The Lingering Legacy of id Software’s Quake: A Glimpse Into Thirteen Years Of Darkness

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## The Lingering Legacy of id Software’s Quake: A Glimpse Into Thirteen Years Of Darkness

As some of you might know, Tronyn held a talk about Quake recently. Called “The Lingering Legacy of id Software’s Quake: A Glimpse Into Thirteen Years Of Darkness” it takes a look on Quake’s custom mappery. Both slides and text can be found below. Highly recommended read even though as Tronyn admits “that the later stuff is a bit biased toward my work, and I’m sure I forgot all kinds of important stuff“. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks Tronyn!

Update
Instead of the ZIP with proprietary formats there are now two PDF files available:
Tronyn-QuakeTalk.pdf
Tronyn-QuakeSlides.pdf

19.01.2010 in Quake Nostalgia | 32 Comments »

### 32 Responses to “The Lingering Legacy of id Software’s Quake: A Glimpse Into Thirteen Years Of Darkness”

1. Baker Says:
   19.01.2010 21:14

   I love the quote on the thanks page …

   “and numerous evil tinkerers, conspirators and schemers”

   If it weren’t for evil tinkerers, conspirators and schemers this game wouldn’t be so great.

   “Rain Palisade”? Never heard of that map and looks top notch. Part of The Rapture I see, one of the few episodic releases I never played through the end.

   Nice history lesson, Tronyn ;)

2. Spirit Says:
   19.01.2010 21:21

   Ah, thanks! I was asking Tronyn what episode that map was from. Seems like I never finished Rapture either. Well, there goes my evening. :)

3. dreadlorde Says:
   19.01.2010 22:46

   When was this talk given? Or was it just released to the net?

4. Tronyn Says:
   20.01.2010 04:12

   it was last Friday (the 15th), I didn’t get many people, and I’m not sure if the recording worked (really short notice for the guy I borrowed the equipment from) plus my delivery kinda sucked; I figured there may not be a good/usable/worthwhile recording so I’d just upload the material anyway.

   And actually Rain Palisade is the first map in Rapture ;)

5. Ron Says:
   20.01.2010 10:35

   Could the .pptx file maybe be converted to .pdf or something that doesn’t require MS Office ?
   I don’t want to install all that crap just for one article.

6. jakub Says:
   20.01.2010 12:46

   thaks for an interesting piece of reading. i’m playing quake for the years because in quake universe anything is possible.

   is it really truth that somebody created level in notepad? it si absolutely out of my imagination.

7. Spirit Says:
   20.01.2010 20:29

   Yes, one of the very first map files released was made in a text editor (I bet it was not Notepad though). It was just a plain room though if I recall correctly. Should be somewhere at http://www.gamers.org/dEngine/quake/

8. Tronyn Says:
   21.01.2010 00:13

   I was referring to this one castle map, I just poked around TeamShambler but couldn’t find the review for it – iirc, it was somewhat nonlinear and even had a moving boat.

9. grahf Says:
   21.01.2010 04:18

   I think this sentence sums up pretty well why we’re all still here, after 13 years.

   “Quake’s lower detail level,
   impressionistic graphics, and vaguer themes (relative to modern games), provide a
   flexibility that allows for its basic elements to bend in all sorts of interesting directions
   and for the game to cloak itself in many different costumes effectively.”

   I enjoyed reading this, thanks for posting it.

10. Ankh Says:
    21.01.2010 09:39

    Maybe you mean this one:
    Tale of Abbot’s Rune
    http://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/sgodrune.html

    A great map. One of my favourites.

11. Ron Says:
    21.01.2010 10:13

    Great article, I really enjoyed reading it !
    Thanks for the translation to .pdf
    One question, where did you get those skins for the last shots ? That Ogre looks fantastic, I WANT !

12. jakub Says:
    21.01.2010 13:59

    that orge skin is part of the reforged quake project – http://quakeone.com/reforged/

13. jakub Says:
    21.01.2010 14:01

    orge = ogre ….sorry :-)

14. negke Says:
    21.01.2010 14:51

    Nice talk w/ shameless selfpimping (2005-now = the Tronyn period). Totally justified though – those NSOE (?) shots are great, so colorful an detailed, and make me want to play the pack again (though I should better wait for the final update).

    What was the audience response like?

    GG and thanks for sharing the material.

15. grahf Says:
    21.01.2010 17:21

    Oh and also, one of the big revelations here for me was the art of Piranesi. Had never heard of this guy before, but I googled him just now and I’m fascinated and inspired.

16. Tronyn Says:
    21.01.2010 21:14

    lol negke, I didn’t go that far – & I don’t think that’s true either. If anything 2005-now is the Quoth period (“the modern period has been dominated by Quoth”), I just felt like giving NSOE a full page since I wanted to show pretty pictures of my work. Even in terms of episodes, Warp Spasm and Travail together dwarf what I’ve released in the modern period. I will say however, that it may be possible that the modern period is slowly turning into a “Drakeish” period rather than a “Quothish” one, but that remains to be seen.

    I got some interesting questions at the end – mostly people who were asking why John Carmack wanted things so “arcadeish” and about the possibility of narrative in games. I responded that while that has been done amazingly (Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth II imo), in Quake, the vagueness is part of the strength of the game; “the message is the environment.”

17. Ron Says:
    22.01.2010 09:49

    Thanks for the link, Jakub.
    I was browsing the forum at quakeone and found a mod/add on I’ve (probably} not played or seen before. It is called Duke of Ontaranto.
    The link is already dead, but if anyone can put it up somewhere to download, I would be really happy.

    I guess it must already be on this site, probably under a different name. Please let me know.

18. jakub Says:
    22.01.2010 10:22

    to ron: i’ve never heard about “duke of ontaranto”, but there is mod with similar name: ontranto. link here: http://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/fc1.html

19. Ron Says:
    22.01.2010 10:28

    Shit ! Played that already …
    Thanks anyway. It seems to be called Duke of Ontaranto at
    http://quakeone.com/polls/456-best-expansion-episode-quake.html

20. negke Says:
    22.01.2010 11:25

    Tronyn: j/k. 2010-15 then. ;)

    Carmack probably just wanted things “arcadish” as he was mainly interested in the engine tech. In retrospective, the vagueness was good, but still somewhat of a lucky shot if you think about it.

21. Ron Says:
    22.01.2010 11:37

    At the time there were also a lot of Duke Nukem fans. Some mods were made for that game too, but not that much, I think. If it had been a proper 3d game, it might have given Quake a bit more competition. I can’t quite remember what the 2nd proper 3d game was. Half Life maybe ?

22. jdhack Says:
    22.01.2010 11:43

    Archived version of the “Duke of Ontaranto” link – it is indeed fc1 (aka Ontranto):
    http://web.archive.org/web/20050315060237/http://www.planetquake.com/underworld/quakerev040717.html

23. grahf Says:
    23.01.2010 07:02

    @Ron:

    I think Descent was actually the first true-3D game, if we want to nitpick. Wikipedia says it came out in 1995, whereas Quake was not released until 1996.

    Narrative in gaming:

    I think there are several types of narratives that games can tell.

    The most obvious, and perhaps the least exciting, is an explicit story driven narrative. Examples being the Metal Gear Solid series and most Japanese RPG’s, it is like watching/playing an interactive movie. The experience is more or less linear.

    The second would be player driven narratives, such as Grand Theft Auto or Oblivion. You can explore and do whatever you want in the bounds of the open world, so the experience is nonlinear.

    The third kind, which I hadn’t really thought of until Tronyn mentioned it, is what I might call the mental narrative. You make up what’s going on in your head as you go along. Linearity or lack thereof is irrelevant.

    I haven’t actually played the Myth series so I’m not sure where that falls.

24. Tronyn Says:
    23.01.2010 08:50

    Always thought the GTA series was doing some interesting stuff, but equally (actually more so) thought it was an attention-whore (both popularly and, surprisingly, critically – perhaps because white academics realized all too soon that they were sorry for having neglected rap and associated culture for 30 years or so, not that getting “in touch” all too quickly made any amends for their own irrelevance. “USERS OF TAX MONEY EXPLAIN TO YOU THE CULTURAL RELEVANCE OF: EMINEM” could be the motto for why I hate the very fucking idea of “narrative studies.”

    Christ…”Well, it’s in my living room now; time to abandon Shakespeare…” Anyway…

    http://www.mythjournals.com/

    Myth gives the player a vague role centring around some story that he/she has little or no control over and generally loses or almost loses. As a player you’re somewhere out there as these crazy historical things (analogues: WW1, WW2) occur. Outside of any one person’s control. The story is basically: You’re in a war. Things need to happen. Wait a minute: did you contribute?

    Most of myth is inspired by The Black Company, a series of fantasy books based on, as Canadian author Steven Erkisson put it, “vietnam war fiction on peyote.” A game, in which you often lose the missions and often don’t see the relevance of these missions to the general plot, achieves this sense of being a lost soldier (wtf is high command even DOING) pretty well. lol.

    Quake is different though. “High command”?? “Things are rusty here.”

25. s_a_j_t Says:
    23.01.2010 17:29

    > Carmack probably just wanted things “arcadish” as
    > he was mainly interested in the engine tech. In
    > retrospective, the vagueness was good, but still
    > somewhat of a lucky shot if you think about it.

    I’m pretty sure he had some views on game design which were much better than those of anyone else at the time (and especially now). After Quake3 he retired from putting his foot into game design because he got the idea that people didn’t understand his design philosophies. So now we are left with insecure, ephemeral “high concept” story-driven crap from Mr. Willits, rather than solid, focused game-games.

    I might be putting words into his mouth here, because these are also my own views, but it seems to me that Carmack thinks the same way.

    He knew that a game needs focus. He took the “use” button out of Quake because it was extraneous. The gameplay coders weren’t supposed to code anything that wouldn’t be used multiple times (except bosses). So Quake seems simpler than Duke3D (with all its crazy one-off details) and Quake3 seems simpler than UT (also with its gazillion gimmicks). Quake has no NPCs, in fact Quake has basically no use of language at all. It doesn’t need any of these things, and in fact, if you imagine Quake with a story, you’re imagining a game that you certainly wouldn’t still be playing today.

    Above all, a game needs to be comfortable in its own skin (that is, its technology). Quake looks unrealistic to modern eyes, but to me it’s more believable than the modern games which try to look realistic, something they can’t achieve, so they always looks like a bad parody (especially 5+ years after the game comes out). Quake will always look good because of the uniformity and consistency in detail, and the fact that it never seems like the game wishes it could do more. It is its own world, rather than an imitation of ours. (“The message is the environment” expresses my thoughts EXACTLY as well.)

    Carmack said a game needs a story like a porn movie needs a story, and it’s true. Modern games (basically, Half-Life and everything since) are only lame imitations of B-movies with a bunch of filler added, rather than an exploration of a new medium. I guess their budgets are too big for them to be able to accept the fact that they are games.

    There are a lot of limitations still today for game designers. You can’t do a believable “human interaction” simulator. You can’t do dialogue without some kind of compromise which acts as a foggy window between the player and the game. You can’t do games where the player is supposed to be able to do so much stuff that you’d need to bind every key on the keyboard to a different action (unless you’re making a text adventure). So you might as well take what does work (one example being “click to shoot to kill”) and design your gameplay mechanics around it, create an elegant, pared down system that operates totally within that sphere without trying to do what it can’t.

26. Ankh Says:
    24.01.2010 00:22

    agree with s_a_j_t’s post 100%

27. Ron Says:
    24.01.2010 09:55

    Good post, s_a_j_t.

    “It is its own world, rather than an imitation of ours.”

28. Valver Says:
    25.01.2010 15:19

    Interesting read, thanks from a long time Quake fan. But slightly suprised/dissapointed to see there’s no mention of Team Fortress and the competitive class based gaming that then spawned.

29. Spirit Says:
    25.01.2010 16:49

    Well, it clearly focuses on Singleplayer. ;)

30. Baker Says:
    26.01.2010 03:06

    Sajt’s analysis was a good read.

31. onetruepurple Says:
    21.01.2011 17:24

    I’m one year late here, but I agree with Sajt’s post 110%

32. Tronyn Says:
    06.02.2011 05:52

    I guess now is the time to say that I hate modern, invasive FPS design and appreciate post #25 more than ever.

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