History of FPS

Technology and Gaming
#41

Honestly I missed the Doom and Wolfenstein era by being totally hooked on console gaming at the time. I did game on the PC, but it was mainly adventure games since the ol’ 386 would have had a stroke trying to play Doom. It wasn’t until we finally got a PC with a whopping 266Mhz of gaming muscle that PC games all of a sudden caught my attention (I even had 3D acceleration, via an STB Riva 128 with 4mb). Age of Empires was probably the first PC game I got totally hooked on, but it was a friend I played that game with that told me about Half-Life. I’d played Quake before, and although I loved the SP experience, online was a real crapshoot on a 14.4 connection. Anyone who played the original Quake remembers the night-and-day different between Quake MP and HLMP; you could actually move around just like single player without iceskating from node to another, and if you could just keep your ping in the lower hundreds you could really enjoy the game.

Everyone that tried the game at my house got hooked, and we soon were playing HLDM on the lan probably every other day for two years with people taking turns out of groups of as many as 16 or so on the four computers we got together. The absolute most incredible feature of the game had to be modding. I made it a point to mod the game at least slightly every single week, sometimes with new player models, weapon models, sounds, or best of all new maps. The hilarity of finding out about these mods in-game really kept things interesting. Then interesting mods started to show up on the web- hundreds and hundreds of them; Sven Coop especially has almost certainly been played more in my house than any other mod or game. I was actually on the development team for Rocket Crowbar 2, which with Rocket Crowbar are still my favorite DM mods. I also released about 10 or so DM maps, including Moonside, Hacienda, Marblegarden, Inanis, and Carbaseus. I still think about doing some mapping or mod projects sometimes, but I’m afraid I might get burned out too easily since I work in PC gaming now (best job ever) :slight_smile:

#42

Started with Wolvenstein 3D on my dad’s computer. A little while later I got Doom and was totally hooked on it.
More FPS I’ve played: Wolvenstein 3D, Doom, Doom2, Hexen, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D, Turok (N64), Goldeneye (N64), Mortyr, Soldier of Fortune, Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Return to Castle Wolvenstein and many more…

I do and I loved it.

#43

The first ones I played were Wolfenstein 3d and DOOM, but the game that got me hooked on the genre was LucasArts’ Dark Forces (1995).

I played that game for hours. It really was a standout upon it’s release, though it ended up being overshadowed pretty quickly. After playing DOOM, the ability to duck, crawl, and jump in addition to looking up and down (like in Heretic) was a fun change.

#44

My first FPS was HL1 (at least that’s the first I remember playing) in 2004 (!), though I had already played tons of other games until then. I played it for 30 seconds, then I quit. I thought Black Mesa was a prison, and I was confused by the title. I though I only had 50 HP (hey, I was 7 and I could understand English only vaguely). So yeah, the story of a lifetime.

#45

Did the Riva have 3d Acceleration? I was in a similar situation, after mt 486, I had a P1 233 MMX with an Ati Rage Pro 2mb, and I had to add a Voodoo 2 for 3d acceleration (12mb)

#46

Rage Pro was a 3D accelerator, even though the OpenGL support was a bit flaky. You probably had to add a Voodoo for Glide support or for more VRAM.

#47

Win and /thread

#48

except Half Life was 1998…

#49

Yes, it had 3D acceleration (sort of), but it looked worse and ran slower than software mode, amazingly. Technically though, it could do it. The ONLY advantage was higher resolution (640x480 in D3D ran about as fast as 512x384 in software). 3D acceleration on a Riva 128 had pretty awful texture filters and coloring; I remember it practically being 8-bit color. Z-buffering was also not there yet, so you got big jagged cracks in between triangles that jiggled around when you moved. We actially left that computer in software mode for the longest time and just had to deal with running in 400x300, as higher resolutions got exponentially slower.

Another machine in the house had an ATI Rage LT 8mb, which was considerably faster, but had by far the worst looking texture filtering I have ever seen. I wish I had a screenshot to show, because if you stood more than about 4 feet from an HEV, it was reduced to 2x2 pixels of definition- flat shaded for all practical purposes. If you went underwater, god help you because you could only see the presence or absense of the water surface, all else was black.

Later came the Voodoo 2000, and all of a sudden badass 3D graphics were here. I immediately bought a 3000 and 3500 to soup up the other machines. It was amazing at the time to play on a 25" SDTV, as the blurriness screen was like free antialiasing in 640x480.

#50

My personal experience is along these lines:
Goldeneye
Shareware Doom
Duke 64
A few other games
Half-life
Half-life 2
Some modern games
Shareware Doom (again)
Shareware Wolfenstein
One or two more modern games
Perfect Dark.

I didn’t own all of those games (quite a few of the N64 games I’ve played over the years were borrowed) but what I do own, I enjoy thoroughly, and most of what I don’t, I wish I did.

#51

Unreal was the first FPS for me. I was always stopping playing on the first map, on that scene when you first see a Skaarj warrior - scene with the flashes of gun shots, screamming and a slow door opening.

EDIT: Always stopped and quit the game on that part. Too afraid to move on it.

Shogo: played and liked it. Unfortunately, I managed to damage the CD copy I bought from a PC Gamer magazine because the CD was adhered to the magazine with sticking plaster. I removed the CD too strong, and about 1/6 of the reading face of the CD dissapeared. The game, still, could be played.

EDIT 2: Also, the game F.E.A.R. has an easter egg - the intro music of Shogo. Here.

#52

My first FPS was, oddly enough, “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six.” Subsequent to that, the original “Ghost Recon.” I suppose that’s why I got more into the tactical shooter end of the FPS market, but GodDAMN were those games fucking hard. The first shooter I ever actually finished was Half Life 2. I think I had some Gamecube shooters at that point, but it was really just “007: Nightfire.” The Gamecube did get me into “Splinter Cell,” however.

#53

#54

^ So damn true, Jerry.

Games today are too point A to point B, not to mention the difficulty level only changes how many bullets the opponent can take. Basically, games today lost that amazing feeling you would get when you beat a game, cause it’s just so goddamn easy.

#55

^this is true.

I remember the Unreal final boss fight, just a giant monster know as “queen”, with 5 of almost each weapon the player had. Yeah, shooting her with the chamber shaking while explosions everywhere, plus spiders coming from every hole of that small room, where the fight was taking place.

No game today could get close to this.

The only thing that I found ironic is the alternative way of killing the boss. Instead you use the other 9 guns to do the job, if you didn’t lose any upgrade cell while playing, the dispersion pistol (the start gun, the most weak gun on the game) with all the 4 upgrades with the amplificator activated, had the power of killing the queen with one shot. A goddamn single shot.

#56

He didn’t say that’s when it came out, genius. That’s when he played it.

#57

Spot-on diagram. Accurately depicts why the average retard can beat a FPS nowadays.

#58

Ahhh ROTT, one of my favorite FPS’ of all time. Have actually been playing it in the past few months via ROTT PLAY (though you could just use DOSBOX too).

This. As mentioned above, too many games adjust difficulty by increasing damage you take and lowering damage you deal. I guess it’s a design “issue” to have, say, harder puzzles in harder difficulties, but SOMETHING else should change with difficulty. That’s why I like the MGS option where if you’re seen, it’s game over (minus scripted events).

My FPS history follows suit with many here (ROTT, Duke3D, DooM, UT, Blake Stone, Wolf3D, Half Life) and nowadays they just ain’t the same. I.e. Duke Forever is a joke (almost better as vaporware) and most new games don’t bring anything new to the table except graphics (though real-time physics in general were a big improvement, a la gravity gun or other physics puzzles).

#59

Consider the design ethos and methods of FPS design at the time. My current jaunt through Return to Castle Wolfenstein has a distinctively '90s feel to the level design- open, low detail, boring, and a confusing layout.

Compare to Call of Duty’s (The original, a contemporary of RTCW) mapping focus- tight pacing around scripted sequences. I personally find the latter to be more fun.

And why would the original Call of Duty be that easy? Have you played the Pegasus Bridge standoff? My fucking GOD that was a tough fight.

#60

Well that’s not exactly true. There are still plenty of games that have monolithic boss fights that are extremely similar. They just aren’t as notable because most of the AAA titles that everyone plays and is familiar with no longer subscribe to this, what many consider, archaic milestone. So in other words: a majority of the games that still do this suck.

Before someone flames me please don’t think I’m saying this is always the case. There are always exceptions to the rule.

You could? I remember how powerful that was… but I think it still took more than 1 shot with the Queen. Maybe you had it on easy :wink:

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.