|Forum|Articles|Quake vs Unreal. By Anubis   WHY UNREAL/UT IS BETTER THAN QUAKE 3 ARENA Perhaps the biggest rivalry in the computer world next to Mac vs Windows, many have argued over whether Quake or Unreal is better. Many of these people have never even played the game that they are against, and are basing their arguments solely on hearsay and conjecture. Hearsay and conjecture may work on Lionel Hutz, but they don't work on me. I have played many hours in both games, and seen every level, weapon, and flashy effect that the stock configurations of the games have to offer. A warning, if the minutiae of first person shooters bores you to tears, stop reading this now ENGINE GEOMETRY CAPABILITY. At this point in the evolution of first person shooters, the deciding factor is no longer overlapping sectors or angled surfaces. It is curved surfaces. Both engines are more than capable of rendering curved surfaces, but the stock Unreal levels do not make good use of this ability( though third party maps do). Additionally the Quake engine appears to do some sort of interpolation algorithm over the curved surface to make it look much more smooth and uniform. Winner Quake ENGINE TEXTURE CAPABILITY This is a much more subjective category than engine geometry ability as different people will see different levels of texture detail based on the power of their computer system. From my tests however Unreal rendered much more detailed vibrant textures, and its decals and coronas were crisp and sharp. Quake textures seemed muddy and murky in comparison and its decal and corona effects were not nearly so awe inspiring. Unreal also seemed to make much better use of detail textures than Quake. Winner Unreal ENGINE EFFECT ABILITY Both engines had some powerful effect generating ability. Quake has it's environment mapping and Unreal has its fractal dynamic textures. In addition each engine has their respective translucency, dynamic lighting, moving brush rendering and whatnot. Each engine could produce some impressive effects, and even though I preferred Unreal's fractal effects more, it is too subjective for me to pass judgment either way. Tie ENGINE EXPANDABILITY Unreal owns this category. Unreal uses a simple folder system in the OS to handle game files, simply drag the new game files to the appropriate folder and you are usually ready to go. In game Unreal has menus to select the game additions you want to use, and also has menus to allow access to individual mods settings. In contrast Quake game media is stored in .pk3 files that must be decompiled and recompiled to install any moderately demanding mod, a time consuming process. Even changing the default bots requires a .pk3 decompile whereas Unreal allows you to edit bots from within the game. Winner Unreal GAME MEDIA: PLAYERS Quake is the clear winner in this category. Quake has some 20 plus different player models with different skins, whereas Unreal only has five player models. In addition the Quake models are all fairly well rendered, and most of the Unreal models are not. An argument could be made that Unreal does have a full set of models, because of all the models used for the monsters in the single player campaign, but none of these models can be used as player models. Winner Quake GAME MEDIA: WEAPONS This is one of my main beefs with Quake. The Unreal weapons are not just better than the Quake weapons, they completely own, dominate and destroy the Quake weapons. First off there are 14 weapons in the stock version of UT, there are only 7 in Quake. The Unreal weapons are unbelievably good, each has original and different attacks, and each one adds new strategies and gore-splattering possibilities to the game. The Quake weapons are boring and pathetic in comparison, if you have played any other first person shooter, you have seen all the Quake weapons before. The Unreal weapons have secondary triggers, the Quake weapons do not. Unreal weapons do body part specific damage, Quake weapons do not. The Unreal weapons strike a better balance between realism and gameplay, if I fire a rifle round into another player head, he is not going to be walking away from it, and hitting a guy in the head is a lot harder than it sounds when they are jumping around and launching grenades at you. In Quake I can fire a rocket launcher point blank into another players face and they will scamper away to pick me to death with their machinegun. Unreal's weapons are so much better than Quake it is not even funny. Winner Unreal. GAME MEDIA: LEVEL GEOMETRY Another win for Unreal. All of the stock Quake levels fall into one of two categories. A satanic temple, or a satanic jumppad arena. All of the Quake levels have the same brownish texturing. All the Quake levels have the same tired reddish lighting, I am not even sure if the engine supports other light colors. It is not that hard for the third party mapmakers to make a revolutionary map for Quake, all they have to do is "not" create a satanic temple with brownish texturing and all red lighting and they will have created something that did not come with the game. In comparison there are levels in the stock version of Unreal that are set in trains, cites, castles , reactors, ships, Egyptian temples, mines and any number of different locales. The Unreal level designers also have made a better attempt to use the entire color spectrum, texturing comes in colors other than brown, and lighting in colors other than red. Winner Unreal GAME MEDIA: LEVEL LAYOUT Let me use an analogy. Most of you have probably seen the Harry Potter movie, or read the book, or played one of the 28 different games slated to be released. In the Harry Potter books they play this game on flying broomsticks. The objective of the game is to pass a large red ball (called the quaffle) through one of three scoring rings. Each goal is worth 10 points. The game does not end until one of the teams catch another ball (called the golden snitch) which is worth 150 points. What this means is that even if your team is getting its ass kicked and the other team is ahead by a dozen goals, you can still win if you catch the golden snitch. So the rest of the game is essentially ballast, regardless of what happens before the snitch is caught, it will have no effect on the outcome of the game. This is a pretty good analogy to the way the Quake levels are designed, in that they do not flow. There is one place in the level where all the killing takes place and all the frags are made( usually it is near the rocket launcher) and the other 90 percent of the level is essentially ballast in that it has little or no effect on the outcome of the game. What this means is that you can be winning the match by a half dozen frags, get killed and then respawn in some distant part of the map, while other players spawn near that critical frag zone. So in the time it takes to run across the entire length of the map you can go from being in the lead to being dead last. So in many cases what you do during the majority of a Quake game can end up having no effect on the outcome of the game. You can just have the bad luck to spawn in the wrong spot near the end of the match, and someone else who was lucky enough to spawn near the frag zone will win instead. In comparison Unreal levels have very good flow, they twist into themselves, the killing is evenly spread across the level instead of being concentrated in one place, and it is easy to get to any part of the level from any other part of the level fairly quickly. Winner Unreal Final score: Unreal 6 , Quake 3     Syntax Error/:|Forum|Articles|