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Quake

From Quake Wiki

Revision as of 18:35, 29 March 2013 by Than (talk | contribs) (Custom levels: fixed weird sentence)

Quake is the first game in the Quake series. In the game, the player is cast as a slipgate explorer, travelling between different dimensions, battling hordes of zombies, demons and various Lovecraftian monsters in order to save mankind from Shub-Niggurath, the final boss of the game.

Quake is notable as one of the first fully 3D games with lighting and texturing, made possible by the technical mastery of the id Software programmers. The Quake game engine was later updated to take advantage of OpenGL accelerator cards when id released GLQuake, which allowed players with supported cards to run the game with more visual effects and at smoother frame-rates than when using the software renderer.

As with id Software's previous series, Doom, Quake featured a networked multiplayer deathmatch mode, which was subsequently improved to run more smoothly over the internet with QuakeWorld. Online play became immensely popular, and many mods were released that changed the gameplay significantly, often focussing on teamplay, such as the popular Team Fortress and Capture the Flag mods.

The game received much acclaim on release and its commercial success led to several sequels, starting with Quake II, which abandoned the Gothic styling of the original for a science fiction theme. Quake has since been recognized as one of the greatest achievements of the video game industry, influencing games that came after it, as well as helping to popularise user made content such as custom levels, mods and machinima.

History and Development

Plot

Main article: Quake story

Gameplay

Community

Modifications

Main article: Modifications

Custom levels

Main article: Custom levels

Shortly after the release of Quake, id Software released QuakeEd, the tool that they used to make Quake's levels with. Although QuakeEd was not useful to most people as it was released, since it was made for the powerful NeXT workstations that id used to develop the game on, it wasn't long before other editors that ran on Windows were released. This allowed gamers to start making their own levels and releasing them on the internet for other owners of the game to play.

Although the early levels released by amateur level designers were generally below the standard of the maps included with the game, as the tools improved and designers got more experienced and began to understand how everything worked, maps that equaled and in some cases exceeded the standards set by id became common.

Quake levels released today are often far more complex than anything id could have ever made, due to more powerful computers for compiling and playing the levels, much improved tools, better engines and the hindsight and experience having the game for over 15 years brings.

Speedrunning

Main article: Speedrunning

Release and sales

Critical Reception

Legacy


This article is currently pending a significant rewrite due to its importance for the wiki, expect the current page to change drastically.