The most circular argument in Doomworld history (max. resolutions of Quake, Quake 2 and Hexen 2 as of 1997)

[Technicolor]

I believe Duke Nukem 3D's original maximum resolution was 800X600 Pixels in 1996.

 

What were the original maximum resolutions of Quake 1 in 1996, Quake 2 in 1997,and Hexen 2 in 1997?

[FistMarine]

Did the following tests using the original CD releases of the games:

 

Duke Nukem 3D

Minimum: 320x200 (default)

Maximum: 800x600

 

Quake 1

Minimum: 320x200 (default)

Maximum: 1280x1024

 

Hexen 2

Minimum: 320x240 (default)

Maximum: 1280x1024

 

Quake 2

Minimum: 320x240 (default)

Maximum: 1600x1200

 

Note that for Duke3D and Quake I briefly tested the original releases (Duke3D 1.3D and Quake 1.01) in DOSBox 0.74-3. I haven't tested the windows versions of Quake (WinQuake and GLQuake) just yet.

 

In case of Hexen 2, I tested the initial 1.03 release. In case of Quake 2, I tested the 3.14 release, which is the earliest version I have (I don't have the very first 3.05/3.06 release). I don't think there is a difference between the other versions when comes to the resolutions. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Hope you find this helpful!

Edited November 23, 2022 by FistMarine

[Technicolor]

On 11/23/2022 at 11:30 PM, FistMarine said:

Did the following tests using the original CD releases of the games:

 

Duke Nukem 3D

Minimum: 320x200 (default)

Maximum: 800x600

 

Quake 1

Minimum: 320x200 (default)

Maximum: 1280x1024

 

Hexen 2

Minimum: 320x240 (default)

Maximum: 1280x1024

 

Quake 2

Minimum: 320x240 (default)

Maximum: 1600x1200

 

Note that for Duke3D and Quake I briefly tested the original releases (Duke3D 1.3D and Quake 1.01) in DOSBox 0.74-3. I haven't tested the windows versions of Quake (WinQuake and GLQuake) just yet.

 

In case of Hexen 2, I tested the initial 1.03 release. In case of Quake 2, I tested the 3.14 release, which is the earliest version I have (I don't have the very first 3.05/3.06 release). I don't think there is a difference between the other versions when comes to the resolutions. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Hope you find this helpful!

 

I played Quake 1, Quake 2 in 2000s. They had such high resolutions. I thought it might be updated resolution, that's why I asked.

 

However, there was a problem with Quake 2 when played in 1600X1200 pixels, the view was getting out of the screen. For this reason, I had to play in 1366X768 Pixels, I think.

 

Hexen 2, which I play now has 1366X768 pixels in settigs even though I can't change the default resolution of 640X480 Pixels.  Then Hexen 2 is slightly updated in resolution.

Edited November 24, 2022 by Technicolor

[Kyle07]

For me 1600x1200 was always streched. Somehow an awful resolution?? I don't know how my 4K TV would handle this resolution now.

[Urthar]

In 1996 on a Pentinum 200, software Quake was playable at 360x400, while a P120 played best at the default 320x200. Duke Nukem would play at 640x480 on lesser machines, which was one of it's selling points over Quake.

 

It wasn't until the first 3DFX cards and GLQuake were released, that you could go to 16bit colour 512x384 on the Voodoo 1. Voodoo 2 would be released in 1998, and allow resolutions of 800x600 and 1024x768 in a dual card SLI setup. There were a few other graphic accelerators knocking around at the time, but none had the raw power of the early 3DFX cards.

[Herr Dethnout]

5 hours ago, Urthar said:

1024x768 in a dual card SLI setup

 

Crazy that now that is the minimal resolution in videogames.

[Technicolor]

1 hour ago, Herr Dethnout said:

 

Crazy that now that is the minimal resolution in videogames.

 

I think mininumum video resolution is 640X480 pixels in video games today.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Technicolor

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

13 hours ago, Kyle07 said:

For me 1600x1200 was always streched. Somehow an awful resolution?? I don't know how my 4K TV would handle this resolution now.

Obviously it would be stretched or pillarboxed, unless you have one of those 4:3 4K TV's.

[Herr Dethnout]

1 hour ago, Technicolor said:

 

I think mininumum video resolution is 640X480 pixels in video games today.

Welp, it depends, but nowdays AAA games are using 1024x768 as the minimal resolution.

[THEBaratusII]

On 11/23/2022 at 2:05 PM, Technicolor said:

I believe Duke Nukem 3D's original maximum resolution was 800X600 Pixels in 1996.

 

I believe you could get Duke Nukem 3D to run on 1600x1200 just by editing the DUKE3D.CFG file.

 

I know that Blood from 1997, did list the maximum resolution as 1600x1200.

[Technicolor]

25 minutes ago, THEBaratusII said:

 

I believe you could get Duke Nukem 3D to run on 1600x1200 just by editing the DUKE3D.CFG file.

 

I know that Blood from 1997, did list the maximum resolution as 1600x1200.

 

In Setup settings, maximum was 800X600 pixels in Duke Nukem 3D.

 

However in PC, the game wouldn't work at 800X600. I always played it at 320X240 in the past for that reason.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Technicolor

[TasAcri]

On 11/25/2022 at 6:55 PM, Urthar said:

It wasn't until the first 3DFX cards and GLQuake were released, that you could go to 16bit colour 512x384 on the Voodoo 1.

 

Yeah and completely mess up the textures and colors in the process.

[Technicolor]

On 11/29/2022 at 6:29 PM, THEBaratusII said:

 

I know that Blood from 1997, did list the maximum resolution as 1600x1200.

 

I have 2019 version of Blood.

 

Maximum resolution is 1366X768 pixels in the option?

 

How is it lower than original?

Edited December 20, 2022 by Technicolor

[Edward850]

54 minutes ago, Technicolor said:

 

I have 2019 version of Blood.

 

Maximum resolution is 1366X768 pixels in the option?

 

How is it lower than original?

Old DOS games had no detection of the available screen resolutions, as there was no video driver to poll, and monitors were dumb. The game just listed all the supported video modes accepted in the Super VGA standard at the time regardless of hardware support.

Modern games obviously are designed to be mostly resolution agnostic and can poll the video driver for supported resolutions. You see 1366x768 as the maximum because that's literally what your GPU reports as the maximum (a list it's specifically getting from your display, as they now communicate both ways).

Edited December 20, 2022 by Edward850

[Technicolor]

3 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Old DOS games had no detection of the available screen resolutions, as there was no video driver to poll, and monitors were dumb. The game just listed all the supported video modes accepted in the Super VGA standard at the time regardless of hardware support.

Modern games obviously are designed to be mostly resolution agnostic and can poll the video driver for supported resolutions. You see 1366x768 as the maximum because that's literally what your GPU reports as the maximum (a list it's specifically getting from your display, as they now communicate both ways).

 

Could it be viewed in 1600X1200 pixels in original version?

Edited December 21, 2022 by Technicolor

[Edward850]

You question is flawed and incomplete, so I've answered both forms:

• The original can be displayed in 1600x1200 if you have the hardware to run it as such. With real hardware this requires a high end CRT. In theory DOSBOX does have this support if configured correctly, though will be inefficient.
• The modern version can if you connect a monitor with that resolution.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Edward850

[Technicolor]

18 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

You question is flawed and incomplete, so I've answered both forms:

• The original can be displayed in 1600x1200 if you have the hardware to run it as such. With real hardware this requires a high end CRT. In theory DOSBOX does have this support if configured correctly, though will be inefficient.
• The modern version can if you connect a monitor with that resolution.

 

It is so absurd how video games went from 320X200 Pixels (Doom) to 1600X1200 Pixels in a few years.

 

I find it very absurd for it to happen in such a short time

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by Technicolor

[Edward850]

Games didn't really "support" it in the strictest sense. Doom didn't have a resolution option because the standards weren't really complete (it had alternative modes such as a 16bit mode during the Alpha, but were cut because they weren't common standards yet and thus would have needed shipping multiple executables to handle the different video standards), however a couple of years later Windows 95 came out, and inevitably the standards had to be finalized or risk having your hardware fall into obsolescence.

 

Build listed all these video modes because Ken Silverman liked doing that sort of thing, and technically they would work but the capability of any PC actually doing so with decent performance was very unlikely when Duke3d & Blood launched. The resolution support was literally speculative, he knew the video modes existed and his engine supported arbitrary resolutions to some capacity (not entirely, it didn't support widescreen), so he just listed everything.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Edward850

[Technicolor]

On 11/25/2022 at 7:55 PM, Urthar said:

In 1996 on a Pentinum 200, software Quake was playable at 360x400, while a P120 played best at the default 320x200. Duke Nukem would play at 640x480 on lesser machines, which was one of it's selling points over Quake.

 

It wasn't until the first 3DFX cards and GLQuake were released, that you could go to 16bit colour 512x384 on the Voodoo 1. Voodoo 2 would be released in 1998, and allow resolutions of 800x600 and 1024x768 in a dual card SLI setup. There were a few other graphic accelerators knocking around at the time, but none had the raw power of the early 3DFX cards.

 

You talk like no pc in the world can run those games in max resolutions back in 1996?

Edited December 21, 2022 by Technicolor

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, Technicolor said:

 

You talk like no pc in the world can run those games in max resolutions back in 1996?

Back in 1996? No they very much weren't: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=979672

320x200 was still a struggle. Running Quake at "max resolution" would have been an absolute pipe dream, and high performance at higher framerates than 320x200 very much demanded hardware acceleration.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Edward850

[Technicolor]

10 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Back in 1996? No they very much weren't: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=979672

320x200 was still a struggle. Running Quake at "max resolution" would have been an absolute pipe dream, and high performance at higher framerates than 320x200 very much demanded hardware acceleration.

 

Then what is the point of putting high resolutions in Quake if no computer in the world existed for it?

Edited December 21, 2022 by Technicolor

[Edward850]

Because time is not a fixed point.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Edward850

[Technicolor]

12 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Because time is not a fixed point.

 

There is no point for video resolutions to be that high if there was no pc in the world that could run it in 1996.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Technicolor

[Edward850]

Yet Quake didn't get a new release for 25 years. If your code can already handle running higher resolutions, is doesn't matter if not every single PC can't run them at a decent speed yet, CPUs will get faster. Having to constantly update your game just to unlock resolution options because a new CPU came out is the biggest waste of everyone's time.

[Blzut3]

17 minutes ago, Technicolor said:

 

There is no point for video resolutions to be that high if there was no pc in the world that could run it in 1996.

Back in those days people didn't complain when their PC couldn't run the newest games at max settings on day 1, max settings used to be for PCs of the future.  This was more or less how PC gaming was until the late 2000s.

[Technicolor]

1 hour ago, Blzut3 said:

Back in those days people didn't complain when their PC couldn't run the newest games at max settings on day 1, max settings used to be for PCs of the future.  This was more or less how PC gaming was until the late 2000s.

 

That's not what I am talking about.

 

In our time, PC differes a lot. Low end PCs and High end PCs from 2022 are nothing like each other.

 

If even highest end, most expensive, best PCs of 1996 can't run Quake at max resolution, then it is absurd to have high resolutions in video setting. This is my point.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Technicolor

[Gez]

That was a time when PC power was doubled every six month, so there was nothing absurd with keeping some growth margin so that your game will sell for more than two weeks.

[Murdoch]

2 hours ago, Technicolor said:

If even highest end, most expensive, best PCs of 1996 can't run Quake at max resolution, then it is absurd to have high resolutions in video setting. This is my point.

 

People get what you are saying, but what they are trying to tell you in turn - and you don't seem to be understanding - is support for higher resolutions essentially future-proofed the games somewhat. I really fail to understand why you can't understand why a developer would support higher resolutions in preparation for the better machines they knew would eventually come and that this does in fact neatly and sensibly explain away your confusion over why they would do this.

[Edward850]

Also as I previously alluded to, this wasn't exactly a big effort list to maintain. The video modes were standardized now so it was just an array of video modes to pick from, which nowadays is (typically) replaced with a hardware generated list of options the game doesn't even know about.

 

Resolution as a concept was/is dynamic, your renderer is fed a 2D geometry which you then apply your 3d projection to, you didn't need to care what the resolution was, so with Quake and BUILD they just filled out the list of modes that existed and the performance didn't matter.

[Jello]

7 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Also as I previously alluded to, this wasn't exactly a big effort list to maintain. The video modes were standardized now so it was just an array of video modes to pick from, which nowadays is (typically) replaced with a hardware generated list of options the game doesn't even know about.

 

Resolution as a concept was/is dynamic, your renderer is fed a 2D geometry which you then apply your 3d projection to, you didn't need to care what the resolution was, so with Quake and BUILD they just filled out the list of modes that existed and the performance didn't matter.

Yes, and this seemed to work fine. In setup.exe you would select your monitor input, your sound card, your resolution; because it was assumed you knew what was in your PC at that time. They would list every possible option that the game was capable of using or displaying, but you had to know what would work with your system. If it ran like crap, or you had banshees shrieking out of your speakers, that was on you.