Project: First Person Shooter History

[almoststew1990]

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 )

 

[almoststew1990]

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...

 

[almoststew1990]

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...

 

[almoststew1990]

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...

 

[almoststew1990]

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.

 

[almoststew1990]

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.

 

[almoststew1990]

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

Thanks for the offer but components have a habit of dying around me so I won't risk it! I'll make do with my MX440. I have a rattly 6600LE somewhere if I really need a (small) speed boost.

 

[almoststew1990]

I've hit another roadblock. I'm having lots of sound issues. Windows wants to put my sblive sb16 emulation to irq10. I set it to 5 in the bios and Windows will mirror that, but when booting it says emulation loading failed due to irq conflict! Windows doesn't show any conflicts occurring. The bios has all PCI IRQs to auto and I've disabled all serial, parallel, floppy, even USB to make sure there are no conflicts. But it's still not happy

 

[almoststew1990]

You're not off the hook as I am just thinking about using my proper w98 pc for the dos and early 3D stuff and sticking XP on this pile of junk! It would have just made it more interesting if I had done 13 years of FPS games on one PC...

 

[almoststew1990]

Aaaaaah... DMA's, IRQ's and I/O's... Fun.

So many memories of hours of anger and swearing. Add in HIMEM, Emm386, QEMM.... joy. Still have a backup of my autoexec.bat and config.sys which gave me a menu to choose what config I wanted in 6.22 and 7. One config got 634kb of free base memory.

Phils computer lab has a similar thing, a "super easy mode" which is a folder with a cd, mouse and creative sound drivers as well as a ready prepared autoexrc.bat and config.sys with a menu for what drivers you want to run / how much memory you need. It's very useful!

 

[almoststew1990]

Right I've got everything up and running on my backup backup PC - the 650MHz P3 (currently overclocked to about 720MHz @ 112MHz FSB), 256MB RAM, MX440 and an AWE32 Value. Surprisingly this ISA card worked just fine, no IRQ conflicts or not being detected. Now I'm trying out a few late games to see how the CPU overclock holds up and once I'm happy I can get started on the first game, Catacomb Abyss (and then Wolf3D). I've updated the games list too.

I'll be building an XP PC of some kind to play the later games, from MoH:AA onwards.

 

[almoststew1990]

Well I've finished Game 1 game!

The Catacomb Abyss 3D - Shareware



This was suggested as a very early FPS, ahead of Wolfenstein 3D. I thought I'd give it a go as I've played Wolfenstein a bit (maybe for a couple of hours in total over the last two years in dosbox on and off etc).

Getting it running
The shareware version I had came "pre-installed" with no need to extract anything. It's less than 1mb big so it may well have come like this on a floppy. No setup menu / options, just start.exe to start.

It wouldn't detect my Soundbaster 32 / AWE32 for its ablib sound effects, so it played through the PC speaker, which I decided gave a touch of "genesis" to this first game on my list.

It had a fairly simply numbered main menu with quick start / read me (which you need to read as its helpful for both controls and gameplay) as well as some lore which sounded very oldschool rpg.

Gameplay

It controls with the arrows, with left and right turning rather than strafing. Strafing requires you to hold alt, and fire is ctrl. Quick turn is TAB, which is necessary to use when you get hoards of enemies around you, and my hands had to learn some new positions / muscle memory as alt, ctrl and tab do not really come naturally to my left hand! After about 20 minutes I was able to slide around like a pro; it isn't as unintuitive as it sounds.

I was surprised at how "standard" minute-to-minute gameplay was. You have a health meter, ammo counter, even a minimap (although it would have been helpful to have shown the walls on it!). I suppose it's functional and tells you what you need to know just fine, so why change what works well 27 years later! There are health pick ups loot chests with more powerful attacks (automatic fire and a sort of scatter bomb that fires spells in all directions around you); however on easy mode (there is a choice between easy and master only!) I had 99 of everything by the final boss fight. It certainly was too easy, but then I was playing at 60fps and have evolved FPS reflexes, which I wouldn't have had if I was playing this when it came out (also I was 2 years old).

Shooting dudes in The Catacomb Abyss has the same appeal and satisfaction as shooting in modern games, more so even perhaps as there is less in the way between pressing fire and a dude dying. No reloading, no sprint to jog animation, no ADS. The core shooting dudes gameplay was genuinely fun, with no nostalgia required.

Level design is are an absolute maze. I've read about mazey early 3D games but, bloody hell, it's hard going when you're used to intuitive levels that tell you where to go (or encourage open ended exploration) without words. Worst of all was Ogre Mines / Trolls Something, which was designed specifically to be like a maze in an already mazey game engine. It's even worse when you're forces down zig-zagging corridors 1 block wide, with the narrow FOV it doesn't feel like a 3D game anymore.

You can see the transition from top down rpgs and crpg dungeon crawlers (I thinnk their called) in this game, there is a status window saying what you're currently doing (turning, retreating, magic), and each location has a name. The names are great and add some personality to the game.. assuming they're being ironic! Names like The Field of Sighs, The Garden of Tears, Chamber of Many Bones" . I'm interested to see the transition from this type of gameplay to modern gameplay. Find the exit keys and then exit, to "the exit is fairly obvious but getting their alive is the hard part", to "there isn't really an exit as such, the story / level will progress when something natural happens; just kill the dudes and see..." over the years.

I completed the shareware game in about 90 minutes. I only died once, on the final level when the boss threw a curveball (*****). Quicksaving is supported so I only lost about 3 minutes.

Each level is "destructible"; some walls (identifiable by a different texture on each level) will collapse when you shoot them and you'll need to collapse walls to complete each level. Unfortunately this means I spammed my spells at the start of each level of find out what texture is destructible.

Graphics and Performance

It's EGA graphics and early 3D, so it looks like arse. Just the colours to me are really off putting with bight greens and blues; I understand there are a few palettes to choose from when using EGA, perhaps a less garish one would have been better. Sprites and animations look alright, as expected, they have a few frames for moving and a few for dying, but it was always enough to know where the dudes are they are and what they are doing. I liked the smooth motion of the spells, slow enough to look good in motion and require a bit of skill to hit a moving target, fast enough to not be a pain to work with.

I can't really comment about performance; it ran fine on my 720MHz P3! It's gameplay is at least not tied to the framerate. I do like the look of these games when you're running down a straight corridor at 60fps. I might try to make a GIF of it.

Sound

It only had sound effects, but that could have been a shareware limitation due to memory size. Ablib (i.e. OPL2 I think?) didn't work, so PC speaker it is. Not much to say other than my speaker is pleasantly quite and tonal so it wasn't an absolute pain. I tried out the ablib sound in dosbox; it's not great but nicer than PC Speaker obviously.

Was it fun?
Yes

Should you play it?
I'll see how it compares to Wolf3D...

Anyway this turned out much longer than expected so here are some "screenshots" and a gameplay video.

 

[almoststew1990]

Game 2 down!

Wolfenstein 3D



The big one; the logical starting point for early 3D FPS games. It doesn't really need an introduction!

Getting it running
I had the registered version on my hard drive from long ago with six episodes; the first three as part of the original release, the last three as a prequel. I didn't bother with episodes 4 to 6!

The game came already unpacked, and simply starts with Wolf3d.exe. I would imagine as a id game it would have had a "deice" installer of some kind originally. Sound is auto-detected and found my AWE32 just fine. Volumes are a bit out though; digitised sound is much louder than OPL playback.

Gameplay

As with The Catacomb Abyss, it plays with the arrow keys. I was used to it now having played C:A previously. It lacks a quick turn button but does have a sprint button, which I rarely used as Right Shift means taking my index finger off the left arrow. I Turning speed is a little slow, but on later levels you'd be dead before you finish turning regardless of turning speed if there are duded behind you!

W3D felt like a step back from C:A. No mimimap, no various spell types. The three guns all share the same ammo so there was no reason not to use the chain gun. A lot more of the screen is given over to the 3D "rendering" compared to C:A which meant less space for HUD. However I never felt I wasn't being told enough information. This game feels much more like a FPS than C:A did, without the RPG hangovers in the HUD.

W3D, as you might expect, has you hunting for keys to unlock doors but is nice enough to only require one key per level in the first episode. As such, you spend a lot of time navigating the mazey levels, although they are nowhere near as bad as C:A. Rarely, progress on the level will be hindered by needing to activate a hidden wall, but mostly they are reserved for hiding secrets.

Whilst the game has a lives system, it is largely useless due to the ability to quicksave and quickload. Why would I die and start the level again, with no guns or ammo, when I can just quick load!

Shooting in W3D is enjoyable, especially with the thumpy SMG. Seeing an Officer go down after a second of SMG fire, before he has time to react, is very satisfying. Again, like C:A, without reloading, ADS etc, there is very little getting in the way of your shooty action!

I completed the main game in about 2.5 hours. I died about 10 times on the second difficulty level, five of which were against mecha-hitler (douche).


Graphics and Performance

W3D uses 256 colour VGA graphics so it is at least less garish to look at, but the early 3D still is not easy on the eyes. Sprites and animations are much like C:A, quite sparse but get the important information across. As you can see in the screenshots, there is not much opportunity for variety in the graphics of this game which does make it a bit repetitive.

As before I can't comment about performance; it ran fine on my 720MHz P3! It's gameplay is at least not tied to the framerate. I do like the look of these games when you're running down a straight corridor at 75fps. I have now made a GIF of it (at 25fps, boo).






Sound

I used soundblaster music and sounds effects with no digitised sounds. The digitised sounds replaces the sound effects (as they're better quality I assume), however, they were very loud on my soundcard so I didn't bother. The sound effects are basic but good enough to let you know when a guard has spotted you.

The music is similarly simple, with some basic but good OPL tunes.

Was it fun?
It was, but I think I prefer C:A as a "my first FPS".

Should you play it?
Yes, but only because of its fame to see what the fuss is all about.

Screenshots and a final boss video.



In the Official Hint manual, which I used some of the time, has a quote from Creative Director Tom Hall "I like how you can look past the columns out at the starry night sky. Maybe it's just me, but I think it looks really sharp. And somehow, it makes you feel a little colder". This is the sort of area where, in my opinion, modern games do work much better, in creating an immersive atmosphere.

The game only credits seven people for making the game, including music and the strategy guide cover illustration

 

[almoststew1990]

Game 3 Complete!

Doom

The third "arrow key shooter", I was interesting to see how the extra two years since W3D would allow the gameplay, graphics and sound to develop. I'm definitely ready for mouse look now though!



Getting it running
This was the first game that came with a setup executable, which I like as I can be sure the game will be running at the maximum "settings" my system can do. Unfortunately I had sound issues with my AWE32... Soundblaster FM synthesis music it is then! Otherwise, I didn't have any issues getting it to run in MS-DOS mode in Windows 98, just run doom.exe and I was good to go.

Gameplay

The gameplay is very similar to the other arrow key shooters, although sprint was mapped by default to both left and right shift, so I could both turn and sprint (left shift) and shoot and sprint (right shift) - yay for sensible game ergonomics! Rotation speed is still too slow - there were several occasions where a dude would spawn behind me and I'd take multiple hits, or about 100 health before Doom Guy had turned his fat ass around.

Whilst there is no minimap, Doom does benefit from a full-screen map (activated by pressing tab) that uncovers as you explore. There are pick ups, I assume in every level, that turns on the whole map so you can see where you haven't explored. The map is very useful, particularly as you can still move around whilst in map view, which feels a bit like driving a car through an obstacle course in a top down view. I found myself doing this a lot later on in levels when most of the enemies have been cleared when busy backtracking.

The levels have been improved significantly through the development of two technologies - vertical change and angled surfaces. This creates the potential for much more enjoyable (and less mazey) levels. This is the first game where the levels can give off the impression I am running around an actual "place" rather than a game level / maze. However, whilst the technology appeared to be there to create a place rather than level, the level design itself is still very mazey and gamey, like a designer has created a hamster obstacle course with demons, not a place that has a function whilst still being fun to play (like half life). In particular there is a lot of symmetry, like cruise ship central stairs which I feel doesn't make the most of the technology, and I found myself running up a set of stairs and having to turn left and then right and seeing that they actually met up in a loop.

The game still uses keys to lock and unlock certain parts of the levels and I was still backtracking (sometimes four times) to unlock, lock, teleport, etc to get to the exit door, but the map at least means you are rarely lost. I am definitely getting bored of keycards now.

Shooting remains enjoyable in Doom, in particular the shotgun (which is pretty much your default gun after a couple of levels), which has a nice thump to it, and the plasma rifle, which fires very rapidly; demons make an "owwy" sound for every hit so you can feel the damage with the plasma rifle Doom is my favourite arrow shooter so far for pure gameplay.

I complete the game in about 6 hours on medium difficulty, although that included dying a million times. Thankfully quicksave and quickload had my back. I liked how the boss from episode one ends up a regular baddy in later episodes which makes me appreciate how the stakes have been raised (still a ******* though).

Graphics and Performance
From a technical standpoint this is huge leap over W3D, with the verticality, non 90 degree angled walls, much higher quality sprites and less weird perspective and texture shimmer. Outside environments really show off the engine, and there is even some form of lighting engine. I see walls light up when I fire my pistol and flickery lights are deliberately, and effectively, used to make quite a scary atmosphere in places (disclaimer - I am a wimp).

It continued to play nice with much more modern hardware and gameplay is not tied to the framerate. I'm tempted to see how it runs on my 386SX 4MB RAM PC which will probably be unplayable.

Sound

Doom is the first game in my list that supports AWE music, so I was keep to try it out. However, this would just give a very loud, high pitched whine when loading up the game (that continued when the game was closed). I ended up using standard Soundblaster music, which to be fair is much better than the simple loops in W3D. One tune in particular really adds to the atmosphere. Soundeffects continue to the basic but effective; the weapon sounds in particular are thumpy and visceral.

Was it fun?
Yes, but 3 episodes is definitely enough (although that could just be retro shooter fatigue!)

Should you play it?
Yes, it makes a much better starting point than W3D for actually having fun in a retro shooter.

Screenshots
These really show off the huge leap in technology from Wolfenstein 3D!








No video this time, I was too busy dying.

 

[almoststew1990]

Game 4 as "complete"

Rise of the Triad

This game promised to inject a bit of humour and liveliness into quite a grim and brown shooter genre and is known for its lightness of tone, jump pads and dog! Unfortunately I just couldn't get along with it.



Getting it running
Many aspects of the game can be configured via setup.exe, and sound via sndsetup.exe (or something). I had no issues getting it up and running.

Gameplay
This was the first game I could use WASD and the mouse comfortably. I mean, I'm using a rollerball dell mouse that I suspect has flatspots on it, so it really doesn't roll very well (especially in a fast paced game like this!) but it made a welcome change from using tank controls on the arrow keys.

This game has a noticable shift in tone to a lighthearted almost arena shooter from the late 1990s. It has jump pads, pick ups for things like elastic, god, flying and doggie modes. You have an absolutely ludicrous sprint speed (which comes in handy when you're lost) and it does have an enjoyable tone after shooting serious demons in serious hell, or nazis.

In practical terms this means that the game is very vertical - sprint pads will catapult you to a second height level where keys will be located (yes still keys going on). Dudes with MP40s will step on them and shoot you from the air, you can Drunk Missile several dudes at once with a 360 shot and it can be quite fun.

However, I just couldn't get on with it. The levels are murderously complicated with progression to the level exit hidden behind the most obscure hidden panel activated by a switch on the otherside of the map, hidden behind a pillar you need to push out the way, that you don't know is pushable because 99.9% of pillars are not pushable. Some hidden areas are locked, you can't just push/ click on it, you need to activate a trip switch on the floor (or normal switch elsewhere) that is naturally hidden itself. I struggled to complete levels even following youtube videos on it. As someone who's enjoyment was wearing a bit thin with this kind of shooter, the nasty level design really killed any fun I was having with the shooting and jumping gameplay. Either I'm a thickybobo or this really is not fun level design, even for the era.

It's based on a Wolfenstein 3D engine (and was going to be sequel to W3D at one point but that didn't happen), and retains the cube 90 degree angle walls. It's a huge step back from Doom and the difficult maps are made much worse by this.

In the end, I gave up after completing the first episode. It's too much of a step back from Doom.

I complete the first episode in about 3 hours on medium difficulty, with not many deaths but backtracking four or more times trying to find where to go next.

Graphics and Performance
Whilst the gameplay received a big upgrade from W3D, unfortunately the graphics were a let down, being back in a Minecraft world. Yes, lighting has been improved and the first person perspective much better than the trippy W3D style, but the worlds felt incredibly hamster maze like, compared to Doom's (albeit very gamey) actual world.

Still no performance issues; gameplay is not tied to the framerate.

Sound

AWE32 sound worked perfectly on this with instrumental music rather than just FM synthesis, which did make a nice change. Unfortunately, the music just isn't very good, being very fast paced, high-pitched almost cartoony music. I grew tired of it very quickly of its 2 minute loop after spending 30 minutes or in each level!

Was it fun?
No

Should you play it?
No - play Doom for a early FPS, play Quake III if you want an arena style shooter that doesn't make you want to gouge your eyes (and ears) out.

Screenshots

 

[almoststew1990]

Game 5 Complete (Shareware)

Heretic



With RoTT being a let down, I jumped into Heretic feeling a bit burned out on this whole project, thinking I could smash out the shareware version I have in an hour or two to power through to where things get interesting - Descent, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. Whilst I certainly did do just that, I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would!

Getting it running
Another Setup executable that lets you configure stuff before launching the game, another game running without issues. I really was expecting more problems getting these DOS games running.

Gameplay
Based off the Doom engine, I was back to arrow key tank controls, but they're second nature to me now!

Heretic feels like a halfway house in tone between very miserable Doom and OTT ROTT. It's not got the miserable music and satanic imagery but is still grounded (literally) with fun pickups like flying mode and "upgrade all my weapons for a minute" mode. The slower pace was welcome.

I was glad to be back in the Doom Engine and out of RoTT's upgraded Wolf3D engine. Varying corner angles and verticality are back! Whilst I felt Doom did not make the most of this engine to create levels that feel like places (if that was even a design consideration at the time at all!), Heretic definitely does try to create an actual environment and not a game level. Buildings, harbours, paths, stairways all actually create a believable world rather than just a game level that looks a bit like a very square dungeon.

This was reflected in the level design being not very mazey at all, and actually being nearly intuitive to navigate! Just finding my way around was not a pain and made for a much more enjoyable experience.

I can't stress how much the level design helped me enjoy the game from navigating to creating a world I am fighting through.

There are a range of magic-y weapons which effectively reflect pistol / shotgun / automatic gun, just as Doom had these style of weapons. This is the first game where ammo was a little hard to find and let to some tense fights against otherwise easy enemies, which did add positively to experience, knowing I couldn't use my laserdeathray3000 to get myself out of this corner. The enemies too are varied with giant bat things being the cannon fodder (who get an upgrade to 'pistol' making them more of a threat in groups), to melee focussed grunts who can take a lot of damage but walk slowly, to green elite soldier things that shoot green magic doing a fair bit of damage, and flying mages who can do a lot of damage.

I completed the shareware, with a grin on my face, in about 90 minutes.

Graphics and Performance
Graphics are an improvement over Doom, partially due to lighting and water usage and partially down to the way the engine has been used to create the levels. A few more colours have been used to create a more vibrant world.

Still no performance issues; gameplay is not tied to the framerate.

Sound
Just as with Doom, AWE32 sound didn't work so I went back to soundblaster / Adlib compatible FM synthesis. The music was largely forgettable apart from a couple of tunes later on (particularly in the Cathedral level). As with Doom (and RoTT) sound effects are functional but forgettable.

Was it fun?
Yes

Should you play it?
Yes, as a good twist on the Doom experience.

Screenshots

 

[almoststew1990]

Some really good games there. Certainly doom is the number 1 title most people fall back to. I know wolfenstein pipped it to 3D but gameplay is a lot better in Doom.

It's stupid how excited we get talking and seeing these old games. Can't say I'm all excited to talk about gears of war or anything after the 2000's really. Some of them are great games but are not classics.

I re-watched a Zero Punctuation review the other day where he was joking that "kids of today" will look back on Halo 3 with nostalgia saying it is the best game ever. That video is about 10 years old and I'm sure in a few years 360 games will become "retro" for some (wrong!) people Having said that there are some great late 2000s games, like Mass Effect 1 to 3, Oblivion, Minecraft... OK not many, but still some!

I think for when you get to Unreal tournament we should arrange a night to play it properly online on a dedicated server

Should be enough on here to get a game going.

That would be cool, playing it how it is meant to be played! But I'd need to figure out how to get my PC online, as I've checked and the motherboard doesn't have ethernet, which is one of those things you take for granted as always being there! I'll need to source an ISA or PCI ethernet card and probably just borrow my main desktop's connection. And also buy the game I'm still some way off UT99 though anyway.

I've been ploughing through Descent. It's getting a bit grindy but I've made use of the built in screenshot function. It saves 64kb images PCX format, so you have to open them in Paintbrush in DOS and save as a BMP for any modern PCs to know what to do with them!







What is this, an image for ants?! Jackie-Chan-postage-stap.jpg etc etc

Edit - this is how that comes out on my 17" screen:

 

[almoststew1990]

Game 6, er, complete....

Descent


I was quite looking forward to Descent; I let it sneak onto the list as something a little different after all the first person shooters I've had to play in this history of first person shooters - crazy, I know. Unfortunately this is another one that I couldn't gel with and I didn't finish.

Getting it running
This is the first game I had issues getting running - the framerate is tied to the CPU speed. I was going to mess around with cache settings but then I thought I'd try "Descent+" which I also have in my DOS games collection. For whatever reason, this version of the game was not tied to framerate, but runs at 60/75fps, which is probably still slightly too fast.

It uses a setup executable which included options for VR gaming, which was very odd!

Gameplay
The major difference between this and all the other 3D shooters, as you probably know, is that it has 6-way control, essentially needing the arrow keys and WASD. It actually controls quite nicely with this combination, and after a while I was doing complicated key presses to half turn, half strafe around corners.

Where it went wrong for me was the mazey levels. It's intentionally set in mines, whether for artistic merit or graphical/engine limitations I don't know, and as a result it had an uphill battle to hold my attention. In any event, the mines are feel intentionally confusing, with multiple paths going to the same place and hidden doors, as well as doors in the ceiling and floor now that 6-way movement is possible. In fact, considering I was well aware I didn't like mazey games when I started this project, I'm not sure why it would be a "break" which it is probably the worst yet as the mazes are in a 3D space not 2D plane!

The combat feels quite good, with punchy lasers that get upgraded several times over the course of the game. Flying around with Level 4 quad lasers or plasma guns and dispatching the low level enemies with one key press is a good feeling. It's not perfect though, big red dudes with homing missiles are a bit too clever and will shoot homing missiles at you before you're even in the room; enemy spawners which trigger when you pass an undisclosed door need to **** off when you're flying around the level repeatedly trying to find the key (yup still key hunting) and accidentally trigger them again. However there is a wide variety of enemies all with different combat styles; some annoying some satisfying. Whilst playing this I got a real sense of deja vu; I think I played this at somepoint in the 90s on our original Windows 98 PC as I remember the big red homing missile dudes and the relief of finding the exit passage watching the explodey cinematic.

What doesn't feel good is the massive "ship bob" your viewpoint has throughout the game. Being low on health and trying to accurately shoot someone quite far away really doesn't work when you're ship is constantly moving up and down by about half a cube.

I managed 8 levels before I decided I've got **** to do, or rather games to play, and gave in. Partly because it was too hard and partly because of the mazey levels. Most of the games I've played on middle or 3/5 difficulty; this one should have been a wimpy 2/5 difficulty .

Graphics and Performance
A second major difference between this and previous games is that it is fully 3D. 3D enemies, player and environment, but the claustrophobic environments really don't show this off. As a result I feel that Doom and Heretic look better than Descent, even though they're 2.5D games.

Still no performance issues given I was using overclocked 1999 kit to play a 1994 game.

Sound
AWE32 sound is back baby, and sounds great! Descent seems to have given some thought as to how to make the most of the AWE capabilities and had high quality music and sound effects. The tunes themselves were not great or memorable, (in fact they were quite annoying actually) but the sound quality was very high. The same is true for the sound effects - Sometimes I forgot I was using 1995ish sound hardware as it just sounded... normal.

Was it fun?
Nah

Should you play it?
Yes, for the 6-way experience, but if you're thick and impatient like me don't expect it to be fun for long!

Screenshots

 

[almoststew1990]

Yeah, Descent was a very good game, but the idea was certainly ahead of the tech around at the time.
Descent II using Glide was a lot more playable.

Glide you say... I actually set up a PC with a Voodoo 3 in it (mainly so the parts weren't loose in my cupboard but also when procrastinating from Descent 1) so maybe I'll try out the Shareware version of D2. Also i'm planning on running original Quake on the main PC I've been using on software mode and then also trying glquake using the 3DFX minigl driver with the voodoo in this other PC..

 

[almoststew1990]

Game 7 Complete!

Duke Nukem 3D



After Descent turned out to be just a bit too... something, I was hoping that the comparatively simple Duke Nukem 3D would allow me to get back to mindless fun. And I was absolutely right - what a game!

Getting it running
I had no problems getting it running. It's the first game that has graphical options as well as sound options.

Gameplay
This was another game that worked very well with mouse control. It's a bit odd not being able to look up and down (at least by default) but your auto aim allows you to shoot up and down reliably once you get to trust it (like Doom)

. The core gameplay of running, jumping (First game with a jump key, and it took me three hours to realise it!) and shooting is incredibly enjoyable due to a refreshing lack of niggling frustrations when you play. There is no getting lost in a cube/grid based map, no crazy head/ship bob like in Descent. Few hidden areas and rarely are very hidden ones required to progress the story, and I didn't get lost at all.

The levels in Duke 3D look like places. Hopefully, gone are the days of running around a maze a game designer created (with the intention of getting you lost!), as Duke and the build engine effortlessly create a world; a fun but believable world. I'm not saying it's realistic, but the unbelievable gameplay is happening in a truly believable world, for the first time. It's crazy that we went from Wolfenstein 3D to this in four years!

Yes, keycards are still here, but I only needed to use a walkthrough once (and that was on an annoying spinny cog puzzle) and the levels are intuitively laid out so that you're I didn't actually get lost or have to back track much at all. The levels are also short enough that progression is steady. In fact, it might be a bit too short, but I understand there is a fourth episode that I might have to track down after this project!

Duke controls very well with the mouse and keyboard; on the second difficulty I had had no issues with getting stuck in a rut and actually beat the developer's time for the final boss fight in Episode 3! (I got 54 seconds or something). I'm not sure if circle strafing was a thing back then, but it makes combat very enjoyable and "empowering" being able to literally run rings around enemies. Of course, I died quite a lot, the game has a habit of spawning duded behind you, but quick save and quick loading means its rarely an issue. In fact, this might be the first game on the list that doesn't have a lives system? Ammo is usually slightly sparse to keep the tension on but never enough to think that you're doomed and need to reload an earlier save.

There are gadgets which are of varying use; it seems that these have been experimented with in a few games and Dukes are mostly useful with scuba gear and jetpacks essential at some points. However, I didn't use the holoduke at all (intentionally) and I only activated steroids (which makes you run really fast and presumably tank more damage) when I instinctively hit the R reload key.

Overall, the gameplay is great fun. Mostly this is due to the removal of a lot of frustrations of earlier games that allow the core gameplay to shine through finally.

Graphics and Performance
My introduction to the build engine. It can create some great looking places with high quality lighting and textures (for 1996). It's quite a leap over Doom, Heretic and Descent, but then I remember that Quake came out (later) in the same year...

This was the first game where there was the odd performance hiccup, running at 800 * 600, fully software. It was completely playable the whole time but during hectic sections I could see my framerate drop to well under 30 for a few seconds. The trade off for this performance hit was very nice graphics (coming from 3xx * 2xx gaming). It's odd to see my processor finally "have to do something" where performance has been a non issue so far.

Sound
Duke 3D supports AWE32. The test (which plays the theme) is quite disappointing and misleading as it sounds terrible on the AWE32, due to the guitars I think, and I was very tempted to just go Soundblaster OPL3 instead. However the rest of the soundtrack is very good in AWE32, and is quite electronic and pulsey which sounds good through OPL and AWE32. There are some stand out tracks like Aliens, Say Your Prayers! and Plasma(which play back to back) which really create a fantastic mood (albeit contrasting with the permentantly silly and brilliant tone).

Was it fun?
You bet your balls it was!

Should you play it?
Absolutely.

Screenshots

This is the first game where the built in screenshots are actually usable! I didn't know that it would only save 35 screen shots before overwriting from the beginning, so we've only got the last 35 to pick from! This is annyoing as I did some nice screenshots with the hud removed and my gun lowered, all of which were overwritten.















I must be remembering that film wrong...