The first FPS that gathered some attention was Wolfenstein 3D, releaded by Id Software on May 5, 1992. This game, who ran on a 286 computer with less than one meg of ram wasn''t really 3D, it featured flat levels with walls always perpendicular to the floors and 2D sprites for monsters. The story involved shooting nazis until there were none remaining. Id Software then released the original Doom in 1993. That game featured levels with stairs and a bit more complexity than Wolfenstein, but you still couldn''t look up or down. The gameplay was not so different from Wolfenstein. You still had to shoot enemies until there were none remaining, except they were space monsters, and you were on mars. Later on, Doom I was released, featuring different map, but essentially the same story and game engine. In 1995, close to the release of Duke Nukem 3D, Id Software released the original Quake. The first "true 3D" game. 2D sprites were replaced by actual 3D models, and level geometry wasn''t as limited as it was in Doom and Wolfenstein. You could also finally look up and down. The plot, on the other hand, remained the same as Doom I and II, you were a space marine killing all alien monsters until all were dead. Quake II followed in 1997, the only hint of a storyline was in a text file you had to read outside of the game, it explained that you were a space marine and had to kill all alien monsters until all were dead. In 1999, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament came out. Those games featured combat against bots or internet deathmatch/ctf/etc games. Their 3D engines had improved graphics, but Quake 3 did not improve on the storyline, in fact, it made even less sense than Quake, and you didn''t even have actual single player missions. For these reasons, Quake 3 gathered moderate success. Quake I gathered a large success, mainly due to the fact that it was revolutionary, graphic wise. Duke Nukem 3D was fairly popular, but not nearly as much as Quake I. Duke Nukem 3D was not regarded as a big technological success. Its engine, tagged as 2.5D actually featured sprites for rendering monsters. People tend to forget though, that Duke Nukem 3D featured some quite impressive features at its time. Duke had reflective surfaces, security cameras that could render on security monitors and a great level of interactivity that you don''t see, even in Quake 3. In 1998, Half-Life came out. Its very immersive and detailed single-player storyline made its popularity. The release of a complete software development kit allowed easy creation of modifications. Counter-strike became extremely popular, having alone, over two times more servers online than Unreal Tournament and Quake III combined. Even today, half-life remains the most popular FPS game and still has many active mod development teams. The half-life engine, an extension of the original Quake engine, is quite limitating, and has its fair share of bugs. If you look at half-life, you will see the levels were incredibly well designed and detailed. Valve did a remarkable job at this, and it rewarded them well. After those games, UT2003 and Unreal II came out. The concept of having a single player and a multiplayer game separate, and the very few innovations brought by those games did not attract many people. Serious Sam and Serious Sam: The second encounter gathered microscopic popularity. Those two games, labeled as engine tech-demos, featured enemies always running at you in straight lines and a storyline that makes absolutely no sense. Right now, the two main games being developed are Doom III and Half-Life II. Doom III will feature both single player and multiplayer, it seems Id Software has learned its lesson after Quake III... But what are they doing? They are basically re-making the same game they have been making for the past 12 years. Same weapons, same story, same location, same character, same monsters (with small variations). Half-Life 2 seems to have a guaranteed success, but it has been delayed twice. It seems the only feature that could make Doom III possibly attractive is the graphics. Thats what Id Software are boasting... A game you can only play with the latest GeForce card, and even there, you can''t expect decent framerates. Half-Life II seems a bit more promising, they have the graphics, they have terrain AND detailed indoor environments, interactivity, great physics. The future seems clouded... A big tendency right now is the evolution to massive multiplayer games, but that usually means compromising the graphics a bit, which is something most game designers dont want. The larged FPS game I have ever played was a Tribes 1 multiplayer game, with 48 players. Quake II has the capability of supporting 64 players and up, but Half-Life only supports 32 at max, which seems like a quite lame and artificial limitation. What are your opinions about the evolution of the FPS genre? Which game would you rather buy between Doom III and Half-Life II?
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Interesting thread.

I think you missed out the FPS / RPG crossovers which do deserve some credit in the scheme of things.

My opinion is that games like Quake II / III are more of a game engine with the game being merely a tech demo. Doom III seems the same way - mindless shooting the same monsters with little regard for strategy.

What *is* interesting is when people take these core engines and combine them with a more RPG/strategy based theme. Take Deus Ex, for example. I personally think that Deus Ex set forward advances in what a FPS could be. Yes, the RPG element was minimal, but it allowed the player to at least have some sense of tactics. There were different ways of completing the levels and killing the enemies. This freedom of Choice allowed for more playability and involvment in the game''s story. The fact that one of your actions could impact the story path was astounding.

Half life was, to me, a pleasure to play. As you said, the levels themselves were very detailed and the story was involved and interesting. The game itself was very linear and when you compare to Deus Ex, you feel as if you are merely moving to advance to plot at times.

I''d rather be playing HL 2 than Doom III. I can imagine some great games will be made off the back of both engines, and to me the real Doom III power will be utilised by other developers. ID seem like they''re in it for the engines, I assume that licensing is where the money lies?

It has to be said that many players do seem to want to upgrade to see better performance from their FPS games. Doom III will be no exception, I can see many people upgrading to play games on the D3 engine, maybe not the game itself but a year or so after the engine is out and some other games have been made for it.

At a certain moment, enough is enough.

The games you mentioned all were revolutionary for their time, yet people accepted their limitations without question.
Wolfenstein 3D lacked any lighting, but its speed was amazing so we enjoyed it.

Doom was both a big innovation and a great game. Its lighting, music, environments and gameplay kept millions on their toes, almost afraid to take the next corner. It also introduced deathmatching, although its 4-player network-flooding IPX use would be unacceptable by now.

Shortly before DOOM there was Ultima Underworld, technologically more advanced, it had better 3D where you could walk both over and under a bridge and it had slopes. It''s a sad thing it''s now forgotten .

Quake 1 was widely praised for its technology and TCP/IP networking, but also critisized for the limitations its design gave. It was designed for 8-bit color, to be able to do proper lighting there were only a few colors, mainly brown and grey.

Quake was also critisized and ridiculed because of the claims made before it was released (that it would be a graphical RPG where you only used hammers, that you could do anything, fall down, stand on people''s shoulders to climb walls, that it would run on a 486, that it would be ready for a christmas 1995 release, that it would support 100 players per server in a stunning graphical MUD style. Then it was released with all the mud/rpg stuff removed and replaced with the DOOM weapons with even the same commands (1=fist, 2=pistol, 3=shotgun etc), resulting in a truly bizarre mix of medieval castles filled with people shooting rockets and wielding shotguns. Gamewise Quake 1 was about the worst game ever.

Quake II and Half-Life (based on Q1) both brought better color because of support for 16-bit textures and colored lights. Quake 3 had some more support for new features but wasn''t as big a step forward as many people think. ''It has curved surfaces!'' is what most sites reported back then, but it''s really only a detail.

Since then the quake series has fallen behind. Blocky BSP levels with a few bezier patches were ok in 1999, but don''t cut it anymore. The Unreal engine is much better, with its clever mix of 3dsmax meshes for visible objects and bsp for zones and portals. But it is sufficient right now, like the Lithtech engine used with NOLF2, they produce brilliant lifelike graphics. Now it''s time again to expand on good games and storyline.

Just like color, 8-bit is terrible, 16-bit is almost ok, 24 bit and 32 bit are enough. Progress stops there because you cannot go beyond perfect anyway. The quake series were engine demo''s, only the derived games (half-life, mohaa, STEF, call of duty, soldier of fortune etc) have been decent. The step from DOOM to quake was a technical one, and it was so impressive that people bought it. Now that engines are already very good, you must impress them with gameplay, not technology.

You made no mention of SS: Tribes being revolutionary in itself. Unfortunately it lacked any single player game, aside from some training tutorials. But it made some huge leaps in the FPS genre.

1) It was largely based outdoors, with absolutely gigantic maps that spanned for miles. And then, on each of these maps, were numerous bases .. which in themselves were often the size of a Q3 or UT map.

2) The jetpack. The vertical element of the game changed the dynamics of how an FPS was played. Tribes was not a ''point and shoot'' game. When an opponent was mid-air, you had to predict where he was going to land and make your move in advance. Fights weren''t won out of surprise, or who had the bigger gun ... but out of patience and skill.

3) Tribes had 3 flying vehicles, which could even be used to transport your teammates

4) Interchangable armor classes with selectable weapon loadouts. It provided true customability to how you wanted to play the game.

Many games have since followed the groundwork set down by Tribes. The latest (and most similar) of these being Unreal''s XMP.

Oh, and the largest multiplayer game I''ve ever played in was in Tribes 2, with 64 players. And remember, Tribes: Vengeance comes out in a year.

This depends on what makes you interested in FPS games. I for one don''t look for the gameplay in the first place, I look for the technical aspects and the artwork (as the cold, boring nerd/geek I am ). Doom3 is far more interesting for me than HL2 and has been all time during all hypes and flashes. I think there is a noticeable margin of quality-difference between D3- and HL2-media. But then again, they aim for different kind of graphics.

Doom and Descent (two old mindless shoot-''em-ups) were the two games that made real impact on me as a boy when they were released. I still got that weird feeling when playing through EP1 in the shareware version of Doom. I never cared about simulators or tactical games or anything else similar.

RTCW looked gorgeous when it was released and I sometimes play through some maps to see some things again (it still looks just as good...). But, for some reason, it''s among the most boring, tedious, crappy games I''ve played. I strongly despise HL1 as well, though I hadn''t even heard about that game, say 2-3 years ago. Unreal2, ugh, won''t touch that again. Perhaps with a 10 foot stick and rubber gloves, we''ll see.

I''ve noticed that I don''t like games that try to be serious and it doesn''t work out for me. Sometimes, the games try to challenge the player and I feel "this was made just to mess things up" HL1, RTCW, SOF2, MOHAA, MP... My fav FPS-series, and overall game-series, is NOLF1/NOLF2. If you''ve played those, I guess you know what makes them special.

A matter of taste, that''s all... Also a hint of what one wants to accomplish with game design.

quote: Quake II and Half-Life (based on Q1) both brought better color because of support for 16-bit textures and colored lights. Quake 3 had some more support for new features but wasn''t as big a step forward as many people think. ''It has curved surfaces!'' is what most sites reported back then, but it''s really only a detail.

Quake II had no actual 16 bit textures. When you ran it in hardware acceleration, you had an option for a 16 bit skybox, but the world used 8 bit paletted textures... It was almost as limited as the original Quake when it comes to colors, except it had colored lightmaps... I must say, Duke Nukem 3D was much more colored and had much more various environments...

Its sad, because the level of interactivity Duke Nukem provided was only beaten by Half-Life yet (don''t tell me about deus ex, I don''t really count it as an FPS).


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you must also takes points away for steps backwards ...

the unreal engine is AMAZING graphically ... and yet everyone at my last job and my current job still plays Unreal Tournament on break, not UT 2003 ... and the reason is not money, because we are programmers, and over half already owns UT 2003 ...

the difference is GAME PLAY!!!

Unfortunately, Unreal Tournament is just more responsive and lively than any more recent / better game we''ve played lately ... Games like UT 2k3, RtC Wolffeinstein, and others all have very nice graphical technical improvements, which DO MATTER ... and someday they will be essential for the next generation of games ... but they all have either worse weapon balances, less FUN gameplay, terrible resource hogging, and most often and most importantly, TERRIBLE engine code from the latency handling and networking point of view!!!)

EVERY modern fps is less responsive than UT ...

EVERY modern fps has more common lag situations, more hard drive thrashing, and just a general more slugish feel than UT ...

and that''s when playing on modern hardware, compared to UT on an old Pentium 3 550MHz with a Voodoo 3 (nice hardware for it''s day).

Yeah, I played the single player ut2k3, and the I never played it again. It was so boring and unbalanced. And the fact that they did not put Assualt in was ubelievable.

And deus ex IS a FPS... not an RPG....

[edited by - curtmax_0 on January 3, 2004 4:11:17 AM]

UT2003 seemed like a bad joke to me. It might have better graphics, but it doesnt offer more interactivity in any way... And that soccer thing doesn''t make any sense.

Modern games tend to cut on the interactivity in fact... If you just look at the way Quake 3 puts all these invisible collision brushes everywhere... Its way annoying, can''t go hide in nice spots like you could in Quake 2.


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Ultima Underworld did introduce everyone to the world of near-arbitrary, texture-mapped game environments, but the minimum required PC to play it costed about $4000 (white box components for everything, which in that day was cheaper than buying something preassembled by a substantial margin; I remember all this, I agonized over it then...). Doom ran pretty well on a fast 386, and it flew on a 486 (lol). As a result, no one played it until AFTER Doom hit the net, and Doom was hailed as the first pre-eminent "virtual reality". Network/modem multiplayer was supported, and the fact it was shareware sealed it. Doom II, imho, had much better level design and was more interesting.

Duke Nukem never engaged me. However, the 2.5D Build engine it was built on was easier to develop with than Quake (read: took less technical skill), and many successful/semi-successful licenses used it (Readneck Rampage being a standout example). Quake was not the first 6DOF game; Descent was. Both however are "everything that moves is trying to kill you; find the keys to the locked doors to make it to the level exit" (ok, in Descent you had to blow the power core in each mine and make it to the exit before the whole level exploded and killed you; interesting game mechanic there). This generation looked prettier, and the sequels bolted on code to the engines to suppport the nacient 3d accelerators.

I will argue that Quake 3 was a step forward for two reasons:

1. It was a _major_ release requiring a 3D accelerator. The other "modernish" engines vying for pre-release attention at the time were Lithtech 1.0 and Unreal, which offered software and hardware accelerated modes. The difference is this: Quake 3 ran faster on hardware than comprobable engines (and with fewer rendering artifacts and bugs) due to shedding the architectural limitations of supporting software rendering.

2. The new netcode almost required broadband to be competitive; the fact that it was mainly meant for internet/LAN multiplayer pushed broadband sales. Also, this was acknowledging that the primary appeal of Quake/Quake 2 had been multiplayer, not single player (as Romero had royally botched the first one, and for some reason the Strogg stuff never enraptured many of the second). Thusly they cleaned up level design and weapon balance for multiplayer, and it shows. Imho game balance is better than the UT series. But calling this anything more than a deathmatch arena mod, bots included, is stretching it.

Unreal had pretty lights. Ooooooh. Lots of licenses.

Half Life is significant. For once, someone set out to design a FPS with a deep story and succeeded. They did this by having the player do things, not simply show them things (how many other games would have done the whole opening sequence as a cut-scene?). Many of the most highly praised "cinematic" levels in the current crop of WW2 shooters use this technique.

Serious Sam and its sequel are satires of the whole genre; as such their plot is ridiculous (and quite enjoyable if you like satires), and should be judged as such. Serious Sam does have something 90% of these other games lack: coop play. Its a blast.

Half Life 2 and Doom 3 have a lot of hype to live up to. Personally, I wonder if either will succeed.

Id is now a technology-driven company; Carmack's running the show, and he is no-nonsense. Far bit from me to say if his aversion from complicated game design philosophies is a good or bad thing. Its shaping up to look like a FPS gamer's worst game-nightmares (come on, you've had those, I have) come to life in a very scary way. I hope their focus on fully 3D environmental sound pushes that stagnant area forward. The lighting looks moody and I am a sucker for shooting at things trying to kill me. Will I buy it? Yes. Why? Its going to scare the crap out of me. Survival-horror without the stupid camara angles, stupid storylines, and stupid gameplay mechanics of the console-born "Survival-horror" genre (a previously attempted idea with some success in "Clive Barker's Undying" for PC).

Valve has become a licensee-driven company. They're building this generation of technology to license; why shouldn't they? The mediocre-for-the-day HL engine rules the mod scene, and many mods now sport retail boxes. The main reason HL sold so well so late after its release was word of mouth buzz about CS, DoD, and the many other fine efforts of the mod community. This time around, mod author support is an official priority and not an afterthought... why will I buy HL? Because of the excellent mods it will generate. Will I buy it as soon as it comes out? No, because I spend more money on it and likely just wait until the multiplayer mod goodness gets done. I really do believe that the focus on the mod support and making the engine licensable and absolutely state of the art will hurt the amount of work done on the gameplay... or just make it take forever (Duke Nukem Forever debacle?). Was "misplacing" their source code a purposeful gamble for time to tweak the single-player game into the realm of goodness? Did the move from technology-licensee developer who focuses on the game to giant developer working on 100% new technology break the magic?

Unreal 2/UT2kX have incredible engines. Really a tech demo. Additionally, it remains to be seen whether the yearly releases of Unreal Tournament will generate adoration (constant outflow of quality levels and new game modes, as well as minor graphical updates) or degenration amongst fans. Not including Assault mode (the most popular team-based mode of the original UT) in 2k3 and then bringing it back in the 2k4 edition is already being scene ban the fans as cynical and an exploitation of their goodwill towards the franchise. Do I own 2k3? Yes. Will I buy 2k4? When I can get it for $20-$30. What do I play against my friends, what botmatch to I hop into now and again to kill a couple minutes? Quake 3 Arena ;-)

[edited by - SteevR on January 3, 2004 10:51:44 AM]