[HN Gopher] Quake Brutalist Jam II
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Quake Brutalist Jam II
        
       Author : jakearmitage
       Score  : 254 points
       Date   : 2023-11-08 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.slipseer.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.slipseer.com)
        
       | rabbitofdeath wrote:
       | OH man. So many hours in Quake - I'll have to learn how to get
       | one of these engines up and running.
        
         | Klaster_1 wrote:
         | Running QBJ2 in a modern source port is really simple: unpack
         | the QBJ2 and the source port into the game dir, run the
         | executable, switch with "game qbj2" in the console. Personally,
         | I prefer https://github.com/Novum/vkQuake because it allows
         | disabling texture smoothing. Too bad vkQuake development has
         | been put on stop recently.
        
           | theevilsharpie wrote:
           | > Personally, I prefer https://github.com/Novum/vkQuake
           | because it allows disabling texture smoothing.
           | 
           | All hardware-accelerated Quake source ports that I'm aware of
           | allow you to disable texture smoothing, going all the way
           | back to the original GL Quake (if not earlier).
           | 
           | It was historically set through the console (rather than
           | through a graphical menu), via the `gl_texturemode` command
           | 
           | On modern hardware capable of trilinear filtering, the
           | appropriate texturemode to disable texture smoothing (which
           | keeping the other niceties of hardware acceleration) was
           | 
           | ```
           | 
           | gl_texturemode "GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR"
           | 
           | ```
           | 
           | For the Ironwail engine, which is the currently preferred
           | Quake source port for modern 3D hardware, options on whether
           | or not to use texture smoothing (and other "retro" aesthetics
           | like whether to use square or circular particles) are things
           | that can be toggled in the video configuration menu.
        
         | wetbaby wrote:
         | Easy setup:
         | 
         | 1) Download and unpack ironwail (best engine).
         | 
         | 2) Copy id1/ (from your official Quake install directory) to
         | your ironwail directory
         | 
         | 3) Launch ironwail
         | 
         | Adding and launching a mod:
         | 
         | 1) Unpack the mod into your ironwail directory
         | 
         | 2) Launch ironwail
         | 
         | 3) select the add-on
         | 
         | If you have quake on steam, ironwail will automatically detect
         | it.
         | 
         | If you want to directly launch into a mod you can create a
         | shortcut or use command-line parameters.
        
           | barbariangrunge wrote:
           | There's something called quake injector too, which makes it
           | even easier to get access to maps, at least ones on
           | quakespasm. You probably still need to add them manually if
           | they're from slipseer, but i think most are on both sites
        
             | wetbaby wrote:
             | Ironwail can download some popular add-ons in game. Not as
             | robust as injector, but is extremely accessible.
        
         | sitzkrieg wrote:
         | nquake streamlines a modern install to a normal installer
         | 
         | https://nquake.com/
        
       | duxup wrote:
       | Is there still a big Quake community out there? People playing
       | new / cool maps?
        
         | tyfighter wrote:
         | There is a huge Quake mapping community that has been
         | consistently producing amazing new maps, map packs, and full
         | mods.                   * https://www.quaddicted.com/
         | * https://www.slipseer.com/           * Quake Mapping Discord
         | where all this goes down https://discord.com/invite/f5Y99aM
        
           | capableweb wrote:
           | What's a good entry point if one wants to get started
           | playing? Acquire Quake (1? 2?) on Steam and then server
           | browsers just work as-is?
        
             | tyfighter wrote:
             | You use ironwail (https://github.com/andrei-
             | drexler/ironwail), and start downloading and playing maps
             | from the sites above :).
        
             | junaru wrote:
             | https://discord.com/invite/eu9B2Jv - Quake for newbies
             | 
             | https://discord.gg/EyPV44hpPz - Quake 1 community
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | I'm just looking for some text that explains how to do
               | it, not to join a community. But thanks! :)
        
         | barbariangrunge wrote:
         | And an even larger Doom community. I took part in NanoWADmo
         | last month, the map making month. There are hundreds of hours
         | of top-tier map content out there, a huge number of "megawads"
         | (32 map packs). Anything by skillsaw is great, and no end in
         | sight is pretty special too imo
        
         | johnmaguire wrote:
         | I still play Quake Live, and I can confirm that we are all
         | still playing the same 5 maps.
        
           | bmk44 wrote:
           | "Almost Lost" and "Campgrounds" are brilliant works of level
           | design art. Why bother playing any other map?!
           | 
           | Great game and it is still amazing to me how after all these
           | years I am still finding new moves or nuances of the physics
           | engine to learn and practice.
        
       | pixelpoet wrote:
       | Bethesda recently announced there won't be a Quake Pro League
       | next year, massively depressing news. IMO Quake is peerless in
       | its mechanical skill and speed requirements, truly one of the
       | most challenging games in the world, like comparing Go to lesser
       | strategic games.
        
         | 7thaccount wrote:
         | Go is one of those games I could never understand whether a
         | move I was making was a good one or not. It just felt like I
         | was randomly placing stones and then at the end had to count up
         | and see who won as I certainly had no clue how it was
         | progressing. Is that normal for new players or am I
         | particularly challenged in that area? Chess is a less abstract
         | game where I can generally tell what's going on.
         | 
         | Regarding Quake, I think you're right. Nothing else is quite
         | like it.
        
           | jurynulifcation wrote:
           | You're not alone. It takes a bit of studying to figure out
           | the strategy of Go, which is primarily conceived of as
           | creating different shapes. Shapes of stone groups impart
           | certain properties to the group.
        
           | ep103 wrote:
           | When I first started playing Go, I realized I thought about
           | it like Risk. I was trying to draw Napoleonic battle lines on
           | the board, and push back the opponent. And it kinda worked
           | for very entry-level games, but mostly didn't make sense?
           | Because then the opponent would just place somewhere behind
           | my "line" and it all fell apart.
           | 
           | Over time, I started imagining each of the spots on the board
           | as being a person in a city. And placing a stone, really, was
           | like bringing the AOE II priest to "wololo" convert the
           | person to my team. So really, the goal wasn't to create
           | battle lines, the goal was to pick and choose who on the
           | board to join my team, so that by the end of the game, I
           | would have the most influence in the city. (I've heard others
           | describe it as planting plants to grow over the majority of a
           | garden, which is similar) At that point, I started choosing
           | spaces around the board in order to make sure I had enough
           | friends in each neighborhood that I would be the most popular
           | person there, even once my opponent started advertising in
           | the region too.
           | 
           | That begs the obvious question, are there different
           | neighborhoods that are more important than others? And the
           | answer is yes. As you learn about eye shapes, you'll realize
           | its easier to be popular and own in a corner than it is a
           | side, and a side than it is the center, so when you start the
           | game, you prioritize being popular in these regions, in that
           | order (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqpqa5NCbMY&t=52s)
           | 
           | And then over time, I've learned how to do that more and more
           | efficiently, and the tradeoffs that come from that.
           | 
           | It also helps to start on smaller boards, then move to bigger
           | ones as you get a feel for what's going on : )
        
         | w4rh4wk5 wrote:
         | Given how much they neglected Quake Champions (or the Quake IP
         | in general) this doesn't come at a surprise I'd say.
        
         | pentagrama wrote:
         | Noooo you just give me that sad news to me. I really enjoyed
         | watching Quake Pro League previous seasons. The finals where a
         | big event to me, I cook some special stuff to watch those
         | games. I'm a fan of the player Raisy, who several times
         | finished in second place and never won the tournament. Sad that
         | he may never have that opportunity again.
         | 
         | Here is the video of the last final when Rapha beat Raisy 4 to
         | 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI4M5u5IxAA
        
         | stylepoints wrote:
         | eSports are going through a slump right now. Psyonix also
         | cancelled upcoming RLCS. Instead it's going to sponsor a bunch
         | of smaller tournaments like salt mine with 10-20% of the budget
         | of last year's RLCS.
        
         | beebeepka wrote:
         | Frankly, they should have pulled the plug years ago. The game
         | has been dead for years. I try to watch every QPL grand final
         | and it has been a borefest. Most exciting moment was the
         | million dollar tournament. Newcomer beating Vo0 in spectacular
         | manner.
         | 
         | StarCraft, which MS also owns these days, at least had traction
         | for about a decade. Quake Champions was a bad game and it
         | failed immediately. Maybe NS could finance proper Quake and
         | StarCraft games with their infinite cash
        
           | 2c2c2c wrote:
           | it's a genre issue. these types of games will never be
           | popular to most people given the alternatives now available
        
             | pixelpoet wrote:
             | Agreed, and people (presumably under 20) even call them
             | "Boomer shooters" :( I get pretty upset about that,
             | especially considering how unbearably Fisher Price Fortnite
             | and Valorant etc look, to say nothing of their completely
             | lacking the hardcore, balls-to-the-wall fast aiming,
             | prediction and spatial planning.
             | 
             | It takes the most difficult mechanical aspects of
             | Counterstrike and makes it 10x faster; apparently "kids
             | these days" have no appetite for the challenge.
        
               | kderbe wrote:
               | John Romero wants you to feel okay about the term "boomer
               | shooter". [1]
               | 
               | Pull quote:
               | 
               | "The funny thing about boomers, it doesn't even matter
               | because for people who made up the term boomer shooter,
               | anyone who's old as a boomer, boomers are actually the
               | kids of World War Two vets.
               | 
               | "That's my mom. My mom is 20 years older than I am. She's
               | actually a boomer. So, boomers are not typically
               | developing games.
               | 
               | "It's funny. It's a funny name. And I usually say it is a
               | boomer shooter. It's got a shotgun in it. It makes a big
               | boom sound and you're shooting. it doesn't bug me. It's
               | really like you're trying to nail the aesthetics of the
               | style and that's like that's a phrase that kind of says
               | what you need to know."
               | 
               | [1] from https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/09/25/john-
               | romero-on-his-b... and HN discussion
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37649594
        
       | scanny wrote:
       | Fantastic work from these artists, the engine really just lends
       | itself to these environments it seems!
       | 
       | As a side Anyone know of a good way to get the geometry of Quake
       | maps out as a 3d model? I thought it would be quite cool to view
       | these on the web. Either individual buildings or as a fly-
       | through.
       | 
       | Edit:
       | 
       | Found the following leads:                   1.
       | https://github.com/sbuggay/bspview         2.
       | https://github.com/passiomatic/elm-quake3-renderer
       | 
       | If you download the jam, go into the "maps" folder and on the
       | following url, https://sbuggay.github.io/bspview/ (1), use the
       | "Load Map" button you can see a basic version (broken skyboxes)
       | if you load a .bsp file.
        
         | garblegarble wrote:
         | This does the trick quite nicely (unless you want them
         | textured, anyway) - https://github.com/fzwoch/bsp2obj
         | 
         | I tried it on the map BSPs from
         | https://github.com/fzwoch/quake_map_source/tree/master/bsp
         | 
         | Edit: Following a sibling comment, Trenchboom can also export
         | as OBJ from the GUI
        
         | skribb wrote:
         | You might also be interested in: https://noclip.website/ (not
         | quake maps)
         | 
         | I also know https://www.halospawns.com/app used to have quake
         | maps (dm6 at least), but can't find it now.
        
         | barbariangrunge wrote:
         | most maps these days are made with something called
         | trenchbroom. Try opening a map and looking for export options.
         | You can open the original game's levels too
        
         | Tao3300 wrote:
         | > the engine really just lends itself to these environments
         | 
         | So I used to think "this would make one hell of a Quake level"
         | in places that it would be really inappropriate to think that:
         | government buildings, hospitals, a school or two. It occurs to
         | me now that these were all Brutalist-influenced buildings. This
         | is something I never ever talked about, growing up in the wake
         | of Columbine.
         | 
         | In retrospect I guess it's not that I'm a psychopath, but that
         | I unconsciously recognized that that sort of design was smack
         | in the middle of the Quake engine's wheelhouse.
         | 
         | Still probably going to keep those thoughts to myself.
        
           | gorkish wrote:
           | My friends and I made levels of our school campus dorms, etc.
           | for both Doom and Quake. This was all prior to Columbine and
           | nobody thought it was strange in the slightest; on the
           | contrary everyone thought it was awesome (faculty included).
           | A couple of years later, and who knows how it would have been
           | perceived or if we would have even felt that it was
           | appropriate.
           | 
           | We only had two buildings with an architectural style that
           | favored the game environments though. They were both built as
           | "modern" buildings some time in the 70's. Somewhat
           | unsurprisingly the school has since torn them down at great
           | expense and replaced them with buildings that are
           | stylistically compatible with the rest of campus.
        
           | golergka wrote:
           | Moscow subway (which have had terrorists blow it up) just
           | have officially released a counter strike bomb map based on a
           | fictional station a few days ago.
           | 
           | https://transport.mos.ru/mostrans/all_news/117153
        
       | tyfighter wrote:
       | The scene has existed since the beginning, but the work that has
       | been coming out of the Quake community for the last 6 years or so
       | has been outstanding. They keep making more and knocking it out
       | of the park. I've played _all_ of it, and keep coming back for
       | more :).
        
         | Narishma wrote:
         | I think TrenchBroom deserves credit for that.
        
       | chilmers wrote:
       | I love how level creation for games like Doom and Quake has
       | developed into these small, independent scenes, with a rich
       | community history and a real sense of taste and refinement in how
       | they approach designing for these games. In the same way that
       | "pixel art" has evolved from a necessity driven by the limits of
       | early hardware, through early attempts to recreate a "retro"
       | look, to the point where it is a well-developed aesthetic that is
       | used as an informed choice.
       | 
       | It might sound a bit pretentious, but it really feels like the
       | video games have begun to reach a point of maturity akin to older
       | forms of art, where people are no longer fumbling around in the
       | dark so much, or chasing the technological zeitgeist. Instead
       | creators are consciously embracing and exploring different
       | limitations and aesthetics, in the same way a painter might use
       | different types of paint, with all these diverse styles and
       | scenes, which are at once independent yet also informed by each
       | other.
        
         | derefr wrote:
         | I agree, it's great to see people rummaging through old game
         | engines to find the "right medium to express their thought",
         | the way one might rummage through a pile of art supplies.
         | 
         | The only thing I personally think is a shame, is that the
         | structure of interactive experience inherently lends itself to
         | _collage_ -- to a potential for different  "scenes" made from
         | entirely distinct "media" -- but that it's prohibitively
         | difficult currently to (seamlessly) weave together different
         | game engines into one game art project; especially when some of
         | those engines aren't open-source engines, but only exist in the
         | form of old games that are usually turned into art through ROM-
         | hacking.
         | 
         | An artist _should_ be able to have me walk through a door in an
         | RPG Maker game end up playing a Quake level! And then, upon
         | killing a certain enemy, be suddenly in a bossfight in a SMW
         | ROMhack! And then, upon succeeding or failing in the boss
         | fight, I should be able to either end up in their custom
         | Unreal-engine-coded finale, or back in the RPG Maker  "space"
         | from before! All without loading times or futzing with the
         | display settings!
         | 
         | I've been working on a "solution" to this "problem of artistic
         | collage" -- a runtime that supports custom (i.e. zero-installed
         | from the internet on demand by a game) sandboxed cores wrapped
         | in realtime-per-frame in-memory-state import/export logic,
         | where "a game" is actually a set of sub-game modules, with each
         | module being expressed in terms of its own core, and having
         | either a plain API call (for open engines) or a
         | RetroAchievements-like memory-watch rule, to trigger state-
         | transitions over to other modules.
        
           | dack wrote:
           | I know about the developer who, instead of building their
           | game, decides to build a game engine. But that appears to
           | have not been enough for you - this appears to be a game
           | meta-engine! :)
           | 
           | It sounds like quite a technical achievement to accomplish
           | that, but it also sounds like it would fill only a very tiny
           | niche of developers who actually want this and are willing to
           | build assets in entirely different engines just so they can
           | transition to different aesthetics during the game.
           | 
           | Not to knock on the idea though - it would certainly be very
           | cool to see. Curious if you have any other use-cases in mind
           | for such a technology?
        
             | derefr wrote:
             | > Curious if you have any other use-cases in mind for such
             | a technology?
             | 
             | Yes. In fact, the collage thing _is_ the secondary pie-in-
             | the-sky non-MVP use-case.
             | 
             | The primary use-case: a Mario Maker-like UX for playing
             | cloud-hosted ROMhacks, where each ROMhack's game engine has
             | been carefully cut down so that the experience is of just
             | playing _a level_ in isolation, with some state (e.g. life
             | counter) managed by the runtime and passed in /out of the
             | running core; where, just like in Mario Maker, the UX takes
             | over between executions of the "per-level simulation", and
             | so it's the UX, not the game, that determines whether you
             | retry on death; and that determines what happens next when
             | you "complete" a given level. So it can do various things
             | like run you through playlists of experiences, shuffle a
             | filtered set of all experiences, etc.
             | 
             | That "cutting down" of ROMs into game engines would be
             | automatic/generalized, and would involve the classic
             | techniques of "program-slicing", applied to the domain-
             | specific tooling of emulation: input-movie control-path
             | tracing + memory-watch rules for where the "boundaries" of
             | the sub-engine in the game are, followed by unreachable-
             | code and data elimination; then base memory-state capture
             | to kick off the game at a given point + overlay-state
             | synthesis to control what it looks like when it kicks off.
             | Jumping control "out of bounds" ends the emulation, with
             | memory rules to then determine whether that constituted a
             | "win" or a "game over."
             | 
             | Also, the base "game engine" ROMs would have all IP
             | "assets" (art, music, etc) removed / factored out; these
             | would instead ship as [modder-provided] "game asset" packs,
             | of which there could be multiple used in a single game
             | project, and which would synthesized _into_ ROM memory-bank
             | files at publication time.
             | 
             | End-user supplies base-game ROM images locally; client
             | synthesizes "game engines" from these ROM images. Or clean-
             | room reversed "game engines" can be distributed, given that
             | they're an alternative compilation from the reversed
             | source, that doesn't contain any of the original game's
             | assets -- those all being wholesale replaced by the mod! --
             | and so (I believe) don't violate copyright. In which case,
             | the end user having the original ROM image available, only
             | unlocks the ability to (potentially) "change the asset
             | theme" of the game from its custom one, back to the
             | original game's IP assets.
             | 
             | The core user-story, would be sitting there with a
             | controller in hand, continuously consuming free-to-play
             | "experiences", presented to them through playlists /
             | recommendations / shuffle. (Game jams would be playlists!)
             | 
             | But there'd also be a store -- for buying experiences that
             | artists want to charge for, yes+; but also for buying asset
             | packs, or for licensing the use of "engines" that others
             | have put their hard work into developing, since the same UI
             | that lets you play the games, is also the UI for publishing
             | the games. (I'm not sure if I want to get involved with it
             | being a UI for _developing_ games, though. Maybe for the
             | multi-module stuff; but I 'm more expecting tooling like GB
             | Studio and Lunar Magic to step in on the development side,
             | allowing export to a package format that you'd use to
             | publish on this thing.)
             | 
             | + (Paid experiences could have "demo versions" that show up
             | in the free-to-play shuffle; where at all times while
             | playing the demo, there'd be a little unobtrusive UI
             | element that could take you to the store page for the paid
             | version of the experience.)
             | 
             | You could add whatever "game engines" you want to this
             | platform -- as these aren't _just_ limited to being ROMs,
             | but rather can also contain a  "native layer" (I'm
             | currently thinking a PPAPI executable, even though it
             | failed in its original browser use-case.) Engines can be
             | designed "on top of" other engines; all the extracted-from-
             | game-ROM game engines would actually be running on top of a
             | set of native emulation-core engines that ship with the
             | runtime. But "RPGMaker-compatible runner" is an engine.
             | Love2D is an engine. RenPy is an engine. StepMania is an
             | engine. The early Win32 GameMaker engines are engines. The
             | Macromedia Flash projector is an engine. Etc. You can
             | publish experiences with these, too; and there would be
             | porting tools to take finished projects from these runtimes
             | and shift them onto the platform.
             | 
             | And, perhaps less obviously, big third parties (e.g. Adobe,
             | Unity) could publish pay-to-license engines on the
             | platform, where you could design your more domain-
             | constrained engine to run on top of their engine, and the
             | whole licensing/royalties aspect would be handled
             | automatically.
             | 
             | ---
             | 
             | One of the key things I actually want from this project, is
             | to "commodify" these other engines, in the way that
             | MAME/RetroArch/etc "commodify" emulators into cores. I want
             | to "containerize" all the old Flash games, old visual
             | novels, RPG Maker 95 projects, etc. such that you could
             | just pick-up-and-play them the same way you can pick-up-
             | and-play a ROM on a modern multi-core emulator. And with
             | all the same modern niceties, e.g. cloud-based save-states,
             | super-resolution, etc.
             | 
             | The other, perhaps less obvious trick here, is that you can
             | slice up the actual original games themselves -- the ones
             | whose game engines are the basis of the mods -- and allow
             | the bits and pieces of these original titles to be listed
             | as these same kind of bite-sized "experiences" on the
             | platform -- but where _these_ "experiences" are only
             | accessible to owners of the original game (i.e. to people
             | who have the ROM image locally, or _maybe_ who have bought
             | the game from its IP owner(!) through the platform; or who
             | can prove they have paid some other licensing fee to the IP
             | owner, e.g. by SSO-binding an account of that IP owner 's
             | platform that proves they have access to a subscription
             | tier that comes with leased licenses for those titles.)
             | Sometimes I just want to re-play a particular small section
             | or mini-game from one of my favorite old games. This
             | platform would treat that section/mini-game as its own
             | _addressable resource_ that I can navigate to and play.
        
           | awayto wrote:
           | > walk through a door in an RPG Maker game end up playing a
           | Quake level! And then, upon killing a certain enemy, be
           | suddenly in a bossfight in a SMW ROMhack!
           | 
           | I just learned about this [1] yesterday but seems to be the
           | first data point I've seen regarding something like you
           | describe. Very cool to see, and it definitely blew my mind
           | that things like this are now being developed.
           | 
           | [1] https://archipelago.gg/
        
         | mysterydip wrote:
         | I agree. At one point pixel art or lowpoly 3D was the best you
         | could do. Now it's an aesthetic choice. I'm actually using
         | raycasting (ala wolfenstein 3D/rise of the triad) for a hobby
         | project because I think there's still interesting things you
         | can do in it that haven't been explored.
        
         | jareklupinski wrote:
         | > feels like the video games have begun to reach a point of
         | maturity akin to older forms of art
         | 
         | in the art world, that usually means a revolution or 'new wave'
         | is nearby
         | 
         | i thought 'cruelty squad' and its ilk were the harbingers of
         | the 'new game'... but yea it seems harder to build that kind of
         | devoted community if you don't release your own editor
        
           | entropicdrifter wrote:
           | Wasn't Cruelty Squad built with the Quake level editor? It
           | runs on Godot, but apparently uses a plugin called Qodot
           | which lets it use Quake levels directly.
        
             | jareklupinski wrote:
             | ah that's awesome! I saw the Godot part and didn't think it
             | would have borrowed from Quake, maybe there's hope...
        
           | dleslie wrote:
           | The medium continues to grow within the purview of the
           | original communities.
           | 
           | Quake hasn't enjoyed _as much_ change as Doom, with source-
           | faithful engines like Quakespasm being standard and the likes
           | of Darkplaces being niche. However, the Doom community both
           | embraces faithful ports like prBoom, Crispy, and Chocolate
           | Doom; and carries at its centre the wonderful GZDoom engine.
           | 
           | GZDoom zigs where every other game engine zags. Rather than
           | moving away from BSP into static meshes, and other standard
           | "modern" shifts, GZDoom embraces the fundamentals that make
           | it mod-friendly. It maintains BSP at its core, and while it
           | supports voxels and meshes it remains 2D-focused. What it
           | adds is all the trappings that make it attractive to rapid
           | iteration: good scripting, a toolkit of predefined events,
           | and tools with excellent asset importation and management.
           | 
           | If I imagine where Quake would go, if it were to follow
           | GZDoom's model, I imagine it would lean into Quakeworld's
           | client/server architecture, the QVM, realtime vis, static
           | lighting, and so forth. Particularly the static lighting;
           | which is something I find modern engines tend to treat as a
           | performance feature and not an aesthetic feature.
           | 
           | Both Quake and Doom, but moreso Doom, have unrealistic
           | lighting; with overly sharp and unnatural transitions. When
           | playing modern games everything is softer, the shadows are
           | more natural, the scenes are realistic; but they lose that
           | harsh aesthetic that gave rise to the horror of Doom and
           | Quake. The shadows aren't just dim, they're black, and who
           | knows what they hold.
           | 
           | Anyhow, I digress.
        
             | badsectoracula wrote:
             | > It maintains BSP at its core, and while it supports
             | voxels and meshes it remains 2D-focused. What it adds is
             | all the trappings that make it attractive to rapid
             | iteration: good scripting, a toolkit of predefined events,
             | and tools with excellent asset importation and management.
             | 
             | Well, it also expands the world format too, so one can do
             | full 3D maps. In fact one of the games with great vertical
             | level design i've played recently is Hands of Necromancy
             | which is made with GZDoom.
        
         | everyone wrote:
         | I've been enjoying more mods than new games recently. When devs
         | make something for pure love instead of money the results tend
         | to be good. Eg.
         | 
         | - Stalker GAMMA
         | 
         | - RLCraft
         | 
         | - Ashes 2063 series (A dooom total conversion mod)
         | 
         | - Quake Arcane Dimensions
         | 
         | - Kerbal space program realism overhaul
         | 
         | - Krastorio
         | 
         | - Morrowind refined
         | 
         | - Portal reloaded
        
         | JohnBooty wrote:
         | a well-developed aesthetic that is used as an informed choice
         | 
         | Wow! I love the way you phrased this, and your post in general.
         | It put into words something I had struggled to express.
         | 
         | For too long, pixel art and other "dead" technologies like Q1
         | mapmaking were largely treated solely as kitchsy "retro" or
         | "nostalgic" aesthetics and not worthy of study, refinement, and
         | enjoyment in their own rights.
        
           | badsectoracula wrote:
           | Personally i'm of the opinion that if you can point at a game
           | and say "that looks like a XYZ game" where XYZ is some
           | period-specific identification then that itself makes XYZ a
           | visual style.
           | 
           | E.g. "that looks like a PS1 game" or "that looks like a 90s
           | game" or "that looks like a DOS game". And that includes
           | "that looks like a PS3/X360 game" too, even if it is probably
           | too soon for many to accept that :-P
        
         | shalmanese wrote:
         | If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend checking out the
         | story of MyHouse.wad:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wAo54DHDY0
         | 
         | If you want to go in spoiler free, I'd recommend downloading
         | the WAD and playing it through blind. But if you don't have the
         | time for that, there's a ton of great youtube videos that
         | covered the topic.
        
       | tibbon wrote:
       | I thought these were images of Boston City Hall at first.
        
       | brap wrote:
       | If you enjoy brutalism and video games I _highly_ recommend
       | Control. Beautiful, beautiful game.
        
         | sbarre wrote:
         | I can second this. I literally just completed my first
         | playthrough of the game over the weekend (backlog pain is
         | real).
         | 
         | The architecture and design in the game is the best brutalist
         | work I've seen in a game.
        
           | brap wrote:
           | If you enjoyed Control (and don't forget the DLCs!) you will
           | probably also enjoy Alan Wake 2 which is part of the same
           | universe and interconnected with it.
           | 
           | (I never played the first Alan Wake but it's not a hard
           | requirement, there are recaps on YouTube)
        
         | neilv wrote:
         | I hated Brutalism before playing Control. Just look at how
         | intimidating the Boston City Hall fortress is, as it looms over
         | you, while you try to even find the entrance.
         | 
         | But Control's architectural and furnishings atmosphere was very
         | appealing, and it warmed me towards the Boston and Cambridge
         | buildings that I'd previously disliked.
         | 
         | Screenshots: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/art/the-real-
         | buildings-that-in...
        
       | CodeCompost wrote:
       | Sorry, we're currently unavailable. Please check back later.
        
       | system2 wrote:
       | I am still playing Q2 on a daily basis. You can download Q2 and
       | see all live servers without downloading an address file.
       | http://q2s.tastyspleen.net/
       | 
       | There is still an active development for quake2 executable and
       | anticheat detection.
       | 
       | There are roughly 20-30 people playing almost on a daily basis.
       | We have tournaments too. (This year's tournament will play its
       | finals).
       | 
       | You can also check q2servers.com. Most players have been playing
       | for over 20+ years. The average age is between 35-55. Twitch and
       | discord channels are also very active. Finally we are playing
       | with voice chat (which is kind of useless considering the speed
       | of the game).
        
         | gukov wrote:
         | I'm in that demographic. Started playing Q2 online in 97/98
         | before switching to Q3A in 99. Lately I've been playing Q2
         | Enhanced. What I miss the most is the OSP tourney mod.
        
         | jakearmitage wrote:
         | what engine do you use? yamagi?
        
           | system2 wrote:
           | Q2Pro is the standard in the servers. You'd get kicked or see
           | warnings without it:
           | 
           | https://github.com/skullernet/q2pro
        
       | beebmam wrote:
       | The brutalist design in the Talos Principle 2 is superb, highly
       | recommend if you're a fan of this style!
        
         | everyone wrote:
         | Talos 2 was one of the 1st games to impress me with its
         | graphics in a while. I've never seen a game with such a big yet
         | also detailed and fancy looking world. Also the anti-aliasing
         | is the best I've ever seen.
         | 
         | I reckon they used a lot of procedural (maybe AI?) tools to
         | make all the meshes and texture them and so on.
        
         | everyone wrote:
         | Also I wanna shout out this game if u like brutalist
         | architecture. It's a forgotten masterpiece imo.
         | https://store.steampowered.com/app/265690/NaissanceE/
        
           | sbarre wrote:
           | Thanks for the recommendation, this looks great. And it's
           | FREE.
        
         | amiga-workbench wrote:
         | Talos Principle is a slept on masterpiece, its shocking it
         | isn't more widely known about. I've been engrossed in the
         | second game all week and the photo mode is a very welcome
         | addition.
        
         | GamerAlias wrote:
         | Been enjoying this a lot since it's release. Getting towards
         | the end of the game ~80% of the way through and appreciating a
         | bit of a difficulty spike as I had found that the game was a
         | bit on the easier side for most of it.
         | 
         | Graphically great and I had partially picked it up as a UE5
         | game that I was already interested in.
        
       | masswerk wrote:
       | Archived: https://archive.ph/VKkYa
        
       | altairTF wrote:
       | Level design was my first contact with the development side of
       | games, i remember spending a lot o time to make the most
       | miserable and unplayable maps on valve hammer editor, to at one
       | point have a map used in a zombie mode of a server on cs 1.6.
       | Amazing to see these communities stil exists
        
       | rabf wrote:
       | VR ports for many of the quake and doom series can be had here:
       | https://github.com/DrBeef
        
       | synecdoche wrote:
       | What I often remembered most from first person shooters is the
       | architecture, and music, even though I didn't focus on it at the
       | time.
       | 
       | I frequently also dream architecture or vistas. I love those
       | dreams. Sometimes I wonder if I chose the wrong profession.
       | 
       | I also love some architecture that noone that I mention it to
       | seem to understand. Those buildings just speak to me in a
       | wordless manner.
        
         | progman32 wrote:
         | Forerunner (Halo) structures and half life 2's Citadel probably
         | harbor the strongest place feelings I've experienced. You
         | almost don't need to tell an explicit story in those places,
         | the walls do enough
        
       | pmarreck wrote:
       | As an old fan of both Quake and Brutalism, this is perfect.
       | 
       | The site seems to be getting hugged to death currently, though
        
       | antod wrote:
       | Looking at those, I could just feel myself plugging my 3DFX2 card
       | into my Matrox Millenium II.
        
         | dicknuckle wrote:
         | I've still got a Voodoo3 in a Pentium 3 machine. around here
         | somewhere.
        
       | chris_wot wrote:
       | What qualifies something as "brutalist"?
        
         | ahoka wrote:
         | "Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist
         | constructions that showcase the bare building materials and
         | structural elements over decorative design."
        
       | pigeons wrote:
       | I get simulator sickness :(
        
       | replete wrote:
       | Making quake mods when I was 12 got me interested in programming.
       | I think my last one was 'Tellytubbies: Must Die'. It was fun
       | making maps, models, textures and editing sounds of teletubbies
       | in pain.
        
         | grrowl wrote:
         | Mapping and modding Quake 2 and 3 pushed me from Basic and
         | HTML/CSS into much less forgiving C/C++ programming around the
         | same age -- wouldn't be the engineer I am without it. It's
         | invaluable to modify something you know and understand and
         | extremely rewarding, which is the first thing I teach to
         | friends who want to learn.
        
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