Wirehead Studios

I recently bought Quake II again (my original copy vanished many years ago), and I love it. In fact, I like it more than Quake III. I played through it on Nightmare skill, and then I got a copy of the original Quake II Generations and I'm playing it again as the player from the first Quake (it's a bit harder playing as Quakeguy than as the Quake II marine, I assure you). I'm currently looking for the mission packs, but they go for a LOT more than the original game itself (I got Quake II for $3.08, and the mission packs cost about $25 apiece on Amazon).. It's even better with the new Quake2maX source port, even though Generations won't run with it.

If I knew where to the the gen for Q2 I'd play it as well. Always liked the look of that, but came here too late to see it. So did BAT.

Here you go.

http://www.fileplanet.com/files/10000/10395.shtml (http://www.fileplanet.com/files/10000/10395.shtml)

It's on Fileplanet, in the mods section for Quake II. I'd also try it as Doomguy, but the use key doesn't work on exit switches so I end up stuck in the first level.

EDIT: Pho beat me to the punch.

I tried the Q1 singleplayer campaign for Q2Gen, but it's exactly identical to the original Q1 in virtually every respect, so you're better off playing TomazQuake or some other Q1 source port.

You two have made my day. (acually my school being closed to kids made my day, I just sat around and did paperwork in the office) but I have been wanting to do this for ages, but thought Id had stopped it, and it was lost forever kind of thing. This is the second best thing of the day. :band:

Besides the expansion packs, are there any really good, long (at least a unit) single-player level sets for Quake II? I don't want TCs--there can be a couple of new weapons and monsters, but it still has to be Quake II.

Downloaded it and played it.  Now, is there a spidermastermind somewhere in it? I seem to remember a screenshot seeing one.

Woolie: there is a missionpack for Q2 called 'Juggernaut' which adds a new weapon, but otherwise is a singleplayer mission pack.  I've played it and quite enjoyed it.

I like telejano for Q1 myself, and BAT seems to play J-doom from time to time.

If I'm not mistaken, that mission pack got a -41 from Something Awful, and the screenshots (especially the Hyperblaster) turn me off. I frequently play JDoom and ZDoom, but I rarely play Q1 anymore. I don't recall ever playing a game that made less sense than the original Quake. A Space Marine who looks like a taller version of Gimli the Dwarf...with an AX?!?!

Something Awful is, for the most part, a joke site. I RARELY ever take them seriously.

Let's not discuss SomethingAwful here, as it is as it is named.

The Q1 episode is identical to Q1, except the ogres can actually aim vertically.  The draw of the original Gen was that you could play, say, Q1 or Q2's single player campaign as any of the other Generations.  The only problem is that the Doomuse command crashes on several buttons, so you have to save often and occasionally cheat to get past certain areas.  What you do if you really want to have some fun is play coop with one guy either Doom or Wolf, and the other guy either Q1 or Q2.  Let the Q1 or Q2 guy push all the buttons, and you concentrate on blowing stuff away and covering his back.  It's a blast!

I've also got some custom model pack reworks for the Doomguy's first-person guns, as well as an improvement to the player model if anyone's interested.

I still enjoyed it.

Don't slag Q1. it was my fav game for years, till about 2001, when I swopped to playing a lot of UT.

I like the black magic and mosters veres guns theame I suppose. (and the reaper bot for team deathmatch) :ownage:

I downloaded Doom Unleashed from Polycount. I tried out the weapon pack, but I removed it because Doom weapons aren't any fun if they don't behave like Doom weapons.

And I still think the weapons in Q1 were the worst of any big-name FPS I ever played. You had:
An ax (why an AX?!?!)
A shotgun that was almost worthless
A super shotgun that was rather unsatisfying to use (Doom got it right the first time)
A nailgun whose nails are weak and easily dodged (and why a nailgun? Modern military weapons fire bullets instead of sharp flechettes for a reason--a nail has around zero stopping power)
A super nailgun that is iike the normal gun except it runs out of ammo really fast
A grenade launcher that was pretty OK
A very Freudian rocket launcher that was an absolute death cannon (in the words of Iikka Keranen, "What do you mean, it's not a mechanical penis?")
A lightning gun that I reserved for taking out Shamblers and Vores because any other purposes were a waste of ammo

And there was way, way too much brown. Even the constant, inescapable, depressing grayness of Return to Castle Wolfenstein was more attractive.

to each his own and  :ownage:

No no, you misunderstand, although I am glad you tried out the model pack.  What I mean is I have an unreleased rework of the actual Gen Doom weapons for Gen itself.

Can I get a copy of these please? BAT is playing it a lot at the moment (last time I saw him, Monday nite) and I intend to give it a go when the winds die down. My father is driving up a new car for my mother (200 miles up the M1) in the 100 mile an hour winds to day, so I sould go and see him, before going to do the gig tonite, if I get any punters to come and see it.

I plan to do Q2 and mission packs if poss with Q1 weapons first.

Sure, download this file and put it in your Quake 2 "gen" folder.

http://www.planetquake.com/wirehead/phoeni.../genq2/pak8.pak (http://www.planetquake.com/wirehead/phoenix/genq2/pak8.pak)

As for the player model, if you like you can just backup your "doomguy" folder and copy "doomunls" and rename it to "doomguy" if you like the newer version of the model.

Discusson on the JDoom vs Gen Doom weapons, begun by Woolie, has been split to a better place.  Those looking for the discussion can click HERE. (http://forums.wireheadstudios.org/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=2307)

I definitely enjoyed the first Quake more than its sequel. Quake II was obviously superior in sheer graphical prowess, and I certainly enjoyed its deathmatch portion more, but I always thought that the style used was bland and generic. I could get the same basic story idea from the first level of Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. Quake however had an awesome setting and style to it, though how it could not when based upon the wonderful works of H.P. Lovecraft I don?t know. No doubt about it, singleplayer in the original Quake was far more interesting. Quake III? Hmmm, what is there to say about Quake III? It sucks and if it were not for Generations I wouldn?t even have it installed, nor would I ever play it for that matter. I have just as little hope for Quake IV as well, since Raven is doing it. Their last few games have been horrible, especially in the level design department.

Well everyone else has a Quake opinion, so I guess I should do the same.  Quake 1, to me, was utterly boring in comparison to Doom.  Sure, it was in 3D, but it was brown.  The shotguns were weak, the monsters were weak except fiends and shamblers (the latter of which I can kill with an axe), and the nailguns were absolutely pathetic.  And... after having the grand-daddy of all weapons, the BFG9000, all you got was that lightning gun?  Talk about a let-down.  Doom may have been more primitive, with its sprites and all, but to me it was infinitely more fun.  When everyone was playing Quake, I was still pounding the halls of Phobos.

On to the next chapter.  I lost my Spear of Destiny disks, and I really wanted to revisit Spear, so I was able to get ahold of a retail copy of Wolfenstein 3D that included Spear.  Also included was the Quake 2 demo.  Now at this point, I expected Quake 2 to be to Quake 1 what Doom 2 was to Doom, but out of curiosity I gave it a try, being a demo and all.  I was astounded, it was nothing like Quake 1, and I was well pleased.  The monsters were interesting, the music was actually music (unlike Quake's monotonous ambience), and the weapons were solid.  Instead of some brown netherworld, strange nailguns, and shotguns that were less than worthless, I was blasting cyborgs in an industrial complex with shotguns that actually HURT things, and then I found the chaingun...  I was hooked.  I bought Quake 2 almost immediately, and played it all the way through on an outdated machine at a choppy 320x200 software mode.  Since then, and the introduction and advancement of OpenGL, I've revisited both games numerous times, and I still cannot come to like Quake 1.

As for Quake 3 Arena, out of the box I don't care for it.  The engine is good, but it's just deathmatch against bots, and Q3 deathmatch online doesn't really appeal to me.  I never even bought the game until I was asked to work on Gen.  Gen, to me, is where it's at, and even if I weren't so heavily involved in the project it would probably be the only thing I'd play within the Q3 universe.

First off, I don't recall the Q2 demo ever having music.

Wolfenstein was addictive, fun, and colorful, but it never took itself seriously. It's hard to get into a game when the secret level has Pac-Man ghosts in it and the guards' German sound like a bunch of inept Americans trying to pronounce German phrases phonetically and the SS guards don't look at all like real SS.

Doom was great. It sucked the player in and never let go.  The pieces don't make much sense individually, but they blend into a wonderful and harmonious whole. The graphics are beautiful even now, the enemies are interesting and (at the time) original, and the first Doom in particular had excellent music.

The problem with Quake is that it's no fun. The 3D graphics were done before 3D models could look good (all of the monsters are atrocious-looking), there was too much brown, the weapons sucked (not even the RL was really any fun, at it looked like a metal penis to boot), the game had no immersion or believability (even the military bases look like castles!), the sounds were lame, the music was worse (Trent Reznor sucks, has always sucked, and will always suck), the fights were no fun at all (especially the fights involving those goddamn mothersporking tar babies that I HATE), and I never once really got into the game. It's easily the worst game Id ever made.

I've already given my opinion of Quake II.

Quake III was passable out of the box, but was painfully uncreative and broke no new ground (even the music was generic). However, so many mods and maps and models are available that there's really no point to playing the unmodified game when you can load up beautiful custom maps in Generations Arena or some other mod. Team Arena has a lot more flavor, but nobody plays Team Arena anymore.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein tried to fix Wolfenstein 3-D's flaws but threw the baby out with the bathwater. It went from cartoonish and silly in its graphics all the way to somewhat dull and drab (where Quake has too much brown, RTCW has too much gray), the guards now speak German-accented English instead of English-accented German (how hard is it to hire fluent German speakers?), the music is good but there's not enough of it, and the whole occult theme has been done to death a thousand times. Still, it's fun, and the multiplayer is fantastic.

Doom 3 is a case of a company trying just a little too hard. The graphics, of course, are beyond reproach, if your computer can handle a high detail setting. Everything is pin-sharp and exquisitely detailed. But it's all the same dark UAC corridors (it's the 22nd century and they can't build a decent flashlight or put tactical lights on the weapons? Even before the demon invasion it's way too dark) with demons that look more like space aliens than demon, and the sounds suck, and there's no music (sacrilege!). It's good, and in places terrifying, but it doesnt't quite draw you in like the original Doom games.

I could really care less about music, since I always turn it off in video games, however I can't help but express my love for Trent Reznor. I guess you guys have different tastes though, with your bland 80's metal *shrugs*

My metal is '60s and '70s.

Doom & Doom II's model is nothing short of fenomenal. And no matter how much people are going to bitch at Trent's Quake soundtrack, it gave the game a creepy atmosphere and it matched the game quite nicely.

By "model", do you mean its music style?

I was joking about the time period... Kind of a friendly jab, you know? ;)

Though really, I don't think you could classify the music of the 60s and 70s as "metal" per say. Still, I would agree that it's the best... Even if I do also like Reznor, hehe.

Aye, Quake's soundtrack does match the game, but I never really found it to be too creepy.

I think what appealed most to me about Doom and Doom II is that there was a lot of variety, and not all of it made sense.  Who cared if a "military base" was a bunch of stairs with slime pits?  Sometimes you'd be in a tech-ish looking facility, open a door, and the walls are completely RED.  You'd go from a fairly normal area to skin hanging on the walls and pentagrams in the floor, leaking pipes running blood into pools, what have you.  That "lack of logic" made more sense in what you would expect for a demonic invasion where the demons start bringing their own "reality" with them.  That reality did not NEED to make sense!  Then the weapons... everything from an asskicking shotgun to a high-explosive rocket launcher, then the energy weapons which were EXTREMELY destructive, and... a chainsaw?  I think some people bought the game just because of that reason alone!  Who didn't drool the first time they fired off the plasma rifle, or gasped as they cleared an entire room with one shot from the BFG9000?  The monsters ranged from possessed zombies to full-fledged demons that were actually TOUGH.  Anyone remember the first time they emptied 20 shotgun rounds into a Baron of Hell in the original Doom before dropping one?

Doom 3, from everything I've heard and what little I've seen in the demo, probably was Id "trying too hard" as Woolie suggests.  I think they wanted to try to mix Quake's atmosphere with Doom, and came out the worse for it.  I still hate the pattern on that damned shotgun!

I liked the Doom 3 shotgun. Worked wonders against zombies and imps.

Have you seen how wide that thing patterns?  A real shotgun doesn't spray lead anywhere near that wide, even with a cylinder bore.  I wish they would have kept the old single-shotty/double-shotty system instead of trying to pack both into one gun.  It's just a waste of ammo unless you're point blank.

Most fights in Doom 3 are point-blank.

That's not the point. The point is that the Doom 3 shotgun is 100% unrealistic. Pho is entirely correct when he says that no real shotgun patterns that way.

Led Zepplin started in the late 60's.

Quake I owned. I suppose you have to be a Lovecraft fan in order to understand its full potential, right Malchia?

Oh yes Lovecraft :thumb: He inspired many of my Ravenloft adventures for AD+D(slightly off topic) but does anybody know how too lock the mouse look on Q1?Having to push a button to look around is annoying.

bring down consol and type    +mlook      seems to work.  I'll bet there is a way to make it perminant, but I don't know it. this needs typing in each time Q1 is started.

You can make it permanent.  Go into QuakeID1, edit autoexec.cfg, put +mlook in the file.  That should do it.

Thanks Pho and Shambler for your help.Works great :thumb:

Just a note:

Which engine are you using for Quake 1?

Winquake is ok, but if you download Telejano, or Tenebrae (I prefer and use Telejano) it improves the graphics and such no end. You also get mouse look  and fog, and decent Water effects plus other things I'm too tired to remember. Give it a go.

To tell you the truth i'm not sure...I've had this program for a very long time and just recently broke it out again.I use GLquake to launch it if that's what your asking.Guess it has as many launchers as Doom.Oh well I prefer Q2 but Q1 is good for a quick romp.

 :offtopic: He has inspired so many great things, but rarely is anything actually based upon his mythologies. Quake and Eternal Darkness, for example, merely use brief references. The Call of Cthulhu video game should be out soon, based upon the wonderful pen&paper RPG (at least the older version I have is wonderful, I haven't tried the new rule set yet).

Really though, as cool as it would be to see a story actually set in Lovecraft?s multiverse, I think it might be counteractive in some ways, since Lovecraft?s ideology of fear is all concerning fear of the unknown. So in essence, merely basing one?s works off of his gives hints away as to what the large construct of the universe might be, while still retaining unknown and misunderstood elements.

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."  --H.P. Lovecraft ;)

I wish I could base them on his universe but I haven't.I'm a big fan of any horror writer.I use his style to scare the hell out of my players.Mostly the unknown...as you stated.Hard to explain but I think you get the picture.

I use Q2K4.

What is Q2K4?

This is Q2K4 (http://www.inovagames.com/q2k4/)