The mid-90s was arguably the period in PC history with the most whiplash-inducing changes. The arrival of 3D acceleration cards, the transition from plain-textbox DOS to fancy Windows 95, and the advent of the Internet all happened at once. This rapidly shifting landscape posed quite the challenge for game developers, as they had to consider writing their games for DOS, Windows 95, or both.

In an exceedingly detailed writeup, Fabien Sanglard explains how the OG Quake got its support for TCP/IP and was arguably the only game that used the same executable with native support for both operating systems.

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[–] Skanky@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Those were the days. Having a high speed Internet connection meant you could absolutely dominate most games. Good times.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

I'm most astonished they didn't use UDP?

I'm not a twitch gamer but for what I recall UDP was all the rage back then for that extra little ping reduction (and the famous UDP cheat pedal). Maybe it came later.

[–] Kn1ghtDigital@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

I feel like there were more games doing this than just quake back in the day