Wrath - Quake 1 engine-based game from 3D Realms

[Graf Zahl]

I have to admit that I'm not a fan of using DarkPlaces to play original Quake, it just alters the lighting too much. Custom made levels are another story, of course.

[fraggle]

I've found that QuakeSpasm does a pretty good job of preserving the original look and feel.

[Darkcrafter]

imagine how many players they will cover with that!

Very few, actually. Contrary to some people's beliefs these old toaster systems are not nearly as widespread as they assume. Worse, since the people using them normally do so because of money shortage, they are not likely customers for commercial games.

This is also based on the DarkPlaces engine which is a bit more demanding than the original one.

From this point yes, you are right. Another question is who's gonna play that. I'm told a few times that "pixels" suck: "oh man how can you play these pixels, it's an old analog tech (:!: )". I assume if people have hardware that is capable of pulling graphics that are much better than this why would they care about this game when they can play something more "beatiful" with lots of colors, pixels, grass and polygons. Seems like this game was made for 90's gamers. Are there a much of them?

I have to admit that I'm not a fan of using DarkPlaces to play original Quake, it just alters the lighting too much. Custom made levels are another story, of course.

hmm. I can't comply with that I wonder if there would be a guy that remakes every doom level so that they retain their old distinctive feel and style yet looking better. It's most probably impossible to accomplish with 100% success but it could get close. Talent, time, dedication, maybe money.

[StroggVorbis]

There's also QuakeSpasm-spiked by the same guy who works on the FTE (Fore-Thought Entertainment) Engine. It's basically a fork of QuakeSpasm that adds more functionality for modders and backports some stuff from Darkplaces.

It even decouples the game logic from the renderer, so the physics don't get wonky if you play with over 72FPS, just like Yamagi Quake 2's asynchronous client.

The best of both worlds so to say.

[Graf Zahl]

I've found that QuakeSpasm does a pretty good job of preserving the original look and feel.

Which is why that is my preferred engine for playing the original game.

From this point yes, you are right. Another question is who's gonna play that. I'm told a few times that "pixels" suck: "oh man how can you play these pixels, it's an old analog tech (:!: )". I assume if people have hardware that is capable of pulling graphics that are much better than this why would they care about this game when they can play something more "beatiful" with lots of colors, pixels, grass and polygons. Seems like this game was made for 90's gamers. Are there a much of them?

Why are you presuming that customers are stupid by default? Many gamers know by now that all the bells 'n Whistles of modern games cannot make up for something that's actually enjoyable.

I have to admit that I'm not a fan of using DarkPlaces to play original Quake, it just alters the lighting too much. Custom made levels are another story, of course.

hmm. I can't comply with that I wonder if there would be a guy that remakes every doom level so that they retain their old distinctive feel and style yet looking better. It's most probably impossible to accomplish with 100% success but it could get close. Talent, time, dedication, maybe money.

[/quote]

"Better" is subjective. I cannot say that DarkPlaces is doing good things to the original Quake levels. The lighting is just too different (and often way too dark) from the original design.

[NeuralStunner]

"Better" is subjective. I cannot say that DarkPlaces is doing good things to the original Quake levels. The lighting is just too different (and often way too dark) from the original design.

Do you mean the realtime lights? I don't like those either, especially with how sharp-cut they are at edges. The original lightmaps, with soft (and not always straight) edges work much better. (And you still get filtered lightmaps with NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR, which is a nice detail.)

EDIT: And regarding the Voodoo2 "controversy"...

[Graf Zahl]

EDIT: And regarding the Voodoo2 "controversy"...

WTF???

[NeuralStunner]

the store page mentions "it'll melt your Voodoo2". Darkplaces hasn't functioned on the Voodoo2 since around 2007.

Personally, I'm delighted that they're putting their money where their mouth is on this one.

[leileilol]

It's what Fresch is falsely advertising by revising the term for bilinear filtering and everyone seems to be buying it up without checking themselves with all those darkplaces builds available to debunk with....

Note that this isn't the only 3DRealms game to do this. Rad Rodgers also tried to claim 3dfx support, which is obviously impossible for UE4.

[dpJudas]

Excuse my ignorance for 3dfx tech (hated those cards in the 90's - nothing destroyed a good VGA signal as one of those), but is there some subtle difference to how they implemented linear filtering? Because bilinear and trilinear generally just means linear filtering and linear+mipmap in the general game industry.

[leileilol]

The only real difference 3dfx made in that is that they have a silly 2x2 dither hack to approximate trilinear filtering without the actual trilinear filtering - which didn't work in multitexturing situations that would involve lightmapping and i 700% doubt that Darkplaces is getting dithered LOD.

Here's a very-much-not-emulated-yet-at-all example of that (multitexturing off, and dither forced on in the driver). Also reminder that this is a clean buffer dump, the actual screen output is fuzzier/blurrier, and the dac filter etc that only a decent expensive vga capture card could grab.

as for the engine debate - Wrath is already using CSQC. They can't simply switch over to an engine that doesn't (or even an older darkplaces as the csqc/menuqc protocols have been evolving since the regressions). Q3BSP and MD3s are also heavily used and there will be portals. That's like telling a GZdoom game to switch to prboomplus at that point.

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given this debacle, i wish Wrath was self-published to be honest. I really shouldn't have to defend Wrath against its own pretentious PR stunts they call "jokes"...

In no way i'm saying I want to see wrath actually support the 3dfx and win9x (let's be real), i'm just calling out the lies it doesn't deserve. The least I can hope for is a public backpedaling clarity statement or so especially since most of the widespread attention towards it HAVE been for the alleged 3dfx support than the game so far :/ (he has only explained 'the joke' to their own discord)

heck the same applies to a lot of "Quake" namedropping, riling up hopes and expectations that it might play just like it or be the "true sequel" when they're clearly going for something different.

[slyrboi]

this is surely a nominee for GOTY, IF most gamers weren't an online-only gamers
and still stick with the oldschooliness of fps

[wildweasel]

this is surely a nominee for GOTY, IF most gamers weren't an online-only gamers
and still stick with the oldschooliness of fps

I'd hold off on nominating anything as GOTY without having first played it.

[Enjay]

Meh, there are so many Game of the Year awards that almost any game that blips up on my radar seems to be able to claim that someone somewhere named it GotY. Much like the 3dfx nonsense, GotY mostly sales pitch and hype. Also, I really don't understand why people get so invested in awards that they are nothing to do with. Why does any player care if a game gets GotY? If you hated it, being GotY doesn't improve it but that also holds true if you liked it. It's actually an irrelevant accolade, other than the kudos and advertising potential that it beings with it (because people care ).


To go back a month or so in the discussion, I too do most of my Quake playing with QuakeSpasm and find that it gives a (subjectively) much better experience than Dark Places. I also have Dark Places installed and dip into it every now and again. It can be fun and stuff made specifically with it in mind can be very good (as Graf said), but QuakeSpasm (to my mind) is the go-to engine for a quick "fire this up, it'll work work and be fun" Quake session.

[edit] I was unaware of QuakeSpasm-Spiked though, so I'm going to look into that. [/edit]

[SouthernLion]

Meh, there are so many Game of the Year awards that almost any game that blips up on my radar seems to be able to claim that someone somewhere named it GotY. Much like the 3dfx nonsense, GotY mostly sales pitch and hype. Also, I really don't understand why people get so invested in awards that they are nothing to do with. Why does any player care if a game gets GotY? If you hated it, being GotY doesn't improve it but that also holds true if you liked it. It's actually an irrelevant accolade, other than the kudos and advertising potential that it beings with it (because people care ).

This is how I feel about all video game and movie and TV show reviews, ever. An arbitrary number given by some self-important person that I've never met assigned to an entertainment experience means nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. I either like something or I don't. I either had fun or I didn't.