Quake Was Built For Three Worlds At The Same Time
When Quake arrived in the mid 90s it did more than introduce true 3D shooting and rocket jumping. Under the hood it was a wild engineering experiment. The team at id Software tried to hit three huge technical targets at once: classic DOS gaming, the brand new Windows 95 world, and real TCP IP networking over the internet.
At that time most PC games focused on one main platform and maybe added some basic modem play as a bonus. Quake tried to be a cutting edge DOS game, a serious Windows game, and a full online multiplayer platform all in a single package. That made development harder but it also pushed PC gaming forward in a big way.
To understand why this was so ambitious you need to remember what PCs looked like back then. DOS still ruled for high performance games. Windows 95 was new and exciting but slower and awkward for realtime 3D. And online play usually meant direct modem calls or tiny LAN setups. Quake tried to crush all of those problems at once.
Why DOS Still Mattered And Why Windows 95 Was The Future
During Quake development DOS was still where the fastest games lived. DOS let programmers talk almost directly to the hardware. You could squeeze every frame per second out of the CPU and graphics card. That was perfect for a game like Quake that needed to do real time 3D math on machines with very limited power.
But there were big problems with staying in DOS forever:
No modern drivers. Each game had to deal with sound cards and video modes in its own hacky way.
Multitasking was terrible. You usually ran one thing at a time.
Networking was clunky. Internet play was absolutely not a first class citizen.
Windows 95 on the other hand looked like the future. It brought better drivers, a more stable environment, and a standard Windows look and feel that normal users were starting to expect. But for game developers it was scary. Windows added overhead and got in the way of the raw performance that shooters needed.
The Quake team did not want to pick just one side. So they tried to support both. Quake had a DOS version for maximum speed and a Windows version that could plug into newer drivers and graphics systems. This meant two code paths, two sets of bugs, and tons of extra testing. But it also meant that Quake ran well for a wider range of players while still getting ready for the Windows era of PC gaming.
Over time that bet paid off. Later games like Quake II and many other shooters moved fully into Windows with hardware accelerated graphics. Quake was one of the main bridges that carried hardcore DOS gamers over to the new world.
TCP IP Multiplayer Was The Real Game Changer
Supporting DOS and Windows together was already a big task. The next step was even bolder. Quake was built from the start around TCP IP networking, the same protocol that powers the internet. That sounds normal now but in the mid 90s it was almost unheard of in commercial games.
Before this a lot of multiplayer PC games used:
Direct modem dial up between two players.
IPX based LAN games in offices or college dorms.
Very basic networking added near the end of development.
Quake flipped that script. Online play was a first class feature from the earliest builds. The game had a client server architecture that assumed people would join remote servers, not just a friend next door. That design would later become the standard for serious PC multiplayer games.
Supporting real internet play forced the developers to think about:
Latency and prediction so the game felt responsive over slow connections.
Fairness and security so the server could stay authoritative.
Data compression and efficient updates so even dial up users could play.
This was a huge technical challenge. The team had to design protocols that were reliable enough to keep games in sync but light enough to survive over 90s internet speeds. They also had to make sure that both DOS and Windows builds of the game talked the same network language. If you connected from DOS and your friend connected from Windows, it had to just work.
The payoff was enormous. Quake helped popularize online deathmatch culture, dedicated game servers, and later full mod communities that lived on the internet. It was a major step away from the single player only focus of many earlier shooters.
How This Ambitious Design Shaped PC Gaming
Trying to hit DOS, Windows 95, and TCP IP at the same time made Quake harder to build. The team had to juggle three major technical targets, each with its own headaches. But that pressure also forced them to create cleaner architecture and smarter systems that could survive across platforms and over the network.
Some of the long term effects include:
Helped push gamers off pure DOS and into Windows based gaming.
Normalised TCP IP based online multiplayer for shooters.
Encouraged modular engines where rendering, input, and networking could evolve independently.
Inspired engines and mods that would shape PC gaming for years.
If you play any modern online shooter, you are feeling the influence of those decisions. Client server architecture, internet based lobbies, cross platform thinking and aggressive performance tuning all trace back in part to what Quake experimented with in the mid 90s.
In the end, Quake was not just a cool gloomy 3D game with great sound and brutal weapons. It was a risky technical project that tried to live in three different tech worlds at once and somehow pulled it off. That gamble helped define what PC gaming would look like for the next decades.
Original article and image: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/quake-was-the-only-game-to-support-dos-and-win95-with-tcp-ip-multiplayer-in-one-executable-deep-dive-explains-how-id-software-did-it
