It's called Unreal...Because it is....

[DemonKing]

The only bit that stands out for me from the original Unreal was right at the beginning when you're looking down a corridor and the lights start to go out one at a time until finally the only thing you can see is a pair of demonic eyes at the end of the corridor. That freaked my little brother and I out when we started playing.

Unfortunately not much else from the game stood out after that. I guess the bots that let you play offline deathmatch were kind of fun for the time. I vastly preferred Half Life personally.

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

Even codex agrees that Unreal is better than quake. This is a surprise.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/quake-vs-unreal-tournament.147615/

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

Quake 3 and UT 99 were last great shooters. After 2000, it was decline for shooters.
Halo arrived and shot the FPS genre in the face.

I guess with the exception of CS1.6 ,Metroid Prime, perfect dark, and stalker

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Awesome game back then. It made me hopeful for the future... Then 2010s began.

You mean the 2000s.

 

[Morenatsu.]

half-life 2 deathmatch was pure incline i dont know what youre talking about

 

[soulburner]

I love both Quake and Unreal as they were the best 3D shooters I have ever played - both in terms of visuals and gameplay. I also love their development history - how they both started as completely different games and both evolved independently into a weird mix of sci-fi and medieval. I also think if you weren't there in 1996 - 1998, playing those games at 11 frames per second and yet still trying to find your dropped jaw under the desk, you cannot appreciate them to the fullest.

The Unreal engine was superior to id Tech at the time in almost every way and it was great we no longer had to rely on John Carmack alone to push 3D rendering technology forward.

I recall Carmack said once he never really cared about licensing the engine to other companies. He wanted to keep id Software small and didn't want to redirect resources to offer support for other developers (you payed the license fee, got the source code on CD and you're on your own). Epic, on the other hand, saw it as a business oportunity to offer the engine as a fully supported product. In the early years companies licensing id Tech were already familiar with all the intricacies and command line tools because most developers came from the modding community, but there came a moment where a fully fledged, developer friendly enviromnent was the better choice, thus Unreal Engine ultimately "won".

 

[ghardy]

Why isn't this on Steam?

 

[Eirinjas]

Why isn't this on Steam?

They used to be, but all of the Unreal games are sold on Epic Games Store now.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Why isn't this on Steam?

They used to be, but all of the Unreal games are sold on Epic Games Store now.

Wow, good that I still have the GOG installers.

Altho GOG still has some Unreal games that may be worth playing

https://af.gog.com/en/game/unreal_lust_theory?as=1649904300

 

[NecroLord]

Really?
They delisted Unreal?
Edit: Checked it right now and it seems to be true.
Good thing I already have 'em installed.

 

[randir14]

Why isn't this on Steam?

The only way to get it now is buying a key (either Unreal Gold or Unreal Deal Pack) but the grey market sites are charging a huge markup for them.

 

[NecroLord]

I love both Quake and Unreal as they were the best 3D shooters I have ever played - both in terms of visuals and gameplay. I also love their development history - how they both started as completely different games and both evolved independently into a weird mix of sci-fi and medieval. I also think if you weren't there in 1996 - 1998, playing those games at 11 frames per second and yet still trying to find your dropped jaw under the desk, you cannot appreciate them to the fullest.

The Unreal engine was superior to id Tech at the time in almost every way and it was great we no longer had to rely on John Carmack alone to push 3D rendering technology forward.

I recall Carmack said once he never really cared about licensing the engine to other companies. He wanted to keep id Software small and didn't want to redirect resources to offer support for other developers (you payed the license fee, got the source code on CD and you're on your own). Epic, on the other hand, saw it as a business oportunity to offer the engine as a fully supported product. In the early years companies licensing id Tech were already familiar with all the intricacies and command line tools because most developers came from the modding community, but there came a moment where a fully fledged, developer friendly enviromnent was the better choice, thus Unreal Engine ultimately "won".

Unreal Engine has become quite ubiquitous.
I heard even the US military uses it.

 

[ghardy]

I find FPS engine history fascinating. Some of the "what if" questions are:

• What if the Build engine had better and easier modding support from the start?
• What if the id tech series had not been open-sourced?
• What if Unreal were open-sourced?
• What if the Dark engine were used more widely?

It is commendable what Valve managed to do starting with the Quake engine to create Source and then Source 2.

Not to mention Monolith's Lithtech. (Though, personally, I've just played F.E.A.R.)

 

[MasterofThunder]

I find FPS engine history fascinating. Some of the "what if" questions are:

• What if the Build engine had better and easier modding support from the start?
• What if the id tech series had not been open-sourced?
• What if Unreal were open-sourced?
• What if the Dark engine were used more widely?

It is commendable what Valve managed to do starting with the Quake engine to create Source and then Source 2.

Not to mention Monolith's Lithtech. (Though, personally, I've just played F.E.A.R.)

I wish Valve would license Source under the GPL. Despite how much support they've given GNU/Linux, their own software has yet to be opened up whatsoever. And now that the original Source is largely dead, it's not like it's relevant and would undermine their commercial projects in any way. John Carmack had a wise policy to GPL everything he did after a few years.