Innovations introduced by various FPS/shooter games:

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

"Conventional" system of health/armor/weapon/ammo powerups: ?Castle Wolfenstein 3D/Doom?
Multiplayer mode, deathmatch AND co-op (LAN/Modem): Doom
Multiplayer mode, internet: Quake?
True 3-D, mouselook etc: Quake?
Command of a squad: Rainbow Six Series/SWAT 3
Humorous enemy dialogue: No One Lives Forever
Open Ended Game Play: Grand Theft Auto 3

List your own...

[democracyindanger]

1. health/armor/weapon/ammo powerups

existed loooooong before FPS.

[Ready4Change]

2. Introduced BY fps's?

Well, I've a litle problem here, in that a great many of these things weren't introduced by FPS's at all. FPS's may well be the most popular genre now, but other than the First Person Shooter concept itself, they've really only incorporated ideas developed elsewhere.

Things like multiplayer, modem, lan and internet play all existed long before FPSs showed up. Powerups were there in the original Mario Brothers. Humor certainly existed in Hack on mainframe terminals (if you ever got frustrated at a bear on a mountain pass and typed "F*** bear" out of frustration you know what I mean.) I recall an early Sierra helicopter sim that was true 3D, could be played against another over a modem, and worked surprisingly well on the power-users 66mhz 286 AT I owned at the time.

(Seriously, I think it was 66mhz. Might have only been 33mhz. No, not 3300mhz. Thirty-Three.)

Geez, I sound like a cantankerous old man, don't I? "Eh! We used to have to run our computers in the snow, just to keep 'em cool! Had to fight away dinasours while playing Pong! Young whippersnappers don't know how good you got it nowadays."

;)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. I think you're missing the point.. I'm not saying FPS introduced these

things. I think you and the other reply misunderstood my intent, perhaps I didn't communicate it well.

I know they didn't.

It's a post about the FPS genre, which games introduced these elements.

[Ready4Change]

4. Ok, with that in mind...

I think Bungies Marathon is often overlooked by fans of the FPS genre. It did a great many things quite early, but since it was Mac only for a long time most players just weren't aware of it. For example: Mac players were deathmatching long before PC players were able to. If it wasn't the first deathmatch capable FPS, it was certainly the best of the early offerings. I know I was envious of several of my friends who had Macs and were able to play it, while I was fiddling with Doom.

By the time Marathon got ported to the PC it seemed out of date, and I suspect that's why many people don't think that highly of it.

Also, might consider Tribes place in the FPS pantheon, as it was one of the earliest multiplayer FPS games with a real focus on teamplay, rather than one against all. Kind of a Halo pre-cursor.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

5. I think your history is off, Doom was released in '93 WITH LAN coop/DM,

and Marathon in '94, so the statement that Marathoners were DMing "long before" Doomsters were able to is not accurate.

I've heard this was a very good game but I never played it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_%28computer_game%29

[Ready4Change]

11. I stand corrected.

Isn't that funny. I recall things in a different order, yet your links say otherwise. Gonna have to re-arrange the old mental files, there. :)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

12. I think what's most likely is that most people you knew who played Doom,

like me, didn't play on or have access to a LAN, so you didn't see people deathmatching on Doom until the huge groundswell of popularity of deathmatch play grew.

The way I remember it, Doom pretty much created the phenomenon of LAN gaming. There may have been games that had it before, but the huge popularity of Doom and the good quality of its LAN play brought deathmatch to the country.

I remember reading news articles about how Doom deathmatching was a serious problem for network and system administrators at workplaces because of the enormous amount of system resources that were chewed up with deathmatch...

I liked deathmatch but had the most fun playing coop via modem on .pwads (custom levels) that others had written and uploaded to bulletin boards. Some were extremely creative, like todays game mods.

I actually subscribed and played online modem games on the DWANGO network, where you'd dial in to a central server that would administer the games... ahhh fun times...

[citizen snips]

6. Online Play

For example XBOX Live.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

7. Quake (PC)was released in '96 with internet play, XBOX Live in 2001...

n/t

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake

[citizen snips]

8. I meant that for the gaming consoles.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

9. Not sure I understand the sentence... are you saying you are making an

entry to list the innovations in console shooters?

[citizen snips]

10. Yes.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

13. No One Lives Forever: Music that changes tempo with the situation.

When the enemies detected you or you were in combat, it shifted to jazzy up tempo combat music, and then when the last enemy was vanquished, it would shift back into slow, moody music. Really enhanced the game experience and since then has been adopted by other games.

[YOY]

18. and made you want to shake your ass while playing...maybe that was just me

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

14. Heavy use of Stealth: Thief series, although it was important in a lot

of Rainbow Six missions too, and in No One Lives Forever also. Probably in some other, earlier, game that I never played too...

[0rganism]

27. The "some other, earlier, game that (you) never played"...

...is called System Shock, and it was made by the same bunch ("Looking Glass Studios") who did Thief (and earlier, Ultima Underworld, as "Blue Sky Productions").

[TheBaldyMan]

15. using a Flight Sim terrain generator for HUGE playfields

Project IGI was the first, the buildings were a little bit coarse but it was the first FPS with a 20km x 20km playable area with realistic weapons ranges.

[Greyhound]

16. As already covered , not really an innovation, but Deus Ex combined

a state of the art FPS w/interesting, even coherent, story line and alternative story-lines. Also gave the player choice of methods used to accomplish mission.

[YOY]

17. Here you go

Soldier of Fortune: Specific limb/body part targeting and ragdoll physics.

Outlaws: A kick ass soundtrack that one can still recognize after years of playing ("Yippi ki yi yippide yay! Yippi ki yi yay!")

Half Life 2: True elemental physical properties assigned to game materials (wood acts like wood and cement acts like cement.)

Dark Forces 2: Experience becomes part of the game and players can progress in experience in a manner that they see fit.

[0rganism]

19. Ultima Underworld, the unsung forerunner of the FPS genre

Released the same year as Wolfenstein 3D (but with excessive system requirements that hindered its popular appeal), Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss is arguably the first fantasy FPS, AFAICT. It had a lot of capabilities you won't find in Wolfenstein, but have become expected in modern games -- jumping, levitation, swimming, etc. However, it walks a fine line between FPS and "dungeon crawl" RPGs, so it doesn't usually get a mention in genre discussions for either. I would also note it as leading up to some of the more creative FPS concept games like System Shock and Thief.

Heretic & Descent were each innovative in their own right. Heretic had angled viewing, gibbage, and a player inventory system -- the first FPS to put these all together, IIRC. I would credit Descent with being the first FPS that was designed around 3 axes of motion, it also upped the ante by having true 3-D opponents.

Also, IIRC, mouselook has been around since Duke Nukem 3D and Star Wars: Dark Forces, both of which predate Quake (not by much, tho).

[jayfish]

20. Loved The Dungeon Crawls Of The Day.

Fond memories of firing up "Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon", for the first time, with my brand-spanking new Adlib soundcard. That intro ruled.

Jay

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

21. Thank you!

It pisses me off to no end (not really, but the rhetoric gets my point across)
when people say "Blaaaahhhh...Quake was the first FPS game with true 3D opponents" when Descent had
that over a year previous to Quake! Not that Quake wasn't a decent game. It was very fun, but
I enjoyed Descent much more. Descent played better with a joystick, a feature that often disqualified you from
being in the "first person shooter" genre, but in my opinion it was still a first-person shooter.

Descent II rocked. I even made a few multiplayer levels called "The Vortex Series"

And I also kept wondering why Ulitma Underworld was rarely mentioned in the FPS genre. I had a neighbor back in
college who played that extensively, and even then I marveled at the 3d cababilities of games back then.

[jayfish]

22. Exploding Barrels?

I can't really think of a genera that had'em before the FPS. :shrug:

Jay

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

23. Good point, I'd probably have to give "DOOM" the nod for that one.

[jayfish]

24. Yup, Right Off The Bat...

you got to blow up barrels. I think you could shoot a barrel even before seeing your first mutant soldier.

http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2005-06-24
http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2005-06-27

Jay

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

25. I liked the chain reaction explosions that some DOOM levels would have.

[jayfish]

26. Sometimes They Played Like...

mini-games all by themselves. Trying to clear a room of (what seemed like) hundreds of demons with one barrel chain-reaction was a hoot.

Jay