Project: First Person Shooter History

almoststew1990 · 8 Jan 2019 at 21:53

Hello everyone!

I've had the urge to do a bit of a project - to play a bit of history!

I want to play a bunch of first person shooters from old to new to get a feel for how the genre "grew up". I came into the genre around the COD2 era and therefore I've never properly played Doom and Quake; I'm looking to correct this oversight and find out where the "modern" FPS came from. I'll be reviewing them (to everyone's overwhelming indifference I'm sure!) to see whether they a) still hold up and b) has the genre evolved since the last game (or not).

The "Retro PC Nerd" catch is I want to do it on one PC without DOSBox!

So first of all, a games list. I should say I am not looking to play every first person shooter, I do have a day job. For instance, I'll be playing Wolfenstein 3D but not Spear of Destiny.

Here is my list, in chronological order. Please add suggestions or correct the order!

Catacomb Abyss (Shareware)
Wolfenstein 3D
Doom
Rise of the Triad (Didn't complete)
Heretic (Shareware)
Descent
Duke Nukem 3D
Quake
Outlaws
Blood
Star Wars: Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2
Quake II
Unreal
Half-Life
SiN (demo only for the moment)
Quake III
UT99 (Demo only)
No One Lives Forever
MOH:AA
No One Lives Forever 2
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Battlefield 1942
Call of Duty
Far Cry
Call of Duty 2

I originally was going to leave it at RCW and play using one of these two machines I have.

Athlon 800
TNT2 Pro or Vodoo 3 2000 PCI
W98SE
SB Live!

P3 650
TNT2 Pro or Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
W98SE
SB32AWE ISA

P4 1.8GHz
MX440
W98SE
SBLive / C-Media Thing

Basically the Athlon gives better late game performance, the P3 gives better early game sound. I think I'd go with the P3 out of a habit of maximising old hardware

Call of Duty 1 to 2 (and any intermediary games) would require a whole new league of PC so sort of ruin the plan, but would take me right to where I started 12 years ago (which was sort of the whole point)I am a bit tempted to get a P4 PC with that MX440 (i'm not spending £lol on a good AGP card) and put W98 on that.

So anyway, before I embark on this pointless endeavour, does anyone have any game suggestions? Hardware suggestions? Coffee I can have? Is this a stupid idea and I should go back to taking arty pictures of hardware?

(This is shamelessly copied from the Vogons forum

)

pingwing · 9 Jan 2019 at 06:58

You never played Quake or Doom?!?!!?!? You need to quit work and start this right now!

If you need a PC from the P4 era do the AMD route, just for power consumption/heat reasons... The P3 will be more than enough for the classics on that list

Only addition is the Half Life collection, that's well worth the time and effort to play

d_brennen · 9 Jan 2019 at 07:21

+mlook will be forever seared into my brain. Kids don't know they've been born these days. Who on earth wants to look UP and DOWN in a 3D shooter or actually AIM with the mouse?!?

Minstadave · 9 Jan 2019 at 08:20

Need some CRT goodness!

almoststew1990 · 9 Jan 2019 at 08:31

I've played them a bit, maybe for a couple of hours each. But never completed them or really got into them.

I also did have a CRT for my retro gaming but they're just too big for my desk. Plus I don't see any benefits in them; they're hot, flickery, small screen size that is never quite square, need lots of power...

bazzabear · 9 Jan 2019 at 08:40

If you're wanting to play games which moved the genre on, then I think you should add Terminator: Future Shock.

It was a pioneer of mouselook, but I think there were several other firsts which it was responsible for too, one of which was being able to use vehicles with a reasonable control system.

bazzabear · 9 Jan 2019 at 08:45

And what about Rise of the Triads - the inventor of 'gibs'!

naefeart · 9 Jan 2019 at 11:02

bazzabear said:
And what about Rise of the Triads - the inventor of 'gibs'!

This was going to be my game contribution. Dual handed pistols, a first I think.

I also feel Doom 2 and Half life 2 should be on the list. Both improved on the originals, Doom 2 if only for the double barrelled shotgun. Great days

jellybeard999 · 9 Jan 2019 at 11:20

A few off the top of my head that I remember adding something different. Whether you'd class them as groundbreaking/evolutionary or theyre all strictly FPS games is another matter.

Battlefield
Soldier of Fortune
Deus Ex
Hidden and Dangerous
Jedi Knight/Dark Forces
Kingpin
Rainbow 6
Delta Force
Operation Flashpoint
System Shock
Stalker (or was that later?)

Edit
Alien Vs Predator
This one - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliens_versus_Predator_(1999_video_game)

almoststew1990 · 9 Jan 2019 at 11:33

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll have a look at them and see which I want to add as I don't plan on doing more than 20 games or so...

Bubo · 9 Jan 2019 at 12:06

Shogo Mobile Army Division wants to be on there.

bazzabear · 9 Jan 2019 at 12:20

Would I be going way off piste if I suggested Mechwarrior and Descent?

hughtrimble · 9 Jan 2019 at 12:21

jellybeard999 said:
A few off the top of my head that I remember adding something different. Whether you'd class them as groundbreaking/evolutionary or theyre all strictly FPS games is another matter.

Battlefield
Soldier of Fortune
Deus Ex
Hidden and Dangerous
Jedi Knight/Dark Forces
Kingpin
Rainbow 6
Delta Force
Operation Flashpoint
System Shock
Stalker (or was that later?)

The dismemberment in Soldier of Fortune was really quite remarkable! My first introduction to proper, messy, gnarly FPS.

Medal of Honour would be another for the list, though that may have been PS1?

rhysduck · 9 Jan 2019 at 14:12

Black Hawk Down - quality FPS shooting that was. (Edit: Ah it was called Delta Force Black Hawk Down which someone has already mentioned)
Rise of The Triads - first FPS I ever played and came on something like 4/5 floppy discs! - https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/rise-of-the-triad/

Duke · 9 Jan 2019 at 14:32

I was a fan of the 'build' engine that Duke Nukem 3D used and several games used it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_(game_engine) - so would add ones like Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage, NAM and Blood to the list

They are all hilarious in their own ways.

SkyNet was a good multiplayer FPS I thought too.

almoststew1990 · 9 Jan 2019 at 14:37

This hasn't exactly got off to a flying start... I was going to use a Pentium 4 PC running Windows 98SE which would allow me to run every game. However, the chipset doesn't agree with W98 (as it was probably designed for XP) and my AGP graphics aren't working properly. I get weird artifacts, but on the desktop (but not in the BIOS), and the card is fine in other PCs. It will also randomly hang about 2 minutes or so after booting, or give me a BSOD (press esc to continue rather than BSOD+reboot). I've swapped the RAM around so it isn't that. I suppose the HDD could be on its way out but it didn't have any issues formatting and installing Windows, as well as moving a few GBs of files around afterwards...

Duke · 9 Jan 2019 at 21:23

Burn a copy of HIRENS onto CD or USB and check the ram, hd, etc.

almoststew1990 · 10 Jan 2019 at 10:51

I got the hardware all working and tested, it is just the chipset drivers (USB in particular) that cause the problems now. After installing I get Windows Protection Error please restart, so I never get into the desktop.

It could be where I install Windows, install "USB stick" drivers so I can get the chipset drivers onto the PC, uninstall USB Stick drivers, finally install chipset drivers (AGP, USB PCI to PCI in one package).

I will give it one more go, this time getting the chipset drivers onto CD and seeing if it is the chipset drivers themselves causing the issue... or the (potential) conflict with 2 different USB drivers installed.

Got the 650MHz system up and running as Plan B anyway.

LewisRaz · 10 Jan 2019 at 19:31

I can lend you a 9600XT for the p4 if you decided to use that and wanted more grunt.

almoststew1990 · 10 Jan 2019 at 22:48

This project has got to a slow start. I've had lots of problems putting together my P4 PC to run on Windows 98; I would get windows protection errors when I install the chipset drivers which I think was related to USB in particular. I've put together four or five PCs and done the same number of formats and Windows 98 installs over the last couple of days! Finally, by complete luck I came across a compatible driver and put it on a CD, resulting in no driver conflicts and a happy Windows 98.

The PC in the end was:

Pentium 4 2.4GHz
384MB DDR266 MHz
Nvidia MX440 128bit
8GB CF Card
SB Live!

Obviously you can't just go around assembling a bunch of retro PCs without benchmarking them:

3DMark 99: 7,497 / 30,958
3DMark 2000: 8,558
3DMark 2001: 5,996
GTA 3 was struggling along at 25fps

Here is the PC:

I'm not entirely sure this will be able to play COD2 but... it meets the specs when running in DX7 mode?

Here is the back-up PC that I was going to use if I couldn't sort the chipset issues (PIII 650 / 128MB / TNT2/AWE32V):

I had also benched this whilst waiting for one of the many, many, many formats/installs. in 99 it scored 5,571 / 9,988 (although that was with the MX440).

One last step is to persuade the generic USB mass storage device drivers to install without causing a Windows Protection Error conflict, and then I can crack on with the first game, Wolfenstein 3D... or possibly Catacombs Abyss 3D.