What is Quake?

Quake is a first-person shooter video game, developed by id Software and published by MacSoft in 1997. It is the first game in the Quake series. In the game, players must find their way through various maze-like, medieval environments while battling a variety of monsters using a wide array of weapons.

---

In the year it has been available on the PC, Quake has won numerous Game of the Year awards, has become the subject of countless Web pages, has spawned “clans” (teams devoted to Internet play), and ruined many, many lives. And now it’s here for the Mac.

Quake offers a leap in gaming technology. Everything is real 3D — unlike in Marathon where 2D sprite-based characters exist in a “2 1/2D” world. The environment has real height attributes, so you can have true bridges, rooms over rooms, and real-time shadows. Characters are polygonal models with texture-mapped “skins.” Weapons follow real physical dynamics, so grenades hop, skip, and bounce around corners; rockets, if poorly aimed, come back down after they’ve gone up.

No doubt, this is the best first-person game engine out there. And it makes a difference in game-play. At first, Marathon players may see the dull color palettes, the less-than-logical design, and the lack of plot, and shrug. But once they take a full 90-degree look up or down, or run through a twisting maze with real, flickering shadows, doubts will vanish.

Quake is immersive, if not as amusing or interactive as Duke Nukem 3D. The game runs at a smooth 30-plus frames per second (fps) on a 200MHz 604e Power Mac (at an acceptable 320-x-240-pixel resolution with pixel doubling), and 20-plus fps on a Mac with a 200MHz 603e PowerPC. Pushing the resolution to a nondoubled 640 x 480 pixels yields sharper images but slows things considerably. You can, however, turn down details, skip every other line, disable flickering flames, and lower resolution.

As for gameplay, Quake doesn’t add much to the first-person, shoot-the-monsters, find-the-keys formula. It simply does it better than anyone else. Solo play, admittedly, lacks long-term appeal and replayability. However, for local network or even Net games (something Marathon could never do), Quake is king. Just ask the players here — oh no, you can’t, because we’re all busy fragging each other.

Next to network play, the best thing about Quake is its extensibility. You can use custom maps and with QuakeC, Quake’s object-oriented programming language, you can create new weapons, creatures, physics models, and even behaviors. For example, not only can you make a Hell Knight faster or slower, you can make it fight on your side, ignore all but certain monsters, or just jump up and down. Scour the Web, and you’ll find everything from grappling hook “mods” to Cujo, a giant dog that accompanies you on your adventure. Test carefully and have patience, though — many mods and Total Conversions (TCs) may not work with the Mac version.

Also note that in conjunction with a special patched version of Quake, the Power3D PCI card from TechWorks (800-883-6495; http://www.techworks.com) lets you run Quake at a full-screen 640 x 480 pixels at more than 30 fps. It gives you smoother textures, fog and translucency effects, enhanced lighting effects (grenades don’t just flash but light a dark corridor), and more. Be warned: Since this card accelerates full-screen 3D only, you can only use it with programs that take over the whole screen — in other words, games. Also, you’ll need at least an extra 16MB of RAM when using the card.

Yes, Quake is still a first-person, dungeon-crawling, plot-free shoot-’em-up. But it offers up a whole new level of 3D realism that no other shooter-up does and the innumerable and clever mods and TCs for Quake are fascinating. Besides, sometimes it’s just fun to run around, blowing the giblets out of your friends.

Turner, D. D. (November 1997). Quake. MacAddict. (pg. 76).

Download Quake for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

System Requirements

From Mac OS 8.0 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

System requirements

Architecture: 68K or PPC (see downloads)
At least 9.3MB of free RAM (recommended 15.5MB)
Mac OS 8.x - Mac OS 9.2.2
A monitor supporting a resolution of 640x480 or higher with 8-bit depth (256 colors mode)

Fully works (and great) under SheepShaver, also works under Basilisk II in 68040 mode, but on my end there is no sound for some reason.

Installation and configuration

• Mount the disc image and install Quake.
• Extract the 1.09 update and install RAVE and/or 3DFX updates straight from their respective applications; do not use the "container" application, as it will complain about a modified resource and refuse to run.
• Open "autoexec.cfg" in SimpleText and add these lines:
  • +mlook (Enables perpetual mouselook while disabling hardcoded lookspring.)
  • r_mirroralpha 0.3 (Enables reflections on some surfaces, such as stained glass windows.)
  • sv_idealpitchscale 0 (Disables automatic vertical view adjustment while traversing sloped surfaces.)
• Start Quake and configure your video, audio, and controls. It is possible to configure Quake to run at 1280x1024 with fully modern FPS controls.

Note: You can also try adding "r_wateralpha 0.3" for transparent liquid and warps however this caused immersion-breaking graphical glitches for me while swimming underwater.

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver