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At a time when pretty much every regular pc and internet connection sucked, here's what is definitely an historical moment in online gaming. The birth of Quakew

by lgl 8y ago

At a time when pretty much every regular pc and internet connection sucked, here's what is definitely an historical moment in online gaming. The birth of Quakeworld, the internet optimized quake engine: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/33ae52fdba46aa0d1abfed6fc7598233748541c0/by_day/johnc_plan_19960802.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-ar... Note JC's comment that "this is just my pet research project". If you've ever played quake and then quakeworld online, you'll know what an understatement that was and how freaking awesome the online gameplay became with qw. So really, thanks John Carmack for the countless wasted hours :)

MrZongle2 8y ago
If you've ever played quake and then quakeworld online, you'll know what an understatement that was and how freaking awesome the online gameplay became with qw. Amen. Especially when you consider that a massive number of players, such as myself, were using dial-up (56k) modems. Quakeworld made multiplayer go from a slideshow to comparable to single-player performance, albeit with hiccups.
SmirkingRevenge 8y ago
As I just posted above, this strikes home for me. For me it wasn't just the client-side prediction, it was that there was also a linux client for quake world.
- lgl 8y ago
  Yeah I remember that. It was also at about that time that I started using and learning linux. Back then, just managing to setup XFree86 correctly was like a huge personal victory and running quake there was really the cherry on top. I seem to recall having to actually input a bunch of numbers/frequencies taken from my crappy CRT monitor's specsheet into the X config and basically bruteforcing it until it worked. "Good times"!
  - SmirkingRevenge 8y ago
    Ahh yes, x11 mode-lines: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86_Modeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86_Modeline) Those were particularly thorny for me too, when I was getting started with linux (and was still a newbie with computers in most respects). "Good times" indeed :)
    - lgl 8y ago
      Aha, that was exactly it! Scary stuff.

by lgl 8y ago

MrZongle2 8y ago

If you've ever played quake and then quakeworld online, you'll know what an understatement that was and how freaking awesome the online gameplay became with qw. Amen. Especially when you consider that a massive number of players, such as myself, were using dial-up (56k) modems. Quakeworld made multiplayer go from a slideshow to comparable to single-player performance, albeit with hiccups.

SmirkingRevenge 8y ago

As I just posted above, this strikes home for me. For me it wasn't just the client-side prediction, it was that there was also a linux client for quake world.

lgl 8y ago
Yeah I remember that. It was also at about that time that I started using and learning linux. Back then, just managing to setup XFree86 correctly was like a huge personal victory and running quake there was really the cherry on top. I seem to recall having to actually input a bunch of numbers/frequencies taken from my crappy CRT monitor's specsheet into the X config and basically bruteforcing it until it worked. "Good times"!
- SmirkingRevenge 8y ago
  Ahh yes, x11 mode-lines: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86_Modeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86_Modeline) Those were particularly thorny for me too, when I was getting started with linux (and was still a newbie with computers in most respects). "Good times" indeed :)
  - lgl 8y ago
    Aha, that was exactly it! Scary stuff.