Closed door in the river of the slipgate complex

[Mugwump]

On shooting walls: I usually prefer axing them instead whenever possible, it saves ammo. The id1 maps are never tight on ammo (except maybe on skill 3, dunno, I never play nightmare) but in some custom maps it becomes vital. Plus, you gotta find a use for that axe, dontcha?

Boris, just out of curiosity, what's your story? I mean how did you come to Quake?

[MadGypsy]

I fight tarbabys with the axe.
















I am lying

[Mugwump]

@tarbabies That comment just made my day!

[boristhesp1der]

How I came to Quake? Buckle up, you asked for it...

I think it had to do with two different things.

For one, I've been a big fan of valve games for a long time. I think I started out with Team Fortress 2, and then I eventually moved on to Counter-Strike and Portal. Eventually I got wind of Half-Life 2 aswell, and was completely blown away by how good it was. Mind you, that was not shortly after its release, but only a few years ago. Despite being pretty dated it somehow overshined every other modern game I had played up until that point. I fell in love with the source engine and started fiddling with content creation tools like gmod and hammer, and even made some maps for Team Fortress and Counter-Strike. Suddenly games were something much more meaningful. Not just something to be played, but also a tool to create. Whole stories, landscapes, sometimes even just little setpieces that sprung to my mind. I always sucked at drawing stuff, and this was a way for someone like me to actually bring ideas inside my head to life. I don't think I ever fully enjoyed games that lack this aspect again after that.

So in search of more cool stuff I kept going down the rabbit hole that was HL2 and the Source Engine, leading me to discover its predecessor. A game as old as myself. The only game older than that I had ever played at that point is the second reason I stumbled upon Quake.

My father isn't much of a gamer, but there was this one thing he played for a while in his college years, and he showed it to me running on an old windows 3.1 machine from a floppy disk when I was less than 6 years old. Commander Keen is still one of my all-time favorite games, and I don't think thats just because it was the first game I ever played. There's just something about how well everything is done, from the beautiful sprites made my Adrian Carmack to the amazing world created by Tom Hall and John Romero, all held together by rock-solid programming from John Carmack. I was pretty obsessed with those games at the time, I even built myself Billy's Neural Stunner and Computer Wrist from legos to go along with my makeshift Commander Keen outfit.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go check out Commander Keen some time. It was pretty much the first game released by id before Wolfenstein and Doom, becoming a series of seven games over the course of only two years.

Anyways, thats how I found out about the existence of id software. I played numerous id titles in recent years, old and new. At one point I had even played their oldest and newest game right after the release of Rage, but I never heard of Quake until only very recently.

As I was saying, I got into the first Half-Life when I had seen pretty much everything the Source engine had to offer. GoldSrc felt kind of weird to me after being used to source for so long, so I had kind of a rocky start with the game. Everything looked even more dated, and while that might have bothered me on the first few chapters I eventually really got into the game. At that point I started seeing something in it I had never seen before in any other game, not even HL2. I can't really explain it very well, but it just started feeling more real than it should. It has to do with how you are no longer being treated like the second coming of Jesus like you were in HL2, but rather just a regular old scientist running late to work. Its generally simpler in many aspects, which allows it to be something I could enjoy for far longer than HL2. It feels different to play since it still has a stronger influence from classic FPS titles, especially quake since that is the game engine it was derived from.

After the countless time I played through Half-Life, I eventually moved on to the many other games running on GoldSrc. The original Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, Day of Defeat, Ricochet, and one more I only discovered very recently.

I bought the Half-Life Complete Pack or something like that some years back on Steam when it was on sale. That includes not only Half-Life 1 and 2, but also every offical mod released on the GoldSrc engine. I thought I played them all years ago, but only a few weeks ago I stumbled on something called "Deathmatch Classic". I never noticed it as it wasn't listed near the Half-Life games, and since my Steam library is pretty big its easy for something like this to go unnoticed. In case you never heard of it, its basically a GoldSrc port of Quake's Multiplayer, a loveletter to the game by the developers of Half-Life. Everything looks very different from Quake, but the gameplay is actually kept very faithful. The weapon roster is exactly the same, only with one visual change exchanging the axe for a crowbar. Even the maps are very close recreations, including moving walls, shootable buttons, different armor types, superhealth, and even variants of Quad Damage & Co reimagined as spinning lambda logos.

Of course I didn't know any of that at the time of my discovery, but I enjoyed that mod far more than any of the other ones. I didn't really find anyone playing it online, and so I forced my little brother to play it over LAN with me for a while. I got hooked immediately but he didn't care much for it, and so I did a little research online and decided to check out the game it was apparently based upon, a 1996 game from id called "Quake". I was pretty much sold the moment I saw the the boxart, and I still cant get over just how damn good it looks.

And that's it, here I am now enjoying the fuck out of an FPS from 96 when I thought I already had all the fun there was to be had in shooting monsters. It takes something very special to make something you have played so much new and exciting again, and pretty much every recent FPS release had led me to believe I had simply exhausted all the fun in that genre.

I am very glad Quake has proven me wrong.

[Mugwump]

Wow, that was extensive!

So you played a lot of id games but never heard about their masterpiece? Huh... That's odd, especially considering they made 3 more games sharing that name (if little else). Yeah, I've heard about Commander Keen but I never played it. The style just didn't appeal to me, just like I never played the 2D Duke games.

I hope you're playing Quake with Nine Inch Nails' awesome soundtrack. If not, go fetch it here: High Quality Music Packs. It would be a shame not to discover it in all its glory. I don't usually use music in FPS's but this dark ambient soundtrack greatly enhances Quake's atmosphere.

When you're done with the game and its mission packs, if you need advice for custom maps and mods, feel free to ask.

Happy fragging!

PS: About Half-Life, have you played Black Mesa? It's an awesome remake of the first game in Source engine (no, not Half-Life: Source) made a few years ago by a fan. There are a few levels from the original game missing, notably the Xen part, but you can find them on ModDB.

[boristhesp1der]

Yeah I'm playing with the soundtrack, but just the regular one you can get from quaddicted. I'll give those high-quality ones a try.

And of course I've played Black Mesa, but unfortunately I can't play it anymore as my old Laptop just isn't powerful enough. I used to have a pretty neat gaming machine when I was younger, but since I mostly play older games and less demanding indie releases (Stuff like Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, Spelunky) these days, I gave my rig to my younger brother. So no more Black Mesa for me.

By the way, I have another somewhat topic-related question for you guys. I'm replaying every level in the Dimension of the Doomed right now, trying to get every kill, uncover every secret, and find every hidden level portal. I'm stuck at Gloom Keep right now, I just can't find the fifth secret. So far I've found the hidden cave in the water, the little tower with armor on top of it, the two-sided portal the the roof, and the hidden door right next to the exit portal. I even found a weird little glitch: If you manage to rocketjump on top of the rotated rune blocks of the exit portal you can actually get on top if it, where you will be teleported to exact place the portal behind the hidden door leads you aswell. Doesn't count as the fifth secret though.

I'm out of ideas at this point, I'm sure I've hit every wall, tried to get through every window and looked just about everywhere there is to look. I've even managed to not activate the lift that takes you to the shambler fight by jumping through the portal in such a way that you barely miss the button, but that room is just a dead end with nothing to do but to press it anyways.

A litle hint to get me on the right track would be much appreciated.

[Mugwump]

Ah, yes. This one is a tricky bitch. There's a certain torch that you need to headbutt (place yourself under it and jump)...

I once stumbled upon a very useful little web page: Quake: The Secrets.
It is totally spoilery instead of giving hints but I'm not ashamed to admit I used it more than once...

[boristhesp1der]

Dammit, it even had little rails over it, how did I not see that? Thanks for the heads up, probably wouldnt have found it myself...

[Mugwump]

You're welcome.

[Dutch]

I didn't know about the hidden teleport above the runegate at the end of gloom keep...20 years later and still learning stuff lol.

Keep in mind for later levels that rotfish monsters are counted twice in the monster count, meaning that any level with fish is impossible to get a 100% kill score (you can kill everything of course, but the score will not reflect this).

[Mugwump]

There is a fix for the rotfish bug. Dutch, have you forgotten your posts here?

[gulliver-trans]

Who knew this would be such a popular thread?

[Baker]

Boris -- the hardest secret of them all is opening the entrance to Ziggurat Vertigo.

I suspect 99% of even experienced players don't know how to do it.

You have to be hard core to know how to access ALL the secret levels.

In addition, there are 3 other secret levels. But Ziggurat Vertigo is the hardest one to access.

[Mugwump]

the hardest secret of them all is opening the entrance to Ziggurat Vertigo.

I found it on my first playthrough, though it did take me some roaming. I had much more trouble with the entrance to The Nameless City.

[Dutch]

Nah I didn't forget. I just assemed boris is playing the original quake without modifications.