The evolution of shooters. Part 1
We dismantled the evolution of racing games , and it's time for shooters. When did the camera first wiggle when moving, adding realism? When did the weapon appear on the screen? What did the first shooters look like? And why does most people use WASD as the main keyboard shortcut?
The history of modern shooters, involving first-person control, begins in the 1970s. One of the first games in the genre was Maze War , released in 1973 for the computer Imlac PDS-1. The player moved through the maze in invisible squares, turning left and right 90 degrees.
To shoot at the enemy, it was enough to look at him, and not aim at a specific point. There was already both single and multiplayer modes: the other participants, the player saw as eyeballs.
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Steve Colley worked on the game at NASA's Ames Research Center. He used tile graphics . The tile image consists of a set of tiles and a matrix of cells. Tiles - “tiles” - images of the same size from which the complete picture is built. This approach allows you to build space, spending a bit of memory.
For a palm with Maze War, a 1974 space simulator called Spasim , designed for the computer system PLATO, is fighting. This is again a multiplayer game with up to 32 participants. Players move in space on spacecraft in the polar coordinate system, and the players themselves calculate the correct coordinates for movement. The PLATO system is an educational one.
One of the first 3D shooters was Hovertank 3D , released in 1991. Events take place during a nuclear war. The protagonist is the mercenary Brick Slage. He must evacuate people from cities at risk of attack, but mutants, armed guards and hovercraft prevent him.
Game made id Software . The developers used sprite graphics . The same scalable sprites and painted walls were later used in Catacomb 3D and Wolfenstein 3D.
The player controlled the hovercraft tank. To create a more realistic atmosphere in the shooter added rocking the camera while moving.
The difference between Hovertank 3D and other games of the time was its speed. The 3D engine was smart, because John Carmack used Ray casting technology. The scenes in the game were based on measurements of the intersection of the rays with the visualized surface. In other words, the computer rendered only what the user saw, and not the entire space at the same time. The 3D games from Carmack that followed Hovertank used the same algorithm.
In 1991, id Software released Catacomb 3D . Health indicator made the image of the face of the protagonist, which later migrated to Doom. Catacomb 3D was the third game in the cycle, where the first two games had two-dimensional graphics and a top view.
The main character is a magician capable of throwing fireballs at opponents. It is necessary to go through the maze, kill the necromancer mage and save his friend.
For the first time in the shooter, the image of the weapon appeared in the middle of the screen - the hand of the magician.
Id Software decided to make Castle Wolfenstein of 1981 stealth action and its continuation of 1984 Beyond Castle Wolfenstein a shooter, bought the rights to the games and released Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. The protagonist is a soldier trying to escape from a Nazi fortress. The game had a lot of secret rooms where you can find jewelry, food, first aid kits, weapons and ammunition. Resist the hero guards, dogs, monsters and bosses at the end of levels.
In the original, which was very different from the 3D version, the player could change into enemy form and silently kill the enemy. The developers of id Software did not embody this in their first game, because it complicated management and delayed the game.
The engine was based on the same principles as Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D. But if the EGA-graphics in Catacomb was able to display 16 colors, then the support of the VGA standard in Wolfenstein 3D improved this result to 256 colors. This was a huge step forward in terms of the visual component of the game.
The first Doom was released on December 10, 1993. The creator of the game, John Carmack, said that the style of the game was inspired by "Aliens" and the second "Evil Dead." If you have not had a chance to play Doom, briefly about the plot: you are a special forces soldier sent to Mars. You are in custody because of the violation of the order of an officer to shoot at civilians, but after losing communication with comrades on Phobos, you break out to deal with problems. In general, this is not very important. The main thing - you are attacked by terrible creatures, whom you purposefully kill. You shoot, blow up, search for hiding places, avoid traps.
The game has become a cult. Until the 2000s, all first-person shooters were called Doom clones, which they basically were. Only the intersection with other genres of games such as Aliens versus Predator, and the addition of the plot without interrupting the game, as in Half-Life, could add something new to the game genre.
The game engine supported several functions that raised the genre to a new level. There were switches in Doom that were responsible for various events: the opening of doors and walls, the movement of platforms. Elevators lifted the player to other floors. The same elevators could crush the player.
In Catacomb 3D, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, the player could only turn right and left. To kill the enemy on the dais or below you, you just had to look at him and shoot. Heretic on the improved Doom engine, released in 1994, added to the genre the opportunity to look up and down. Another difference from the predecessors of the game was the inventory with artifacts that could be used in the process, and not immediately after they were picked up. In case of loss of health, the player could use the Quartz bottle and restore it, and the Chaos Emblems applied at any time would teleport the player to the beginning of the level.
In the 1994 game, Bungie released Marathon for Macintosh, where it was possible not only to look up and down, but to freely change the direction of the look with the mouse. This game was one of the first shooters where the capabilities of this manipulator were used instead of the standard arrows on the keyboard. A rocket jump appeared in Marathon. Up to eight people could play on the local network.
In early 1996, 3D Realms releases Duke Nukem 3D. The first two games in the series were platformers. The new Doom clone with pseudo-three-dimensional corridors supported a single version and multiplayer, although the latter - only on Windows 95.
The game went to the quotes: “Let's rock!”, “Hail to the King baby!”, “Damn ... I'm looking good!” (This phrase the main character said when he saw himself in the mirror). The game had a lot of Easter eggs with references to films.
Id Software developers are not asleep and set the pace for competitors. Quake 1996 remained relevant for many years. And not because of the schedule, although you can still look at it without pain in your eyes. Prior to this, 3D graphics looked weaker than the pseudo three dimensional developed at that time. But in Quake, they managed to use textured polygonal patterns at the right level. The gameplay was interesting, multiplayer battles were excellent, and the soundtrack from Trent Reznor, the founder of Nine Inch Nails, helped to add atmosphere.
If the game Street Fighter II is associated with the concept of "combo", then Quake - with the concept of tricking in computer games. There was a rocket-jump already used in games, as well as a bug that allowed you to speed up in a jump - to do a stretch-jump .
Before the release of the full version, a QTest demo version appeared that did not have a single mode. During the first day, dozens of servers appeared to play over the network.
Quake had a huge impact on eSports. More precisely, it stood at its origins in the modern sense. Championships were held, professional players appeared. On February 18, 1996, several people at id Software headquarters tested the game before release, in August of that year in Texas 40 people took part in the championship, and in September the championship in New York was covered in the media.
In June 1997, the Red Annihilation took place in Atlanta at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. At this championship Dennis Fong won the John Carmack Ferrari 328 GTS. What is interesting is what key combination Phong used.
The shooters before Quake and Marathon had enough arrows on the keyboard, but they added a mouse to the controls, and it became inconvenient to click the arrows. Among the options appeared A Shift ZX, where A - forward, and Z - back, WADX, EDSF. The developers of Wolfenstein and Wizardry were users of PLATO, where control in the game Moria was carried out using AWD.
Phong chose WASD. John Carmack added the Phong name configuration to Quake II, but only in Half-Life was it the first to become the default configuration.
Valve 's Half-Life game was created on a recycled Quake engine. One of the differences between Half-Life and other games in general, and shooters in particular, is narration without video savers. The plot develops in the game world with the participation of the player. This allowed for even greater immersion. The effect was added by the fact that we did not hear the voice of the main character. The world has become more complicated, the player had not only enemies, but also allies.
Quake fans worked on creating the game. Newell and Harrington, the founders of Valve, found inexperienced modders and several game industry veterans from 3D Realms, Shiny Entertainment and Microsoft.
Fans modders played an important role for Valve. In 1999, the SDK to create mods for Half-Life was made publicly available. Among the amateur crafts was Counter Strike mod. In 2000, Valve noticed the project and bought out Ming Lee and Jess Cliff's mod, developing it to a full-fledged Counter-Strike 1.6 game, and then a whole series of games that became synonymous with eSports. A multiplayer game and won an audience by competing with Quake III and Unreal Tournament.
In the games of this series, server administrators and championship organizers especially have to make sure that players do not use cheats. The standard set of tools for deceiving and dealing with it is getting back to normal.
Today, we recognize the atmosphere of the game world in shooters by the old pixelated screenshots. Technical progress gradually brought the graphics to the level of photorealism, but do not think that it was the main challenge. Sound is important for a good game.
In Aliens versus Predator from Rebellion Developments provides support for surround sound. In the dark, the player knew where the enemy is. Unexpected sounds are needed to create an atmosphere of horror and complete immersion in the genre of survival horror. Although “Aliens vs. Predator” is also a stealth action game: when playing for Alien, you have to bypass opponents with automatic weapons, because you only have claws, teeth and a tail,my documents .
The player assumes the role of Alien, Predator or Marine. For each of the characters need their own tactics. A Marine from a firearm can kill an Alien, but the Alien is able to frighten a soldier to release the entire store into the dark and start reloading. And then the Alien breaks his victim.
An important milestone for shooters on consoles was the game GoldenEye 007, released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64. With great pleasure, the players found themselves in the shoes of the famous James Bond. The game received a huge amount of positive feedback from both players and critics.
In this article, we remembered not about all the games until 2000. So let's discuss in the comments the shooters you remember and how they influenced the genre and what they added to it.
The history of modern shooters, involving first-person control, begins in the 1970s. One of the first games in the genre was Maze War , released in 1973 for the computer Imlac PDS-1. The player moved through the maze in invisible squares, turning left and right 90 degrees.To shoot at the enemy, it was enough to look at him, and not aim at a specific point. There was already both single and multiplayer modes: the other participants, the player saw as eyeballs.
')
Steve Colley worked on the game at NASA's Ames Research Center. He used tile graphics . The tile image consists of a set of tiles and a matrix of cells. Tiles - “tiles” - images of the same size from which the complete picture is built. This approach allows you to build space, spending a bit of memory.
For a palm with Maze War, a 1974 space simulator called Spasim , designed for the computer system PLATO, is fighting. This is again a multiplayer game with up to 32 participants. Players move in space on spacecraft in the polar coordinate system, and the players themselves calculate the correct coordinates for movement. The PLATO system is an educational one.
One of the first 3D shooters was Hovertank 3D , released in 1991. Events take place during a nuclear war. The protagonist is the mercenary Brick Slage. He must evacuate people from cities at risk of attack, but mutants, armed guards and hovercraft prevent him.
Game made id Software . The developers used sprite graphics . The same scalable sprites and painted walls were later used in Catacomb 3D and Wolfenstein 3D.
The player controlled the hovercraft tank. To create a more realistic atmosphere in the shooter added rocking the camera while moving.
The difference between Hovertank 3D and other games of the time was its speed. The 3D engine was smart, because John Carmack used Ray casting technology. The scenes in the game were based on measurements of the intersection of the rays with the visualized surface. In other words, the computer rendered only what the user saw, and not the entire space at the same time. The 3D games from Carmack that followed Hovertank used the same algorithm.
In 1991, id Software released Catacomb 3D . Health indicator made the image of the face of the protagonist, which later migrated to Doom. Catacomb 3D was the third game in the cycle, where the first two games had two-dimensional graphics and a top view.
The main character is a magician capable of throwing fireballs at opponents. It is necessary to go through the maze, kill the necromancer mage and save his friend.
For the first time in the shooter, the image of the weapon appeared in the middle of the screen - the hand of the magician.
Id Software decided to make Castle Wolfenstein of 1981 stealth action and its continuation of 1984 Beyond Castle Wolfenstein a shooter, bought the rights to the games and released Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. The protagonist is a soldier trying to escape from a Nazi fortress. The game had a lot of secret rooms where you can find jewelry, food, first aid kits, weapons and ammunition. Resist the hero guards, dogs, monsters and bosses at the end of levels.
In the original, which was very different from the 3D version, the player could change into enemy form and silently kill the enemy. The developers of id Software did not embody this in their first game, because it complicated management and delayed the game.
The engine was based on the same principles as Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D. But if the EGA-graphics in Catacomb was able to display 16 colors, then the support of the VGA standard in Wolfenstein 3D improved this result to 256 colors. This was a huge step forward in terms of the visual component of the game.
The first Doom was released on December 10, 1993. The creator of the game, John Carmack, said that the style of the game was inspired by "Aliens" and the second "Evil Dead." If you have not had a chance to play Doom, briefly about the plot: you are a special forces soldier sent to Mars. You are in custody because of the violation of the order of an officer to shoot at civilians, but after losing communication with comrades on Phobos, you break out to deal with problems. In general, this is not very important. The main thing - you are attacked by terrible creatures, whom you purposefully kill. You shoot, blow up, search for hiding places, avoid traps.
The game has become a cult. Until the 2000s, all first-person shooters were called Doom clones, which they basically were. Only the intersection with other genres of games such as Aliens versus Predator, and the addition of the plot without interrupting the game, as in Half-Life, could add something new to the game genre.
The game engine supported several functions that raised the genre to a new level. There were switches in Doom that were responsible for various events: the opening of doors and walls, the movement of platforms. Elevators lifted the player to other floors. The same elevators could crush the player.
In Catacomb 3D, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, the player could only turn right and left. To kill the enemy on the dais or below you, you just had to look at him and shoot. Heretic on the improved Doom engine, released in 1994, added to the genre the opportunity to look up and down. Another difference from the predecessors of the game was the inventory with artifacts that could be used in the process, and not immediately after they were picked up. In case of loss of health, the player could use the Quartz bottle and restore it, and the Chaos Emblems applied at any time would teleport the player to the beginning of the level.
In the 1994 game, Bungie released Marathon for Macintosh, where it was possible not only to look up and down, but to freely change the direction of the look with the mouse. This game was one of the first shooters where the capabilities of this manipulator were used instead of the standard arrows on the keyboard. A rocket jump appeared in Marathon. Up to eight people could play on the local network.
In early 1996, 3D Realms releases Duke Nukem 3D. The first two games in the series were platformers. The new Doom clone with pseudo-three-dimensional corridors supported a single version and multiplayer, although the latter - only on Windows 95.
The game went to the quotes: “Let's rock!”, “Hail to the King baby!”, “Damn ... I'm looking good!” (This phrase the main character said when he saw himself in the mirror). The game had a lot of Easter eggs with references to films.
Id Software developers are not asleep and set the pace for competitors. Quake 1996 remained relevant for many years. And not because of the schedule, although you can still look at it without pain in your eyes. Prior to this, 3D graphics looked weaker than the pseudo three dimensional developed at that time. But in Quake, they managed to use textured polygonal patterns at the right level. The gameplay was interesting, multiplayer battles were excellent, and the soundtrack from Trent Reznor, the founder of Nine Inch Nails, helped to add atmosphere.
If the game Street Fighter II is associated with the concept of "combo", then Quake - with the concept of tricking in computer games. There was a rocket-jump already used in games, as well as a bug that allowed you to speed up in a jump - to do a stretch-jump .
Before the release of the full version, a QTest demo version appeared that did not have a single mode. During the first day, dozens of servers appeared to play over the network.
Quake had a huge impact on eSports. More precisely, it stood at its origins in the modern sense. Championships were held, professional players appeared. On February 18, 1996, several people at id Software headquarters tested the game before release, in August of that year in Texas 40 people took part in the championship, and in September the championship in New York was covered in the media.
In June 1997, the Red Annihilation took place in Atlanta at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. At this championship Dennis Fong won the John Carmack Ferrari 328 GTS. What is interesting is what key combination Phong used.
The shooters before Quake and Marathon had enough arrows on the keyboard, but they added a mouse to the controls, and it became inconvenient to click the arrows. Among the options appeared A Shift ZX, where A - forward, and Z - back, WADX, EDSF. The developers of Wolfenstein and Wizardry were users of PLATO, where control in the game Moria was carried out using AWD.
Phong chose WASD. John Carmack added the Phong name configuration to Quake II, but only in Half-Life was it the first to become the default configuration.
Valve 's Half-Life game was created on a recycled Quake engine. One of the differences between Half-Life and other games in general, and shooters in particular, is narration without video savers. The plot develops in the game world with the participation of the player. This allowed for even greater immersion. The effect was added by the fact that we did not hear the voice of the main character. The world has become more complicated, the player had not only enemies, but also allies.
Quake fans worked on creating the game. Newell and Harrington, the founders of Valve, found inexperienced modders and several game industry veterans from 3D Realms, Shiny Entertainment and Microsoft.
Fans modders played an important role for Valve. In 1999, the SDK to create mods for Half-Life was made publicly available. Among the amateur crafts was Counter Strike mod. In 2000, Valve noticed the project and bought out Ming Lee and Jess Cliff's mod, developing it to a full-fledged Counter-Strike 1.6 game, and then a whole series of games that became synonymous with eSports. A multiplayer game and won an audience by competing with Quake III and Unreal Tournament.
In the games of this series, server administrators and championship organizers especially have to make sure that players do not use cheats. The standard set of tools for deceiving and dealing with it is getting back to normal.
Today, we recognize the atmosphere of the game world in shooters by the old pixelated screenshots. Technical progress gradually brought the graphics to the level of photorealism, but do not think that it was the main challenge. Sound is important for a good game.
In Aliens versus Predator from Rebellion Developments provides support for surround sound. In the dark, the player knew where the enemy is. Unexpected sounds are needed to create an atmosphere of horror and complete immersion in the genre of survival horror. Although “Aliens vs. Predator” is also a stealth action game: when playing for Alien, you have to bypass opponents with automatic weapons, because you only have claws, teeth and a tail,
The player assumes the role of Alien, Predator or Marine. For each of the characters need their own tactics. A Marine from a firearm can kill an Alien, but the Alien is able to frighten a soldier to release the entire store into the dark and start reloading. And then the Alien breaks his victim.
An important milestone for shooters on consoles was the game GoldenEye 007, released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64. With great pleasure, the players found themselves in the shoes of the famous James Bond. The game received a huge amount of positive feedback from both players and critics.
In this article, we remembered not about all the games until 2000. So let's discuss in the comments the shooters you remember and how they influenced the genre and what they added to it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/399349/
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