Games without which everything would be different

[luj1]

Just something I had on my mind recently. I know some of you have strong opinions about Darklands




Goldeneye - signaled the transition to realistic shooters, introduced location based damage. Counter Strike before Counter Strike

Morrowind - saved Bethesda from bankrupcy and (despite being good itself) paved the way for huge declines in the form of Oblivion and Fallout 3 (which almost single handedly caused the decline of the RPG genre)

Quake - if John Carmack hadn't licenced the Q2 engine to Gabe Newell we wouldn't have Half Life, Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Team Fortress, Overwatch, etc. (link) and around a 100+ Source games (link)

WarCraft III - developed the hero concept now responsible for a new genre including 50+ MOBA titles (link) and 20+ Hero shooters (link)

Diablo - huge influence on system design to this day, don't even know where to start. The itemization, the enemies, the red and blue mana "blobs"

EverQuest - never played it but I hear WoW copied everything from it (from the HUD to the class trinity) and everyone else copied WoW (maybe anvi can tell us more)

WoW - the "everything is colorful" palette which plagues art direction to this day




EDIT: and let's stick to a more reasonable timeframe, modern stuff only (so no Pong and Pac Man)

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

PONG

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Realms of Arkania HD

 

[Ghulgothas]

Resident Evil - Responsible for the popularization and codification of it's particular brand of Survival Horror and it's focus on inventory management and tight map design. A philosophy that would inspire many attempted successors and influence the gameplay in the Horror Genre for years to come.

Team Fortress 2 - Obviously the rise of Class-Based Hero Shooters and the Ilk endemic to them. But it also set a high standard for Versus Multiplayer games with it's utilitarian design (before the bloat) and demonstrated how effective a unified art style designed specifically to gel with gameplay can work to great benefit, as opposed to greyed attempts at realism. It and the rest of the Orange Box are also what helped to make Valve an industry titan.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Those are not necessarily the best games, though usually they would be memorable.

So games which invented FPS => Wolfenstein 3D, Doom.
Games which invited Real Time Wargame =>
Centurion (turn based movement on the world map and real time battle you could interract with
Ancient Art of War (with real time movement on the world map AND real time battles you could interact with)
Before that it was turned based or "let's copycat that TT Wargame"
Adventure games => Zork, King Quest
RTs => Warcraft, Dune 2
Strategy Game => Imperialism, Civilization I
RPG => I am sure you will know the examples but Wizardry and Ultima I have to be here.

Then there are the games that are famous for popularising a genre, and they are not always the same one as those creating the conversions (think C&C vs Dune 2, the first Total war vs Ancient Art of War, ...)

 

[Ghulgothas]

Daikatana, and for the better.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

EDIT: and let's stick to a more reasonable timeframe, modern stuff only (so no Pong and Pac Man)

'k, bye newfag.

 

[Viata]

I don't get the point of the topic. If there was no Goldeneye, soon or later someone would made a game like that. Just like if Einstein didn't exist, we would still discover all his theory.

 

[luj1]

Team Fortress 2

Initially a mod for Quake 1 if I recall

 

[Ghulgothas]

Team Fortress 2

Initially a mod for Quake 1 if I recall

It is! Another testament to the primeval basis Quake has provided for games across the years.

 

[luj1]

So games which invented FPS => Wolfenstein 3D, Doom

Yeah I recently read about Catacomb 3D (the precursor to Wolf) which apparently was the first 3D first-person game

Fucking Carmack pretty much created shooters it seems

 

[ValeVelKal]

I don't get the point of the topic. If there was no Goldeneye, soon or later someone would made a game like that. Just like if Einstein didn't exist, we would still discover all his theory.

First games in a genre create conventions that stay around. Typical examples is that the "average range" in RTS (in terms of size of the average screen) was codified by Dune II. The combat tank range was the same as the tank range in C&C for instance, and carried on until the death of the genre. Similarly, nuXCOM created the "1 movement and 1 action, or 2 movements" convention that was copied and copied again in recent tactical shooters.

There are more hidden stuff. The size of a "tile" in a diablo-like was for a long time the size of a tile in Diablo, which took it from ... UFO Defense. The color code of random items (green / blue / purple / gold) also comes from Diablo I believe. Controls on FPS stabilized around the convention created by the first Call of Duty I think (or maybe Unreal).

And then there are genres created by a game - PUBG created a new genre (or popularized a genre created from DayZ) which could very well have existed in the early 2000, and created the "beginning in a parachute" convention.

Without seminal games whole genres would not exist nowadays, and when they are eventually invented they would look & feel different.

 

[ValeVelKal]

So games which invented FPS => Wolfenstein 3D, Doom

Yeah I recently read about Catacomb 3D (the precursor to Wolf) which apparently was the first 3D first-person game

yeah I heard about Catacomb but never played it. Maybe another case of "Catacomb invented the genre, Wolf3D popularized it"

 

[luj1]

ValeVelKal My bad, apparently Hovertank 3D > Catacomb 3D > Wolf 3D (the Wolf lineage) > Doom > Quake > everything

 

[ValeVelKal]

ValeVelKal My bad, apparently Hovertank 3D > Catacomb 3D > Wolf 3D (the Wolf lineage) > Doom > Quake > everything

Let's say that you are important if you :

- Create a genre, or
- Define (or redefine) the conventions of a genre, or
- Popularize a genre

 

[luj1]

There are more hidden stuff. The size of a "tile" in a diablo-like was for a long time the size of a tile in Diablo, which took it from ... UFO Defense

Crazy stuff

Let's say that you are important if you :

- Create a genre, or
- Define (or redefine) the conventions of a genre, or
- Popularize a genre

Well put mate

 

[DraQ]

Baldur's Gate - spawned PS:T using its engine, but inflicted literally decades of "I want to be a warcraft" RTWP fucktardry on RPGkind.
Diablo - invented H&S/roguelite. Whether or not it was a good thing is debatable.
Diablo 2 - invented shitty item treadmill MMOlite. Whether or not it was a good thing is bloody fucking obvious.
Oblivion - declined everything, single handedly.
Halo - introduced gaypad wielding consoletards to FPS mainstream.
DOS - resurrected TB.
Elite - invented open world 3D space combat/trading genre.
Operation Flashpoint - proven that getting realistically shot in the face is fun for sufficiently large target audience.

Quake - if John Carmack hadn't licenced the Q2 engine to Gabe Newell we wouldn't have Half Life, Counter Strike, Call of Duty, etc. (link) and around a 100+ Source games (link)

Q1 engine, actually.

WarCraft III - developed the hero concept now responsible for a new genre including 50+ MOBA titles (link) and 20+ Hero shooters (link)

Starcraft did it earlier.

WoW - the "everything is colorful" palette which plagues art direction to this day

Warcraft III, actually.

 

[luj1]

Starcraft did it earlier.

And Warcraft II did it even earlier. But it wasn't until Warcraft III that this hero concept was fleshed out and began to influence everything

Warcraft III, actually.

Yup, you're right

Q1 engine, actually

Highly modified Q2 engine. But because Valve had acquired various Quake licences back in the day its possible they used bits and pieces from Q1 and other quake engines too

GameSpot: You originally licensed the classic Quake engine but preferred to roll your own features into Half-Life's engine rather than license Quake II. Why was that?

Gabe Newell: Actually we have a licence to the Quake II engine. We have the source code to the original DOS Quake, Win Quake, GL Quake, Quake World, Quake II, and all of the various patches. We pick and choose from that source base depending on what we are trying to do. However, we've been implementing a lot of our own sub-systems (animation, AI, GL and software renderer), so about 75 per cent of the engine is our own code.

 

[Falksi]

The Good

Baldur's Gate - Perfectly timing to take RPG's into the Golden Era. Refined a lot of older mechanics, and surrounded it with great roleplaying. Made me buy a PC.

X-Com - Bullied turn based combat to the front of the queue

Double Dragon - Yeah beat 'em ups were already out there, and Kung Fu Master definitely nailed their mast to the donkey, but kids cruising the arcades knew when this hit it was BIG. Suddenly all the BEU elements were taken to another level.

Street Fighter 2 - World changing. Not only did it revolutionise how BEU's played, but it suddenly made mass competition on arcades a real thing. We had to literally fight to get a go at the cashade.

GTA Vice City - Took pop culture from being a backdrop in gaming, to being a screaming, in your face core part of it.

Super Mario Bros - Proved gaming could be as addictive as smack


The Bad

Pokemon - Took JRPG's away from being fantastical adventures, to fucking stupid merch-fueled collect-quests.

The Sims - Warped a generation into think life exists on a machine, and changed the perspective that instead of having a break from reality, it was now about creating a new one.

Mortal Kombat - "Forget gameplay, here's real life graphics." Cursed gaming for 10-15 years after.


The Ugly

Final Fantasy series - Not only popularised JRPG's amongst gamers, but broke them through to the mainstream too with FF7. Whether that's a good thing or not I'm not sure.

COD - Bought FPS to the forefront, and watered them down to mongsville in the process

Metal Gear Solid - Amazing PS1 game gave rise to a ton of absolute self indulgent bullshit cut-scenes in various games of this ilk, including it's own sequels.

 

[Danikas]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel

Without this there would be no Rpgs.

 

[AArmanFV]

Resident Evil - Responsible for the popularization and codification of it's particular brand of Survival Horror and it's focus on inventory management and tight map design. A philosophy that would inspire many attempted successors and influence the gameplay in the Horror Genre for years to come.

I can't think of RE without Alone in the Dark, but I agree that the massification and popularization of the formula was due to resident evil.

 

[Carrion]

Operation Flashpoint - proven that getting realistically shot in the face is fun for sufficiently large target audience.

Rainbow Six, SWAT 3 and Hidden & Dangerous don't count, or are you just thinking in terms of multiplayer?

It's actually a damn shame that pretty much no one has made a serious attempt at beating OFP in its own game. Even Bohemia didn't, as they never bothered making a decent SP campaign for any of the Arma games.

 

[Bad Sector]

Highly modified Q2 engine. But because Valve had acquired various Quake licences back in the day its possible they used bits and pieces from Q1 and other quake engines too

Highly modified Quake 1 engine actually, there is very little Quake 2 code in it. Here is an archived article with two programmers who worked on the engine saying that it was based on Quake 1:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080228162611/http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?doc=1028244478-62628500

What came first, the chicken or the egg? What is Half-Life built on, Quake 1 or Quake 2? These questions pop up pretty frequently, and neither seems to have an accepted answer. In an effort to extinguish the argument, I've asked the people who know best. About Half-Life, that is. We're not touching the question about the chicken.

Ken Birdwell explains it like this:

"It is fundamentally just a heavily modified Quake 1 engine. There are about 50 lines of code from the Quake 2 engine, mostly bugs fixes to hard problems that Carmack found and fixed before we ran into them."

At its core, it's a Quake 1 engine. You can tell this by comparing Half-life's map compiling tools with those shipped with Quake1. You'll find very minor differences -- none of them are fundamental. The core rendering is architecturally identical to Quake1, the only "significant" change is removing the fixed palette, making map lighting RGB instead of 8 bit, and converting software rendering to be 16 bit color instead of 8 bit color, which was pretty easy and only required minor code changes. Our skeletal animation system is new, though it was heavily influenced by the existing model rendering code, as were a lot of our updated particle effects, though less so with our beam system. Decals are totally new, our audio system has some major additions to what already existed, and at ship time our networking was almost totally Quake1 / QuakeWorld networking but about a year later Yahn rewrote most of all of it to be very different in design. The most highly changed sections are the game logic; ours being written in C++ and Quake's being in written interpreted "Quake C". Our AI system is very very different from anything in Quake, and there's a lot of other significant architectural changes in the whole server and client implementations, though if you look hard enough you can find a few remnants of some nearly unmodified Quake1 era entities buried in places.

Jay Stelly adds, "We also took PAS from QW and/or Q2 and a couple of other minor routines I can remember (no more than 100-200 lines of code there). There was some feature overlap (as Ken mentions) like game code DLLs and colored lighting, but we developed our own solutions to those independent of Q2."

So there it is. This should put some arguments to rest. Half-Life is based on Quake 1, although it has a very small amount of Quake 2 code. Yahn notes that "we did use some of the winsock functions from Q2, that's about it. Probably more than 50 lines, but nothing too interesting."

Also the file formats for the maps, etc are closer to the Quake 1 and even in Source engine you can find remnants of Quake 1 that were removed in Quake 2.

 

[Farewell into the night]

Pokemon Red/Green

 

[Jvegi]

Baldur's Gate.
Without it perhaps I would've been such a gaming faggot, I'd have joined the scouts, met the girl of my life 10 years earlier, and we would be together, with two kids and great love life.
Instead, I met her too late, I got involved with someone else and it's all fucked.