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Why is Quake so fast?John Romero explained
It feels like you are moving ridiculously fast in the original earthquake: The classic shooter is fast, that’s it. but why? id Software will not make Quake or other shooting games so fast. Is it because of some MS-DOS restrictions they face? Is this related to the appropriate horizontal geometry at the time? Is it harder to design slower games?
Did not say John Romero, Chief designer of Quake. Not those things. Really, id Software is just showing off.
We want to show people what a game is. What will they look like. Super fast.
John Romero
Here is a message that may upset some PC Gamer viewers: My only real experience with Quake is the Xbox port of Quake 4. I was born in 1991, and although almost everyone my age has blown up some cacodemons and fought off some Gothic Nazis, there are even fewer backgrounds about the land of Strogg. Although “Doom” and “German Headquarters” were successfully restarted, the id Software industry’s work was undisturbed until the Quake remake was released this summer. (At least if you ignore the earthquake champion, this is easy to do.)
When I downloaded the remake and leaned on the W key, I slid to the other end of the corridor, so fast, it felt like I opened the console and edited the power cap. Twenty-five years after its release, Quake’s fast silver speed is still exciting and disorienting: you play table tennis back and forth between arenas, and when the enemy is in your crosshairs, click on rockets and shotguns in seconds . You rush across the map without a clear direction, knowing that your speed is too fast for any enemy to catch your blind spot.
If you are like me, and you did not grow up in the golden age of FPS, then the original Quake feels like it was born out of a completely replacement PC tradition. Later, the developers slowly but surely extracted the amazing speed of the Id from the FPS, adding cover, slow motion and scopes, and complex ballistics.
However, slowness may be the bottom line: Romero said that Quake’s speed was a response to the slowness of other games at the time.
“The development of 3D games was very slow at the time,” he said. “Look at Ultima Underworld. It was the first full 3D game, and it was very slow. When we made the German headquarters and optimized the game for junk hardware, we maximized the speed as much as possible. We wanted to show people” What the game might be. What will they look like. Super fast. Since then, we have optimized the speed, which makes our games stand out in the industry. “
Above: A clip from Quake’s remake.
Romero told me that game speed has become id Software’s guiding philosophy, despite a strange prehistoric period before the advent of consumer GPUs: the legendary mid-90s. The team is dealing with tight textures, weapons, and enemy economics.
“We don’t want the design to slow down. We took something out of the German headquarters to maintain the speed,” Romero said. “It’s all about showing off what your computer can do.”
Quake Deathmatch is fun, but because of Doom, I feel it is very slow.
I was surprised to find that Quake is not the fastest shooting game id software made in the early days.In fact, it is slowestWolfenstein was the fastest, followed by Doom; Romero said they deliberately squeezed the power of Mars to compensate for the level of the Doomsday Labyrinth. (No one wants to look around for the blue key.) This puts Quake behind, which is incredible considering its agility compared to today’s typical shooters.
“Quake Deathmatch is fun, but because of Doom, I feel it is slow. I still play Doom deathmatch often,” Romero said. This man has lived in the momentum of the earthquake for so long that nothing can impress him anymore. This is what I expected.
Above: Clip from Doom Eternal.
If you play Ultrakill, you will find one of the fastest shooters around. There are still games that can do this.
John Romero
I asked Romero if he missed the old, super fast FPS model. I mean, we have experienced the sports shooting game boom in the mid-2010s. The jarheads of Call of Duty suddenly inherited the ability to double jump, but this is not as tickling as Quake’s smooth horizontal acceleration. Romero disputed. Yes, the large budget space may have exceeded id Software’s plan in Dallas, but many independent studios have the same problem.
“If you play Ultrakill, you will find one of the fastest shooting games around. There are still games that can do this. Dusk, retro shooting game, I mean, Doom is eternal. They don’t disappear. Just every game It’s not like that anymore,” Romero said. “I like to play all kinds of games.”
He is right, of course. If Quake restarts, we will see if id Software still prioritizes speed. I hope it has not deviated from its beliefs, and players can hunt down alien war mage as fiercely as in 1996. If the remaster proves one thing, it is that FPS players can still absolutely be confused by speed.