DF Retro: Quake 2 - The Legacy And The Ports!
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- Опубликовано: 13 май 2017
- John dives into id Software's 1997 classic Quake II. With its cutting edge technology, Quake II furthered id's domination of the PC. Against expectations, a pair of talented development studios managed to bring Quake II to console owners of that era. We're looking at each official port of Quake II while breaking down what makes each one so impressive.
Special thanks to @feinripp for providing 3DFX Voodoo capture for this video
Sources:
Zeebo Footage - • [ZeePlay] Quake II
Electronic Playground footage taken from Episodes 12 and 13 - • Video
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Игры
The "warping" of the meshes talked about at 8:30 was not because of an animation technique. It was because the MD2 format used for the models in Quake 2 stored the coordinates of each vertex as 3 bytes (X, Y, Z). A single byte can only store 255 different values. So the warping is because of tremendous lack of precision of vertex positions, not because the animators did a lousy job.
This needs to be higher up, I came here to say just this and you've already said :)
ZimM He never said they did a lousy job.
3 bytes doesn't make 0-255
Thats 8 bits variables
Nevermind i am a boffon
I weny to comments to write the same info. It is the md2 limitation.
*I remember buying Quake 2 N64 and we had so much fun in 4 player deathmatch. Man those moments were so intense and funny!! ✅😀*
Wasn't that a 2 player only version of deathmatch on 64? Still fun as hell though :)
Q1 had 2 player only, my bad :p
Quake 3 in the 4 players, Quake 4 is 1 player
20 years ago "console port" had very different meaning than it has now.
Anton Kirilenko Really? How could “A PC game but modified to run on a console” change meaning?
He means "A console game modified to run on PC".
A very sad time we live in indeed.
Just Another RUclips Channel , because the meaning has flipped. Well technically it's that people use the terms incorrectly because they use the terms console port and PCport interchangeably.
Robert T That’s true.
As others have mentioned, there is something wrong with the Voodoo Graphics capture. My guess it's running on the latest drivers which switched out the MiniGL driver to a OpenGL ICD driver. This was done to increase compatibility with later OpenGL games, but it hurt performance on older ones which had custom made MiniGL drivers, like Quake2. I did a 640x480 benchmark on a Pentium MMX 233, 64MB RAM, ASUS VX97, Creative AWE64 Gold with a Orchid Righteous 3DFX card using 1997 drivers and the MiniGL which shipped with the game. With that setup I got on average 21 FPS. I also replayed the section shown in the video. It never got down to 9-10 FPS.
I thought something was off with that. I have a ThinkPad 380XD from 1997 that plays Quake in Software no problem. So I was suspicious to see a PC capture with a faster processor and a dedicated 3D card playing Quake II so poorly.
Love the positive comments in these Retro videos. Most of the regular content is filled with trolling and negativity but everyone is cool here!
or guys like me that want to know about oldschool games that I believe it is sad that I missed because I started gaming with console gaming 15 years ago
You really did miss out, Quake II was the bomb. Damn, I played Q2 and Q3 for years and years
Still actually have the game on my laptop too! Though I can't get the music because I don't have a CD drive any more...
I am waiting for the steam sale so I buy quake 2 and 3, and Unreal tournament just so I can at least experience those games, and also patiently wait for when Unreal tournament (the new one that epic is testing on their client) to see if it is worth it
Let me troll you around a bit with negativity. Look into MD2 file description, notice something? Look at struct md2_vertex_t. And then you tell me where the wobble comes from. Shouldn't take you more than a few seconds. It's not because of animators hand shifting the vertices - first, they they likely had rigging available, and second, they're much better at this than you'd think, e.g. by selecting vertices in groups. It's specifically the interaction of 8-bit packed coordinates and morph blending that gives it this super wobbly look - had there been no blending, the vertices snapping into new position would have largely hid the issue.
I think it's largely due to the age differential of viewers who watch your retro videos compared with the viewers who watch the other DF videos! So cringeworthy to read their comments.
Holy smokes! The PlayStation version looks and feels so good!
Another fantastic episode, John. Congrats on 1 year! This is still one of my favorite series on all of RUclips.
Seriously?
@@AlphaZeroX96 1996 says it all quake 2 is more legend/better than all these garbage games now, far more skill based multiplayer than some dogshit game now.
"Quake 2 remains an important and legendary game."
YES! Thank you! So many people seem to think Quake 2 was the worst of the Quake games but for me it was always the best! Glad to see there are others who appreciate the game :)
I wholeheartedly agree, Q2's setting, story and design are much more compelling than the original game. Also, the hub system provides a more coherent game structure as opposed to disjointed thematic levels. I'm not taking into consideration Q3 because it's totally aimed at multiplayer, and Q4 is basically a fancy reboot of Q2, so it's clear where my preference lies.
Believe me, Quake 2 is still today very very fun and much better FPS than many modern games. Great graphics, atmosphere, story, music, gameplay, physics, enemies, weapons, puzzles, blood, effects, etc, all on this game works very fine!
The worst Quake is either 4, Enemy Territory or Champions, but not 2.
Quake 3 is obviously the worst. It doesn't even have a campaign, so it's worthless 🖕🏻 The least interesting Quake game and an absolute write off. A hollow, soulless experience. Then comes Quake 4, because it's just inferior to 1 and 2. And it feels depressing, compared to Quake 1 and 2, which make you smile.
@@Amadeus_Eisenberg I wholeheartedly agree.
DAT SOUNDTRACK!!!
alucard0712 Sonic Mayhem did a great soundtrack for this game.
Artorias didn't Sonic Mayhem do one of the Quake 3 soundtracks?
I always prefer Aubrey Hodges' moodier, more ambient scores for Doom and Quake I & II.
@@kdkseven I also like N64 soundtrack more for Quake 2, it gives some dystopian cyberpunk vibes wich fits strogg theme. Also it sounds a bit alike NIN's Quake 1 soundtrack.
I have some great memories of playing 4-player Quake 2 on the PlayStation with some friends!! I used the control method where the left stick aimed and turned, and the face buttons were used for movement and strafing.
R1 and L1 to move cursor
UP and Down. Right analog was bad for precise aiming. Buttons were way better.
@@psdmaniac
I found the analog aiming pretty decent on PS1(using a PS2 controller), if I remember right. But on PS3 backwards compatibility with PS3 controller it's simply atrocious.
I used to use the dpad back in the day and really struggle, with shoulder buttons to strafe and look and down.
Now I use the right stick to look and the dpad to move. It's almost like playing a modern console shooter. Much, much better.
Hammerhead made some very smart decisions on the PS port, really clever approaches that worked really nicely.
Wow! I never realized the N64 port was a Quake 1 engine game, that makes it way more interesting imo.
Engine does not matters, it's completely not Q2, just it. Now i also want to take a look at it. Completely different levels - #1
Pretty interesting that it's Quake 2 on the Quake 1 engine with new levels. Reminds me of Duke Nukem and Quake 1 on the Powerslave engine.
But that's isnt Quake1 either. By the engine. Q1@N64 uses own engine, even when really closer by levels compared to Q2 that offers completely different levels.
Didn't know Quake 1 on N64 wasn't the Quake engine, always figured it was a slightly modified Quake 1 engine.
Quake 64 Engine, not id Tech 1. id Tech 1 Q2 would probably be a disaster, but the N64 version looks like a complete sidegrade (awkward controller notwithstanding).
I'm glad I have the quake 2 disc for xbox 360, really good port.
If there was ever a golden age of gaming, then the 90's was it!
Even someone in their early 20's have to admit the 90's was a hell of a lot more exciting. I mean, in the span of 10 years we went from the crude 2D of something like Metroid on the NES, to getting fully 3D accelerated titles such as this. Go back 10 years from now and you end up at games like Oblivion, Mass Effect, and Crysis, which honestly don't feel that much different from the stuff released today.
Exactly! I blame consoles. Mainly the X360 and PS3 and later Xone and PS4. Two console generations in a row pure shit. This wouldn't be a problem if developers made still games for PC and then ported them to consoles in the best way the see fit.
It's all because of the weak consoles that are holding the gaming industry back, if PC gaming was leading the industry and not consoles, we would've had games like that Watch Dogs E3 2012 Demo in 2014 and that Division E3 2013 that said that it was running on a regular PS4 by Digital Foundry (Bullshit), we would've had these graphics in 2013 or 2014.
Did you see what Nvidia showed 3 days ago? They showed a tech demo on a VOLTA GPU, and that GPU is coming in early 2018 (maybe It'll be called GTX 1180), they showed a CGI scene from FFXV's KIngsglaive CGI movie running in real time on a potential consumer level VOLTA GPU, that shit was FUCKING IMPRESSIVE!!
But hey, It's not just consoles that hold back the industry, It's that most people EVEN on the PC side don't have those highend GFX cards like GTX 1070 or 1080, or even a GTX 1060, most of them have lower I guess.
And to make it even more F'd up, is the industry's move to 4K gaming, that's using almost all of High-end GPU powers up, even with the GTX 1080 Ti, couldn't handle all games at 4K/60fps MAX, It dipped in games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and The Witcher 3, sooo.....it's not just consoles, It's more than that.
Maybe 2019 or 2020, when the PS5/XB2 launch we'll get a BIG graphical jump, a BIG LEAP, hopefully devs will start utilizing the new graphical features that can't be done on consoles today like SVOGI and others.
It was the golden age in multiplayer online gaming. I remember there was a site called MSN gaming where it was a precursor to steam. It had lobby system, chat system, and community section. We were able to match up and all we needed was one click of the button to play together. Looking back, it's amazing that we even had this system in place already.
on the bright side pc gaming is in a renaissance of sorts compared to the dark days of the 360 and ps3. Star citizen will be a graphical powerhouse
I don't know man, even with my i7, 16 GB DDR4, and a $240 card, the GTX 1060 6GB I can't max out all these high end games at 1080p with maximum settings at 60 fps consistently. The GTX 1070 at $380 can just about do it but even then it can run into some resistance. How demanding and advanced do you want these games to be? The Scorpio, AMD Vega, and Nvidia Volta might shake things up a bit.
I know some people out there have unlimited funds and the GTX 1080 Ti but most of us don't.
A developer is welcome to develop a PC exclusive game that is highly demanding. Nothing is stopping them. Like with Quake Champions. I just wonder how many of us have the hardware for it.
I always wondered why the polygons rippled like that in Quake 2 engine games, now i know!
BTW, it was a long time... Rippling of polygons was ALWAYS in PS1 GTE(aka PS1 polygon jitter) and in 99% of PS1 3D games.
John Freeman you're thinking of the warping polygon problem that the PlayStation had.
The MD2 mesh format used by Quake 2 also compresses vertex data to decrease file sizes and memory usage. The vertices are stored with a single 8-bit signed byte per coordinate, meaning there are only 256 possible positions for a vertex per axis within the mesh's bounding box. That's a fairly low resolution and causes the vertices to visibly "snap" between positions. Combined with animation interpolation, that creates the wavy ripply look.
On the PS1 it's different. Polygon data is sent from the CPU to the GPU in pixel coordinates, without any depth information. The GPU basically only knows how to draw textured 2D triangles on exact screen pixel positions; the CPU has to do all the maths to transform 3D polygons to 2D screen triangles and sends that data to the GPU. The result of this is that vertices will snap from one screen pixel to the next (causing the jittery polygons), and the GPU does not have the required depth information to do proper perspective correct texture mapping (causing the texture warping effect).
decayedmatter interestingly enough the quake 3 engine still animates in the same manner but the raw increase in polygon count makes the effect far less noticible.
Quake 3 also uses 16-bit signed integers to store its vertex data, which is a lot more precise than what Quake 2 had.
Since I am in my late 30s DF Retro are probably some of my favorite nostalgia trips I can take. I have always been a gamer and I can remember playing or trying to play (gaming pc's in the 90s cost a fortune) so many of the games they feature. This is a great series. Keep it going!
That little texture warping in the game was one of those quirks I love.
My word, watching these videos make me feel so privileged and honored to have grown up in the age of greatness where games like Quake 1, 2 and 3 defined what PC gaming means to me today. The 90's for PC gaming were truly classic. How I miss magazines like Computer Gaming World. I still have 2 copies of said magazine, I never read them as I was too young back then, I would simply just page through them to check out the 3Dfx cards and adverts of upcoming games. Good times !
To think that running this game smoothly now only takes a New 3DS
Man,the nostalgia of drooling over "Prepared for Quake 2" PCs on my neighborhood computer stores...
I loved playing Quake 2 on the PS1. When I finally got hold of the PC version, I fell in love with that version.
From a gaming standpoint, Quake 2 has always been my benchmark. It felt great to play, and is one of the purest forms of first person gaming. Only Doom in recent years has given me the same feeling.
I completely agree with you there buddy playing Quake II on Playstation was a mindblowing game for the time and I still remember the Playstation port of Doom and Doom II (Final Doom) which absolutely loved and adored. It really is remarkable how these games thrived by a passionate modding community that really keep these games at the front and center of how a game should be.
Wogle Same here. I didn't get into PC gaming til 2001, and since I didn't get a PS1 til a couple of years into its life, I missed the Doom console conversions. Quake2 was my first Id FPS and it felt glorious. That super shotgun is just a thing of beauty.
Quake2 was a game I strangely have memories of playing with different groups of people which I don't have with other games of the time. My cousin on his PS1 around 99, then when in college I had a copy of the installation folder on a CD which I passed around, allowing us to death match in practical/lab classes. In the preonline gaming world of dialup internet that was a huge thing! Then playing a modded version of it with a buddy on a LAN. It is one of those milestone games.
half life was not bad either
Quake 1 is more exciting
The opposite for me, hehe. My first experience of Quake 2 was on PC. But I fell in love with the PS1 version and got that.
That PS1 port looks very noteworthy. I remember a lot of PS1 games becoming very dated looking as time passed by but it seems to look very pretty. Congrats on a year of episodes, can't wait to see what else you've got in store for DFRetro :D
A huge amount of work has gone into this video and I hope it is appreciated. So many memories. Excellent job DF :)
I absolutely love these dives into gaming history. Am so glad we have dedicated people like yourself keeping the history alive!
Also John, I don't know if you noticed but the N64 version of Quake 2 took levels from the PC versions mission packs and re-worked them around. A majority of the levels on the N64 come from the expansions.
This is SO cool! I remember downloading the demo and testing it out on my dads newly purchased Voodoo card. It blew my mind that the light would follow the blaster shot.
This is extremely in-depth and the sheer amount of research and old-school authenticity is really commendable. Keep it up!
9:30 Voodoo 2
10:80 Voodoo Rush
10:50 Voodoo 5
12:10 Two developers port Quake 2
"THIS IS QUAKE II - what are you gonna do about it?"
Uhm.. I don't know. I mean, like .. I don't even .. what?
I love those cheesy old magazines. Ha ha
GTX 1080 DESTROYS Scorpio!!
Uh .. okay. Cool.
I know what i did about it.
I played the fuck out of it until i beat it. Then i went back for more. Kinda sad i never got to play the MP but our family didn't have good internet at the time so i didn't get the chance. Oh well, such is life in the zone!
And in 2019: Real time raytracing!
And in 2023: Raster Remaster! Without RT.
Ray Tracing is a gimmick
This is by far the best retro series on RUclips. Keep up the good work 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👊🏼
Was lucky enough to experience Quake II and Unreal both in software and then running on the glorious Diamond Monster 3D II and it's dizzing 12MB (not KB, *MB*) of VRAM. The change blew me away and that was the end of my short life as a console gamer. Some 24 years ago. All hail the Carmack!
Can't understand how it would lag that much on a machine that fast.. you could have it running quite nicely on a P1 166-200 mhz with a 3dfx card
A terrific video, thank you!
Dude, thank you for these videos. They really are a cut above most RUclips gaming content, and I really appreciate them :)
All the feels. Great episode. I remember seeing my friend play this on PC back in the day and being so impressed. I was thrilled when it came out on Playstation. The PSone version was so impressive. I loved it so much and had many hours of fun with the splitscreen multiplayer.
I have quake II for the N64 and I love it.
I have the 360 version
You must have done something very wrong with that 350mhz+voodoo1, because it runs like ass. I had a 166mhz+vodoo1 and got 30-40fps in 512x384.
that's what i thought too. my voodoo2 ran that at 90fps 800x600, no way a voodoo 1 couldn't at least do 30fps 512x384
With the 350 should run a lot better, the voodoos scaled up with the cpu like crazy. When I swapped from my 233mmx to a P3-500, Quake3 went from "meh" performance to 90fps timedemo (same lowest settings, ofc). There's even videos of people running NFS:U in Sli voodoo2s.
I think the same. it runs fine on a pentium 133 with a 4mb diamond monster (voodoo 1 chip), it never gets that slow and choppy.
a pentium 2 350 should get at least 40fps minimum all the time and it should reach 60 in some places.
GraveUypo I’ve heard some people in other comments say that one of the final builds of Quake II changed the rendering from MiniGL to Full OpenGL, effectively reducing compatibility and efficiency with old Voodoo 3DFX cards, but making the game far more effective on more modern graphics cards. So it’s likely that the footage was filmed using the latest version of Quake II because the latest version normally had the least bugs, which makes it far slower for a Voodoo 3DFX card as it has to run a far more complicated renderer designed for a modern graphics cards, which while being superior and allowing more features, the Voodoo card cannot use any of these new features meaning it just lags it.
@@pelgervampireduck the P133 definitely was too slow. i had an overclocked one back then with a Voodoo2 12mb and Q2 was basically unplayable.
Awesome episode, as always.
It is always incredibly interesting to take a look at the various ports, the workarounds implemented by the devs, etc.
More DF Retro, please.
DF Retro is the best thing on RUclips! Thanks Man and keep up the good work!
Love DF retro! Please don't make us wait one year for quake 3!
The Playstation port was miraculous. Also, best 4-player FPS splitscreen mode ever made (yes, way before Halo).
Love these DF Retro episodes. Great job and looking forward to the next one!
Loved the vid! Toward the end where you were mentioning source ports I was kind of surprised you hadn't mentioned the KM Quake 2 Source Port or the Unofficial Quake 2 3.24 patch! I was also surprised that I was unaware of the Yamagi Client. Learn something new everyday I guess.
I remember playing Quake 2 with my Intel Pentium 200 MhZ and an Orchid Rightous 3d graphics card. And i have no clue how the game could have ran so poor on the 3d Fx card shown in your footage. On my Pc at that time Quake 2 ran smoothly on 640*480 with the highest settings. Even Half Life ran pretty well on my system back then with the exception of the dam in surface tension. I remember this so well because it was the first time ever ive seen lagging low FPS in a game on my PC.
it's probably a shitty modern driver. you had to use specific minidrivers for each game. that should actually be running at ~35fps in 512x384, not 15 fps 320x240
Quake 2 for PS1 was a technological marvel. Say what you want, but I spent countless hours on a split screen multiplayer and I had tremendous fun. Quake2 on my P166 with Voodoo Rush was just too slow, and the PS1 port had excellent framerate. I still listen to Sonic Mayhem soundtrack while coding :)
Another trip down memory lane. Thanks again DF Retro. Love your videos.
Great video, I really like this series! Happy aniversary hope you can do many more.
My favorite ID Software game. I bought it together with a voodoo2 and it was simply stunning back in the day, also loved the single player experience and was really pissed at first when I bought q3 later and realised it was multiplayer only :D
Love the retro series 😃👍
John you're the man! Always bumped to see a new Episode of DFRetro! even though i've never played all the games you showcase. But it's always fascinating to see the Tech behind those Masterpieces!n keep up the good work!
This is one of my favorite new series. I always look forward to DF Retro.
I played through the Playstation port of Quake 2 loads. The sound of a Tank stomping around always put me on edge.
RevolverRez Yes! Haven't thought about that in 20 yrs! The enemies in Q2 were really iconic, which being an Id game, is no surprise. The Iron maidens sigh is another!
Dude i had quake 2 on ps1. And my mates would come round and play 4 player split screen. The controls at the time were excellent! We all had OG ps1 pads. No sticks! So u would use dpad to move forwards and turn. L2 was strfe left and R2 was strafe right. L1 and R1 were used to look up and down and finally X was to shoot. Once u got used to it, u would fly around the maps. He had some classic matches. I especially liked getting the BFG. Nothing better than firing that into a room of 3 of them, and the green lasers start firing out of the ball. Was brilliant. At first some of my mates, turned their nose up because of goldeneye, but once they started playing they loved it. Only complaint i had for the MP was the levels were quite small. But considering how fast and how good it looked, u saw past that. Great game and one of my favs on ps1. Official PSM UK at the time gave it either a 9 or 10 out 10 at the time.
Whenever I hear Sonic Mayhem, I get pumped. God, the soundtrack for Quake 2 was awesome.
Another quality DF retro episode keep up the stellar work.
This VooDoo1 footage is false. I've played Quake II in 1997 on Pentium MMX 166MHz, 16MB RAM and VooDoo1 (4MB) at 512x384 and it was reaching 45+ FPS no problem (with 30 being the bare minimum) without reducing any details. This dude's retro build is fubared. I would know, I've got a build like that sitting at my desk right now.
This video though was effin' awesome. Gonna whip out my Q2 disc and give it a whirl again.
Maxim Reality He probably used the most recent version which swapped MiniGL for Full OpenGL (was meant for the latest NVIDIA cards and the ATI Rage 3D series)
Blank Blank OOF
I dont see how they say the OpenGL version looks better than the software render. 2:50 - its spectacular for its time, the OpenGL is so blury - how is it better?
Yeah. DF totaly fucked up this review. Q2 works MUCH faster.
@@brentgreeff1115 It's true, software looks amazing, especially in quake 1
How does anything look better in openGL
quake 2 made me get my first accelerator card voodoo2 which was expensive as hell. and at the time it was glorious xD before i was playing quake and other games using "software" and low frame rate. it's a great feeling when you get to play a game you ran before at 15 fps and could now run at 30 or 60 fps.
Thanks for this great first year of the series, looking forward for more :D
Thanks John, another great episode!
It's almost been a year? Holy crap, time just flies by.
Interesting to see the console versions and the PS version in particular is very impressive. Overall a pretty nice video, but I have some complaints...
a) no mention of alternative miniGLs like wicked3d that massively increased performance on Voodoo cards,
b) no discussion of the actual quality of Quake II as a game (which I found to be mediocre at the time),
c) no demonstration of how point resizing textures looks considerably better than filtering because of Quake's aggressive use of gradient blending on a very small palette (the SSG texture alone is such a blurry mess it loses actual parts of the gun),
d) no mention of the terrible OpenGL bug in the official release (which was never fixed) that never renders textures higher than mip level 1 so they're at best all half-resolution, and that this is one of the best things that Yamagi Q2 fixes.
Saying that the Voodoo Graphics is the card that Quake II was meant for is a little mistaken. The Voodoo Graphics card was already old news when Quake II came out because competing cards from ATI, Nvidia, Matrox, PowerVR, and other companies had come out after it. The Voodoo 2 came out just a month after Quake II's release and it supported the single-pass multi-texturing which Quake II was designed for.
I think it's an interesting point to discuss that MIP mapping actually makes textures look much -worse- particularly when they're starting out at sizes like 32x32 as they do in Quake II. With high-resolution rendering that we have now, if you disable texture filtering entirely (simple point sampling) and render the game in a very high resolution (by using super-sampling or similar technologies like NVIDIA DSR/AMD VSR) you can maintain the crisp and clear look of the original textures without suffering too much shimmering, pixel walk, or moire. Try it out!
Anyway, I know this video wasn't just about the PC version, so I guess most of this is forgivable. Keep up the good work DF!
Thanks for the extra info! Unfortunately, with less than 3 days total to work on the video, I definitely couldn't include all of the detailed I had wanted. Some of that stuff I had completely forgotten even (the wicked3d thing, for instance).
At the time of Quake 2's release, though, I do still feel like the Voodoo was on top. One reason being Glide, of course, which was still heavily in use but even in terms of raw performance, the competition was not great at the time. Which other cards did you feel were competing? The Rage Pro from ATI was slower than Voodoo 1 in Quake 2. I owned a PowerVR PCX2 when Q2 launched and it was much slower than a Voodoo. The Nvidia Riva TNT wasn't out until mid-1998, I believe - they didn't really have a great competing card before that, right? The Riva 128 maybe?
You're right, though, the Voodoo 2 was just one month later - though I didn't get one until fall 1998, unfortunately. The difference in performance there was dramatic.
you were a Voodoo guy too? same here Man! Me and My Dad (it was His Rig) had the Orchid Righteous version of the Voodoo 1 first, then we upgraded to the Diamond3D Monster 2 Voodoo 2 Banshee what that launched because Q2 was, indeed, running like Crap on the Voodoo 1 as the Idtech2 Engine was simply too much for It so we were having to run on the CPU to get better Performance before we got the Voodoo 2 Banshee, then I got 3DFX's own version of the Voodoo 3 Banshee in late 1998, then, as well all know, Tragically 3DFX just dropped the ball on the Voodoo 4 and 5, far too high priced, with build quality issues, and with technology far too complex for Machines of the Time, resulting in Performance issues that were not present on the Cheaper ATi and NVidia units, and 3DFX sadly ended up going defunct, I still Miss them in fact..so I bounced back and forth between ATi and NVidia for a while, before finally settling on a Lineage of NVidia's after the original CUDA Enabled GTX 200 Line's launched, as I was just getting too many issues on ATi with bad build quality, poor drivers, and terrible Performance.
I still consider Myself a Voodoo Fanboi to this Day however. 3DFX4Life! and it amazes Me just how much 3DFX tech NVidia still uses. I mean, what is GameWorks if technically not a Modern Take on the idea behind Glide? albeit its nowhere near as good as GLide (thank heavens for GOG packing NGlide into their Re-Releases of old 3DFX Enabled Games!) and of course, Dual Card SLi was another 3DFX invention NVidia took on board! So at least they still left an incredible Legacy, which is more than I can say for Matrox or Power PC.
Hmm, that's an idea for the next DFRetro! the first Three *Iconic* Voodoo Cards!
The best example is the Riva 128 (edited to remove ZX, ZX came out just after Q2) which was faster than the Voodoo Graphics and competed somewhat even with the Voodoo2 despite lacking the ability to do single-pass multitexturing like the V2 and the TNT (which stood for TwiN Texel, referring to its dual texturing engines). However, it had severe image quality issues, which was a specter that plagued Nvidia until the GeForce 3. (I remember some hardware sites recommending the Radeon 64 DDR over the GeForce 256 because even though it was slower in 16-bit color, it was faster in 32-bit and had overall better texture filtering quality.)
The ATI Rage Pro cards were faster than the Voodoo Graphics after the major driver upgrade that caused ATI to re-brand them as the "Rage Pro Turbo". They, like the Riva 128ZX, got there through some image quality compromises (in particular the Rage Pro didn't support hardware alpha blending), but the large RAM (8MB) on those cards compared to their competitors allowed them to make use of higher texture quality settings. Of course, the Pro Turbo update came after the Voodoo 2, if I recall correctly, so I guess that's not really much of an argument.
It was surely a trade-off, but lots of those kinds of trade offs had to happen in those days. You remember of course that it was in this time when PC gamers became tweakers and modders as we tried to make games run better on our inadequate and buggy hardware. I remember keeping a library of different versions of atiogl32.dll files and manually switching out OpenGL drivers for various games, hehe.
As far as other chips, well, Rendition's Verité V2200 chip competed favorably with the Voodoo Rush (fair comparison since it was 2D/3D capable like the Rush.) However it was surely slower than the Voodoo Graphics, but again it had 8MB version where the Voodoo Graphics had 4MB with hard split of 2MB framebuffer and 2MB texture.
Ultimately I think at Quake II's launch the best option was the PowerVR PCX2 as found in the Videologic Apocalypse 3dx and Matrox M3D. Very few games supported it but both Quake and Unreal did (Unreal even used the SGL native API instead of a miniGL, much like it used Glide instead of 3dfx's miniGL). Quake II can even run in 1024x768 on the PCX2, something which required a pair of Voodoo 2s to accomplish (although the SLI Voodoo2s surely gave a better frame rate! It would be interesting to test these two cards against each other.
I missed out on the RIVA 128, as I said, I didn't start flipping between ATi and NVidia until around 2001 after 3DFX went under. so, around about the Geforce 2 era IIRC (sorry, My Memory isn't all that good at times as new GPU Generations were coming out 3 Per Month back then!), as I said, I was running a V1, then a V2B back in those Days. I think I may actually still *have* the V2B lying around in the attic actually, hmm, I might be able to build a retro-rig if I can get it to come back to life...
So *That's* what TNT stood for! thanks Man, I have *always* wondered about that, I thought it was just a Marketing Gimmick, suggesting "Explosive" Performance.
Yup, its amazing to think, when you look at the Dominance they have now, that NVidia used to be the *worst* of the GPU Products, with Severe Image Quality issues and laughably outdated hardware, now its AMD/ATi with those issues, yet back then ATi had the better Hardware, albeit it also got stomped on by 3DFX.
Not just sites, the proper Physical Magazines were still around back then (PC Gamer was the one I collected, especially after the one bundled with the Disk with the "Uplink" Demo for Half Life! as well as Demo's for Klingon Honour Guard, the Original Unreal, and SiN) and indeed, they also recommended the Radeon 64 DDR over the Geforce 256 as it was much faster Card and with less image quality issues, its, just sadly, it had "typical" ATi Build Quality (IE Trash, at least IMO) and suffered a Terminal short circuit on the Nucleus Soldering after only 3 Months.
Indeed, ATI/AMD still seem to have that issue now, they bring out a GPU, 3 generations late, that will Stomp all over NVidia's Product, and bring out a killer Driver.... and then NVidia just launches its Next Hardware Architecture evolution and Whack, AMD is 3 Generations behind Again, same as what happened after 3DFX launched the V2B. The V-RAM situation is also the same today, with the RX580 able to Theoretically run at Higher Resolution due to 8GB of V-RAM compared to the 6GB of its closest rival, the GTX 1060, but with performance so bad (not surprising seeing as the RX580 struggles to do 60FPS at 1080P in a lot of Games) it just isn't worth cranking the Resolution up, all because of the Slow Clock, poor IPC and shockingly outdated Hardware Architecture.
Yup, the PC Golden Age was all about Trade offs, in a way it still is even now, did you go for 640X480 and get terrible frame rates, or did you go for a locked 60 and back down to 460X280 and a window? did you go for the less V-Ram and thus lower settings but Storming Performance of the Voodoo units? (and Glide!) or the Higher V-RAM of ATi but get worse Performance and build Quality issues. its still the same now! 1440P 60+ or 4K Sub 60? GTX 1060 or RX580 (AMD doesn't have anything that can compete with the 1070 or above yet, and sadly, by the Time VEGA launches, NVidia will have moved on to Volta so it probably still wont be able to Compete) when you think about it, Very little has actually changed on the PC!
We still have to be Tweakers and Modders even now due to a worryingly large Number of Todays "Developers" being ,IMO, either Lazy or Downright Incompetent and only really bothering to code the Games for the much easier to Develop on Console Systems, and just treating PC as an Extra Buck, meaning we basically need to Recode the Bloody Games from the Ground up just to get them Running Properly.
Sadly, I was quite young back then, around 11/12 in 1998, so all those Different Files and Drivers just confused the hell out of Me, so I just Brute Forced the Games, My Dad got good at Tweaking however and indeed, had whole External Back up Tapes full of Drivers and DLL's to get the best out of the Games, and He eventually taught Me his tricks when PC started going under around 2006/7 and the "Bad Console Port" Started becoming very frequent and even the most Powerful PC Hardware needed a lot of Tweaking to even get Console Level, let alone Proper PC Level, Performance out of the Games and being a Tweaker essentially became Mandatory to keep on Gaming on the PC.
I don't Remember the Rendition Verite cards, I don't think they were sold in the UK actually.
Yup, Split V-RAM, odd isn't it how it was perfectly acceptable on the Voodoo Rush, yet caused foam Mouthed *Fury* When NVidia resurrected the Idea on the GTX970. that is one thing that has changed on PC IMO, the audience is a hell of a lot *Less* Mature and Intelligent that I was in the Golden Age.
Agreed, in a way, Quake 2 was the Crysis of its time, built around a GPU from one Generation ahead, so when it launched, there wasn't really a GPU that could run it Properly, so you just had to go for the best "Bodge" and that was the PowerVR, however, Me and My Dad already knew the Voodoo 2 (and its overclocked "Banshee" Big Brother) were coming from an Article on them in UK PC Gamer Magazine and decided to just run Q2 on the CPU as it would be waste to get a PowerVR PCX2 just for one Month!
I Remember the old Matrox Mystique's! I never had one, but a friend of Mine did!
Indeed, I remember the Fierce "war" Between Matrox and 3DFX Fans, it really was the PC Gamer equivalent of PS1 Vs N64, and every bit as Hotly Contested, it would be awesome to see a top of the Range Mystique battling against SLi V2B's at that Resolution..
The fact the Game could Run at that Resolution on Matrox also shows just how Long "HD" has been available on PC! since 1998! and to think, the Consoles are still struggling to reach 720P on some Games (Quantum Break's Dynamic Resolution can drop the Game as low as 640X480!) it just shows how far ahead PC was even back then, nearly 20 years ahead!
well the Riva 128 (even nvidia tries to forget it) was nice .... as long as the memory held up. I remember a friend who bought it while I had a Voodoo 1 in my PC. He had problems in Q2 because the memory was full after a while and the driver did not release the memory. It looked really really terrible.
The V1 on the other hand worked flawlessly with its glide support.
Man, what a great video! when I was a little kid (1998/99), the only games that we had in our windows 98 pc were doom and blood (both sketchy build engine games), and I thought they looked great. Then in 2000, by dad bought quake 2, and I swear, it completely blew my mind. This was my first big game and I spent so many hours of my childhood with this. Excellent content! thanks for this throwback- Hugs from Argentina
amazing video!!!!!!!! I love DF Retro so much!!!! I spent all day doing accounting and just took time off and watched this on my break
Oh shit here it is, nice one John
What kind of resolution and CPU is the Voodoo 5 running? I have a P3-450 with a Voodoo 3 3000, and the demo1 never ever goes below 60fps even on 1024x768. Although I'm running without vsync, so that's one less burden.
I have run the demo1 benchmark and recorded the results for a huge variety of cards, but the Voodoo 1 is missing (mine is faulty and doesn't work anymore), so this video was pretty interesting to watch.
Truly the only thing on RUclips i have no problem spending 30 min on
As you got us used to, another fantastic and well documented video !
The BEST shooter ever to come to PC in the pioneering 3D era.
There is something wrong with your Voodoo systems. I Played Q2 on a P100 in softwaremode and a P200 with Voodoo 1 and it ran way better. Maybe you have a to new mod or something on the system or didn't use the Glide-mode?
The Voodoo 5 is more than overpowered for Q2 it should run above way 100fps if you have a capable CPU of that time.
I reached 74,8 FPS (1024*768) on a V5 in the much more demanding Quake 3 (CPU: Athlon XP 2000+ 1666 MHz @ 133 MHz FSB).
am i the only one who wants an episode dedicated to impressive looking handheld games? CORE on ds looks better than any fps game of the 5th gen @60fps
Quake II on the N64 is the game that opened my eyes to the greatness of shooters. Just a rondom Blockbuster rental too. Still love playing through it today. Great and informative video!
Currently on a DF Retro binge and loving every second of it!
The PlayStation version of Quake II is the one I remember.
We need a new single player Quake game.
Sam S. it would just look like a doom knockoff
zarif No; it wouldn't. They're entirely different games. I'm tired of Quake's focus on multiplayer lately. DOOM got a great new single player treatment. It's time to Quake to return.
Sam S. if people can compare overwatch to Quake. They sure as hell can compare it to doom
zarif That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and your argument is completely invalid. Overwatch is for casual losers who can't play shooters.
Sam S. casual losers who can't play shooters?and you like your own comment?yeah,i'm not interested in starting a conversation woth you
Wow that Q2 port to Playstation looks kickass! Bummer about the controls though, maybe one can remap it when using an emulator?
Kaffeebohnson The best setup for the controls was to use Dpad for movement and right stick for aiming. It was not ideal, and its sort of baffling how they introduced a couple of different alternate control schemes but didnt even out of curiosity include a proper dual stick controls.
Had to buy a new PS1 controller when I played it through, because my Dpad was too stiff, though.
This was great because I just installed and started playing Quake II on probably my fourth computer. I think I've bought it about three times. I waited two years to install it on my latest computer and amusing as heck how familiar the levels are. I would run it with a more modern engine, but all they seem to do is make everything look shiny. Now I got to find a place to download more maps.
DF Retro continues to be some of the very best content on RUclips.
Will there be a Doom episode of DF Retro? (Take note that there are obviously tons of ports)
Love myself some DF retro on a Sunday morning - Happy Mother's day y'all!
"The cyber-b**** from hell…not the kind of girl to take home to mom. ”
-Quake 2 Manual
Beautiful and informative review! Pry the best review of Quake 2 I've seen in years! :)
I found this channel by that New DooM video you guys released! Liked and subbed faster than lighting! QUAKE 2 64 DOMINATES
8:33 - KINGPIN!!
that was amazing game
Quake is the King of shooters.
Happy birthday DF Retro! :)
thank you for the great memories and tech analysis.
I would soo buy a PS4 remaster of Quake I&II or even straight ports.
Also, i don't get why the game is so slow for you on that Pentium 2. I played the game on a Pentium 1 166 with a voodoo card and it was much smoother.
Software Mode > GL Mode
he ran it on highest supported res, most ppl ran at much lower res and windowed mode on top of that(and lower settings too ;)
Imgema you ran it below 640x480
MrFireFist yes but back then i played it in gl mode. It wasnt even my system.
Chances are extremely high that your memory is foggy.
Those DF Retros are awesome, keep em coming.
this was well put together and well edited. awesome. I played this on a tnt 2 then a voodoo 3 green box i remember there was 2 versions. still have both cards also a sound blaster live for the eax experience with 4.1 creative speakers. this and unreal/ unreal tournament looked and ran great on that card. I miss thoughs days when pc games realy pushed the graphics/sound and experience.
we need Quake reboot Doom 2016 style with lenghty and satisfying campaign. and btw fuck Quake Champions
Do a documentary like this on the original Unreal
Well it would turn out that all that praising for Quake 2 graphics engine didn't really mean anything. Unreal 1 was released only few months after Q2 and it literally wiped floor with it. With U1 hitting the market we've realised just how obsolete Q2 engine was even in the day of its release.
Kacper Baszczyk Q2 just has the color lighting and the Voodoo. It was more of a showcase
Amazing work John, a game I go back to reply on PC and N64 every few years. Really hope you do the same service to Quake III Arena.
It’s hard to watch other videos that do not understand the impact every game id software put out. I was the perfect age for all of this and it was amazing to live it. This video does justice to the technology and time.
what is the game at 29:54? looks cool
This so much, please.
Daikatana
How could you forget about the Xbox version of Quake 2? It was basically a customized .xbe (.exe) which you placed into the game folder of the PC version and played it on your Xbox. Many years ago since I played it but if I recall correctly it ran great with very nice visuals.
The only version of Quake 2 I have played through completely.
It's homebrew also. I still cant understand why he's included homebrew and bleemcast in this video... bleemcast+PS1Q2 -> what the fuck... just any PS1 emu on PC doing the same much better.
That homebrew for the OG xbox was excellent it supported even 1080i and 720p and you could play online.
It was also ILLEGAL because, like nearly every homebrew OG Xbox project, it was compile with a stolen Xbox developing tool.
I had forgotten about that! Cool stuff.
its homebrew - i know, i ported it
I love DF Retro so much, I wish it were possible for there to still be a new episode per week
My favourite channel, John, you always make those retrospectives so interesting. Will you go for quake 3 arena after this one?
Quake II on PS1 looks and runs waaaaaaaaay better than N64!
Elena Skyline pc version is best
Ps1 is the superior system overall. No ram contention issues bottlenecking cpu performance, cd's allow higher quality textures and music, better controller etc
8:33 Even Halo 2 does that on the weapon models a bit.
Also funny how with no textures it looks as good as an Unreal Engine 4 with no textures. Textures are everything.
Another brilliant episode! Keep them coming! Any hints on what the next one might be?!
Great video! I Played a ton of Quake II for N64 back when it came out and loved it. Out of curiosity I picked up the PlayStation version many years later during the PS3 era. I was very impressed with how good it looked and ran, and wanted to play through it, but I just couldn’t get used to that control scheme.