Blood

Okay, so Blood wasn't a Quake Clone; it wasn't even proper 3D. However, the Build engine games enjoyed some extended life with titles like Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage. Fully 3D environments and characters, while technically advanced, took a step backwards in art style. Sprite artists and mappers could still produce a livelier atmosphere despite some of the limitations. While RR made jokes about hillbillies, and SW made jokes about nuclear bombs and gay rabbits, Blood took a more vintage horror approach.

There were certainly the usual pop-culture references, most of which weren't period specific, but outside the attempts at humor they did a decent job at creating a believable world in which the story takes place. Most of the enemies are either cult members or the demons that they worshipped. Weapons did remain period correct with a combination of dynamite sticks and tommyguns, both relics of a time when we were a real country. Curiously enough, the weapon pickups were made from voxels, a tech that had some promise around that time but was seldom used. Functionally the weapons filled the traditional melee, ranged, and specialty roles, but all with their own flare. There was a flare gun too.

The levels pushed the 2.5D engine to the limit, featuring cemeteries, circuses, and temples. My favorite level was the runaway train, where all the action took place in cramped cab cars. Even without the combat, it was pleasant enough to enjoy for its own sake. The only downside was that the environments were so well done, you felt like there should be a bit more. In the circus, the crowds were absent, and I never got to meet Jo-Jo the Idiot Boy. In time, these things could be possible, but at the time there was an unease to the solitude.

There was a sequel, plus the registered levels. To be honest, the shareware levels were peak, as the following episodes felt like more of the same. The environments also tried to push the boundaries of realism, but in doing so, fell a little short - mainly in the outdoor arenas. The sequel was a full 3D title, but didn't carry over the gothic horror aesthetic. I played the demo, since the shareware model was becoming hard to justify as games became more complex, but I couldn't get into it.

Oh yeah, they also created a conlang for the cultist. It was complete enough for use within the game, but I believe there was some documentation out there. Like most 90s games, once you got the actual meaning, it was edgy obscenity, but 'A' for effort.

Descent

Rather than repeat things that have already been said, I'm going to STEAL content off a website from February 1995. Credit goes to SVEN. RIP. I don't know if he's actually dead, but we'll assume that the majority of people from 1995 have passed.

Things in Descent

This list will show you the things you will find in Descent. Many of the specials are hidden behind secret doors, so look around. Remember: Descent is fully 3D so walls aren't the only place to look.

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The weaponry

Here's a quick overview of all weapons in Descent. Special thanks to Parallax software for most of the graphics!

• laser - up to level 4
• vulcan cannon
• quad laser
• spread laser
• plasma cannon
• fusion cannon
• concussion missile
• homing missile
• smart missile
• mega missile
• proximity mine

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The powerups

• access keys
• shield boost
• energy boost
• cloaking device
• invulnerability
• extra life
• vulcan ammo

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sven@ping.de

Blood wasn't a Quake engine game, and Descent wasn't a first person shooter, so one more strike and they'll send me to the glue factory. It did have the distinction of fully 3D enemies and environment though. They were block and pixelated, sure, but it was a start and a necessity when traversing the 6-degrees of freedom. Six-degrees was a big deal back then, and moreso now since I only have one-degree of freedom, and that's the privilege of working until I die. I think a lot of people threw up when playing this too, so I must give credit when due. That's so 90s.

I think one of the cheat codes was Gabbagabbahey. I only recall because back in Netscape v1, you could put anything in lieu of the color hex codes for website color, and it would just produce something. I had no idea what colors like #34EF2C meant, so I just typed whatever came into my head. Above are some enemies. What they do, and how tough they are will forever remain a mystery.

I visited DC back around that time, and this happened. What a world.

Hexen2

Much like the original Hexen that built upon the Doom Engine, Hexen 2 took one of the first plunges into fully 3D territory by focusing on the gameplay without having to also deal with the technical creation of the engine at the same time. Also like the first Hexen, I think I only played the demos, so I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'd wager that many of the self-proclaimed 90s gamers got by on the freebies.

What was the plot? No idea, but look at that lack of pixelation. The blockiness of Quake was fixed through the miracle of bilinear filtering, or trilinear if you got really fancy. Sure, it looks like mush once you get too close, but you couldn't let anyone know you were still playing in software mode, could you! If you didn't have a $300 Voodoo2 daisy chained off your $15 S3 Virge card, you weren't playing with power. Because that's a Nintendo thing, and we're part of the PC Master race. Off to the gulag with you console gamers.

There was also a Heretic 2, but that was a third person game where you play as an elf doing parkour or something.

Quake 2

Ah, here we go! Quake was a.........
WOW those animated characters look awful on a white background
Anyway Quake was a proper sequel to Quake. And by proper sequel, I mean it retained the name and John Carmack continued to do his wizardry. Much was done on the backend by making it a Window executable and making mods run off .DLLs instead of QuakeC code. I was never able to figure out QuakeC, so it was a given that I would never figure out how to use a compiler and make anything for this. The 256 color palette still remained, but full-bright pixels were taken away thankfully. Colored lighting made a debut, and you KNOW that wasn't going to be abused by mapmakers in any way, shape, or form.

Characters were more or less created the same way. MDL files gave way to MD2, and instead of the skins being baked into the file, they were appended as indexed PCX files I think. I was still getting my head around index palettes, and this was made worse when the skin files were created as monochrome images without any reference to the Quake2 color theme, thus rendering them as blotchy and random luminance patterns until the game engine made use of them. If that doesn't make any sense, then don't worry about it, since Quake 3 would be jumping right to 4 color channel TARGA files. I think that was the case, but I think everyone is just looking at those images to the side. Did Quake2 have soft-physics? No, you coomer, it's still all hard coded into set animation routines. It wouldn't be until Half-life when skeletal rigs would be used, however the frame-by-frame animation were 'tweened'. That doesn't mean they sit in their bedroom listening to B*Witched, no the coordinates of each vertex will fill in the gaps between each frame of the animation, ultimately equaling the frames per second of your gaming experience. It was good in practice, but since the three-dimensional grid system was still rigid, this resulted in pulsing and undulating models. Good for characters, not so much for guns.

There was still support for software mode, which would give you that pixelated look back. It wouldn't be until a decade and a half later with Minecraft that the aesthetic would be back in vogue, so if you wanted to be popular on the IRC channels, you needed to shell out for that extra graphics card. Among other graphical updates, the sprites were eliminated and were replaced with either more meshes or with a particle system. I didn't care for either. The explosions would key-frame between wildly different fireballs, and the particles threw perfectly square confetti in your face. We never knew how good we had it with Doom.

If you want to know more, I have an old FAQ lying around from well before the game was released, so there's even less information than here. Also FAQ sounds like a bad word, but it isn't. However, Quake 2 became the first game to have a swear in it, so cover your ears during the intro.

SiN

SiN was a game. I don't remember anything about it other than there was a John Carmack homage character, you could open a secret door with a 'shave and a haircut' sequence, and if you shot a female office worker in the chest, you would get a free show. Here's some screenshots.

Prey

Prey was all about going next level. No clunky software mode. Colored lighting. Reflections! Mult-level mipmapping (hi res textures would pop in when you got close). The biggest tech claim was going to be the use of portals. Normally the environment was built out of brushed, or shapes, and you everything was connected. With portals, you could make 'doorways' connect different areas, so the inside doesn't necessarily have to match the outside. I'm sure this had a purpose.

But like everything in life, it languished for years and never saw the light of day. There was something called Prey that finally came out, but it wasn't anything like the screenshots here.

More...

Want more? Well here's a few more early Quake-related links, but don't get your hopes up, because they're also mine from various versions of me througout time and space. Gotcha ladies!