I just played Quake 2

[shihonage]

So I started looking for Doom2 screenshots and found this.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Find cover? The whole thing is about shooting the enemy before he shoots you. If you pop up from behind cover you still need to locate the enemy and put a crosshair on him before he does the same to you.

Yeah you've got to do that in CoD too.

I mean, that playing pop-a-mole is pointless because nothing is gained. Cover is for separating enemies from each other, not for hiding behind it and popping up.
Of course it can backfire because the second enemy can flank you in smaller rooms.

 

[Gragt]

You guys convinced me to reinstall both Quake 2 and Unreal. Good job.

 

[Lord Rocket]

Shihonage, if you were looking for detailed info on enemy counts, The Doom FAQ is the place to check. As you can see enemies per level rarely exceeds 200, and is generally around 150.While a fair bit higher than D1 it still falls short of 'horde' gameplay. I've probably been spoiled by user maps though.
Thanks for that pic, by the way - I'm going to print it out and put it above my bed so it's the first thing I see when I wake up.

Awor, what do you mean 'nothing is gained'? You don't get shot.

 

[shihonage]

Shihonage, if you were looking for detailed info on enemy counts, The Doom FAQ is the place to check. As you can see enemies per level rarely exceeds 200, and is generally around 150.While a fair bit higher than D1 it still falls short of 'horde' gameplay.

This is a highly flawed statistic which doesn't take into account obstacles and enemy grouping. Doom 2 was full of little "moments" where you run into a roomful of trashmobs, which was oddly suitable for your double shotgun.

On average, Doom 2 always had significantly more enemies attacking you at the same time, than did Doom 1. This philosophy became apparent comparing earlier maps of both games, and though both games increased simultaneous attackers in latter maps, Doom 2 remained consistently nuts about it.

Most importantly, the apex of this philosophy can be seen in final levels of Doom 1 and 2, where in the former you fight a singular, scary boss and a couple of lesser enemies, and in the latter you fight a fucking monster spawn timer.

Doom 1 made individual enemies matter more, it was more close and personal, regardless of speculations as to "why". Actually, both Doom 1 and Quake 2 had a similar reason for their indoorsy, handful-of-enemies-at-a-time designs, and that reason was system requirements - limiting what is displayed on the screen at a given time is much easier when the level is full of twists and turns.

 

[DraQ]

What I don't like is stuff that's boring, and Quake 2 is boring. I've elaborated on this in this thread before, and DraQ (although I don't agree with everything he says) brings up a couple more points that I missed, such as long 'I'm going to shoot you now' animations (ie. FIND COVER OR YOUR MOLE WILL BE POPPED signals) and the fact that the preponderance of hitscanners leads to proto-popamole gameplay. If you think shooting boring enemies with boring weapons while hidden behind a wall is fun then more power to you, I guess.

This. The problem isn't whether someone is having fun in Q2, the problem is that Q2 is the type of 'fun' where you'd likely not notice if someone switched the god mode on, unless you really suck. For several hubs.
And I'm speaking of 'hard' difficulty.

Seriously, even on hard Q2 makes you feel like fucking predator hunting unsuspecting geriatrics.

In Q2, hitscanning is the order of the day and was frequently an enemy's only effective attack - consider the gunners (?) and their shit GL attack, which basically never hit you - and isn't even z-aware if I recall correctly.

Indeed.

Overall, though, Q2 is about cover and Doom is about dodging. Couldn't be more different at their cores.

I think the difference is even more fundamental - after all you still use cover in Doom and you still use mobility in Q2 - it's that in Q2 you can achieve almost complete impunity in very simple and natural manner.
All Q2 enemies are nuisance enemies - they can't aim (even gladiator has serious problems hitting moving player with a fucking railgun), take ages to fire at you (even gladiator has noticeable delay sufficient for successful popamole), can't move at any reasonable speed, can't navigate environments, have very high pain chance and long pain anims which means you could probably stunlock them with a fucking musket, and saying they are dumb as bricks would actually be insulting to the bricks.
And, on top of that you have ample cover.

The weapons replace one another

Well, yeah, that's a bit of a problem, although to a lesser degree than in Q1.

the SSG makes the SG basically redundant

SG and SSG in both Quakes actually work similarly to how they work and differ in Doom, the main difference being not as tight spread from SG (even if it's still significantly tighter than from SSG) and enemy HP inflation making SG too underpowered to be a practical weapon it was in Doom. Hell, few enemies in Q2 fail to withstand at least one rocket to the face.

(except at range; but even then you're far better off using the MG or HB or RG)

Actually, MG's spread is awful - at least on par with SG, it doesn't even have extra accuracy for first shot.

HB is indeed fairly accurate.

the CG is also grotesquely OP

I like calling it tank mincer - they don't even have a chance to fight back once this baby starts spinning.

the RL makes the GL redundant (not that the GL was ever dundant; throwing the Gs by hand was just as useless and it's available to you much sooner).

Well, GL allows you to attack enemies without even leaving cover pushing popamole to a new level, plus it's effectively a shittier RL(though RL is already underpowered in Q2) for which you tend to have much more ammo if you can score direct hits.
It also produces slightly less shitty grenade trajectories than throwing by hand.

It's good weapon against enemies you can't be arsed by, or against flyers if you want to hit them with the least practical weapon for lulz.

The SSG in Doom does this to some extent but it's spread and slow reloading time still allows the SG some minor use.

I strongly disagree - I used SG almost all the time in D2, but barely touched SSG apart from stuff like shooting pinkies point-blank in the face.
SG has noticeably greater RoF, and it has pretty tight spread in Doom1&2 making it useful even at quite long ranges.

I mean, that playing pop-a-mole is pointless because nothing is gained.
Cover is for separating enemies from each other, not for hiding behind it and popping up.

Everything is gained.
It takes player much less time to pop out, acquire target, shoot it and pop back in, than it takes the AI to stop running pointlessly and actually prepare its weapon to fire, allowing you to listen to enemy shooting walls while you wait for your RG/RL to be ready again. Even with MG or HB it's better to hide rather than absorb enemy fire, especially when you consider that they can fire short bursts.

SSG is better for charging an enemy and stunlocking them before they can react, which is also very cheap, because they won't really react in less than 3-5s.

Of course it can backfire because the second enemy can flank you in smaller rooms.

Can't. Too busy trying to flank self. We're speaking of Q2 AI here.

Also, regarding the AI, it's infuriating how enemy is cheating while crouching - their crouched hitbox is actually much lower than their crouched model, meaning that projectile hitting the model's head or even chest will just pass through. A lot of wasted shots, and it's not like it helps them in the end because they generally don't shoot while crouching, so you can take your sweet time learning to aim at their ankles.

You guys convinced me to reinstall both Quake 2 and Unreal. Good job.

 

[praetor]

Easy now.

Inspiration is pretty obvious, even though popping horrors with a RL does lessen them a lot.

Anyway, it's still better than Dante fucking Aligheri running around hell with fucking scythe.

what inspiration is obvious, except for the last boss' name as i already stated? there's exactly 0 creatures in Q1 that resemble anything even remotely approaching "lovecraftian". jesus, the assburgers of today... i can't say i'm surprised since you consider Q1 ST to be good or Unreal to be a good FPS

 

[Phelot]

We never had that; they'd only go nuts if they were already pissed off at each other. It would be a cool feature though.

Eh? I specifically remember getting killed and having the camera move around (I think it followed your killer?) and the enemies all going nuts killing one another.


Also, this happened in Marathon and was really fun to watch as well. Yeah, that's right, Bungie pays me to plug their games.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

I miss all the enemies going nuts and attacking each other after you die. Why can't we still have that?

I can still remember a level in the original Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter where six enemy types were frozen in place as a sort of museum. A Purlin (big mix of a dino and a gorilla), an alien commando, a Shaman, a Raptor with some cyborg shit attached to it, and two more I forget. Stepping on floor plates would bring them back to life and they'd attack. Time it right, and you could start this giant battle royale. Magic and plasma blasts and bodies (Purlin had a sweep attack) flying everywhere. Created a special save just to watch them go at it whenever I got back from school.

There was another level where you could lure a triceratops kitted with rocket launchers on its back to attack a small legion of heavy robots. This isn't counting the times you'd wander around a level and find Raptors randomly attacking mercs or the other wildlife. Things were fearless, and thinking about this has really made me miss the feature as well. Damn you.

 

[shihonage]

We never had that; they'd only go nuts if they were already pissed off at each other. It would be a cool feature though.

Eh? I specifically remember getting killed and having the camera move around (I think it followed your killer?) and the enemies all going nuts killing one another.

It happens because you were being shot, you died, the shot hit some other enemy, they threw fireball at the gunner, and so on and so forth.

 

[Phelot]

We never had that; they'd only go nuts if they were already pissed off at each other. It would be a cool feature though.

Eh? I specifically remember getting killed and having the camera move around (I think it followed your killer?) and the enemies all going nuts killing one another.

It happens because you were being shot, you died, the shot hit some other enemy, they threw fireball at the gunner, and so on and so forth.

Why are you trying to destroy my faith?

 

[shihonage]

Why are you trying to destroy my faith?

Hey man, who cares how it happened, if the end result was often the same? We're all just assburging about details here.

 

[Phelot]

Well... WE NEED MORE OF THAT

 

[Lord Rocket]

Well, yeah, that's a bit of a problem, although to a lesser degree than in Q1.

Not really; in Q1 there's the nailgun and it's super counterpart, but the other weapons still have pretty well defined niches. Hell, the SG is probably a more practical weapon than the SSG.
Oh and I listed the MG as a 'good' ranged weapon not because of it's accuraacy, but because of it's ability to conserve ammunition.

I strongly disagree - I used SG almost all the time in D2, but barely touched SSG apart from stuff like shooting pinkies point-blank in the face.
SG has noticeably greater RoF, and it has pretty tight spread in Doom1&2 making it useful even at quite long ranges.

Bro geez, L2P or whatever. SSG has much, much higher DPS; I checked the frame defs (I didn't count the refire frames as I couldn't remember if the weapon fired again before or after the frame was displayed) and did some retard level maths, and in 36 seconds the SSG will have output roughly 540 pellets compared to the SGs 329. If you're using the SG in any situation other than 'that guy's miles away and I'm out of bullets' you are doin it rong.

Anyway Shihonage I'm conceding to you about D2's monster spam, although I think you're wrong to dismiss a straight monster count as a metric - try playing maps 25 and 10 like I just did and see the difference. The D1 counts bear out your assertion as well.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS LOLLOL THIS SO CALLED DISCUSSION IS FUCKING RETARDED LET ME PARAPHRASE

HEY BRO QUAKE 2 SUCKS BECAUSE I SAID SO AND UNREAL IS GREAT

HEY BRO YOU ARE A LIAR UNREAL SUCKS AND QUAKE TOO IS FUN BECAUSE I SAID SO

BROS TAKE THIS TO GAMEFAGS LOLLOLLOLOL

BRO DRAQ YOU ARE THE SKYWAY OF THIS THREAD

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS THIS THREAD IS THE EPITOME OF CUNTY

 

[commie]

I don't see anything on that screen that hasn't aged well. Lines are still lines, points are still points, rectangles are still rectangles - it's not like there was some great technological advance that makes modern points and lines look much better.
And c64 palette is still great.

Well tell me how the forests of Europe and South Asia look. Not a tree in sight in Vietnam. How about the wireframe triange as a Hind? You seriously telling me that the 'Hind' in Gunship has aged well? It looks like shit even compared to a game from 1990 like LHX where you could tell what it was just by looking at it. In Gunship, without the text telling you, you couldn't be sure what it was.

LHX buried Gunship. That game looked so much better than Gunship and for one of the earliest times you could actually see that the objects looked like their real world counterparts and not have to rely on text.


I know what you're trying to say but no way has Gunship aged well in comparison to its competitors even a few years later. Games like EAW or Jane's USAF or Apache v Havok from 1998-99 still look and play like modern games more or less.

That's what I think of when I talk about things 'aging well'. That they can directly be transferred to the current era without much being lost. Gunship relies on much more personal nostalgia. I told you that as far back as 1995 people wouldn't touch SWOTL from 1991. Yet flight sim fans will play 12-14 year old sims even now.

Apache Longbow has a completely different graphics style, though. It doesn't have point-infantry and pyramid hills, for example. Similarly, in comparison to Apache Longbow, Enemy Engaged doesn't have untextured terrain and models with nice colours.

I'm not sure what your point is. Graphics are different because even then Gunships graphics were considered prehistoric. People moved on. Apache longbow has textured units though, and they were 3dfx accelerated in a patch. More to the point Apache Longbow is modern in look and weapon and avionics modeling. Sure it's a bit creaky now, but you can see that it's a modern game. Longbow 2 has helicopter models that look even better and only in detail are basically worse than those in a game like Ka-52 Black Shark. And that's a 14 year old game. Gunship was simplistic and primitive just a few years after it was released.

Again I'm not dissing the game, I like it even now, but from a technological standpoint it really hasn't aged well.

 

[DraQ]

Well, yeah, that's a bit of a problem, although to a lesser degree than in Q1.

Not really; in Q1 there's the nailgun and it's super counterpart, but the other weapons still have pretty well defined niches. Hell, the SG is probably a more practical weapon than the SSG.

Well, there are two pairs of weapons rendering each other redundant (SG, SSG and NG, SNG) and one of them (shotguns) is also collectively made almost redundant by everything else.

And I wouldn't consider SG more practical in Q1 as there are no enemies you can kill with it with a single shot and you can't fire it in bursts.

Oh and I listed the MG as a 'good' ranged weapon not because of it's accuraacy, but because of it's ability to conserve ammunition.

Well, you can control the amount of ammo used easily with MG, but it's still not as good as it would be if you could also persuade this ammo to hit the target.

Bro geez, L2P or whatever. SSG has much, much higher DPS; I checked the frame defs (I didn't count the refire frames as I couldn't remember if the weapon fired again before or after the frame was displayed) and did some retard level maths, and in 36 seconds the SSG will have output roughly 540 pellets compared to the SGs 329. If you're using the SG in any situation other than 'that guy's miles away and I'm out of bullets' you are doin it rong.

What good is DPS if >half of the damage dealt is wasted on walls? SSG has much bigger spread, due to code advancements it's spread is vertical as well as horizontal which means that portion of damage that would otherwise hit the target is wasted on floor and ceiling (if present) even if actors are infinitely tall, while SG's spread is horizontal only, ensuring that target or targets will always be hit unless the pellets spread too much to the side. SSG also has much more consistent spread, unlike SG which often shoots its pellets in much denser pattern that it does in the worst case scenario. Finally, there are many enemies with less than 1 shell worth of health and they tend to attack at range, while there are few enemies you can close distance to safely (was even more important in times when Doom was played vanilla, on KB only) that have between 1 and 2 shells worth of health (I can't think of anything but pinkies and spectres).

tl;dr:
Weak enemies -> SG>SSG
Any enemies at range -> SG>SSG
Hitscan enemies -> SG>SSG
Anything you can't casually walk up to and blast it in the face without risking repercussions -> SG>SSG
Low on ammo -> SG>SSG
Pinkies -> SSG>SG

BROS LOLLOL THIS SO CALLED DISCUSSION IS FUCKING RETARDED LET ME PARAPHRASE

HEY BRO QUAKE 2 SUCKS BECAUSE I SAID SO

No, you're fucking retarded.
I explained in detail why and how Quake 2 sucks in SP, based on facts* about its gameplay mechanics rather than opinions and supported by thorough testing, so no, not because I say so.

EITHER LRN 2 READ OR GTFO, BLO.

*) Yes "enemies can't harm you unless you suffer an epileptic attack in the middle of firefight" makes the gameplay objectively bad and that's a fact.

If that's just an opinion like any other, then so is saying that PS:T has better writing than Oblivion and codex should just embrace the "evolution" and enjoy the popamole instead of whining all the time about its "ugly", "obsolete" games.

 

[Roguey]

You know who loved Quake 2? Tim Cain, a developer infamous for having terrible taste and for making terrible games. All that needs to be said.

 

[Renegen]

Nostalgia

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Well tell me how the forests of Europe and South Asia look. Not a tree in sight in Vietnam. How about the wireframe triange as a Hind? You seriously telling me that the 'Hind' in Gunship has aged well? It looks like shit even compared to a game from 1990 like LHX where you could tell what it was just by looking at it. In Gunship, without the text telling you, you couldn't be sure what it was.

LHX buried Gunship. That game looked so much better than Gunship and for one of the earliest times you could actually see that the objects looked like their real world counterparts and not have to rely on text.


I know what you're trying to say but no way has Gunship aged well in comparison to its competitors even a few years later. Games like EAW or Jane's USAF or Apache v Havok from 1998-99 still look and play like modern games more or less.

That's what I think of when I talk about things 'aging well'. That they can directly be transferred to the current era without much being lost. Gunship relies on much more personal nostalgia. I told you that as far back as 1995 people wouldn't touch SWOTL from 1991. Yet flight sim fans will play 12-14 year old sims even now.

To be honest, I can't really relate to what you're talking about because I haven't experienced the 80s in gaming - I got my first computer - a C64 somewhere between 1992 and 1993.
The first time I played Gunship was after I have played many games on arcades which already had 256colour detailed sprites and stuff like that.
To me it simply looked different, exotic. Like I was suddenly thrown into some weird virtual reality. In that scale, I have found such looks very appealing, fascinating. I wish I could play it fullscreen now to be able to immerse myself in that strange environment.
As for nostalgia thing, my liking for these graphics is limited to Gunship and Project Stealth Fighter in C64 version - I haven't even played them much back then because I had them on cassettes with multiple rips. I like the PC version less as it has weird looking hills in different colours and I like the colours in general less and I like the Amiga version the least because I don't like the colours at all.
On the other hand, I dislike graphics in games like Spitfire '40 and F16 Combat Pilot which I also played back then.

Gunship was simplistic and primitive just a few years after it was released.

Again I'm not dissing the game, I like it even now, but from a technological standpoint it really hasn't aged well.

Gunship is simplistic and primitive, but at the same time it has the best attempt of flight model of these times with stuff like wind, having to turn on the engines and the rotor, ability to autorotate, etc. while at the same time not requiring to constantly struggle with analog stick, throttle and rudder just to keep the flight straight. Which is why I play it much more than the later helicopter simulations.

 

[shihonage]

You know who loved Quake 2? Tim Cain, a developer infamous for having terrible taste and for making terrible games. All that needs to be said.

That does it. Tim Cain and I are soulmates.

I think now people are trying to advance beyond just making a map and plopping down a couple monsters and saying "Ok, now I've got my first person shooter." I think people are ready to make something a little more complicated.

 

[DraQ]

You know who loved Quake 2? Tim Cain, a developer infamous for having terrible taste and for making terrible games. All that needs to be said.

That does it. Tim Cain and I are soulmates.

Both of you haven't figured a way to shoot Q2 GL without blowing yourselves up?

Maybe he just played it on multi after plowing through it once,so he didn't get to notice how retardedly easy this game is?
Because otherwise I just don't understand - how is sticky indestructible box so different from non-sticky indestructible corner if both result in the same kind of gameplay?
And how is this kind of gameplay anything else but purest decline?

I think now people are trying to advance beyond just making a map and plopping down a couple monsters and saying "Ok, now I've got my first person shooter." I think people are ready to make something a little more complicated.

And this I can salute.

 

[shihonage]

Both of you haven't figured a way to shoot Q2 GL without blowing yourselves up?

Maybe he just played it on multi after plowing through it once,so he didn't get to notice how retardedly easy this game is?

 

[lulurkinglurkerlurk]

I beat Q2 and meantime pope visits his country and my city...
So pope on the streets i can see him from my window,but fuck i prefer to watch ending cutscene with fist