The Quake engine ("Quake", 1996) used fewer animated sprites and used true 3D geometry and lighting, using elaborate techniques such as z-buffering to speed up the rendering. "Quake" was also the first true-3D game to use a special map design system to preprocess and pre-render the 3D environment: the 3D environment in which the game took place (referred for the first time as a Map) was simplified during the creation of the map to reduce the processing required when playing the game.