Today is the 14th anniversary of QTest, our release to the public of the Quake executable along with three deathmatch maps, to test our network code over the internet.
Quake was our first internet-playable game, and we knew it would be great to let players try out the net code before the game’s release so we had some lead time to fix all the bugs found with it.
At id Software, we never had a QA department. We were our own QA team, us programmers, designers and artists. A pretty small group, but we were pretty thorough. The network code in Quake, however, needed to be tested way more than our small group could handle because of the amount of networking hardware our packets had to travel through.
It paid off – Quake was released with pretty reliable network code. Playing Quake on a LAN was always a much, much better experience, so John Carmack addressed that with the QuakeWorld release in November 1996 by fixing the network code and adding client-side prediction. Now, the issues he fixed are just part of normal network programming.
The day we released QTest, we invited a very small, select group of hardcore DOOM players to our office to test our release right in front of us. They’re known as the QTest 7. They are:
- NaTaS (Mark Fletcher)
- Hardball
- DoomDeity
- PoLiSh (Jaroslaw Krzysztof Marcin Wolski, aka Jerry Wolski. R.I.P.)
- Wendigo (Brian Hess)
- Monolith
- Avatar (Mackey McCandlish)
Here are the original photos of the QTest event at id Software that Wendigo took that Sunday.
The release of QTest paved the way for high-speed internet FPS gaming. I guess you could say that February 24, 1996 was the beginning of the future. Long live QTest!
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Thanks again, John ! Those picture worth millions ! It is great to know how things were and how things have become. Masters of Doom told the story but you are complementing it. I can only thank you for sharing those with the world.
Very good times. I remember this ran too slow on my 486 so I always saw the turtle icon. I was amazed by the true 3D after so much DOOM WAD making.
This is awesome, thanks for all those cool Articles.
I absolutely love these quake/doom/id-Games based Nostalgia Posts. I could read them the whole night long… and i have to say: Thx John for posting this stuff.
Best wishes from Austria.
I spend an original austrian cow for planet romero.
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Oh snap. Looks like my original austrian cow took vacation in q3dm6
[...] Romero erinnert sich ebenfalls auf seiner Seite an das Erscheinen der QTest Version. QTest war damals nur der Multiplayer, mit Tricks liessen sich [...]
I was lucky enough to be around when this evolution in gaming was introduced and quite frankly guys without it I dont think online gaming would be what it is today without it.
I can remember days of when me and buddies dialed direct into each others modems running at 14.4k and playing 1vs1.
Heh I remember getting a copy of QTest off a UK computer magazine’s cover CD (I did ask a friend who had the Internet to download it for me, but he said his 33.6k modem was too slow
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I installed it on my 486, ran it… shrinked the screen down to its smallest size and said “I need a new PC… right now”. It was fascinating being able to walk over a ledge, and then walk underneath it.
Awesome.
Man you’re bringing back memories here. 14 years already?
You know… I’ve been wanting to play through Quake again; dunno why but I’ve been sorta jonesing for some old-school FPS action.
Anyone know how to get Quake running on a Windows 7 machine? I’ve looked into DosBox, but not sure if that’s a good solution…
WinQuake or glQuake both work fine for me (Windows 7, x64)
When we see all Quake series in AppStore?
Sorry, this isn’t on topic, but we’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of Daikatana. Are there any plans to commemorate that event, like releasing the game on GOG.com, Steam or for free – or is that beyond your control (I guess EIDOS owns the distribution rights)?
[...] 6 play-testers in the Romero video who were DOOM fans offered to play QTest at id Software's HQ. QTest was Ground Zero|planet romero Both maps are in the RQuake map pack and feature no exit so RocketGuy inserted a special [...]