Let's compile Quake like it's 1997

"VC++6 is remarkably powerful for 1996. It has features such as "Go to definition", breakpoints, stacktrace, and variable inspections (but no Intellisense auto-completion yet). I never used it but it must have felt like a dream at the time."

And here we are, in a generation of people writing blogs that never used VS6. I am now officially old.

I was still using VS6 as late as 2009 btw...also it's from 1998. If you made a list of Microsoft bangers it's in the top 5 with probably windbg, quickbasic and windows 3.11.

> DO NOT get it from github or transfer the files via FTP.

I bet the author doesn't know about FTP's ASCII mode, and especially doesn't know that it is the default.

ASCII mode was a nifty feature, but it never should have been the default. Especially when you consider that most text files are small and easy to re-download if you forget, while binary files are often quite large and the damage done by the line ending conversion is close to impossible to repair. Also, if you forget to convert a text file you can trivially do it on the host afterward.

> Go back and run setupsp5.exe. This time it will work. By now it should feel like you are following the solution of Monkey Island. Nothing makes sense. We are definitely deeeep into the 90s.

Gold.

The whole thing compiles with 2 warnings. Incredible codebase. John Carmack definitely was/is on a different level.

Back when I was making videogames I followed a similar philosophy. No warnings (but in an orders-of-magnitude smaller and less complex codebase). Crash on failed asserts, used liberally, in debug builds. Not sure why but it seems that gamedev doesn't do this kind of rigorous engineering in general (or at least it didn't back then -- and admittedly I never worked in a big studio).

This drips of nostalgia. Quake being the first "lan party" title at college definitely makes me realize my age, but I credit this game for my interest in understanding LAN topologies, networking, latency and learning about multiplayer real-time interaction.

Article from February OP

Some more discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46936274

Man, I love the Visual C++ and Visual J++ interface so much. It was so fast and super clear.

VC++ 6 was awesome, I wouldn't have a career if I didn't have pirated copies of VC++ 6 and Borland Delphi. And look at how clean and crisp it all looks. Every pixel has a purpose.

If you want to play Quake for free on Windows 11, try this: https://quake-remake.en.uptodown.com/windows/download