The net has received a gift from the gods better than anything lame old Prometheus has bestowed. This gift will change the face of the net and spawn a multi-billion dollar industry. And Quake Be thy name.
Quake, for everyone who doesn’t know, and you know who you are, is the successor of DOOM from ID Software. A first person perspective shoot-em up game, DOOM was the biggest selling PC game ever. It fostered the “entertainment is killing our children will mindless violence” political rhetoric. Blood and gore were the staples DOOM’s success, and its later versions only added to the carnage. It was so good it created a whole genre of games trying to dethrone the champ. (Called DOOM-Killers, i.e. Duke Nukem 3D) There was only one problem.
Obscure History of the Net:
A man named Lars Penjl used to play Zork on his Apple II. He liked the game, which was completely text based and involved Dungeons and Dragons type adventuring and killing. (Watch Hercules or Zena to see it in action) He quickly mastered the game and conquered all of the levels. There was no place left to go, until he got an idea. He redesigned a version of the programming language C with one thought in mind. Multi-Player. He invented LPC which is the language used to create LPMuds.
LPMuds are Multi User Dungeons where you can play these adventure games through the internet. The open architecture of the internet let multiple players play against each other real-time. This was a milestone in gaming history as all commercial games were single user and limited. The only thing missing was graphics.
Enter Quake:
Quake is the first graphical game designed to run over the internet real-time. Its lightning-fast game engine processes movement and attacks (shotgun, nailgun, granade launcher, the usual) fast enough to send the information to 16 remote players using 28.8 modems.
To finally get to the point of predicting the future:
Quake will set the entire gaming industry on its ear. SONY Playstations and Sega Saturns will shortly release internet ready versions creating the first “real” Network Computer. (Sorry Larry Ellison) These game oriented NC’s will be $250-$300 and play Quake (and a slew of future Quake-Killers) over the internet real time. This industry will surpass sales in the current PC world by the turn of the Millenium. This is the future.
** Editor’s Note: There will be plenty of other hype jobs around here, we have to keep interest high.
Related Links:
Download Quake
Running Quake Servers (for MultiUser play)
Everything About Quake
Quake newsgroups:
rec.games.computer.quake.announce,
rec.games.computer.quake.misc,
rec.games.computer.quake.playing,
rec.games.computer.quake.servers
rec.games.computer.quake.editing
Example of a MUD
Whatya think?