The Quake 3 demo was one of my favorite games I wasn't allowed to play as a teenager. Loved blowing people up with a rocket launcher and laser beaming with a railgun. I have no qualms about whether AI finished this, just enjoying the fact that nostalgia can be invoked more easily and cheaply than ever before.
On a similar note World of Warcraft just launched "WoW Forever", a nostalgic throwback to vanilla WoW. Millions of people tried to play on the first day and for the first time ever during a major launch of WoW, everything went smoothly and players were able to log in and play without lagging out. Normally it took a few days after launch for servers to catch up to demand and allow people to actually play the game without lag or disconnections. I'm confident that AI played a major role in allowing Blizzard's team to navigate a WoW launch successfully for the first time.
It seems weird to attribute WoW's launch success to AI and not to the 20+ years of experience the industry has with modern online game architecture. When it launched in 2004 the state of MMO games was very different and a lot of those choices are hard to undo on an actively played game. I imagine AI was used but I doubt it had any great architectural insight that the experts at Blizzard didn't.
> I have no qualms about whether AI finished this, just enjoying the fact that nostalgia can be invoked more easily and cheaply than ever before.
Maybe making nostalgic experiences available so cheaply is not a good thing. For me seeing mods and reimaginings of old games is interesting because people puts lots of effort into them with attention to detail and their own ideas. Someone recreating Half-Life 1 with modern graphics using AI is not going to create something as cool as Black Mesa, for instance, which didn't attempt to make a 1 to 1 recreation but to improve things and make it fit with more modern graphics.
There are some gameplay issues with the WoW Layering tech (Layering is World of Warcraft's name for where you there are multiple shards for the same zone, and players may transfer between each layer as it balances. So instead of different servers, everyone is on one "server", and each zone is sharded to accomadate large populations). But the layering and single realm tech is just really well done. It scales to huge populations seamlessly. There is some polishing on zone boundaries and pvp, but the tech was pulled off without a hitch for a massive launch, millions of concurrent players.
I remember pirating Quake, got it in August before the Nov launch (gotta love early 0-day releases) and playing the hell out of it. Played so many mods and the early machinima mods. By the time Quake 2 came out I had money to buy the game and did so, great game. I setup my first Ethernet network between two machines and the first thing I did was call a few friends over for 1v1 Quake 2 matches. I can still remember my friend Jose killing me in that lava room trap and the laughs had. I wasnt a big twitch gamer but my brother and I did a little bit of Q3A DM but it wasn't my thing; I prefer a story and casual game play.
I remember buying Quake 4 but I don't remember playing it. Tells you a lot right there.
I watched a playthrough of the expansion and it was a bit more forgettable than Quake 4 itself. It didn't do much of anything new that the main game didn't.
I remember really enjoying the single-player campaign for Quake 4 at the time, but I don't know how well it holds up. I still have the discs in the original retail packaging, tucked away in a closet somewhere.
At least in Germany, at the time when Quake 4 was released, basically everybody who was slightly interested in gaming topics (independent from whether one loved or hated this game) knew about it because of the huge outrage that the German version of Quake 4 was so censored:
My memory of quake 4 was me and my friends were excited because it was one of the first PC games to have a DVD release instead of a bunch of CDs. This felt revolutionary at the time.
I think a cool middle-ground for the future could be that AI-based modding becomes a first-class service provided by game companies. That way, they could reasonably own the IP of mods (especially if they provided the AI services), and it'd sort of end-run around like, "oh but you just copy the game or make the game" but instead, the fundamentals are there, the platform is there, etc. Make it easy for customers to play their mods with friends, etc.
I don’t understand why this isn’t more common including long before AI. As in, why don’t game companies make source code available to modders and take a cut of sales? Even if mods sell for a fraction the price of the main game, some are bound to take off, so for the game studio it’s like being given 1000 lottery tickets where a handful are bound to win, and at no cost.
That's like saying my house was framed by a hammer instead of a carpenter. AI is a just a tool with no agency. The people wielding the tool finished this expansion, just as the title says.
The Quake 3 demo was one of my favorite games I wasn't allowed to play as a teenager. Loved blowing people up with a rocket launcher and laser beaming with a railgun. I have no qualms about whether AI finished this, just enjoying the fact that nostalgia can be invoked more easily and cheaply than ever before.
On a similar note World of Warcraft just launched "WoW Forever", a nostalgic throwback to vanilla WoW. Millions of people tried to play on the first day and for the first time ever during a major launch of WoW, everything went smoothly and players were able to log in and play without lagging out. Normally it took a few days after launch for servers to catch up to demand and allow people to actually play the game without lag or disconnections. I'm confident that AI played a major role in allowing Blizzard's team to navigate a WoW launch successfully for the first time.
It seems weird to attribute WoW's launch success to AI and not to the 20+ years of experience the industry has with modern online game architecture. When it launched in 2004 the state of MMO games was very different and a lot of those choices are hard to undo on an actively played game. I imagine AI was used but I doubt it had any great architectural insight that the experts at Blizzard didn't.
Instant Quake 3 nostalgia here: https://thelongestyard.link/q3a-demo/ (actually predates AI)
> I have no qualms about whether AI finished this, just enjoying the fact that nostalgia can be invoked more easily and cheaply than ever before.
Maybe making nostalgic experiences available so cheaply is not a good thing. For me seeing mods and reimaginings of old games is interesting because people puts lots of effort into them with attention to detail and their own ideas. Someone recreating Half-Life 1 with modern graphics using AI is not going to create something as cool as Black Mesa, for instance, which didn't attempt to make a 1 to 1 recreation but to improve things and make it fit with more modern graphics.
There are some gameplay issues with the WoW Layering tech (Layering is World of Warcraft's name for where you there are multiple shards for the same zone, and players may transfer between each layer as it balances. So instead of different servers, everyone is on one "server", and each zone is sharded to accomadate large populations). But the layering and single realm tech is just really well done. It scales to huge populations seamlessly. There is some polishing on zone boundaries and pvp, but the tech was pulled off without a hitch for a massive launch, millions of concurrent players.
> Quake 3 demo was one of my favorite games I wasn't allowed to play as a teenager.
yea that opening Quake 4 sequence came a little too early for me D:
I've not even played a second of WoW. Is WoW forever worth playing for someone in my shoes?
Quake 4 was decent. It's the Doom 3 engine in the Quake 2 universe.
I've replayed Quake 1 and Quake 2 dozens of times but I'll never play Quake 4 again.
I remember pirating Quake, got it in August before the Nov launch (gotta love early 0-day releases) and playing the hell out of it. Played so many mods and the early machinima mods. By the time Quake 2 came out I had money to buy the game and did so, great game. I setup my first Ethernet network between two machines and the first thing I did was call a few friends over for 1v1 Quake 2 matches. I can still remember my friend Jose killing me in that lava room trap and the laughs had. I wasnt a big twitch gamer but my brother and I did a little bit of Q3A DM but it wasn't my thing; I prefer a story and casual game play.
I remember buying Quake 4 but I don't remember playing it. Tells you a lot right there.
Is there any video footage of it done? A graphic alone as a preview...
379 downloads at this time...
I watched a playthrough of the expansion and it was a bit more forgettable than Quake 4 itself. It didn't do much of anything new that the main game didn't.
It wasn't a good game though. I tried it a few years ago and it felt very sluggish. Definitely not some classic worth playing now.
I remember really enjoying the single-player campaign for Quake 4 at the time, but I don't know how well it holds up. I still have the discs in the original retail packaging, tucked away in a closet somewhere.
I actually love Q4 as it packs so much into the game. I guess it’s a love or hate game.
But I’ll need to play the expansion first.
Quake never really did it for me but Unreal Tournament... oh yeah.
When Quake came out in 1996 there was absolutely nothing else like it.
Ever played Xonotic?
This feels wrong... like releasing post-humous musical albums the original artist never finished or intended to finish.
I would love to have more pink Floyd with as good style and quality of what I like from that band
But Michael Jackson - California got us this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp4_7T9J6Fg
Nice job Claude
Who knew there was a Quake 4?
At least in Germany, at the time when Quake 4 was released, basically everybody who was slightly interested in gaming topics (independent from whether one loved or hated this game) knew about it because of the huge outrage that the German version of Quake 4 was so censored:
> https://censorship.fandom.com/wiki/Quake_4
> https://www.reddit.com/r/quake/comments/1namarb/quake_4_on_s...
It wasn't a real mainline Quake game by id, they got Raven to do it. Also it was single player focussed.
So there wasn't the same level of hype.
My memory of quake 4 was me and my friends were excited because it was one of the first PC games to have a DVD release instead of a bunch of CDs. This felt revolutionary at the time.
There was a QuakeLive too, playable in a browser, but it was discontinued.
"Play the original campaign"
!remindme 74 years.
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMw_f6980a4a-d6af-4ec9-ad4f-b1...
Nice move
I think a cool middle-ground for the future could be that AI-based modding becomes a first-class service provided by game companies. That way, they could reasonably own the IP of mods (especially if they provided the AI services), and it'd sort of end-run around like, "oh but you just copy the game or make the game" but instead, the fundamentals are there, the platform is there, etc. Make it easy for customers to play their mods with friends, etc.
I don’t understand why this isn’t more common including long before AI. As in, why don’t game companies make source code available to modders and take a cut of sales? Even if mods sell for a fraction the price of the main game, some are bound to take off, so for the game studio it’s like being given 1000 lottery tickets where a handful are bound to win, and at no cost.
Finished by AI
That's like saying my house was framed by a hammer instead of a carpenter. AI is a just a tool with no agency. The people wielding the tool finished this expansion, just as the title says.
Ok and?
so what?