Quake III: Arena

by: Rick Myers

Consider this, right now there are four games of Q3Test starting every second, playing on around 1200 servers. Some would call me crazy for writing my first review based on id Software's newest cash cow. However, the trend in the gaming industry has (as we all know) in the past few years largely gravitated toward the first person shooter genre as well as generous advancements in 3-D graphics and animation. id Software and a small handful of others have consistently raised the bar in PC Gaming. That being said, let’s get to it.

When id Software made the startling announcement that it would be focusing its third Quake title solely on bringing the heart-pounding speed and carnage of deathmatch to the masses, thereby foregoing the traditional, story-driven single-player experience, I myself was amazed.

But then it all started to make sense. After reading numerous previews based on visits to id's Dallas offices to play Quake III: Arena (yes, I am jealous), I can tell you it was the right decision. By focusing primarily on delivering the best multiplayer shooter ever, id is putting its considerable programming muscle behind one of its greatest (and let’s not forget "popular") strengths: deathmatch. The single-player Quake experience might have been fun, but it pales in comparison to the game's multiplayer component.

Although the single-player purists will not be left out. On the contrary, a strong single-player game is key to id's strategy of making deathmatching accessible to all gamers, young and old. We just have a situation where instead of an empty storyline with a hero trudging through linear level after level, you will be competing in roughly 40 simulated deathmatches against AI-guided bots. An initial difficulty will be chosen at the start of the game and most players should cruise through the first few maps pretty quickly. As the solo player progresses, however, the carnage will grow more intense, as the bots adjust dynamically, scaling their abilities to give every player a real challenge.

So how does it look?
The first time I booted it up was on a TNT2-Ultra,and I must say, at first glance my initial reaction was "Wow." The graphic quality is instantly noticeable. Sure Half-Life, SIN, Unreal, etc. all used 16- and 24-bit color, but the quality of the images just don't seem to compare. id and company have done an excellent job of updating the Quake renderer. The texture quality, combined with superb rendering, as well as major advances in consumer 3-D hardware gives Quake III a look and feel all its own and yet somewhat familiar. If you've read through Carmack's previous .plan updates, and/or been to any of his speeches, you are probably familiar with the techniques he is using.

The short list of improvements are: 32-bit color, curved surfaces, volumetric fog, mirrors, and drastically higher poly counts in general (Although I do miss translucent water from the first Quake). All the bells and whistles in the world, however, won’t come to light unless there is a fast OpenGL card behind them.

Graphic cards are achieving faster clock speeds and frame rates just about every three months now (didn’t it used to be six?) They are also focusing on the higher end OpenGL1.1 extensions (1.2 should be interesting), which used to be limited to the higher-end workstation quality graphics. However, we will start to see these sorts of advancements within games to come. With this being the first implementation of Bezier curves that I am aware of, the screenshots literally do not do the geometry justice at high-quality settings. Once the game is released and the poly count increases tremendously due to the use of more curves, we will see where which 3d card shines the most.

The player models look excellent as you can see in screenshots; this is mostly due to 32-bit texture quality and rendering. I can’t forget higher poly count in the models, but even with low-poly models there are ways to make simple primitives look like masterpieces. Your point of view in Quake III is slightly higher off the ground making you feel taller than Quake II (although you can tweak virtually every part of the UI).

OK It's pretty, does that change the game?
But, let’s be honest, what really is the most important part of a game? Gameplay! It has to bring you up and slam you down, get your heart pounding and involve you in a world where one thing matters.... winning. As any fanatic deathmatch player will tell you it's all about the control, physics, weapons, and levels. So do any of these effects actually have an impact on the hard-core gameplayer? Just a few that I will mention are, the fog and mirrors.

A colleague of mine who spends time as a level designer emailed me a few maps he has been working on to try out for this article. In one of the more tourney-style maps, the level was clouded with fog. In a real-world scale my visibility couldn’t have been better than 10-15 feet. Even though, I could catch the silhouette of a player off in the distance. Suddenly, I wasn’t running around fragging away anymore. Audio became very important very quickly. Listening for other players footsteps and adjusting accordingly. I didn’t want to be snuck up on, but also was on the hunt. It gave a very eerie feel to the game, but that’s one thing I enjoy.

There were also times where I used the fog to literally duck under, which I must say is a lot of fun. Watching another player walk up to you and not even knowing it, then WHAM!

Mirrors were certainly interesting; if anyone reading this has ever seen Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, they know exactly what I mean. This element has more than a few possibilities to it, like watching an enemy without them knowing it (or vice-versa). How about mirrors being able to be destroyed, then regenerating? Okay, now that’s just me. A lot of people have seen or heard about the models "backflipping" when jumping backwards. One of the things you can see in the mirrors is that these direction-specific animations aren't just limited to that. Running backwards actually shows a backpedaling animation, and strafing looks much better also. No more "ice skating"!

One of the things that stood out (especially with the Quake Marine model) is "sliding feet." Not the same as what's mentioned before, this is the "moonwalking phenomenon" where the position of the feet do not match up with the floor for a single animation (such as running forwards). Note that this is bound to happen in development, as one of the things being constantly tweaked is player speed, adjust it by 5 percent and the feet will noticeably slip. From my understanding, this is history (and I don’t think anyone will miss it).

However, overall, yes, the graphics additions DO add to the overall fun and gameplay factor. The only thing in a consumer’s mind should be, "Can my box run it?" But, most of the individuals reading this article aren’t typical consumers, right? We will have to wait and see.

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