The match begins, and as scheduled, the two sides will first have a standard Quake 1 exhibition match.
Firstly, it serves as a warm-up, allowing both sides to familiarize themselves with the rhythm.
Secondly, it was also a clever idea from President Lin to ensure a strong enough contrast when showcasing the second generation later.
Thirdly... perhaps it's also to let professional players get a general idea of the Bureau of Commerce's situation, so they don't play too fake.
"Sigh, as we can see, the Supernova Team got off to a bad start, losing their mega-health point to Solid!"
"Oh my god, Rebecca, this is really not a good thing, don't you think?"
"Yes, we all know that mega-health can provide a character with a full 100 extra health points, which will be a significant threat in the ever-changing world of Quake."
Unlike the faster-paced and more modern CS mode, Quake's combat is very fast-paced and full of dazzling movement and skillful maneuvers.
But in terms of actual time-to-kill (TTK), it's much longer than counters.
Especially considering the existence of buff items like mega-health.
Although this era did not yet see the emergence of complex team-based competitive gameplay like bomb defusal mode, the limited map size made it difficult to support overly complex matches.
However, concepts such as "point control" and "resource management" had already begun to take shape long ago. This included medical supplies, ammo boxes, maximum health, various types of armor, and even weapons.
These can all be found on the map.
Whoever controls the crucial resource points will gain the upper hand in the ensuing battles.
Even though viewers have seen this kind of battle countless times.
But this time, they still couldn't help but exclaim in amazement.
This time, the competition equipment was upgraded to the latest Novara Deon 9000 graphics card with 4MB of video memory.
The performance has undergone a complete transformation.
The game, which originally had a stable frame rate of 30fps or even as low as 10fps, was suddenly boosted to a stable 60fps, with even low frames reaching 30fps.
When placed on a CRT television, this is already the limit for the naked eye.
Combined with the inherently high-speed combat scenes of " Quake," it's practically a thrilling action movie.
" Master Lin had a bad start; we can see this is the third time our leader has failed a lateral jump."
"Hey, you know, Master Lin must have his own ideas. Maybe he's just pretending to fool the opposing Solid opponents." Quake is full of "tricks," or rather, techniques.
Just like those little tricks in CS.
Every engine has its own unique features.
For example, Frostbite Airlines, and the various physical effects and tricks in the Source Engine.
They may have started as simple bugs, but through the development of the player community, they have evolved into a kind of "culture".
The same applies to quake.
With such a massive and complex physics engine, especially one overseen by Bethesda, it's impossible to be bug-free.
Even with Carmack and Lin Lixin backing them up, computational problems were still inevitable.
Of course, some of it was a deliberate design by Lin Lixin.
The various special jumps in Quake are an example of this.
It was originally likely a bug in the physics calculations of the Quake engine, not an intentional design by idSoftware.
However, it must be admitted that it did inject a lot of fresh blood into Quake's gameplay, making it much more interesting. Ramp jumps and side jumps are "features" that have continued into the Source Engine and many modern video games.
Simply put, when a player jumps while rushing up a slope, the upward speed of the jump is additionally added to the upward speed of the slope.
This is clearly a typical physics engine bug.
The same applies to side-shift jumps; the main problem stems from errors in the computer's calculations of trigonometric functions and floating-point decimals.
Some games even fail to normalize the vectors of the front-back and left-right axes when combining them, resulting in speeds that are 1.5 times or even 2 times faster when running diagonally.
Some of these bugs seriously affected the fairness of the competition and were directly nipped in the bud by Lin Lixin during the testing phase, while others were preserved as "flavors".
However, there are indeed some special mechanisms deliberately designed within this system.
A typical example is the rocket jump, which uses the recoil force of a rocket launcher to make oneself jump higher and farther.
This tactic has even become a classic design in many subsequent FPS games, and has been retained and passed down from generation to generation.
It's like Junkrat's landmines in Overwatch.
As the founding father, Quake may indeed not be perfect.
But its soul and will have been inherited by countless successors. "Okay, Miss Vivian has been eliminated first. Now the Supernova Team is facing immense pressure after losing a member. Let's see if Master Lin can lead the team to a comeback in this adversity..."
" Sam and Carmack had a fantastic performance, McCoy, they just played a beautiful defensive game."
" Master Lin has made a series of blunders! We still don't know why Master Lin, at full health, failed three consecutive side-step jumps before jumping onto the high platform to grab an ammo box he didn't need at all!"
" Master Lin... Oh no! Cerny has been captured by Razor, and it looks like his life is in danger... The Supernova Team is down one member!"
"It seems the Supernova Team's defeat is inevitable..."
"Wait, Master Lin... Master Lin is still putting in more effort!"
Just as all the audience members were holding their breath, preparing to see Mr. Lin make a fool of himself.
On the screen, Lin Lixin's progress bar was full.
"Hey, the download speed is pretty fast, isn't it?"
Given Mr. Lin's petty nature, losing face in front of such a large audience is absolutely unacceptable.
From the very beginning, he subtly sent a notification.
It has to be high-level matches to gain experience quickly. At this rate of skill proficiency gain, I could easily win a few world championships when I'm old and retired.
Okay, even though I've leveled up my proficiency in such a short time, it's still difficult to reverse the current disadvantage.
Quake isn't Counter-Strike; the idea of turning the tide in a clutch situation is practically a myth.
No matter how skilled or agile you are, if you're facing five rough guys with guns, pinning you against a wall and mowing you down, you're likely to look pathetic.
Sam and Carmack were outnumbered, especially since their opponents controlled several of the most important resource points.
After a short while, only Master Lin remained in the group.
And so, a horrific commercial operation ended amidst the chaos of rockets and electric shocks.
"Ahem, our development department has been busy with Quake 2 lately. The system optimization and upgrades are just too much, and we're a bit rusty with the first game's environment. Ladies and gentlemen, now it's our turn to shine."
Facing the camera, Master Lin shamelessly declared.
Although his actions at the very end did seem human-like, his overall performance still led everyone to label him as "!? a nobody?!"
"... Alright, Mr. Lin, may we now show the audience the packaging and disc of ' Quake 2 '?"
The host pointed the Mike at Lin Lixin, awaiting his answer. This was what everyone watching the program on television was also looking forward to.
Even though the date hasn't arrived yet, it shouldn't be a problem to show me what the box looks like, right?
"Hehe... sorry, we don't have that at the moment."
Lin Lixin waved his hand.
This doesn't mean he suddenly went crazy and decided to cancel the physical game discs and commit suicide; rather, the sales model for Quake 2 is slightly different from before.
He turned around to look at the screen.
Today's competition used Quake, which was connected to Gamenova's test server.
This means...
It can directly pull updates.
Players who own Quake can download the full update directly via the internet starting at midnight on Black Friday! Of course, I still recommend downloading during off-peak hours to avoid slow download speeds due to server congestion.
Lin Lixin grinned and slammed his hand on the keyboard.
The game program immediately began updating automatically. Don't get me wrong, Quake is not Myst; its core code resources are relatively few.
Disc games typically have two modes.
One method is purely as a storage medium, where the program is installed onto the computer's hard drive.
Another method involves using a special file structure to load the data using a CD-ROM drive.
Critical programs are cached in memory and hard drive in advance and read in real time as the program runs.
The so-called online content retrieval actually only overwrites that portion of the hard drive.
In essence, while Quake 2's upgrades are massive and involve many changes, almost everything is implemented procedurally.
Only the map resources, brand-new textures, and lightmaps—these audio and video resources—account for the majority of the file size.
How big is Quake?
To put it simply, even if you use floppy disks, you would only need about 40 disks.
Don't be fooled by how big this number sounds; considering the pitiful capacity of a floppy disk, it's easy to see how small the original Quake was.
It's only about 55MB. And what about its successor, the second generation?
This number jumps to an astonishing 300+ MB.
This is even with Gamenova's numerous advanced texture compression and audio compression technologies.
If it were truly uncompressed raw data, it would likely be in the gigabyte range.
"Oh right, did I forget to mention that the second-generation Nexus modem will also be officially launched this week? Currently, it's only available for order in California, Arizona, and Nevada."
"We expect to gradually expand our official operations to the East Coast and meet with our dear players within the next year!"
As he spoke, the director very considerately switched the camera to his computer.
A simple window displays the real-time download speed.
8mbps
Seize the young?
8 Mbps, which translates to a download speed of nearly 900 kb per second. Absolutely incredible!
This means that even downloading the entire Quake 2 game would only take a few minutes.
" McCoy, why don't we take this opportunity to show everyone this week's gaming news? We'll be right back."
Lin Lixin blinked at the camera.
The camera immediately cut back to the studio.
However, it wasn't completely cut off.
Because the space at the bottom of the screen, which was originally used to display scrolling news, was now occupied by a live broadcast.
It was the download progress bar on Lin Lixin's screen.
It's just placed right here, so that all the viewers in front of their televisions can open their eyes and take a good look.
Watching the terrifying download speed, I finally managed to download a complete copy of " Quake 2 ".