Back around 1996 or so, when I was working at Intel in Oregon, testing some of the first 3D video cards ever, we played a hell of a lot of Quake, to see how the OpenGL support of the cards worked in the game. Good times.
I want to give a huge congratulations for the Digital Foundry team, no doubt now one of the greatest teams covering gaming of all time. Sensational job Richard, bringing John & Alex was a master stroke & the rest of the crew too. Simply outstanding. Happy birthday DF Retro!
These videos are seriously the best there is on TH-cam, these are legitimate documentaries of video game history and have serious value. You are doing amazing work, and I seriously hope you will continue making these kinds of videos. Discussing, analysing and talking about important games and the impact they've had.
@@purebaldness To add to your recommendation. Summoning Salt makes fantastic documentaries on the history of speedrun records. ‘S’ tier storytelling - highly recommended.
@@cloudbloom been on YT for about 12 years or so, whilst dodging exploitative, algorithm chasing BS in recent years, as much as I can and I can safely say he's my favourite uploader, ever.
Whenever I load up a source port like Quakespasm for the first time on a system, the first thing I do is tweak it to resemble the software renderer as much as possible. Hell, I even turn off animation interpolation because the choppy animations are just so iconic to me.
Quake's Soundtrack is by far some of Trent Reznor's best work. It's haunted, unnerving soundscapes transforms Quake into something dreary, uncomfortable, & thrilling. Production-wise, it sounds like an extension of the ideas found in Nine Inch Nail's "The Downward Spiral" & that era of NIN's discography, though it's by far more surreal & abstract than anything else the band put out at the time. If you're even remotely into NIN, Reznor, or ambient music, please give it a proper listen either by playing Quake or streaming the album.
The excitement of this gaming era can't be overstated. Art, technology, culture, and community seemed to travel at warp speed with mind-boggling advancement almost every week.
It was pretty awesome. I was working at Intel at the time, and I got to test out some of the very first 3D accelerated video cards, AGP video card technology, and the advent of USB. I miss those days.
Its still the same, even more excitet imo. Just buyed a rtx card few months ago, awesome times, but i still play n64 games on the emulator sometimes, i also like the more abstract graphics of old games some modern games uses. Im 20 years we play on complete new kinds of hardware technologys and looking back to this very exciting times😎
@ammonitida Interestingly Carmack was postulating virtualized geometry after working on mega textures for Rage, before he shifted on to VR. This is what initially inspired the Epic graphics programmer to pursue the UE5 approach if I recall.
@@DubElementMusic Moore's Law has practically ground to a halt and now the most we can expect is a new process technology/architecture with a modest performance increase, it's nothing like the days of moving from 386 to 486 to Pentium, Pentium II etc. where we were advancing by orders of magnitude every few years.
Yeah, modern FPS's prioritize covers, aiming down sights and sniping while Quake is more about impulsively blasting rockets at whatever moves before your face. Having played Q1 for years, my first reaction to early console FPS's like Halo was as if it's playing in slo-mo.
%100 I grew up on COD and Battlefield and only started playing quake when the remaster came out on PS4, its now one of my favourite games ever. Deathmatches have a pace that I always wanted but never knew existed.
What fascinated me most about the predecessor Doom, as well as about Q1, was the aggression of the opponents against each other and using it strategically.
When I first saw Doom I was blown away. I remember thinking "nothing will ever top this". Then a couple of years later I saw Quake. My jaw was on the floor. These games changed my life forever. I hope iD's next project will be a SP Quake game. I would be soooo happy.
Actually there are indie FPS games on Steam right now trying to replicate the mood and feel of Q1. You can also make your own Q1 based on the source ports than Dark10X mentioned.
DF team is a godsend to the gaming community. Everytime i feel my generation of gamers is fading away they give us a reminder that we were, we are and will always be a part of some of gamings greatest moments. To my fellow old gamers and to my dearest late friend.. Game is not Over.
@Dam Sen "Any generation can still enjoy Quake as much as anyone did back in the 90s, if not more because even the current generation's low-end PCs can run the game without any problems, Quake destroyed PCs back in 1996." after reading that I think you completely misunderstood my comment. there's a lesson to learn here if you can figure it out. have a nice day.
There was another contemporary 3D accelerated quake that was missed in this comparison: Quake RAVE, which used the low-level layer of Apple's QuickDraw 3D called the Rendering Acceleration Virtual Engine (RAVE). It was platform-specific and never gained much traction, being replaced by OpenGL and dropped entirely in OS X.
In all fairness, the fact that DN3D managed to stand its ground against Quake and is still remembered as a classic and an important entry in the history of FPSes shows the validity of that quote at the time, and in some ways it still works since the Quake series nowadays is kind of treated as id's red-headed step-child (though not as much as RAGE or Keen at least). You know what joke didn't age nearly as well? In the shitty Christmas-themed level pack for DN3D, there's a level named "The Land of Forgotten Toys", and there's a section based on the classic first level from DOOM. Hahaha, ahahaha, I don't think I need to explain that. All that said, the state that Duke is in right now is definitely a massive shame. Thanks Randy!
One of the biggest improvements I've noticed is that the shots of John with his OLED as the background are much better looking. Great color balance between John and the BG.
The first time this video was released it was bad timing because Geeks & Gamers already did a detailed retrospective. Now it happens they've released a remaster after this video has come out. Bad luck or what? 😆
@@pferreira1983 Geeks and Gamers is not a Gaming focused channel despite what its channel name says, it's a channel focused more on cultural war stuff and making all sorts of drama videos ranting about non Gaming related stuff (unless its The Last of Us 2 where that's the only Gaming related thing they talk about nonstop) like Marvel, Disney Star Wars, etc. TH-cam's algorithm favors that channel making negative/drama related content, so anything non drama Gaming related they do (like their Quake retrospective video) will not reach nearly the same amount of views as Digital Foundry's videos; in fact, G+G's Quake video hasn't even gotten to 20,000 views while Digital Foundry's Quake 1 DF video is already at the 250,000 view landmark despite G+G's Quake video being 6 months old and DF's Quake video being 3 months old. Plus Digital Foundry has *way* more subscribers than Geeks and Gamers, so by default DF's videos will get more views than G+G's videos. Also Digital Foundry's content is way more unique and in depth than whatever stuff Geeks and Gamers has to say in Gaming because Digital Foundry focuses a lot more on the technical and game design aspects of Gaming rather than the other aspects of Gaming like cultural impact and other stuff which G+G focuses more on. Comparing Geeks and Gamers with Digital Foundry should not even be a thing considering how different both channels are in terms of size, the type of content they release, the type of audiences they have, and their channel goals.
@@generalcjg That's a shame as well since their Quake retrospective was almost as detailed as this one. As soon as this video was released I thought I'd seen it before. 😂
I love homebrew and beta/unreleased game. There is a homebrew and a "demo" if Quake for DC I still have copies sitting on a CD spindle. 😅 HL Blue Shift was great on DC. Back in the day i downloaded a few versions of Thrill Kill, unreleased MK2, betas of Tony Hawk for PSX. Now it's cool you can easily find things like Ecco 2 and Castlevania for DC.
Didn't feel like an hour, I was drawn in and loved every minute of it. Great work! Quake is one of my favorite games - one of the few I've completed several times and also used to mod back in the day. It's always a great day when well-made videos are released that underline exactly why I love the game. Quake is a sum of a bunch of different things that aligned perfectly.
playing quake over 2020 and 2021 with my friends with our own little custom mod and maps (one of us is EXTREMELY talented!) has been an amazing way to ride out the pandemic and still stay connected. outstanding video, john!
Sort of similar case with the cyberdemon in Doom, too; it takes no splash damage, so a considerable amount of damage is lost when using rockets against it, but the main difference there is it's still worth it because they do more DPS than any other weapon except the plasma gun and BFG.
To quote a certain prisoner forced to review games for the internet: "You ought to remember: Shamblers are explosion *resistant*, not explosion *proof*."
@@GrammerPancreas Doom kind of trolls you when it comes to the Cyberdemon, since his first appearance comes in a level that gives you a rocket launcher immediately and has tons of rocket pickups! It's been a while since I played through Quake so I can't remember what weapons are available when the Shambler first shows up.
Excellent work as always John! I'm beyond happy to see that there's now a DF Retro Patreon tier; I've never supported something so quickly before. Can't wait to see what's to come, hope you have fun with it, and wishing you nothing but success with this new chapter for DF Retro.
This video should be preserved as the definitive handbook on the technical legacy of Quake. Relatively concise, yet deeply informative and captivating. All first-person shooter fans should watch - especially younger generations - and know this history behind modern 3D gaming. Just brilliant.
In 7th and 8th grade, the science teacher in my school was a lowkey gamer...he overheard my friends and I talking about Quake. He helped us set up an after school "computer club" in the lab where we all played shareware quake multiplayer. Man I love this game.
You joke, but it was Quake that brought mouselook into the mainstream for FPSes AFAIK. At the very least, WASD originated in its competitive scene. EDIT: I know games like Marathon and Duke 3D did it first, but I don't think mouses were really seen as that important for FPSes by most people before Quake came along.
@@LonelySpaceDetective Well said - I remember having to adjust to Quake, and it was a huge adjustment (especially playing against others through QuakeWorld). Nobody I knew (or ever met) used mouselook in any FPS prior to it.
@@LonelySpaceDetective you're right, Descent was out already though, iirc, but i remember Quake at release being the first real fps with mouselook. Been playing them since then, with inverted y axis.. cause of flight sims, Epic, Wing Commander etc
What a coincidence. I have been getting back into Quake again for the past month or so and really been obsessing about it, and here John comes with an hour-long deep dive into everything Quake to satiate my needs! Thanks a lot John, I am going to thoroughly enjoy this.
My old crew has apparently already rounded up the troops in the last few months to play some Q4 CTF and Duels again. I was just about to go reinstall all my Quakes again. lol and this video pops up
I remember my first time playing GLQuake on my brand new, shiny Orchid Righteous 3D 3DfX card. It was housed in my very modest IBM Aptiva PC. Good times!
The best time in PC gaming history. So much variation. I was, I guess lucky, to work in PC building back then so got to test and buy most of the cards on the market.
This episode of DF Retro was great. One of your best. Brings back memories from my first computer, a Pentium 133 with 32Mb of Ram. This was one of the first PC games I ever played.
Man, that VQuake at 240 with the anti-Aliasing looks like how my brain will tell me N64 games looked. Like the rose tinted lens version of them. I was playing N64 Quake a few weeks back and having a blast with it. Need to get that Saturn port some day.
Amazing video - thank you! God, I miss the gothic gloom of Quake so much. Sad that almost everything after that went scifi. Lucikly there were Hexen 2 and Heretic 2 to enjoy, but other than those two it was and is slim pickings. Also: software rendered Quake looks a hell of a lot better than that early 3Dfx smoothed out mess.
Same here, and I had the Saturn version only. Don't think I ever beat it though because the battery for saving games has been dead for as long as I can remember. I had to leave the system on the entire time I was playing a game if I ever wanted to complete it.
Ever since it's arrival I've praised and preached Quake as the biggest game changer (of the last 30 years). BTW I first played it using a Pentium 133, no GPU and 8MB RAM. It ran beautifully. I've never been as blown away by a game as my first play of Quake. HL was the second game to impress in a similar manner.
Phenomenal job with this episode. Really raises the bar on videogame docs to another level. Great production quality, going knee-deep into the tech details, and covering the game from so many relevant creative angles. Amazing job here.
One thing that always stood out to me, at least in GLQuake, were enemy animations. They have very few key frames with no interpolation so they end up looking like stop motion animation. Modern source ports fix this via interpolation, but for some reason, the enemies seam to animate perfectly in the Saturn port. But it could just be that the low animation frame rate more closely matches the low overall frame rate.
Considering the nature of the Saturn port, I wouldn't be surprised if the monster animations were redone and/or somehow handled differently. Personally, I kinda love the look of the animations without interpolation. It just feels *right* for Quake in a way I can't really put into words.
@@LonelySpaceDetective it kind of fits for the unsettling and almost unreal (ha) horror aspect. I think it was the first terminator film, where the t1000 was animated at a slightly lower framerate than the film reel ran at, giving it an unsettlingly jerky and unnatural feel. it's probably something similar
I have one sitting on the floor in my bedroom. It may or may not work. All yours for S&H ;-) Sadly, all of my ViewSonics are history :-( Another case where "retro" tech is better, if less convenient.
Excellent. One thing that rarely gets mentioned re Quake is the subtle yawing motion added to movement, particularly when you strafe. It added so much to the feel of your character having weight and heft, and not just being a mobile crosshair.
I played Q1 and Q2 a lot, hundreds of hours each... but never got into Q3... Unreal Tournament was released 3 days before Q3 and in my opinion is a much more enjoyable and different experience... Q3 was the absolute downhill by not being a sucessor to Q2... one of my top 10 games of all time.
Masterpieces from the community such as the Arcane Dimensions mappack make me believe that Quake will be eternal, and our grandchildren will still be captivated by it, decades from now.
Wow so happy to see this in my feed this morning John, DF Retro is the best, I really appreciate the hard work and love you put into these. Quake is amazing!
The first 3D accelerator I bought had only 4 megabytes of video RAM. It let me play Quake 1 in OpenGL at a glorious 640x480 resolution. That doesn't sound like much today but in 1997 that was a big upgrade over software render at 320x240.
DF needs to do another quake video as the enhanced version of quake has now been released by night dive studios...and as with doom 64 and the original doom's it's a fantastic version.
I’m eagerly awaiting a fully featured RTX version of Quake 1. I’ve always loved the first game over the others, from its style/atheistic to its sound track (which I’m lucky enough to own on vinyl). There’s still nothing like it.
I slaved away a summer to afford dual voodoo 2s in SLI to play quake and quake 2 back in the 90s. SLI allowed me to run at a grand resolution of 1024 x 768 at 60 FPS... it blew my mind at the time along with the first cable internet, quake had insane multiplayer back in the day. I can absolutely attest quake drove me into pc gaming and building systems. Great video! Very nostalgic take on a golden age
Let's be fair: I was initially sceptical about the content and the duration of the video but I have to say that this was surprisingly very entertaining! Thanks.
Thanks so much John, what a feat. Absolutely fantastic production and storytelling. 1 small criticism, dropping your head at the end of sentences to change page or move the script or whatever is happening there takes me out of the feeling of having you tell me this story.
I remember that it was tried but it was a disaster even as a prototype. I don't remember what magazine it was that had a blurb on it. But to be fair the Jaguar was a disaster all around. Where the few 32x + Sega CD games are essentially as good as a Jaguar game. So, considering how weird the Sega Saturn port was. One can only imagine how bad a Jaguar port would had been.
Living in the edge of a small town in rural North Carolina, USA I forget that there are other tech nerds who enjoy the minor details until I see your df retro notifications and remember they just shipped them all to Great Britain. Keep up the good work guys.
I first played Quake on an N64 since my dad got it bundled at a pawn shop. It was mesmerizing to go through the stages and see all the monsters. One thing that really blew me away, besides the whole game itself, was when I saw 2 AI monsters fighting each other, it just made it so much more immersive.
This brings back great memories. A friend of mine got a Voodoo card and my mind was blown away when I saw how good it looked and how fast it ran on his Pentium. It was also my first experience playing online against others on Quakeworld. Love the videos!
I remember as a teenager working a job at our local grocery store to pick up Diamond Monster 3D (3DFX Voodoo) after seeing Quake play at a local computer store. Now almost 25 years later and I still love playing games on my pc.
Awesome stuff, can't wait to see more old school pc gaming goodness. That early era of 3D acceleration will never be beaten and it was made for guys like you to make DF retro videos :D.
This is the best DF Retro yet, you takes in all way to Quake in tech of the same time, with details and quotes from the developers really strike well. And you own personal take in the tech, style of gameplay and how it's now in the present it's what make this video section shine.
Quake changed my life. It was the game that needed a graphics card upgrade for the first time, we opened up the box and "upgraded" Ive been working in computing ever since !
Back around 1996 or so, when I was working at Intel in Oregon, testing some of the first 3D video cards ever, we played a hell of a lot of Quake, to see how the OpenGL support of the cards worked in the game. Good times.
Nice. It was for "Science". Hey you'll never know until you "stress test".
I feel like John Carmack himself should watch this video. It would make him proud.
Wonder if he has any Quake prototypes lying around, it was a vastly different game.
John Carmack is an eldritch being, he's seen every possible reality of this video's existence and nonexistence.
He famously doesn’t look back all that much
Lol, like he doesn't have better stuff to do...
@@protocetid doubt it, Romero is the most likely source, though he was done at ID by the end of Quake 1
I want to give a huge congratulations for the Digital Foundry team, no doubt now one of the greatest teams covering gaming of all time.
Sensational job Richard, bringing John & Alex was a master stroke & the rest of the crew too.
Simply outstanding.
Happy birthday DF Retro!
These videos are seriously the best there is on TH-cam, these are legitimate documentaries of video game history and have serious value. You are doing amazing work, and I seriously hope you will continue making these kinds of videos. Discussing, analysing and talking about important games and the impact they've had.
The channel, Ahoy, is good for gaming documentaries, including id games.
Throwing it out there just in casr
@@purebaldness To add to your recommendation. Summoning Salt makes fantastic documentaries on the history of speedrun records. ‘S’ tier storytelling - highly recommended.
Another great recommentation for channels that cover retrospectives & video games history very well are:
NoClip & Raycevick
@@purebaldness I was going to recommend Ahoy and Retro Ahoy, that guy is next level
@@cloudbloom been on YT for about 12 years or so, whilst dodging exploitative, algorithm chasing BS in recent years, as much as I can and I can safely say he's my favourite uploader, ever.
Does anyone else prefer the look of the software renderer? The grittiness of it fits the look so well!
very much so
Agreed, but you can use a modern renderer like vkQuake and just turn off texture filtering to maintain that look.
Whenever I load up a source port like Quakespasm for the first time on a system, the first thing I do is tweak it to resemble the software renderer as much as possible.
Hell, I even turn off animation interpolation because the choppy animations are just so iconic to me.
@@LonelySpaceDetective same here!!! Gl_texturemode 0, r_lerpmodels 0, r_lerpmove 0 , and weapons positioning, scr_ofsx -5 assuming the POV is 100.
Yeah thats why I turn off a lot of the texture filters
Quake's Soundtrack is by far some of Trent Reznor's best work. It's haunted, unnerving soundscapes transforms Quake into something dreary, uncomfortable, & thrilling. Production-wise, it sounds like an extension of the ideas found in Nine Inch Nail's "The Downward Spiral" & that era of NIN's discography, though it's by far more surreal & abstract than anything else the band put out at the time.
If you're even remotely into NIN, Reznor, or ambient music, please give it a proper listen either by playing Quake or streaming the album.
Quake's soundtrack still sounds incredibly modern to these ears. It's just as unsettling today as it was back in 1996.
Not only the soundtrack, Reznor produce every sound you hear in the game.
Quake might be the first game I pirated on a 32k modem. No soundtrack though, I didn't know what I was missing.
Quake was my introduction to NIN. i was also baffled how they put a full soundtrack on the same disc as the game itself
I'm relatively certain that Quake is singlehandedly responsible for the invention of machinima, as well.
You're absolutely right. Diary of a Camper was the one that started it all.
The Seal of Nehahra is the one i remember the most. What a great piece of Art that was :)
This was always the Quake Story in a movie. It was perfect!
Quake also started the internet
Quake invented inventions
"What do you call an alien with three balls?"
The excitement of this gaming era can't be overstated. Art, technology, culture, and community seemed to travel at warp speed with mind-boggling advancement almost every week.
It was pretty awesome. I was working at Intel at the time, and I got to test out some of the very first 3D accelerated video cards, AGP video card technology, and the advent of USB. I miss those days.
Its still the same, even more excitet imo. Just buyed a rtx card few months ago, awesome times, but i still play n64 games on the emulator sometimes, i also like the more abstract graphics of old games some modern games uses. Im 20 years we play on complete new kinds of hardware technologys and looking back to this very exciting times😎
@ammonitida Interestingly Carmack was postulating virtualized geometry after working on mega textures for Rage, before he shifted on to VR. This is what initially inspired the Epic graphics programmer to pursue the UE5 approach if I recall.
It was the golden age of PC gaming
@@DubElementMusic Moore's Law has practically ground to a halt and now the most we can expect is a new process technology/architecture with a modest performance increase, it's nothing like the days of moving from 386 to 486 to Pentium, Pentium II etc. where we were advancing by orders of magnitude every few years.
Quake is still more fast and fun than many FPS's to this day.
Yeah, modern FPS's prioritize covers, aiming down sights and sniping while Quake is more about impulsively blasting rockets at whatever moves before your face. Having played Q1 for years, my first reaction to early console FPS's like Halo was as if it's playing in slo-mo.
@@abadenoughdude300 and then Quake 2’s rail gun is as good a test of accuracy as anything that came after
%100 I grew up on COD and Battlefield and only started playing quake when the remaster came out on PS4, its now one of my favourite games ever. Deathmatches have a pace that I always wanted but never knew existed.
@@elismightyplays1282 Nothing will ever come close to Q1 deathmatch.
What fascinated me most about the predecessor Doom, as well as about Q1, was the aggression of the opponents against each other and using it strategically.
Another absolutely stellar episode, John (& Audi!). Fantastic job, thank you for your hard work and artistry.
Quake in general is amazing
@@TheRealJochen DigitalFoundry kicks ass when it comes to quality and professionalism. Brilliant.
When I first saw Doom I was blown away. I remember thinking "nothing will ever top this". Then a couple of years later I saw Quake. My jaw was on the floor. These games changed my life forever. I hope iD's next project will be a SP Quake game. I would be soooo happy.
If you still remember, what appeared to be the major difference between the two, back then? Graphics?
@@francescoberta It was a combination of things. But I would say the animation of enemies and lighting is what sealed the deal for me.
That was EXACTLY my experience. I said those same words about Doom lol.
So, id's next game turned out to be: DOOM: The Dark Ages
This is classic DF. This video will become a timeless classic and will be enjoyed by many for years to come. A fantastic addition to the DF archive.
I love the atmosphere of Quake 1 and am sad that none of the other games picked up on it
Same. That gothic gloominess is part of why it appeals to me so much.
Actually there are indie FPS games on Steam right now trying to replicate the mood and feel of Q1. You can also make your own Q1 based on the source ports than Dark10X mentioned.
If you have a Sega Saturn, check out the WIP game Hellslave.
That's why it's my favourite. Not a fan of the generic sci-fi direction.
Oh that ambient moody music, made my hair stand on end, made the game do scarily atmospheric
DF team is a godsend to the gaming community. Everytime i feel my generation of gamers is fading away they give us a reminder that we were, we are and will always be a part of some of gamings greatest moments.
To my fellow old gamers and to my dearest late friend.. Game is not Over.
@Dam Sen absolutely not, but whatever makes you feel like a chimp champ.
@Dam Sen no, it's a normal human response to someone who thinks like he's news.
@Dam Sen "Any generation can still enjoy Quake as much as anyone did back in the 90s, if not more because even the current generation's low-end PCs can run the game without any problems, Quake destroyed PCs back in 1996."
after reading that I think you completely misunderstood my comment. there's a lesson to learn here if you can figure it out. have a nice day.
There was another contemporary 3D accelerated quake that was missed in this comparison: Quake RAVE, which used the low-level layer of Apple's QuickDraw 3D called the Rendering Acceleration Virtual Engine (RAVE). It was platform-specific and never gained much traction, being replaced by OpenGL and dropped entirely in OS X.
lol, don't think I've heard mention of RAVE in, like, decades.
OH MY GOD I FORGOT ABOUT RAVE
I still have the mac version, with the scary game manual.
This is the version of Quake I want raytracing for. I liked it a lot more than Quake 2
Yep, since vkQuake already runs great with Vulkan it would be a good starting point. Think they chose Q2 because of the colored lighting.
"I ain't afraid of no Quake!"
Oh Duke... if only you had known.
He should have been afraid of Randy Pitchford.
Which reminds me, how greasy is Randy?
@@mjc0961 it doesn't matter how greasy, he still can't get women wet.
In all fairness, the fact that DN3D managed to stand its ground against Quake and is still remembered as a classic and an important entry in the history of FPSes shows the validity of that quote at the time, and in some ways it still works since the Quake series nowadays is kind of treated as id's red-headed step-child (though not as much as RAGE or Keen at least).
You know what joke didn't age nearly as well? In the shitty Christmas-themed level pack for DN3D, there's a level named "The Land of Forgotten Toys", and there's a section based on the classic first level from DOOM. Hahaha, ahahaha, I don't think I need to explain that.
All that said, the state that Duke is in right now is definitely a massive shame. Thanks Randy!
Now both are dead
@@mjc0961 Randy bo bandy is just grease all the way through, he's transcended humanity just to become a congealed blob of unpleasant sticky goop.
One of the biggest improvements I've noticed is that the shots of John with his OLED as the background are much better looking. Great color balance between John and the BG.
the corners of his glasses do weird stuff :P
This video is a masterpiece, especially for someone who grew up on a Quake.
Well, now John has to do a DF Retro EX talking about Nightdive Studios's latest Quake 1 port available on all current Gaming platforms.
The first time this video was released it was bad timing because Geeks & Gamers already did a detailed retrospective. Now it happens they've released a remaster after this video has come out. Bad luck or what? 😆
@@pferreira1983 Geeks and Gamers is not a Gaming focused channel despite what its channel name says, it's a channel focused more on cultural war stuff and making all sorts of drama videos ranting about non Gaming related stuff (unless its The Last of Us 2 where that's the only Gaming related thing they talk about nonstop) like Marvel, Disney Star Wars, etc.
TH-cam's algorithm favors that channel making negative/drama related content, so anything non drama Gaming related they do (like their Quake retrospective video) will not reach nearly the same amount of views as Digital Foundry's videos; in fact, G+G's Quake video hasn't even gotten to 20,000 views while Digital Foundry's Quake 1 DF video is already at the 250,000 view landmark despite G+G's Quake video being 6 months old and DF's Quake video being 3 months old.
Plus Digital Foundry has *way* more subscribers than Geeks and Gamers, so by default DF's videos will get more views than G+G's videos.
Also Digital Foundry's content is way more unique and in depth than whatever stuff Geeks and Gamers has to say in Gaming because Digital Foundry focuses a lot more on the technical and game design aspects of Gaming rather than the other aspects of Gaming like cultural impact and other stuff which G+G focuses more on.
Comparing Geeks and Gamers with Digital Foundry should not even be a thing considering how different both channels are in terms of size, the type of content they release, the type of audiences they have, and their channel goals.
@@generalcjg That's a shame as well since their Quake retrospective was almost as detailed as this one. As soon as this video was released I thought I'd seen it before. 😂
It’s almost like they saw all the hard work that was done on this video and went “You know what’d be funny?”
@@late_night_coder6112 I know! 😂
The nostalgia man, really hits hard. Still remember playing on Pentium Pro 200mhz, with friends, over dial up....
......
I remember playing a Dreamcast port of Quake although it may have been homebrew.
It would have been homebrew b/c Q1 was never officially ported to DC.
Was it Simpsons Quake?
my alcoholism makes me forget too...
I love homebrew and beta/unreleased game. There is a homebrew and a "demo" if Quake for DC I still have copies sitting on a CD spindle. 😅
HL Blue Shift was great on DC.
Back in the day i downloaded a few versions of Thrill Kill, unreleased MK2, betas of Tony Hawk for PSX.
Now it's cool you can easily find things like Ecco 2 and Castlevania for DC.
best FPS ever made for me personally. Absolutely loving the remaster
Didn't feel like an hour, I was drawn in and loved every minute of it. Great work! Quake is one of my favorite games - one of the few I've completed several times and also used to mod back in the day. It's always a great day when well-made videos are released that underline exactly why I love the game. Quake is a sum of a bunch of different things that aligned perfectly.
My god, the interlaced smoothly animated B-roll is so satisfying.
playing quake over 2020 and 2021 with my friends with our own little custom mod and maps (one of us is EXTREMELY talented!) has been an amazing way to ride out the pandemic and still stay connected. outstanding video, john!
lol
DF Retro ♥ all the best, John!
why is this comment 4 weeks old
@@Jabroni_69 This is very odd indeed.
How is this comment older than the video??
@@Jabroni_69 people who donate money to the channel get to see videos early
No one has told John that shamblers take half damage from explosives.
I remember feeling like a dummy when I spammed rockets at the shamblers on the Ziggurat map on hard mode after reading up about that.
I've been playing Quake for over 15 years, before I knew that.
Sort of similar case with the cyberdemon in Doom, too; it takes no splash damage, so a considerable amount of damage is lost when using rockets against it, but the main difference there is it's still worth it because they do more DPS than any other weapon except the plasma gun and BFG.
To quote a certain prisoner forced to review games for the internet:
"You ought to remember: Shamblers are explosion *resistant*, not explosion *proof*."
@@GrammerPancreas Doom kind of trolls you when it comes to the Cyberdemon, since his first appearance comes in a level that gives you a rocket launcher immediately and has tons of rocket pickups! It's been a while since I played through Quake so I can't remember what weapons are available when the Shambler first shows up.
Excellent work as always John! I'm beyond happy to see that there's now a DF Retro Patreon tier; I've never supported something so quickly before. Can't wait to see what's to come, hope you have fun with it, and wishing you nothing but success with this new chapter for DF Retro.
This video should be preserved as the definitive handbook on the technical legacy of Quake. Relatively concise, yet deeply informative and captivating. All first-person shooter fans should watch - especially younger generations - and know this history behind modern 3D gaming. Just brilliant.
Brought a nostalgia tear into my eye) Spent around billion hours playing different versions of Quake)
In 7th and 8th grade, the science teacher in my school was a lowkey gamer...he overheard my friends and I talking about Quake. He helped us set up an after school "computer club" in the lab where we all played shareware quake multiplayer. Man I love this game.
Your typical Doom player after entering Quake deathmatch for the first time: "Guess I gotta learn mouselook."
Yea there two different games
You joke, but it was Quake that brought mouselook into the mainstream for FPSes AFAIK. At the very least, WASD originated in its competitive scene.
EDIT: I know games like Marathon and Duke 3D did it first, but I don't think mouses were really seen as that important for FPSes by most people before Quake came along.
@@LonelySpaceDetective Well said - I remember having to adjust to Quake, and it was a huge adjustment (especially playing against others through QuakeWorld). Nobody I knew (or ever met) used mouselook in any FPS prior to it.
@@LonelySpaceDetective you're right, Descent was out already though, iirc, but i remember Quake at release being the first real fps with mouselook. Been playing them since then, with inverted y axis.. cause of flight sims, Epic, Wing Commander etc
@@Owdaks games like decent were played with a joystick or keyboard only.
That Carmack impression was 10/10 ngl
What a coincidence. I have been getting back into Quake again for the past month or so and really been obsessing about it, and here John comes with an hour-long deep dive into everything Quake to satiate my needs! Thanks a lot John, I am going to thoroughly enjoy this.
My old crew has apparently already rounded up the troops in the last few months to play some Q4 CTF and Duels again. I was just about to go reinstall all my Quakes again. lol and this video pops up
I've missed these high quality big episodes of DF Retro, gonna watch it all soon.
Finally catching up on this. John, once again you go above and beyond!
The amount of craft and work that went into the making of this hour-long video is absolutely insane, good job DF!
Essential reading: *Masters of Doom*
A friend lent me their copy - fantastic read!
I just starting reading that book, it's really good so far
Have it wishlisted on Amazon
Read it back in 2012, such an excellent read. Once I read the last sentence I was still left wanting more.
I really want to read that
I remember my first time playing GLQuake on my brand new, shiny Orchid Righteous 3D 3DfX card. It was housed in my very modest IBM Aptiva PC. Good times!
A masterpiece. I learned a lot and felt inspired. Thank you for this!
Great DF Retro! I remember playing Quake on my Sega Saturn! Awesome memories flooding back!
PowerVR's Tile Based Rendering was so far ahead of the curve at the time.
It took a decade before Hidden Surface Removal became viable on The Big Two.
The best time in PC gaming history. So much variation. I was, I guess lucky, to work in PC building back then so got to test and buy most of the cards on the market.
(sees Quake in the title)
Joe Rogan: Pull that up, Jaime.
This episode of DF Retro was great. One of your best. Brings back memories from my first computer, a Pentium 133 with 32Mb of Ram. This was one of the first PC games I ever played.
Man, that VQuake at 240 with the anti-Aliasing looks like how my brain will tell me N64 games looked. Like the rose tinted lens version of them. I was playing N64 Quake a few weeks back and having a blast with it. Need to get that Saturn port some day.
Amazing video - thank you! God, I miss the gothic gloom of Quake so much. Sad that almost everything after that went scifi. Lucikly there were Hexen 2 and Heretic 2 to enjoy, but other than those two it was and is slim pickings. Also: software rendered Quake looks a hell of a lot better than that early 3Dfx smoothed out mess.
I spent much more time playing Quake than doom, duke, or even Quake 2.
Same here, and I had the Saturn version only. Don't think I ever beat it though because the battery for saving games has been dead for as long as I can remember. I had to leave the system on the entire time I was playing a game if I ever wanted to complete it.
Probably because Quake 2 is a better technical achievement than it is a good game worth playing... SP falls flat, DM is still very solid though.
@@BobsRevenge its the Quake sequel we never got, and probably will never get since Microsoft owns it now
@@protocetid do you mean that version or quake in general cause I think Id software is working on quake right now
@@TheTruth-mv7hm What I mean is Quake 1 never got a direct sequel and the community gave it to us with AD. Quake Champions is dying/dead.
Who else is watching this again since Night Dive's Quake remaster?
I'm watching again while playing it on Switch!
Thank you John, for me Quake is indeed the most important PC game of all time
Ever since it's arrival I've praised and preached Quake as the biggest game changer (of the last 30 years). BTW I first played it using a Pentium 133, no GPU and 8MB RAM. It ran beautifully. I've never been as blown away by a game as my first play of Quake. HL was the second game to impress in a similar manner.
This was an amazing episode, cheers John
Phenomenal job with this episode. Really raises the bar on videogame docs to another level. Great production quality, going knee-deep into the tech details, and covering the game from so many relevant creative angles. Amazing job here.
One thing that always stood out to me, at least in GLQuake, were enemy animations. They have very few key frames with no interpolation so they end up looking like stop motion animation. Modern source ports fix this via interpolation, but for some reason, the enemies seam to animate perfectly in the Saturn port. But it could just be that the low animation frame rate more closely matches the low overall frame rate.
Considering the nature of the Saturn port, I wouldn't be surprised if the monster animations were redone and/or somehow handled differently.
Personally, I kinda love the look of the animations without interpolation. It just feels *right* for Quake in a way I can't really put into words.
@@LonelySpaceDetective it kind of fits for the unsettling and almost unreal (ha) horror aspect. I think it was the first terminator film, where the t1000 was animated at a slightly lower framerate than the film reel ran at, giving it an unsettlingly jerky and unnatural feel. it's probably something similar
Quakespasm + Arcane Dimensions = modern Quaking at its finest level in my experience. Thank you. The love really comes through in this video.
Such a good video, glad to have this type of DF Retro back. Also, I'm jealous every time you show a shot of your CRT. I want one.
I have one sitting on the floor in my bedroom. It may or may not work. All yours for S&H ;-)
Sadly, all of my ViewSonics are history :-(
Another case where "retro" tech is better, if less convenient.
Excellent. One thing that rarely gets mentioned re Quake is the subtle yawing motion added to movement, particularly when you strafe. It added so much to the feel of your character having weight and heft, and not just being a mobile crosshair.
Quake 3 was such a good game, ID Software has been always ahead of time with this one and Doom
Pinnacle of eSports IMO. In league with Street Fighter and StarCraft
@@purebaldness esports has never been bigger than LoL tho.
I played Q1 and Q2 a lot, hundreds of hours each... but never got into Q3... Unreal Tournament was released 3 days before Q3 and in my opinion is a much more enjoyable and different experience... Q3 was the absolute downhill by not being a sucessor to Q2... one of my top 10 games of all time.
@@HeloisGevit that's mostly because LoL wasn't released in 1999. Online gaming is many magnitudes bigger now than it was back then.
Quake 3 was fantastic in so many ways, I just wish it had an actual campaign too.
God bless you John! Very well organized and presented. Thanks for helping re-live some awesome times with you.
I remember those sweet times of the beginning of real 3d gaming and Quake was the real first step back then.
No one discusses retro game graphics like these do. I enjoy these videos immensely
Masterpieces from the community such as the Arcane Dimensions mappack make me believe that Quake will be eternal, and our grandchildren will still be captivated by it, decades from now.
Wow so happy to see this in my feed this morning John, DF Retro is the best, I really appreciate the hard work and love you put into these. Quake is amazing!
The first 3D accelerator I bought had only 4 megabytes of video RAM. It let me play Quake 1 in OpenGL at a glorious 640x480 resolution. That doesn't sound like much today but in 1997 that was a big upgrade over software render at 320x240.
its literally the jump from ps1 resolution to better picture quality than a ps2
@@dmer-zy3rb More like Dreamcast resolution. Not many games on the PS2 rendered at that resolution.
The passion, insight and production value of DF Retro episodes like this is fantastic.
I love these detailed retrospective series! Running Quake and Half Life on my Pentium 2 with TNT2 videocard, ah sweet nostalgia! :D
This brought back many memories, of a more interesting time for gaming and technology! Great video, keep em coming John!
DF needs to do another quake video as the enhanced version of quake has now been released by night dive studios...and as with doom 64 and the original doom's it's a fantastic version.
Very cool shoutout to Quaddicted! The Quake community is still pumping out tons of mindblowing maps!
I’m eagerly awaiting a fully featured RTX version of Quake 1. I’ve always loved the first game over the others, from its style/atheistic to its sound track (which I’m lucky enough to own on vinyl).
There’s still nothing like it.
Great video. How many other people tried to move the cursor off the player window at 55:00? 🤣
Well done John. As always 👏
I slaved away a summer to afford dual voodoo 2s in SLI to play quake and quake 2 back in the 90s. SLI allowed me to run at a grand resolution of 1024 x 768 at 60 FPS... it blew my mind at the time along with the first cable internet, quake had insane multiplayer back in the day. I can absolutely attest quake drove me into pc gaming and building systems. Great video! Very nostalgic take on a golden age
Of the source ports my preference is quakespasm. It is the most faithful to the original and one for the purists.
Let's be fair: I was initially sceptical about the content and the duration of the video but I have to say that this was surprisingly very entertaining! Thanks.
I've just seen 2 seconds and I know this will be a great episode :). Thanks John for this brilliant content :)!!!
Edit:
11:18 .... MDK music
This is a real work of art dude. Not just another TH-cam video. I can’t imagine how many hours poured into this. Thanks for all the hard work!
Am I the only one who always heard "Geoquake" when John said GLQuake?
yes
No, I was confused for a second as well when I first heard it.
Ha, yes, until it finally came on screen.
same
Since second time,
First sound GL Quake.
Thanks so much John, what a feat. Absolutely fantastic production and storytelling.
1 small criticism, dropping your head at the end of sentences to change page or move the script or whatever is happening there takes me out of the feeling of having you tell me this story.
lol the john carmack impression. perfect
The fact that this video released right before the remaster
Time to review the Remastered versions
Thx for this episode. Will be great same about Quake 2
I remember reading in a magazine that Quake was going to be ported to the Atari Jaguar. That would have been insane since the Jag only had 2 mb of ram
I remember that it was tried but it was a disaster even as a prototype. I don't remember what magazine it was that had a blurb on it. But to be fair the Jaguar was a disaster all around. Where the few 32x + Sega CD games are essentially as good as a Jaguar game. So, considering how weird the Sega Saturn port was. One can only imagine how bad a Jaguar port would had been.
To be fair, even the PS1 port of Quake 2 is more of a reimplementation than a direct port. And PS1 also has 2 MB system RAM.
Living in the edge of a small town in rural North Carolina, USA I forget that there are other tech nerds who enjoy the minor details until I see your df retro notifications and remember they just shipped them all to Great Britain. Keep up the good work guys.
We need a Quake single player follow up after Doom Eternal's run.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who wants this
Agreed. Instead of glory kills, though, a mix of melee / traditional Quake-style combat and movement is in order. Let's make that axe far more useful.
Dusk
I first played Quake on an N64 since my dad got it bundled at a pawn shop. It was mesmerizing to go through the stages and see all the monsters. One thing that really blew me away, besides the whole game itself, was when I saw 2 AI monsters fighting each other, it just made it so much more immersive.
Machine Games (New Wolfenstein devs) also released an unofficial "episode 5" for Quake a few years ago called Dimension of the Past. Its excellent!
Interesting.....I'm going to have to check this out, thanks
This brings back great memories. A friend of mine got a Voodoo card and my mind was blown away when I saw how good it looked and how fast it ran on his Pentium. It was also my first experience playing online against others on Quakeworld. Love the videos!
Quake was everywhere at the time - except in Germany, where only somehow the quake engine existed. ;)
Love this one. Quake changed my life. I spent all my money on that Verite card you mention :)
Please review the Quake remaster
I remember as a teenager working a job at our local grocery store to pick up Diamond Monster 3D (3DFX Voodoo) after seeing Quake play at a local computer store. Now almost 25 years later and I still love playing games on my pc.
The good old days. Thanks for the coverage john.
It's not just nostalgia either, the Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 era truly was the golden age of PC gaming.
@@hannibalb8276 Yes
@@hannibalb8276 and it's still lasting. Nostalgia would be saying that it ended.
One of the best Quake 1 documentaries. Congrats.
Awesome stuff, can't wait to see more old school pc gaming goodness. That early era of 3D acceleration will never be beaten and it was made for guys like you to make DF retro videos :D.
This is the best DF Retro yet, you takes in all way to Quake in tech of the same time, with details and quotes from the developers really strike well.
And you own personal take in the tech, style of gameplay and how it's now in the present it's what make this video section shine.
Looks like you guys get to revisit this again now it's released on series x
Quake changed my life. It was the game that needed a graphics card upgrade for the first time, we opened up the box and "upgraded" Ive been working in computing ever since !