     +----------------------------------------+
     | Q U A K E  M I N I  F A Q  -  11/18/95 |
     +----------------------------------------+

|    by joost schuur (jschuur@globalnews.com)


     The purpose of this document is to inform people about the game
  QUAKE and to reduce the amount of frequently asked questions to the
  relevant Usenet newsgroups.

     Behold that this FAQ will probably raise more questions than it
  answers. id Software, the makers of QUAKE, have been a bit quiet
  about updates on QUAKE's status. Nevertheless, the interest in QUAKE
  is enormous, as QUAKE is expected to be a quantum leap in computer
  gaming.

     This FAQ may be distributed freely, provided it remains unaltered,
  and the original author is mentioned. It is forbidden to redistribute
  this FAQ commercially in the form of magazines, books, CDs or other
  pay services without prior permission of the author, joost schuur
  (jschuur@globalnews.com).

     I would appreciate not being flooded with QUAKE questions at
  this point. Should further information on QUAKE be available, they
  will be added to future versions of this mini FAQ, quaketalk (see
  section 7) or possibly full featured QUAKE FAQ (see section 8).

     This mini FAQ will be reposted weekly to relevant gaming usenet news
  groups and it's latest version can be retrieved from

|       ftp://ftp.mantis.co.uk/pub/doom/periodic/quakefaq


 1 - What is QUAKE?

     QUAKE is a 3D 'point of view' action orientated game with 
  certain role playing elements from id Software. It is the successor
  to DOOM and features an engine with many enhancements, such as:

   . full six degrees of freedom. no more 2.5Dness as in DOOM
   . polygon based, texture mapped items
   . environmental sound effects
   . advanced player interactions
   . highly advanced networking capabilities:

      + QUAKE servers that can be linked among eachother
      + dozens of players in one game
      + leave/join games in progress
      + source code availability for the server. make your
        own modifications and recompile on other platforms.

   . QUAKE will come with its own C like programming language,
     allowing you to addons to the game never before possible

     A plot for the game has not been conceived yet. It will
  possibly center around a fantasy/medival theme, but people will
  be able to create their own scenarios.

     QUAKE will be available for DOS first. A port to Linux and
  other Unix platforms should follow thereafter and then a native
  Windows '95 version. Other platforms such as OS/2 will soon follow.


 2 - Is QUAKE 'DOOM 3'?

     No. There will not be a product called 'DOOM 3'. QUAKE is id
  Software's next own project after DOOM 2. A special port of DOOM
  to Nintendo's new U64 console system is being done, which will
  feature some enhancements to the PC version, but this is also not
  'DOOM 3'.

  For more info on this, check:

        http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~mapleson/sgistuff/ultra64/ultra64.html


 3 - When is QUAKE due out?

     id has been very persistant in insisting QUAKE will come out
| in christmas '95. Well, John Romero from id has confirmed that id won't
| be able to make it in time for the christmas season. It looks as if QUAKE
| will take another few months. An exact release date cannot be made yet, 
  since the game is still in a developmental phase. It is always hard
  to predict when a piece of software will be ready for a release.


 4 - What will the hardware requirements be?

     This is probably the question that's going through everyone's
  minds the most. 'How will QUAKE perform on my system?' and 'Will I
  need a pentium system?'.

     Based on the information I have onhand, it is my educated guess
  that QUAKE will perform slightly worse than DOOM on a comparable
  system. The targeted machine should be a 486 DX2/66 or slightly
  better. Having a pentium will certainly not hurt, but QUAKE will
  not be a pentium only game and is still likely to be very playable
  on a 486 based system.

     As far as RAM is concerned, indications are that 8 megs will
  increase playability significantly. It is unsure wether QUAKE
  will require 8 megs, but 8 or 16 megs will certainly help make
  playing QUAKE much more enjoyable.


 5 - Are the screenshots for the game?

     Yes. As of August 4th, 1995, id released a first series of
  screenshots, revealing some of the level building capabilities of
  QUAKE and one of the monsters, a red dragon. They can be obtained
  from their ftp site at

        ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake/quakepix.zip

  or at a mirror such as

        ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/idstuff/quake/quakepix.zip

     A picture of id's QUAKE editor called qe_dev.gif can be found there 
| too. Additionally, further screenshots depicting two of the monsters in
| QUAKE with more detail (the ogre and the knight) called qpix.zip are also 
| available.

     A list of mirrors can be found in the 'DOOM: FTP and WWW Sites' 
  article periodically posted to rec.games.computer.doom.announce.

     The screenshots can also be viewed via World Wide Web at id's web
  site described in section 10 of this minifaq.


 6 - Is there a playable demo/beta out?

     No. There is no alpha/beta/demo/preview of any sort available to
  the public currently. Based on remarks made by id, it is highly
  unlikely that anyone outside of the company will get involved in
| the beta testing of QUAKE. All of you who thought they were elite 
| enough to get an alpha off of questionable FTP sites got a fake.


 7 - Where can I get more info on QUAKE?

     For the past year now, I've published quaketalk, a newsletter on
  QUAKE. I attempted to gather any QUAKE related bits of information
  from the net and elsewhere. The current version is 400 and is
  available at

|       ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/docs/faqs/qtalk400.txt

     In the future, the filename may change to reflect the new version
| number. An HTML version of quaketalk can be viewed from Josh Micheal's
| web site at
|
|       http://www.prairienet.org/joshm/qtalk/


 8 - When will there be a real FAQ to the game?

     Hank Leukart and I plan on bringing out a real, full length FAQ
  to QUAKE as soon as we've gathered enough information and have
  ensured id's cooperation on this. For now this mini FAQ should cover
  the most common questions on QUAKE. As soon a full FAQ is available,
  it will be announced in the appropriate Usenet newsgroups mentioned
  in section 9.


 9 - Where can I discuss QUAKE?

|    A new rec.games.computer.quake newsgroup hierarchy consisting of
| three groups (rgcq.announce, rcgq.editing, rgcq.misc) successfully
| passed the Usenet Call for Votes procedure on November 16th.  These
| newsgroups should be available by November 16th, barring any last-
| minute problems.

     Should your newsserver not carry these groups, ask your newsadmin to
  add them.  Until then, QUAKE can also be discussed on alt.games.quake,
  comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action and rec.games.computers.doom.misc.

     On IRC (the Internet Relay Chat), quake enthusiasts already meet on
  the #quake channel.


10 - QUAKE WWW sites

     There are already a couple of World Wide Web sites dedicated to
  QUAKE. Most of them carry identical contents, but who knows, this might
  change.

     Here they are:

   - id Software's own QUAKE screenshots page:
     http://www.idsoftware.com/qss.html

|  - Hank Leukart's Rumor Mill page is dedicated to up and coming
|    new games. He also has a page on QUAKE
|    http://happypuppy.com/hleukart/rumorsquake.html

   - Jason van Fickell runs the 'Unofficial QUAKE homepage'
     http://www.hal-pc.org/~jasonv/quake/

   - Yours truly also runs the QUAKE section of Doomgate
     http://doomgate.cs.buffalo.edu/games/quake/

   - Colin Caird has yet another QUAKE page
     http://www.islandnet.com/~ccaird/doom/quake.html

   - Gary Hillard's QUAKE screenshots page
     http://www.trader.com/quake.htm

|  - John Orazem's QUAKE page
|    http://www.io.org/~jco/quake/

|  - TTM & Associates, 3rd party QUAKE programming
|    http://info.pitt.edu/~brianm/quake

| Please send suggestions regarding this FAQ to the maintainer,
| jschuur@globalnews.com.
