This isn't a review, as such. It's a rambling stream-of-consciousness explanation of the QUAKE phenomenon.

Just about anyone who has ever played games on a computer knows about the Doom phenomenon, a first-person blood and guts foray within a three-dimensional computer generated maze, fighting computer generated opponents. Doom broke new ground in violence, game-play, and networkability. ID Software, the boy-wonders behind Doom, went on to make Doom2, with a few weapons changes, much better level design, and some great monsters to fight. Playing against the monsters was challenging when there were lots of them to fight, with limited ammunition. Once you had defeated a level, then the 'challenge' diminished with each successive repetition.

Doom and Doom2 really shone when you played against other people in Deathmatch mode; humans don't stand still to be shot, humans don't move the same rigid way, humans fight back with the same type of weapons. But most importantly, humans scream with rage whenever they get slaughtered by your superior skills. (Of course, you might be the one screaming with rage).

Doom2 on a Local Area Network, with four players active at the same time, was an intense, sweaty, adrenalin pumping experience. Doom2 changed people's lives. Doom-style games followed ID Software's lead - Heretic 'Doom with ogres', Dark Forces 'Star Wars Doom', Hexen 'Doom with spells', Rise of the Triad 'Doom with corny humour', as well as a number of other 3D first-person games.

The next big thing in the 3D first-person game field, which hit the streets a few months before Quake, was Duke Nukem 3D. 3D Realms, an offshoot of Apogee, produced a stunning 'doom killer' game, which featured amazing speed, lots of sick humour, and up to eight players simultaneously slaughtering each other. Duke 3D removed many of the design limitations that the Doom graphics engine imposed upon the game - in Doom, Doom2, Hexen, Heretic, Dark Forces, and similar games, you couldn't have things on 'top' of other things. The graphics engine could not cope with true three dimensional representations of 'the world'. (Dark Forces managed to fudge this a little by having levels which were almost seamlessly logically linked, but the end result was the same - you couldn't have players or monsters directly 'below' or directly 'above' you.) Playing in Duke 3D you could fly around, fly over people, have buildings with multiple levels, sloping surfaces (instead of the ubiquitous Steps in Doom etc), and a number of improved weapons, including the devastating pipe-bombs, which could be remotely activated, and underwater action sequences.

Duke 3D has many adherents, primarily because of its raw speed on 'low end' computer systems. The 'frame rate' for Duke 3D (the number of times per second it could redraw the screen) was well over 25fps on a 486DX4-100 machine. Compare this to Doom2 on the same machine, which would perhaps coax 15-20 fps out of the same hardware. Those people with 'high end' machines, such as Pentium 100s or better, saw awesome performance from this game. But at the same time, it appeared 'cartoony', not as absorbing as Doom2, not as exciting as perhaps it could have been.

Enter Quake
Quake was perhaps the most anticipated 3D first-person-perspective game that the industry has yet witnessed. The game was pre-released in a 'test' version, with three small levels, and a very crude user interface. The real release was preempted by a beta-test version which 'leaked' into the Internet community, and quickly spread throughout the 'net. ID Software finally released the Shareware version of Quake, Version 0.91, at a whopping 9Mbytes of data (seven floppy disks). The readme file stated that the game would not run on anything less than a Pentium 75 with 8MB of memory. Complaints from members of the gaming community who had 486-based machines, were loud and frequent. You can run Quake on a 486 machine, but you can't run it very well. People with Pentium 90's and above were treated to a dark brooding computer-generated maze, inhabited by a variety of ugly creatures. Quake featured full 3D movement - players could jump, fly through the air, aim weapons at any conceivable angle, go underwater, be sucked into air-shafts. Quake's environment is extremely flexible, gravity can change between areas, the friction of the surface you're on can become zero, the speed you can walk, turn, shoot or fly can be modified by level designers.

One of the great features of Quake is the ability to change your key bindings while in the game. From the in-built console, accessed by pressing the ' (back-tick) key, you can enter commands to bind keys to command sequences. Say you want to set up a key to fire a weapon, then turn around, and fire again, you would create an alias with the command 'alias FORBACK attack; turn; attack', and then you would bind the alias to a key "bind FORBACK L", which means that when you press the L key during play, you will fire, turn around, and fire again. There are aliases to do many amazing things in Quake. Search in Stomped (a WWW site) for example configuration files. Your configuration file can go with you, so that when you play on a friend's machine, you can just load the file during play, and have all of your key combinations automatically configured on the fly!

Quake also features dynamic resolution changes. Doom was fixed at either 320*200, or a dithered version (160*100), and was unable to run in higher resolutions. Quake can run in a large number of resolutions, up to 1280*1024, depending upon the memory restraints of your graphics card. Even a P166 with a top of the line Matrox Millenium video card, can't play Quake in these resolutions with any speed (perhaps 7 frames per second at best!). To be able to play properly, you should be getting at least 25 frames per second. Any less than this, and you start to experience a jerky, non-continuous play which can affect some people (make them nauseous) to the extent that they cannot play.

Quake in 320 * 200 mode
Quake doesn't have the initial 'Wow!' factor of Duke 3D, and the lack of speed on a 486 platform made it impossible for a giant percentage of the game playing sector, to play the game with any degree of smoothness. The computer gaming world didn't immediately grasp Quake to its collective bosom. The commercial release features lots of levels, and the ability to play additional user-created levels which the shareware version cannot/will not do. The monsters get tougher, levels are cunningly disguised or hidden. Getting through all levels of Quake is a monumental task and in the end, compared to deathmatch play, it is comparatively tedious.

Quake in 1024 * 768 mode
Quake, as with its predecessor, Doom, comes to the fore during network deathmatch play. ID learned some lessons from their previous games, and have dramatically improved the entire network play architecture.

No longer does everyone have to be ready to start at the same time as players can join a game when they please, or leave when they have had enough. No longer are you limited to just four or eight players but an incredible sixteen players all interacting simultaneously in the one shared world (using a dedicated Quake server).

Network support has traditionally been achieved by using Netware's IPX protocols on local area networks, but IPX doesn't travel over the Internet (playing Doom over the Internet was impossible before IPX‡ŠTCP/IP programs like KALI were developed), so the ID guys included native TCP/IP support under Windows 95, as well as add-on TCP/IP stack support for DOS-only play. IPX is still the fastest way to play Quake against your friends, but it is no longer the only way. The biggest drawback with an Ethernet IPX network is that in order to play Deathmatch, you have to get a bunch of people together with their computers in the same physical location - which means that if you have ten players, you have to find a location where ten people can set up ten computers, cable them up into a network, with enough room to move around. Invariably, network glitches take up valuable Quake playing time, and a nine-hour session may only result in six hours of actual game play. Then everyone has to pack up, and drag their computers back home. Computers don't like travelling in cars (I speak from bitter and repeated experiences in this area), so getting together to play Quake is risky, and possibly expensive if you damage your computer during transportation or setup at either end.

A group of friends I play with occasionally hire rooms at local libraries on a Saturday or Sunday, and have an all-day Deathmatch session there. With ten or more people, it's relatively cheap ($30-50 to hire the room for a day) when everyone chips in. Hiring a room means chairs and tables are available, and you have a lot more space to set up in. Setting up for 'multiplayer' in a normal 3-bedroom house, means people have to be spread throughout the house, and cables have to snake everywhere. Obviously, getting together to play the game, and moving your computer around, isn't something you can do or arrange to do at the drop of a hat.

Enter Quake service providers
These are small companies which provide a number of Quake servers (PCs running QUAKE in dedicated SERVER mode) and a bunch of modems, and which offer their equipment to anyone who wants to play, using the modem and TCP/IP communications. There are two Quake service providers based in Canberra, QuakeZone and Games Online. They both offer multiple servers, with many players ringing up and playing against each other. Pricing is available by calling each company, or you might visit their web sites. Both companies plan to host Quake competitions, both locally-based and interstate challenges. In fact, QuakeZone recently hosted a challenge on their system. Entry was free and, if you were good enough to come first, second or third, you won some hours. I managed to win four hours of time on QuakeZone for coming second - which is pretty incredible, because based on my experience, I am a fairly hopeless Quake player!

Games Online (Digital Online Systems) enquiries can be directed to 1-800-68-6661 or point your web broswer to http://203.63.254.200 to see their web page.

QuakeZone (Iceberg Technologies) can be contacted on 231 7272, or point your web browser to http://www.qzone.nf to see their web page.

What is now happening, some months after the release of the real version, is an explosion of new user-designed levels; people get 'bored' with the same levels provided by ID software, so new levels enriching the choice of deathmatch arenas. Specific deathmatch levels can be awesomely designed to enhance the experience of killing your best friends; however, a badly-designed level can turn the game into a tedious slog, trying to find people to kill in a huge installation with no idea where anyone is from either visual or aural cues.

Additional levels were always a part of the Doom scene, with magnificent Deathmatch levels produced where 'small was beautiful', and the 'frags' (player deaths) racked up quickly. Where Quake has improved the 'additional level' concept is in the programmability of the entire Quake environment using the QuakeC language.

QuakeC allows you to compile changes which can affect anything and everything in the Quake universe. Sick of rockets that only fire in a straight line? Fine, go and design a 'homing' rocket that will find someone, and lock on to them, chasing them around corners. This has already been done! There are QuakeC patches that change the fundamental ways in which you play the game. Perhaps the best known patch is the 'Capture the Flag' modification (known as CTF) where people are assigned (as they join the game) into Red or Blue teams, and the object is to capture the opponents' flag and then race back to your home flag before getting killed. Or killing people who have captured your flag. When you capture the opposing team's flag, every member of your team is awarded 12 'kills'. First team to have someone reach 100 'kills' wins!

CTF takes the focus from random violence (you against everyone) and moves it into coordinated game play, where a team of people decide how they will play, eg who will defend, who will attack. CTF also features a completely new device, the 'Grappling Hook', which you can use to climb out of pits or to attach yourself to walls. You select the 'second' mode of the 'Axe' (press the '1' key twice) to activate the hook, or you bind a key to a certain Quake 'Impulse' command. Once selected, you pick a spot to aim for, press and hold down your fire key, and a grappling hook lobs itself forward. Once the hook hits something, it stays there and, while you keep your finger on the fire key, you will be reeled up (or down!) to where the hook is. If you change your weapon, you can then perch there, supported by the hook, and rain down rockets on the unsuspecting targets. It gives 'camping' or 'lurking' (where a player just sits there and waits for victims to come to them) a whole new dimension!

Quake is a really fascinating game in a multiplayer environment. People are just learning how to make interesting modifications to the game. ID Software are working on Quake 2, and the entire scene looks exciting with the imminent release of mmx-enhanced CPUs (mmx is on-chip graphics commands built into the Pentium chips themselves) and the new generation of 3-D video cards. See ya in Quake!

Andrew Clayton, aka DAC, can be contacted on the Internet by emailing dac@pcug.org.au or found wherever Quake is being played.