The Forgotten Future

[Baker]

In this last year, I've used the phrase "The Forgotten Future" to represent the promises that Quake represented.

Quake was very easy to mod, very standardized and if you saw the tremendous amount of modding done with Quake, you would immediately thing the promise of the future would be easily modded games.

It never happened.

Closed sourceness. Games on rails. Hyper complexity.

[Aside: And if you think closed sourceness doesn't matter, tell that to the games I purchased in the 1990s or early 2000s, some of which I love, and next to none of them run on Vista (Unreal, Carmageddon 1/2, Moto Racer II, Judge Dredd pinball, etc.)]

But a fumbled ball is one that can be picked up.

Around 2002, everyone thought was Quake was "dead".

Is it?

Quake is dead, but dead like "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

It is going to rise again. Look at Nexuiz. It started to great acclaimation, then stuttered very badly, recovered and looks like it is thriving.

Modding needs easy gratification to beginners and Quake is very easy to map and relatively easy for QuakeC modification. And modifying the engine, as long as you stick with something not bleeding edge, is relatively easy to pick up.

[revelator]

hmm strange that unreal wont work for you on vista i have unreal gold and it runs quite hunky dory hell even blood2 runs and actually better than in xp :S

my guess is you didnt turn of UAC ?
cause in that case you must righclick the shortcut and select run as administrator.

as for quake well only problem i had with that lately was from nvidia drivers not playing nicely with quakes way of handling strings (not thread safe) but as for everything else theres a workaround to get it running.

get nhancer install it then open it and see if your game is allready in its profiles if not make a new one name it whatever you like quake? now go to the compatibility tab select opengl and put this in driver extention limit (11a8) without the brackets ofc.

now it works

if anyone else have problems getting stuff running on vista or win7 im happy to help

[goldenboy]

> Quake is very easy to map for

It depends what you're trying to do. Knocking up a box room is relatively easy, yes.

DOOM is easy to map for. Quake is probably easier to code for. Some things aren't at all easy or logical.

Look how many maps the DOOM community keeps churning out. Compare to the output of func_ etc.

[Baker]

Look how many maps the DOOM community keeps churning out. Compare to the output of func_ etc.

Doom is the McDonald's hamburger of games with all the sophistication that packets of ketchup and mustard can provide.

It should have more maps made for it.

Quake doesn't have really any AI (maybe it could?), but the maps can be as immersive from a gameplay standpoint as nearly any game out there.

[ceriux]

quake is beyond amazing to me both as a gamer and as some what of a developer. i hope its around till i die.

[scar3crow]

Doom is the McDonald's hamburger of games with all the sophistication that packets of ketchup and mustard can provide.

If this is true, than all Quake could be is ketchup, mustard, and mayo packets.

Doom is easier to map for because it uses a blueprint style of laying down boundaries, and the game derives additional information from that. In Doom you make the visible portion of walls, give some height numbers and light numbers. In Quake you make the entire wall, the floor, the ceiling, everything in between, and manually position the lights. Its very different.

In Doom you supply the limits, in Quake you supply just about everything.

As you would tell people to not underestimate Quake, and I would agree, I would also instruct you to never underestimate Doom.

[Dr. Shadowborg]

As you would tell people to not underestimate Quake, and I would agree, I would also instruct you to never underestimate Doom.

Yeah, he should go try KDiZD sometime. That thing is amazing for a Doom mod.

[frag.machine]

Back on the topic.

Quake strengths as a modding platform, IMO:
1) easy to map (and I am talking about making more than a simple room);
2) easy to code gameplay logic (and this is what really matters for modders);
3) easy to create/replace some of the artwork (specially textures);

Quake weak points as a modding platform, IMO:
1) hardcoded gameplay stuff into the engine (like sounds, or HUD specific protocol messages);
2) hardcoded engine limits that were reasonable in 1996 but not anymore;
3) a shoddy alias model format (storing verts as bytes ? C'mon...) and no tools from id to create/edit them (forget modelgen).

I think we hit a point were we should be thinking about ways to convert all original artwork and game logic to better formats and create a from-scratch engine to use this. And then we could turn this "future promise" into reality.

[r00k]

I think we hit a point were we should be thinking about ways to convert all original artwork and game logic to better formats and create a from-scratch engine to use this. And then we could turn this "future promise" into reality.

http://raydium.org/

[Baker]

Quake weak points as a modding platform, IMO:
1) hardcoded gameplay stuff into the engine (like sounds, or HUD specific protocol messages);

CSQC solves some of that (right?). I hate sbar.c and menu.c in the engine. I hate the .lmp format as well.

I need to sometime find a time to do a test implementation of Spike's CSQC WinQuake and maybe some documentation.

2) hardcoded engine limits that were reasonable in 1996 but not anymore;

Documenting the differences between FitzQuake 0.80 and FitzQuake 0.85 really goes a long way towards that.

The changes are not that drastic. I was able to port most of the changes to FitzQuake 0.80 SDL in 8 hours on a first attempt and then was able to run giant maps like The Masque of the Red Death.

And FitzQuake 0.80 differs almost none from original glquake outside the rendering changes.

3) a shoddy alias model format (storing verts as bytes ? C'mon...) and no tools from id to create/edit them (forget modelgen).

I think we hit a point were we should be thinking about ways to convert all original artwork and game logic to better formats and create a from-scratch engine to use this. And then we could turn this "future promise" into reality.

^