think Q1SP is a lot better than Doom 1 and 2. The level design still stands out today for it's blend of unique styling and great gameplay. The maps, especially once you learn how to rocket jump, are surprisingly open and let you tackle things in a variety of ways. Even with the game's limited weapon choices and smaller amount of enemy types compared to Doom 2, it still has some great and tense fights. Ammo and health placement is just right; you occasionally feel like you're OP, but a rough encounter or two will drain your ammo to more reasonable levels. Also, your ammo rarely gets to the point where you have to actively conserve ammo most of the time.

The enemies are much faster than Doom's. Doom's enemies are painfully slow and fire easy to dodge projectiles, meaning it gets very boring after a while. The last time I played Doom, back during the 20th anniversary, I quit because of how dull and rote the enemies were. Meanwhile, dancing with Fiends, dodging Ogre grenades bouncing everywhere, baiting a Shamber so he doesn't use his electricity attack, and hopping over a large cluster of Hell Knight fireballs in a tight hallway are still fun years after I've beaten Q1 multiple times because of how fast and tense they can get.

I'll admit the weapons aren't as diverse nor interesting as Doom's, but if you aren't a Doomer that's playing Quake 1 for the first time and trying to kill everything with the Super Shotgun (then complain the game has bullet sponge enemies on 4chan), you'll find they're fun, useful, and satisfying to use.

I'm also starting to like Duke Nukem 3D much more than Doom 1 and 2 as well.

>>4076131

Most of /vr/'s FPS chat is slobbering over Doom and their flavor of the month mod for it, with most of them either A. too afraid to go off the Doom reservation to play other games or B. playing other classic FPS games besides Doom, then getting mad and saying they suck because you can't breeze through the game with the shotgun (or shotgun equivalent).

Some days I'm impressed that the Unreal thread still lives. I love it when people try out Unreal and UT99 for the first time and enjoy them.

>>4077375
Yeah, as someone who loves Doom, the /vr/ threads are 50% gameplay mod dicksucking, and 50% complaining about maps being too hard or confusing

>>4077363
Amusingly enough that exact reason is why I've always been a Doom > Quake person for SP.

Doom is all about mowing down hordes of bastards, with things like Viles and Revenants providing flavourful encounters as opposed to just LOS cheesing.

With Quake, almost every enemy is a bullet sponge, except the 'former goons'. It just felt like more of a slog, and it's not what I'm looking for out of the game (and games like it). Nothing necessarily wrong with it, just not what I'm looking for.

>>4077615
Yeah I recently played through Q1 again after the GoG sale and it was easier to just ignore enemies most of the time

>>4077615
The "bullet sponge" thing is why I prefer Doom 2 over Doom 1.
Because of no SSG, Pinkies, Specters, and especially Cacodemons break the pace of the game too much.

>>4077623
I like that you didnt even bring up the worst offender of bullet sponge. Barons

>>4077642
I always felt that Lost Souls should die after one shotgun shot too.

>>4077645
Yeah, they should've been 60 hp, instead of 100.

>>4075770
Half-Life leveraged 16-bits of colours in software. As a result, it's bright and vibrant.

>>4077649
>60 hp
So still two shots to kill one?

>>4077676
Shotguns fire 7 pellets, dude.

>>4075629
>reddit spacing

>>4076245
They kind of abandoned this concept after the original Doom, though:
>According to Sandy Petersen, "Most people started levels with some kind of significant equipment. However, almost all our playtesting was done starting each level with just a pistol. We made the game too easy for the average player."

>>4077801
The game is easy even through pistol starting, though. I'd more just blame the fact that the level design in Doom 1 and 2 hardly ever takes advantage of the monsters to create any meaningful challenge. Its why I prefer Final Doom and PWADs.

>>4075618
I thought the level design was meh when I tried being like how speedrunners did it, really fast and rapid. I had more fun when I had the music playing and took my time because it was really creepy and fun.

Why does every Quake thread have to end up full of Doom spergs?

>>4078118
Because you're on /vr/

>>4075618
>Why is Quake singleplayer so underrated?

I loved Quake 1 and 2's single player. What are you talking about? Quake 3 was actually a bit of a let down for me since it was exclusively multiplayer.

>>4078118
ID made both doom and quake, no shit doom fans are going to be in quake threads. I never see doom fans in duke nukem threads.

>>4078243

>I never see doom fans in duke nukem threads.

That's because they ragequit once they try to take on a group of Enforcers with the shotgun while standing still and get wiped.

>>4078249
Or maybe this doom fan boogeyman isn't real as you think it is.

>>4078243
doombabs are always shitting up duke threads

>>4076145
Whatever has working audio out of the box.
none of them

>>4076007

There's a thread on /vr/ every few weeks-months depending on the season. When Q1 first came out, a lot of people didn't have good enough internet (effectively 1-3 kbps practical bandwidth for me) to really play the multiplayer.

Myself, I had a 486 DX33 (33 mhz CPU) and I could barely play the single player above easy difficutly due to my own lack of skill and the terrible framerate. That singleplayer was all I had for at least a year or two until I finally got a 100mhz computer and it finally ran well.

I talked about it for at least half my childhood, and then revisit it every few years. It's a well known fact that the 1st episode is the best episode. There was nothing like seeing those big 3D levels in 1996. No one had ever seen anything like it, and they felt bigger and moodier than anything you could imagine.

Also, I drank a bunch of wine, pardon my enthusiasm.

>>4078243
>I never see doom fans in duke nukem threads.

This is because levels are a huge pain the ass the navigate.

I like Doom and Duke Nukem, but have never played a Quake, except for maybe an hour in a Deathmatch during a Beta for #3, or #4 or something.

>>4078397
>Muh doom babby boogeyman

>>4078778
Duke Nukem levels are a lot easier to navigate, though.

>>4078778

What, are you mad that the maps aren't as hand-holdingly simple as Doom's? Does remembering landmarks and having to hit the use key on things besides doors confuse you too much? Are button puzzles just too complex for you?

>>4078778
How the fuck are Duke Nukem 3Ds levels a pain to navigate?

>>4078558
its incredibly easy to get the music working in most ports - in quakespasm you create a folder called music and put the soundtrack in it. Not exactly rocket science.

>>4078778
Duke Nukem has a lot of problems but the levels aren't one of them.

>>4078001
>I had more fun when I had the music playing
Why does this even need to be said? Do most people turn off music in video games or something?

>>4077592

Is it the ultimate irony that, despite all the worship Doom gets here, the Doom players here only care about mods, and even with mods, they suck ass at the game?

Say what you want about Doomworld, but at least they know how to play the game. The Doom players on here shit their pants and complain if a map isn't a string of corridors, then whine about how hard a map is if they there's some sort of challenge that mentally going into autopilot mode with the Super Shotgun won't fix.

Quake SP is god tier. I don't expect the idiots of this board to understand.

>>4079113
>has a lot of problems
It really doesn't. You're just a fucking idiot.

>>4079482
yup. /vr/'s doom babbies are the most pathetic shitters and represent the absolute worst of what /vr/ has to offer. the fps community of this board is disgusting.

Eternal reminder. Avoid the babby general like herpes. Never take the meme consensuses of this board seriously as they're fucking shit.

>>4079573
They don't play on UV? What the fuck's the point then?

>>4079586
their biggest problem appears to be hitscanners. they immediately menstruate upon seeing them like they've been caught with their pants down. they also can't handle revenants, meatballs, archviles, basically anything that isn't a retarded lumbering imp throwing its projectile at 2 centimeters per hour. I've even heard babbies claim the original doom is 'cheap' on UV. can you fucking believe that? I can't even imagine how bad the gameplay must be of those idiots.

>>4079619

I'm still impressed that the Doom thread posters are thrown off by fucking Revenants. If you've mastered the frightening skills of "taking sharp turns near a wall" and "strafing and moving in wide circles", they're a joke, no matter how many of them there are.

Even the "dreaded" Chaingunner is piss-easy. Tap the chaingun or lob a rocket at them to defeat them at range, then use the rocket launcher, plasma gun, or BFG (in an emergency) to gib groups of them. Though, looking at this, I can see why they consider Chaingunners a tremendous pain in the ass; you can't kill them with the Super Shotgun without taking a shitload of damage.

And who the fuck has problems with the Archvile? All you need to do is hide behind something as soon as he starts up the "shoot fire" animation and he's completely harmless as long as you aren't tarding out and killing the bad guys near him while he's still alive. Shit, as soon as I see one, I shove 5 rockets or a BFG ball up his ass to make sure he won't rez enemies.

>>4079619
>>4080210
That's just fucking sad and yeah I've never understood their problem with Revenants either. In Quake a Vore's shots will follow you like a motherfucker but Revenant shots are lazy. Archvilles if you've got the chance you just run up to them and stick the SSG up their nose and interrupt their cast animation. For chaingunners its not much different you can just use the regular shotgun or even the chaingun to interrupt their animation or stunlock them. If there's a lot of them you just move around so that they start killing each other.

>>4080228

Vores are bitches, but their projectiles are great for starting in-fighting. Lead a ball to any monster with a melee attack and 9/10 odds she's dead. I've even seen Knights manage to kill one.

>>4075618
Because Romero was upset they didn't kept the original idea.

>>4075618
I finally got Quake 1 few months ago and I'm not regretting it, played it twice and will try more.

>>4075619
I hope speedrunning is not everything what people care about Q1 singleplayer.

>>4076245
>levels you'd have to kill shamblers with an axe
First time playing Episode 5 with 2 shamblers in end with only shotgun with not enough ammo and axe to kill them.

>>4079326
Games with CD audio music often end up without music because player dont bother with music disk when recording it and posting on internet or game have releases without that music disk like GOG/Steam Quake.

>>4079326
>>4080758
Every copy of quake be it from GOG or steam comes without music. I played for years without the music till I finally decided to try it.

>>4081004
>I played for years without the music

>>4080758
>>4081004
along with every old rip of the game not including it.

>>4081127
For a long time I honestly didn't know there was supposed to be music and by the time I did find out I wasn't into the game enough at the time to play with music because I was too used to without it. I wish I got into the music sooner.

>>4081174
Note, I was like a kid when I first played quake so I just accepted it without music.

What went wrong?

>>4081616
It's meant to be a low tier weapon and is placed in the first map of each episode. The GL is the weapon that is at the same weapon progression tier as the Doom SSG, but obviously not as versatile and requires more deliberate and skilled use.

The double shotgun is still a good weapon, its high rate of fire emphasizes persistent close quarters combat and gives you a reason to stick close to enemies and tango with their varied attack patterns.

I just got the two mission packs for quake today. What am I in for?

>>4081732
fun

>>4081708

Quake 1's SSG is a nice little ammo conserver if you're running low on rockets for single targets.

Generally, my weapon usage is like this:

Axe - Hitting secret walls. lol for actual combat.

Shotgun - Ranged work (stray Scrags, etc).

Super Shotgun - Close quarters work early in a map (or map set) and if I need to conserve rockets.

Nailgun - Use for crowd control early, then let it rust once I get Super Nailgun.

Super Nailgun - Awesome for crowd control and Shambler elimination.

Grenade Launcher - Use to soften up enemies from around corners and as an improvised rocket launcher before I get a RL.

Rocket Launcher - Great for single targets (except Shambler) and can handle crowd control reasonably well. Probably the best all-rounder in the game.

Lightning Gun - Ultimate crowd control weapon and my preferred gun for taking out groups of Shamblers (though the SNG does a good job with this too). Basically treat it as my "Fuck you" weapon if things are getting too hairy.

>>4081732
annoying scorpions

>>4081732
Scourge is great, with some very creative level design and effects. Dissolution is meh, with some cool "new" weapons but awful level design overall.

>>4081781

You're not kidding about Scourge having good level design. I just finished that mine level, it was bretty cool seeing all those tumbling rocks and boulders. Maps alot more detailed too which I like. Although those scorpions are annoying as hell.

Anyone play Malice, the quake TC? That was tough I thought (i was 12 though)

>>4081127
back then games would be ripped of every single dead weight to make it easier to copy or download through the internet. quake with music would be 600 mb while game files themselves took only 40 mb

much like how it is now with uncompressed audio and badly encoded cinematics

>>4075767
Play seal of Nehehra if you can find it.

its not quite as good as arcane but still very solid and quite long.

>>4075767
I can't force myself to like AD. Yeah, it's good, brings a lot of fun things without breaking the gameplay and it's a gust of fresh air, but I really, really like the eldritch feeling from Quoth more. Still, haven't seen any "elder" themed map for AD.

>>4075785
Well, they're half demo-half real maps to show off what mappers can accomplish by using the mod.

>>4075760
Personally, while I find Quake's singleplayer good, Quake 2's singleplayer is better.