Prerelease:Quake (PC)

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Quake (PC).

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

To do: Two Quake Wikis have articles on the game's development, use them as a template for this one, but remember kids don't just copy and paste everything from them! This Github project could be of use. Cover the Timequake document. Check this 3D Realms forum post about the early concept of the game when it was called "The Fight for Justice" where John Romero partially talks about it. Timeline needs filling out. Random info to add: Virtua Fighter inspired the move to 3D, the game was going to have third person combat like VF as well at some point. The game had an Aztec theme rather than the iconic Lovecraft/dark fantasy one seen in final. When Trent Reznor and NIИ got involved in production. When the team scrapped everything and restarted. Sources for info mentioned throughout the article. Some articles on the Wikia have early screenshots, such as the Axe Ogre section with a shield that was mentioned in a prototype article. Has demon horns too. If we have the prototype that a screenshot comes from, then take a screenshot of that prototype and put it in its respective page. Trademark of "Fight For Justice" by Apogee Software in 1994.

Starting life out as a side-scrolling RPG known as The Fight for Justice starring a man known as Quake, this game would slowly evolve into the first-person shooter we know as today.

Despite Quake being a legendary PC title, it's development was troubled to the very least. High ambition, growing animosity among staff members and the fact that the team scrapped everything and restarted caused several team members, notably John Romero to leave id after release. Thankfully it wouldn't end up effecting the overall quality of Quake.

Development Timeline

1990

• December 14th - Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons releases, included in the game's first episode is a tease for The Fight for Justice, which would slowly evolve into Quake.

1991

• Unknown - Development begins but is later put on hold due to need for more advanced technology to achieve what the team desired. At some point later, The Fight for Justice concept was abandoned.

1993

• October - Virtua Fighter is released in arcades worldwide. John Romero is inspired to turn Quake into a 3D title.

1994

• Unknown - After the release of Doom II, id Software begins working on a new game engine capable of being able to display full 3D graphics.
• July - 'Computer Gaming World' announces Quake.
• August 8th - Quake's programming language, "QuakeC" is developed and ready to be used for the game.
• Late 1994 - id Software bought SGI Indigo2 machine, and Alias/3 to be used to make the game's models. Multiplayer was reported to also have been working at this stage.

1995

• March - Kevin Cloud creates the first models for the game, one being a model of a human that consisted of approximately 200 polygons while using the Doom Cyberdemon textures as a placeholder base, a bat which would become the dragon or serpent (which both later become entirely scrapped within the final game's release), and something which Dave D. Taylor described as a "biped baddy". It was also during this time that the Quake engine had lighting implemented.
• August 3rd - John Romero released the very first screenshots of the game and put them onto the id Software FTP server as "quakepix.zip" for anyone to look at.
• September 28th - American McGee released more screenshots, consisting of the Knight and the Ogre within a zip file called "qpix.zip". an old id Software .plan file shows that the Knight's animations are the same, while the Ogre's has a missile attack while holding an axe and a shield instead of a chainsaw and a grenade launcher like how it does in final release of the game.

To do: Is there any captures or footage of the event?

• Very late September - Quake is shown off in the 1995 London European Computer Trade show. Knights were reported to die if pushed off high ledges, and an early cut off version E2M4 could be played. There was also an explosive weapon that uses the light_globe sprite as a projectile.

1996

• February 24th - Qtest1 is released for testing.
• June 22nd - After 5 years, 5 months, and 7 days after announcing the game, Quake is finally playable and released to the public within the shareware release.
• July 5th - The Linux shareware release version is released.
• July 22nd - The full version of Quake finally is available to people who ordered to id Software.

Early Development

Quake traces its origins as far back as 1990, when the first episode of the Commander Keen trilogy, Marooned on Mars is released, id Software included a preview message for a follow-up project called The Fight for Justice.

COMING SOON FROM ID SOFTWARE
As our follow-up to the Commander Keen trilogy, ID Software is working on "The Fight for Justice": A completely new approach to fantasy gaming. You start not as a weakling with no food--you start as Quake, the strongest, most dangerous person on the continent. You start off with a hammer of thunderbolts, a ring of regeneration, and a trans-dimensional artifact. Here the fun begins. You fight for justice, a secret organization devoted to vanquishing evil from the land! This is role-playing excitement.

And you don't chunk around the screen. "The Fight for Justice" contains fully animated scrolling backgrounds. All the people you meet have their own lives, personalities, and objectives. A 256-color VGA version will be available (smooth scrolling 256-color screens--fancy that)!

And the depth of play will be intense. No more "whack whack here's some gold." There will be interesting puzzles and decisions won't be "yes/no" but complex correlations or people and events.

"The Fight for Justice" will be the finest PC game yet. 

Billy says: "ID Software is really keen!"

The "Quake" character mentioned throughout the preview message had originated from a Dungeons and Dragons campaign where he was John Carmack's character. He had a "Hellgate Cube sidekick creature" at some point as well and was said to be "a total badass".

Even though it never released, a few things from The Fight for Justice would end up in Quake:

• The name of Quake not only became the game's title, but also got used for the antagonist force you face (and not Shub-Niggurath, contrary to popular belief).
• The main protagonist also dropped the Quake name, becoming Ranger in the final.
• A weapon called the "Hammer of Thunderbolts" is mentioned, which likely became just the Thunderbolt later on, but you do start of with an axe as a melee weapon instead.
• The idea of a hammer, however, would possibly later be reused for the Scourge of Armagon expansion for the Mjolnir as it also has an electric attack.
• The "Ring of Regeneration" may have been changed to the Ring of Shadows, as Quake has plenty of other healing items.
• The "trans-dimensional artifact" may have later been the runes, or maybe other powerups.
• All of the RPG elements, such as NPCs were removed in final, but some elements would remain in final.
• Fully scrolling backgrounds is surprisingly accurate considering the genre change, as the sky boxes have animated portions within the clouds.
• The mention of the 256-color VGA palette is also accurate, but no other versions with other color modes such as CGA or EGA of the game exist.
• Some maps in the game also have puzzles, so that is also another idea that hasn't changed, minus the NPC portion.

Early Screenshots

To do: Note differences/any interesting content in these images.

August 1995

John Romero would release the first batch of screenshots for Quake. The "100" is using the font from Doom as a placeholder.

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  Q1.GIF

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  Q2.GIF

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  Q3.GIF

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  Q4.GIF

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  Q5.GIF

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  Q6.GIF, The dragon from the Qtest1 prototype can be seen here flying within the skybox.

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  Q7.GIF

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  Q8.GIF

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  Q9.GIF

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  Q10.GIF

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  Q11.GIF

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  Q12.GIF

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  Q13.GIF

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  Q14.GIF

Romero provided eight screenshots; four were of E1M5: Phobos Lab from Doom and four of a recreation of it in Quake.

To do: Not sure if we need to have the Doom screenshots here.

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  QE1M5-A.GIF

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  QE1M5-B.GIF

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  QE1M5-C.GIF

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  QE1M5-D.GIF

Finally two 640x480 24-bit TIFF color screenshots were provided.

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  Q15.TIF

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  Q16.TIF

The README.TXT included alongside the screenshots.

Quake screen shots
Released August 3rd, 1995

Here they are - at long last!  The very first screens shots of Quake, taken at 320x200 resolution.  Screens q15.tif and q16.tif are high-res 640x480 24-bit TIFF color screens, just so you can see the awesome lighting. The cool Quake lighting can be seen in all these screen shots (except the de1m5-? ones, which are DOOM screen shots) and a couple sprites and an Alias model as well.  We don't have any Alias models working in the game at this point, but we're >this< close to getting them fully implemented with movement, proper light sourcing and animation. Screen q6.gif has our dragon hovering above a bridge above a moat.

The screen shots prefixed by qe1m5 are to be compared against their DOOM counterparts, the screen shots prefixed by de1m5.  Obviously, these are screens from DOOM episode 1, level 5.  I duplicated the level and Quakeified it and you can see for yourself how cool it looks compared to the original.

In q3.gif, you will see a couple torches at the end of the hall. Those are old DOOM torches, just holding a spot for the new ones, so don't worry - we're not shabbing out some old graphics on ya. The same goes for the numbers at the bottom of every screen shot, which are DOOM's status bar number graphics.

In the screens where you see some pink/purple sky - that sky parallaxes and is spherically mapped. You can just imagine the wind whistling in your ears...

You should see these screens in action. :)

(Source: quakepix.zip, id Software FTP)

At some point in Early August, id added an encrypted zip to their FTP with more screenshots intended for Steve Poole of PC Gamer magazine, who was doing a cover story for the game. The zip was later noticed, cracked (the password was "poole") and the screenshots were spread out online.

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  QUAKE00.JPG

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  QUAKE01.JPG

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  QUAKE02.JPG

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  QUAKE03.JPG

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  QUAKE04.JPG

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  QUAKE05.JPG

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  QUAKE07.JPG

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  QUAKE08.JPG

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  QUAKE10.JPG

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  QUAKE11.JPG

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  SQBIG1.JPG

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  SQBIG2.JPG

A single image called qe_dev.gif would be released on August 10th, showing a screenshot of the QuakeEd editor used for Quake on a NeXT workstation.

September 1995

American McGee would release four screenshots on September 28th. The images show the Knight and Ogre enemies, both of who have noticeable differences from the final.

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  QUAKE00.GIF

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  QUAKE01.GIF

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  QUAKE02.GIF

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  QUAKE03.GIF

A separate .txt about the screenshots.

Quake screen shots
Released Sep 28th 1995

Here are some shots of the knight and ogre. I said something about looking at the knight in the help finger file... and then realized that there were no shots of him on the ftp site. So here they are.

(Source: qpix.zip and qpix.txt, id Software FTP)

Concept Art

To do: Sources

Shambler

Different revisions of the Shambler drawn by Adrian Carmack.

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  Possibly the earliest variation, that being more of a design for it's general shape. It's unfinished.

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  A later iteration which has a more lankier design with the arms and hands being a lot more bony and narrow. The torso is partially exposed, and the head is a lot more raised in height instead of being more central like the previous image.

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  An early version of the next image. Handwritten notes near the id logo at the top right read: "BLKGUMS [sic] VIOLET HEAD".

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  A similar version of the 2nd sketch, but complete. The head looks adjacent to the in-game design. The only differences is the size once more, as it is more lankier as well as the arms and hands. Some weird tendrils connect from the shoulders to the neck and head, the torso's abdominal area also has more exposed organs, and the hands are now also mouths.

Expansions

• The Phantom Swordsman and Statute enemies from Disillusion of Eternity are referred to as "Enchanted Sword" and "Living Statues" respectively on Rouge Entertainment's old website.