id: The Impact
This editorial was written by: Redskull1331
When
I think of all the developers over the years that have pushed gaming to
the next level over and over, a select group comes to mind. Sure we all
know what Nintendo, Sega, Konami, Capcom, ect. all did, but there is
one that never quite gets credit were credit is due. That developer is
non other than id software.
id software is well known for popular games like Wolfenstien 3D and
Doom, but there biggest accomplishment in my eyes has to be the Quake
series. Now before you feel like ripping me a new one hear me out, I
may jump into areas that you are unfamiliar with or areas that you may
not understand, but when I'm done with this article, you will see my
point. Atleast I hope.
First off, anytime I hear someone spout off that Quake is a crappy Doom
clone I think to myself, "man that person just spit in the face of so
many games from the past 10 years." Why do I think that? Quite simply
Quake is nothing like Doom other than they are both FPS games. Quake
was built on an entirely new engine than Doom and a much better engine
at that. It allowed for a lot of new innovations not only on gameplay
but in graphics and control, and was the first to feature fully 3D
enviroments and characters. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I
didn't find the first Quake to be the greatest game, but it was part of
an engine that needed to evolve. And evolve that engine did. The first
Quake spawned off many clones just like the Doom series. We all
remember Doom clones like Blood, and Duke Nukem, and Quake was no
exception with clones like Hexxen 2 and Duke Nukem 3D. It may not be
clear right now where I'm going with this but just stay with me. I
recently decided to look into the background of id software to see what
all I could find, this was mainly because I could not get over how well
the graphics in Quake 3 still hold up today. What I found is one
companies ability to push games further than most could even hope to.
With Quake 2 we got a better polished engine and could begin to see
what id was atempting to create. By the time Quake 3 Arena hit the
Quake engine was perfected. Now Quake 3 chose to mainly focus on
multiplayer, however the engine could do so much more. From the first
castings of true bump mapping textures, impressive lighting effects
through softlight which surpasses vertex lighting. To the shear speed
of over 60 fps. The game truly made an impact in development. The
graphics alone are impressive and the use of textures could be used in
such a way that they can still hold there own against todays offerings
yet they don't need the horsepower that games today require to run.
This alone is a feat in itself. What else can be said about id and the
Quake engine? Well a lot more, and I will go into Doom's new engine as
well.
Now the Quake 3 engine was such a development breakthrough that many,
and I mean many games have used its engine. The list could scare you,
but here are some of the games to get their bases from the Quake
engines: Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, Half Life, Kingpin, ect. Now Half
Life has taken pieces of the engine and molded it into something
greater, but it's roots are all Quake. The Quake engine offered so much
in the way of innovations for FPS and even some non FPS games. Duel
Weilding was first made possible in the Quake engine, as well as Duel
trigger firing, yet some other big named FPS around today would like to
take credit for those, but they can't.
Now what about Doom 3? What did it's engine bring that none had before
it. Quite simply the Doom 3 engine if nothing else, took graphics to a
level that wasn't possible yet. Lighting tricks and illusions are
something id has perfected, makeing a game look incredible and
realistic without needing hardware that doesn't exist yet to run it. id
manages to break the wall that blocks every developer from pushing
forward in terms of graphics. Doom 3's engine may not have been cloned
in masses yet, but the graphics part of it has been emulated by many
games already: Chronicals of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Splinter
Cell: Chaos Theory, Area 51, and more.
Now whether you want to believe it or not id invented FPS, and with it
they have gone on to perfect it. Now I know other games have sold more,
or may be more popular than id's creations. But quite simply non of
them would have any foundation to exist without id software. And
everything you find in an FPS thats around right now id has already
accomplished, you may not have noticed it, it may not have been
utilized by id themselves, but its there, deep down inside their
engines its all already there. Grab some Quake 3 Mods and see for
yourself that so many things you thought were innovative today, where
accomplished on the Quake 3 engine that is over 5 years old. Thats why
id gets a huge nod from me. They have pushed games to new areas and a
lot of times never got noticed for what they did. Now this isn't some
fanboy rant, or an attack on other games or developers. I'm just giving
credit where credit is due. Hell even I didn't know what all id has
done for this industry until I dove deeper into their engines and found
the TRUTH.
Full info on Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3: Arena below. Links are in order.
Quake
Quake 2
Quake 3: Arena
- Redskull1331
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