There are many people that say Apple invented the computer mouse as well as the windows and icons interface but the Xerox Star computer system from 1981 had that long before the Apple Macintosh computer had desktop icons and a mouse. There was even a demonstration of video conferencing and the keyboard and mouse interface in 1968! So you can tell the Macintosh users that their beloved Apple corporation only copied something that already existed before and was invented by Xerox corporation. Have computers advanced since then or have they stagnated. Computer games have certainly gone downhill, the Need for Speed series is a good example. The Need for Speed III Playstation game was the peak of the Electronic Arts racing game, then after the NFS High Stakes release, it went downhill. Classic Doom was the peak of the First Person Shooter genre, with awesome level design in the first shareware episode that is not rivalled by any modern game, that was a game you could enjoy playing for hours and hours and never get bored. Here is the article I wrote about the classic Doom game. These days the FPS gamers play Call of Duty, but I am not interested in a game like that, I prefer my classic Doom as it has actual gameplay without regenerating health and the dumbing down that modern games are suffering from.
The Doom series was a better game than any modern example, the gameplay was very simple, but challenging as well. It did not need regenerating health, trophies, achievements to unlock and cheap sniper shots from across the map. Sure you can silent BFG an opponent and they will not hear their death approaching, but that is merely exploiting a bug in the game engine and is not frowned upon in deathmatch at all. Another cool feature that has been lost in PC multiplayer gaming is the floor in a Doom deathmatch map being covered in so many bodies that you can not see the floor for all the corpses. Of course, a modern game’s memory constraints and processor power do restrict this but it would be cool to have a modern game that could have this Doom style of gameplay back again. Doom 3 tried this, but only allowed 4 players, whereas Quake 2 could have 64 players with the huge 64 player deathmatch maps. The fact that many people are still joining Doom forums and are creating Doom maps is a sign that the best classic games will never die. The venerable Quake 1 game also has quite a large number of addon maps and episodes that exist, as well as a few projects that provide high-resolution models, skins and textures for the maps. The opinion is divided concerning the high-resolution models and skins, but I like them myself. I mostly play Quake though using the Quakespasm source port for Linux. Type sudo apt-get install quake to install this source port. The Quake Reforged project is here: http://quakeone.com/reforged/index.html.
The high-resolution models and skins only work with the Darkplaces source port though. Quakespasm has fewer system requirements than the Darkplaces port and supports Mp3 music, allowing you to rip the Quake CD to the hard disk as MP3 files and then use them for music. Just copy the files into your ~/.quakespasm folder and the music will play when you are ripping apart Ogres and Zombies.
john@deep-thought:~/.quakespasm$ ls -R id1/music/ id1/music/: total 135M drwxrwxr-x 2 john john 4.0K 27-02-12 07:28 pm . drwxrwxr-x 4 john john 4.0K 27-02-12 07:28 pm .. lrwxrwxrwx 1 john john 11 27-02-12 07:28 pm title.mp3 -> track02.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 12M 04-02-12 06:42 am track02.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 5.6M 25-02-12 12:03 am track03.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 20M 25-02-12 12:23 am track04.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 14M 25-02-12 12:08 am track05.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 17M 09-02-12 11:25 am track06.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 20M 26-01-12 04:53 pm track07.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 13M 25-02-12 12:00 am track08.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 15M 25-02-12 12:03 am track09.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 8.2M 25-02-12 12:13 am track10.mp3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 13M 25-02-12 12:19 am track11.mp3 john@deep-thought:~/.quakespasm$ |