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The developers who made their living off of id engines in the 90s and 00s

Your favorite idtech slam dunkers?


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Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Ninja Destroyer kinda made the point I was going to make - you can't judge these studios just by their idtech "ripoffs" - you have to dig a little deeper and find their roots before that time.

Raven Software adds The Black Crypt, a real-time grid-based dungeon crawler in the vein of Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder that has some very unique, interesting quirks of its own.

"Xatrix Entertainment", to those who ain't hearing the redneck squawk in those words, also did Redneck Rampage on the Build engine.

Another factor that needs to be considered is the 'assembled studios' - namely the various Ion Storm branches - and realize where the talent for them came from. That adds a whole new dimension to all of this.

But the basic gist of the gaming industry remains the same - if someone hits upon a winning formula that prints money, people will inevitably try to cash in by following it as closely as possible. These software studios are no exception... the only question is whether they had enough original spunk in them to stand out from the others.
 

Wunderbar

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By the way, can you elaborate on this? I didn't dislike Quake 2, but the people who hate it cite the weapons and how easy it is to exploit the enemies if you wish. How do the expansions fix that?
i didn't hate the weapons or enemies, just disliked how the entire game consists of same grey environments, samey looking hallways, samey encounter design.

Well, maybe expansions aren't all that better than the base game, but at least they are shorter and don't overstay their welcome.
 

Roguey

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i didn't hate the weapons or enemies, just disliked how the entire game consists of same grey environments, samey looking hallways, samey encounter design.
On release the general mood I noticed was that the color palette was a welcome change of pace from Quake's brown. :) Though you needed a dedicated 3D card to experience the colored lighting.
 

hexer

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Some tough choices here but nothing beats SiN for me.
I still remember playing and replaying SiN and Half-Life in tandem at the end of 1998.
Too bad we'll never see SiN episodes and more of Levelord's work!
 

Zboj Lamignat

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Kinda silly thread, because you have to be a really hardcore "look ma, I'm on the Internet" tryhard to not admit it's raven. It's OK to have favourite games and all, but their overall track record is the best objectively. GoG should finally get to releasing their catalogue proper, and include TNP and Mage slayer, goddammit.

Also, my edgy shitposting opinion: never understood what the deal with Sin is. Not a complete dud or anything, but not exactly a game that could hold its own during sheer fucking onslaught of amazing titles at the time.
 
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Also, my edgy shitposting opinion: never understood what the deal with Sin is. Not a complete dud or anything, but not exactly a game that could hold its own during sheer fucking onslaught of amazing titles at the time.

It comes off as building upon the Duke 3D formula with interactivity, and varied level design.
However yeah compared to half life its got bloated combat (its biggest problem) and less interesting enemies.
 

Fishy

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Kinda silly thread, because you have to be a really hardcore "look ma, I'm on the Internet" tryhard to not admit it's raven. It's OK to have favourite games and all, but their overall track record is the best objectively. GoG should finally get to releasing their catalogue proper, and include TNP and Mage slayer, goddammit.

Also, my edgy shitposting opinion: never understood what the deal with Sin is. Not a complete dud or anything, but not exactly a game that could hold its own during sheer fucking onslaught of amazing titles at the time.

Oh wow, had forgotten that Mageslayer was Raven too. Even more of a slam dunk.

Ah, and ShadowCaster. Sure, it's simple enough and takes all the thinking out of Ultima Underworld, but it was a fresh take on first-person fantasy combat and was pretty cool with how it used the various shape shifts for level traversal. And very few games allow you to morph into a giant 4 armed werecat, so extra points.
 
Last edited:

Roguey

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Kinda silly thread, because you have to be a really hardcore "look ma, I'm on the Internet" tryhard to not admit it's raven. It's OK to have favourite games and all, but their overall track record is the best objectively
It's a track record full of things that bug me.
 

Roguey

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As a follow-up here are links to post-mortems to detail the conditions under which some of these were made
Heretic II https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131748/postmortem_raven_softwares_.php
Estimated budget: $1 to 1.5 million
Time in Development: 11 months

Soldier of Fortune https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131541/postmortem_raven_softwares_.php
Full-Time Developers: 20 (on average)

Contractors: 2

Budget: Multi-million-dollar budget

Length of Development: 23 months

Star Trek Voyager - Elite Force https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131512/postmortem_raven_softwares_star_.php
Project length: six months preproduction, 18 months production

Number of full-time developers:
20

Number of contractors:
13, including two prerendered animations studios, additional musician, voice director, casting director, and eight main Voyager actors

Project Size: Single-player and Holomatch: 919,749 lines of code; 1,679 files. The single-player game was largel controlled by scripting, totalling 112,056 lines of code and 2,236 files.

Budget: Multi-million dollar budget.

As mentioned in this forum post https://jkhub.org/forums/topic/8941...di-source-code/?do=findComment&comment=128068

we actually finished Jedi Outcast in 10 months. Academy took 14 months.

SiN https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131727/postmortem_ritual_entertainments_.php

Team size: The SIN team was made up of three programmers (Scott Alden, Mark Dochtermann, and Jim Dose), six level designers (Patrick Hook, Levelord, Tom Mustaine, Charlie Wiederhold, Matthias Worch, and Mike Wardwell), four artists (Beau Anderson, Robert Atkins, Michael Hadwin, and Joel Thomas), one project manager (Joe Selinske), one support person (Don Macaskill), one business person (Harry Miller), and one sound person (Zak Belica).
Release date:
November 1998
Project budget: $2 million
Time in development: 20 months

Heavy Metal: FAKK 2 https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131520/postmortem_ritual_entertainments_.php?page=2
Project length: 18 months

Number of full-time developers:
11-18

Number of contractors:
1

Budget:
Approx. $2 million

How swell it would be if people still made decent shooters in 1-2 years for $2-3 million. :\
 

Roguey

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Daikatana maybe bombed back then, but it's an alright shooter (especially with unofficial patch which reduces annoyance factor about dumb AI companions).

I've completed this. It's almost a good game with the fan patch. I didn't download the fixed maps, so there were a few places where I had to babysit the companions. The first episode is terrible regardless of companions; I tried to look up which designer was responsible for it, and was surprised to find out all of them were. What wasn't surprising is that they made the episodes in chronological order, which was an astoundingly dumb decision, and they learned the hard way what it means to lead with your worst work. The other episodes were passable to good in quality (peaking with 2 then diminishing), though the poorly balanced RPG elements diminished the fun; After episode 1, I had upgraded health twice and since they had to balance the game assuming no health upgrades, this meant I had an entire extra health bar and never came close to dying (to be fair, I also played on easy so I wouldn't have to mess with the console to make the companions immortal). The cinematics had too much boring, overly-long exposition, amateur nerd hour. The tragedy of Romero is that if he had cut the companions, his storytelling pretensions, and his attempt at having RPG elements, he could have made a classic 4-in-1 time hopping Quake clone. Instead he became a clown.
 

octavius

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kCYgh.jpg

 

lophiaspis

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The tragedy of Romero is that if he had cut the companions, his storytelling pretensions, and his attempt at having RPG elements, he could have made a classic 4-in-1 time hopping Quake clone. Instead he became a clown.

The lesson: Don’t put something in your game if you can’t make it excellent!
 

luj1

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Half-Life was built on a modified version of the Quake II engine, Carmack played a central role in FPS history.
 
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I remember countless hours I spend plying Jedi Knight series when I was a teenager :) Such wonderful times, never to return.
My nick comes from Jedi Knight games, because when I finally got Internet at home I needed a nick for MP games. Finally I was playing MP with people not bots !
Also remember how I was downloading mods for JK on school computers using those 1 MB floppy discs, before having net in house.
 

Wyatt_Derp

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1980s devs - jerking off alone in their basements while making great games.

1990s devs - getting mountains of pussy while making great games.

2000s devs - getting fat chick pussy while making meh games.

2010 devs - getting dick while making dick games.

2020 devs - watching other people getting dick and pussy while making games about people turning into dicks and pussies.

2030 devs - fuck it, we're all robots now.

2040 devs - back to the basement.

The circle is now complete.
 

RoSoDude

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Half-Life was built on a modified version of the Quake II engine, Carmack played a central role in FPS history.

Actually GoldSrc, which was used for HL, is the modified Quake engine.

This is also why Half-Life and even the modern Source engine sequels to Counterstrike and Team Fortress all have Quake 1-style bhopping (hold strafe only, turn mouse at a constant rate), while games made using the later iterations of the Quake engine like Daikatana, RTCW, and the Jedi Knight games all have Quake 2-style strafejumping (hold forward + strafe, angle mouse to a slowly shifting sweet spot). For some reason, it bugs me is that most of the l33t gamer kids practicing bhopping in CS:GO have no idea that it's all derived from the original Quake.
 

Wunderbar

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The Reckoning was better than a decent Ground Zero (and both of them were better than a base game).
By the way, can you elaborate on this? I didn't dislike Quake 2, but the people who hate it cite the weapons and how easy it is to exploit the enemies if you wish. How do the expansions fix that?
so i've replayed Quake 2 and both expansions.

Quake 2 is a competently made, but bland and boring game that becomes somewhat interesting only in the last unit (Palace). Movement/weapon feel/enemies aside, Quake 2's biggest issues are very low difficulty and the fact that the whole game looks the same and you don't feel like you're progressing anywhere - just sleepwalking from one grey industrial building to another.

The Reckoning ramps up the difficulty by giving low-tier enemies powerful laser weapons and adds sort-of semblance of progression (you start in some cave system with animalistic mutants, then progress through sewers/tunnels into familiar Q2 industrial zones, and finish the game at the spaceship / moon base). Levels (even grey bases) are imo more memorable because of a harder difficulty and some minor environmental storytelling (a squad of dead soldiers at a rendezvous point, or a pack of gekks worshipping a stolen airstrike marker in their lair).

Ground Zero does roughly the same - difficulty is way higher thanks to a new enemy type - turrets, and level units are thematically different (first unit is a lava-filled cave where you had to backtrack a lot to turn off tectonic stabilizer, then you proceed to familiar Q2 zones and finish the game at the more futuristic-looking gravity well). This expansion also features something that you can call a setpiece moment - great secret level where you have to outrun a raising lava while everything around you explodes. Another thing i liked about Ground Zero is a new weapon - Flechette rifle - which is basically a quake 1 nailgun (full-auto projectile-based weapon). Too bad it's worse than a hyperblaster.
 

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