the Quake and DOOM Page

Salusa Secundus, the harsh prison planet
and the source of the Padishah Emperor's
elite troops, the Sardaukar,
feared throughout the Dune Universe
What better training ground
for the elite space marines of Quake and DOOM !

DOOM

ID Software's DOOM (I include DOOM II), in my opinion, this is the game that started it all, the grandfather (mother has been abused too much :) of all such fantastic games as Quake, Heretic, Hexen and Duke Nukem 3D, as well as so many also rans which didn't quite make the grade and shall remain nameless. ID software's Wolfenstein 3D gave the world the first such game, known widely as First Person Perspective or FPP. However Wolf 3D lacked the one thing that elevated DOOM beyond just merely great to phenomenal, network multiplayer action ! The ability to play DOOM with or against 3 other friends is what really propelled DOOM to greatness (not to mention making ID Software lots of money!). DOOM woke the world up to low cost, easy to set up multiplayer gaming which seems to be one major trend in computer gaming (apart from full motion video and 3D graphics). Multiplayer options distinguish the great games from the merely good, and also extends the staying power of the game in the market. DOOM has also been said to be the reason for the current popularity of multimedia on the Internet ... its a long story so I'm not going into much detail. Basically DOOM became so popular it literally brought networks all over the world to a crawl (The early version of DOOM's broadcast network traffic helped :). Network administrators, not realising what was the cause, kept upgrading the networks to cope. When it was finally realised what was the cause, DOOM was banned from many networks, but the new infrasturcture was already in place so people started finding things to do with the new bandwidth ... the rest is history :). Probably nothing could have extended the longevity of the IPX protocol as much as the network multiplayer gaming explosion DOOM started. Another "feature" of DOOM which contributed greatly to its popularity and longevity was the ability for anyone with the right tools to design new levels or maps for DOOM, as well as change the music, sounds, graphics and even monsters. Thousands of user designed levels can be downloaded from the Internet, created by people with a fanatical obsession for the game. Ironically, ID Software never designed this "upgradability" into the game from the beginning.
Sadly, DOOM is now in its twilight, exceeded by the very games it inspired, however still played by people whose computers don't have the muscle to run Quake or Duke 3D.

Enough idle chatter, Enter the World of DOOM !

QUAKE

ID Software great success with DOOM made it difficult to come up with a worthy successor but I believe they have succeeded with Quake. Quake retains the most important traits which made DOOM so popular, network multiplayer (now 16 players rather than DOOM's limit of 4), with user modification features designed into the game, FPP and frantic gameplay. On top of that Quake added a true 3D environment as well as an accurate physics model, beautiful graphics (well DOOM looked pretty good when it came out !), and higher screen resolutions (up to 1280x1024 pixels), ability to play on the Internet without 3rd party software and many more goodies.To cap it all Quake comes with a programming language, Quake C ! Quake C can be used to modify Quake's gameplay to the limit of the programmer's imagination and abilities ! With Quake, the graphics environment looks like the rendered stills on graphics workstations we gasped at not so long ago, except this time you are IN it, dashing around the complex 3D environment in real time. When you kill someone, they fall down realistically, when caught in an explosion, bodies fly through the air, when you blow someone up ("gibbed" in Quake parlance) with a rocket or grenade their body parts fly in all directions. There is a price to pay for all this, realistically a minimum of of 486DX4-100 with 16MB of RAM is needed to play the game at the lowest resolution of 320x200 pixels and even my Pentium 133 with 64MB of RAM plays the game at 1280x1024 resolution like a slide show. Quake (through Quake C) was designed from ground up to have users modify anything from weapons, shapes, textures and even the physics model (lower gravity for example). Many fantastic new weapons and levels await your downloading from the Internet ! The new 16 player option is a most welcome improvement, and I have had the opportunity to experience it with 16 players ... it is wild ! As in the world of fighter pilots, in Quake, "Speed is Life". I'm glad to say that the skills I mastered in DOOM are "portable" to Quake.
Have a look at my Quake Weapons Employment tips.

Created on Tuesday, February 25, 1997 and last updated on May 4, 2000