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Quake

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Quake
Cover image missing, please upload it
Developers
id Software
Publishers
GT Interactive
Engines
Quake engine
Release dates
DOS June 22, 1996
Mac OS (Classic) 1997
Linux 1999
Windows May 31, 2007
Quake on Wikipedia
Quake
Quake 1996
Quake II 1997
Quake III Arena 1999
Quake 4 2005
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars 2007
Quake Live 2010
Quake II RTX 2019
Quake Enhanced 2021
Quake Champions 2022
Quake II Enhanced 2023

This page is for the original Quake. For Valve's GoldSrc multi-player remake, see Deathmatch Classic.

Key points

Engine is open source with modern multi-platform ports available; see Recommended engines.
Can run on low end hardware.
Small but hardcore community.
Easy to mod.
The Steam Version lacks the Soundtrack, but this can be fixed.
Vanilla Quake sometimes has trouble running on modern machines. It is recommended to use a Source Port.

General information

Quake Wiki - A detailed wiki for every Quake game made.
Steam Community Discussions
Steam Users' Forums for game series
Func_Msgboard - The mapper hub, new map releases, technique improvements.
bit7.org/quake - Community site with extensive mirrors section, reviews and details on editions of the game.
Inside3d - The modder hub, QuakeC tutorials and an active forum.
Quaddicted - Great collection of categorized and rated single player maps as well as a ton of general information and history.
Quake Brasil - Brazilian Quake player hub.
QuakeOne - Original network style multiplayer hub, player community.
QuakeWorld nu - QuakeWorld multiplayer hub, competitive player community.

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Does not come with game soundtrack; see CD Music.
Error: key type '{{{5}}}' not recognised
Error: OS parameter cannot be empty
GamersGate
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Error: key type '{{{5}}}' not recognised
Error: OS parameter cannot be empty
Retail
DRM details are not known
Error: key type '{{{5}}}' not recognised
Error: OS parameter cannot be empty
The Steam version (and others) can also be played on OS X and Linux using a source port; see Recommended engines.

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon Available on Steam
DOS
Windows
Quake Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity Available on Steam
DOS
Windows

Versions

Qtest

A technology demo released on February 24, 1996, a few months before the full release. Meant to showcase the multiplayer and level themes of the full game. Includes 3 maps and many elements of the game that were either cut or changed for the final release. See the Quake Wiki for more details.

Quake

The original DOS version. Can only be run in MS-DOS (or DOSBox for newer systems). Fullscreen only.

Quake (shareware)

This version is the official demo of the game (besides Qtest) on the release of the game. Only the first episode is available to play. All other features and episodes are locked until the full version is bought.

WinQuake

This version is optimized to run under Windows 95/98 as an independent exe file. Allows the game to appear in a window and screen resolutions can be selected in-game.

GLQuake

This version will not run on computers with nVidia graphics cards. See Recommended engines for a source port.

A special version that was designed to run with 3D accelerators (now known as graphics cards), unlike Quake and WinQuake (all graphics rendering and game logic calculations are done by the CPU only). Rendered with OpenGL, it improves the overall look of Quake greatly (smoothed textures, transparent water, etc.) and allows widescreen resolutions. Screen resolutions need to be entered in via console commands before launch.

QuakeWorld

A multiplayer only version of Quake specifically designed to play over the Internet. A version rendered using OpenGL is also available (GLQuakeWorld). See Quake or QuakeWorld? for specifics.

V Quake

The first hardware accelerated version of Quake, released shortly before GLQuake. VQuake is optimized to run with graphics cards using the Vérité chipset. Beyond being able to run better on a very specific set of graphics cards, it presents nothing special. It is impossible to play it on modern machines today. Avoid it.

Essential improvements

Quick Setup Guide Video

This video guide explains the basics you will need in order to get Quake working with a modern engine. Later sections on this page go into deeper detail on each subject.

Quake Setup Guide on YouTube

Recommended engines

  • DarkPlaces - Though there are many engines for many needs out there, DarkPlaces is a common one for new players due to its support for modern Windows environments, Linux, and OS X along with modern graphical features such as realtime shadowmaps, bloom, and normalmapping. It also supports both the netQuake, and QuakeWorld networking protocols, as well as its own. It scales well on visual effects from the modern to the classic and sports a fast rendering for modern GPUs. It has some problems with mods that depend on the original Quake's bugs that the engine has fixed.
  • DirectQ - DirectQ is a Direct3d oriented engine with a few tweaks to the menu but little to graphical improvements, it simply runs on DirectX instead of OpenGL. It mostly resembles the classic look, but performs excellently.
  • Fruitz of Dojo Quake - A Cocoa port of the engine, it allows Quake and QuakeWorld to be played on modern Macs.
  • FTEQuakeWorld - FTEQuakeWorld is targeted at QuakeWorld players while adding support for other Quake engine games, it features enhanced visuals, voice chat support, and better modding capability for QuakeWorld servers.
  • QuakeSpasm - QuakeSpasm is a descendant of FitzQuake and like that engine, it focuses on fixing bugs and stability, lifting engine limits such as maximum items and geometry detail and restoring the missing functionality that the original software renderer had but the OpenGL renderer lacked. Unlike many other engines, QuakeSpasm does not alter the style of the original game and doesn't fix game-changing bugs that affects mods. It runs under Windows, OS X and Linux.
  • Ultimate Quake Patch - Designed for the Steam version of Quake but is also compatible with retail versions by changing the install path of the mod. Adds bug-fixes, improved graphics, enables mouse use in menus as well as music through software playback.

For starting out, go with whatever your engine of choice supports and then explore the other as you wish. This can be simplified by using DarkPlaces which will connect to either.

Installing and Using Mods

Mods are accessed via an amendment system, where you tell the engine where to look first for game data, and then it falls back to the default subfolder (id1) for the base game. Simply extract a mod into a subfolder inside of \Quake\ where the subfolder root will either have a progs.dat file, or a .pak or .pk3 file. You load the mod with a command line argument of -game <folder containing the mod>, for example if you wished to run the DarkPlaces engine and the DarkPlaces mod, it would be something along the lines of C:\Quake\darkplaces.exe -game dpmod"

Keep in mind that DarkPlaces fixes a few bugs with the Quake engine that break compatibility with some mods and can result in unplayable maps (unreachable items floating in the air, enemies falling out of the world, etc.). Also many modern Quake mods and maps break the limitations of the original Quake engine by using more enemies, items or scripting commands. Usually the modern mods mention which engine or engines they are compatible with.

Installing and Playing Custom Maps

Inside of the id1 folder create a folder named "maps", extract the archive (usually a BSP and a text file) into id1\maps. Launch the game with your preferred menu and in the console type "map <name of the bsp file without the extension>". For example if you wanted to play Matt Sefton's classic map Jawbreaker, you would type: "map jawbreak". You can also have a map be loaded immediately from the command line with "+map jawbreak". The plus is stuffing a console command and its values into the initial engine execution, allowing you to do things like specify a map as well as a difficulty, or connect immediately to a server.

Maps which require mods should be placed inside of a folder named "maps" inside of the mod's folder.

CD Music

The Steam version lacks the original soundtrack. The Ultimate Quake Patch will restore music to the Steam version and add the features of the DarkPlaces engine mentioned above. This fixes compatibility problems found on modern Windows versions and restores the soundtrack.

If you prefer to use the original engine you can download the soundtrack from the Steam forums. Either burn a new CD from the image file or use a CD emulator like WinCDEmu to mount the image.

Installers and Launchers

Quake Injector: Automatic Installer for Mods and Maps

Quake Injector is a Java-based client for the Quaddicted single player map and mod database that runs on Windows, OS X and Linux. It provides the ability to install and uninstall maps and mods (with their requirements/dependencies) from the site directly on Quake with a single click and includes information about each mod, such as release data, rating (from the Quaddicted editor), title, authors, a brief description (from the editor) and screenshot. Also it can (with varying levels of success) figure out if there are known maps already installed.

Quake Injector does not provide access to every map released for Quake (it has no support for multiplayer maps, for example, unless they come as part of a singleplayer map pack or they are singleplayer maps in addition to multiplayer), but it is very close to that and provides an easy method to try new maps and mods.

Please note that under Linux (and maybe OS X, depending on the file system) many older maps will need manual editing of their filenames because the original files contained mixed case or upper case letters.

MiniQL

MiniQL is a small Quake launcher that provides an easy front-end to running any user map or original map by scanning Quake and mod archive files (PAK files) and displaying all maps to select from. It can also be used to supply default variables (such as fov) and screen resolution when starting the

MiniQL can be downloaded from here.

Texture Packs

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

Save game data location

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
Steam Cloud

Video settings

In-game general settings.
In-game screen resolution settings for WinQuake.
In-game screen resolution settings for GLQuake.

Template:Video settings

Widescreen resolution

By default Quake doesn't have any widescreen support and while it can use some widescreen resolutions, it will not adjust the FOV for them. The default is 90 degrees horizontal FOV for 4:3, so for a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio this must be increased to 106 or 100. Of course since many players like to play with an increased FOV even in 4:3, you may set it to 110, 115, etc. Some engines will provide automatic adjustment of the FOV so when you set the FOV to 90 (for example), the engine will adjust it to 106 (for 16:9).

Changing the FOV is as simple as opening the console and typing fov n where n is the new FOV. Keep in mind that extreme FOV values may have negative side effects on the game's display.

Some engines will not save your screen settings, so you may want to modify the executable shortcut or launcher settings (see below) to specify the resolution you want. All Quake engines accept the -bpp and -width parameters for specifying the bits per pixel and horizontal resolution. Most engines also support the -height parameter for vertical resolution. If you want to set a console variable (such as fov), you can put a + in front of it.

An example for the QuakeSpasm engine would be:

quakespasm.exe -width 1920 -height 1080 -bpp 32 +fov 106

Input settings

Template:Input settings

Audio settings

Template:Audio settings

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
LAN play
16
Online play
16

Connection types

Ports

Protocol Port(s) and/or port range(s)
TCP 26000
UDP 26000
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) support status is unknown.
This is the default port used. It can be changed in-game by the user

Issues fixed

Running the original GLQuake

Although this is not recommended, some people might wish to play using the original OpenGL version of Quake. On some machines this still works out of the box, but on some (Nvidia only) it simply won't due to the GPU extensions overflowing the engine's buffer when trying to print them into the console. If it doesn't run there are a few ways this can be achieved, though:

  • Go into the control-panel of your Nvidia graphics card and look for an option to enable an "Extension Limit", this will prevent the buffer of the engine's console to overflow
  • Run the original glquake.exe with the commandline parameter -no8bit

The last step is optional, some cards would display all textures blank without it, though.

This fix can also be applied to other games running using the GLQuake engine, as well as the pre-alpha version of John Romero's Daikatana which was released in 2004. A tutorial on how to fix these issues with Nvidia cards permanently and without recompiling the source code can be found here.

Music does not loop

This is a known issue on some Windows Vista and 7 machines

Instructions

Other information

Getting Started

Quake is primarily played with modified engines which make use of modern technology and operating systems. Installing them is as simple as extracting them into the same folder you can find WinQuake.exe and running the modified engine's exe. For multiplayer all you need is to pull down the console (~) and type connect <server address or ip>.

Many modern engines have a setting for mouse looking in their options menu, but if it doesn't exist you can enable it from the console by entering +mlook. The plus sign in front of the mlook' is a modifier that means "enable". You can disable it later with -mlook.

From the options menu, you may also want to set Always Run to On and set Lookstrafe and Lookspring to Off.

Quake or QuakeWorld?

When Quake initially launched its netcode was not optimized for the dial-up connections of the time, and so consequently QuakeWorld was created, a separate exe for the game which was multiplayer only with adjusted physics and severely revamped netcode. As personal internet connections improved, the original Quake protocol became more relevant. The original, non-QuakeWorld version, is now often revered to as NetQuake and there is a divide as to which to play. Serious competitive players are very sensitive to the differences between them, however for the starting out player the differences will be barely noticeable, and the experienced but more casual players play whichever, simply going for servers where a fun time can be had.

System requirements

DOS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) MS-DOS 5.0
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 75 MHz or 486 DX4 100 MHz
System memory (RAM) 8 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 80 MB
Video card (GPU) VGA capable video card
Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 75 MHz or 486 DX4 100 MHz
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 80 MB
Video card (GPU) VGA capable video card

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/2310/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (2310) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References