Quake computer game

Quake is a first person shooter game that was published by id Software in 1996. It was revolutionary because it used 3d polygons not only for the scenery but also for all the players and monsters.

The majority of programming work on the Quake engine was done by John Carmack. The background music for the game was done by Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails.

The story to the game follows the usual format for id Software's FPS games: Portals to a realm of evil beings have opened up, and you are the only person who can journey through them to close the rift. In the specific case of Quake, the other realm is inspired by several influences, notably that of H. P. Lovecraft (the end game nasty being Shub-Niggurath herself!)

It has a multi-player mode to play over the internet with or against other humans. The network play uses a client/server model, where the actual game runs on the server only and all players "log in" there to participate.

The game itself can be heavily modified. Users created their own maps and models, and coded some changes to the game itself using QuakeC, an interpreted, cut-down version of the computer language C. The QuakeC code runs on the game server alone.

The source code of Quake was licensed under the GPL in 1999.

Based on the success of the first Quake game, id later published Quake II and Quake III Arena.

Games using the Quake engine

• Quake
• Hexen II

Games using a Quake engine with more options

• Half-Life
• Quake II
• FAKK[?]
• SiN[?]

Replacement Quake I Engines

• GQ
• TomazQuake[?]
• DarkPlaces[?]
• Tenebrae