We Need to Preserve the Vanilla Quake Experience

[OpenRift]

Now, I know what you're thinking.

"There's plenty of software renderer source ports out there, try Mark V Winquake!"

"Quakespasm's pretty vanilla."

Here's the thing. As awesome as software ports like Mark V Winquake and Chadquake are, they still don't have the 100% vanilla experience. From a preservation perspective, the full DOS Quake experience is very far from accessible. Running it in DOSBox always yields performance issues (running too slow/fast). Running in an emulator like PCem or x86Box is a pain to set up and also has significant drawbacks.

But what sets DOS Quake apart from something like Mark V Winquake or Chadquake?

The most important things to look at are the resolutions available in DOS Quake.

The main resolutions to look at here are 320x200 and 640x400. If you do the math, that should calculate to a 8:5 (16:10) aspect ratio, right? Well, if you know anything about old DOS games, you'll know that CRTs back then had the talent of being able to display non-square pixels. Given that most MS-DOS games ran at 320x200, this meant that this 8:5 ratio is squished into a 4:3 screen. This would mean that the pixels have a 1x1.2 width to height ratio. 

But why is this important?
Let's have a look at a side-by-side comparison of DOS Quake at 200p (left) and then at 240p (right).

Don't see it yet? How about now?

 

That's it.

Every 2D Texture, from the menus, to the console, to the hud, to even the crosshair are stretched when displayed at 240p because it then renders all these textures with square pixels instead of non-square pixels. To put things into context, most DOS game developers, including Id Software, designed their 2D texures with non-square pixels in mind.

Most people are used to the stretched look from 240p, 480p, etc. because no source port that I could find has ever made the effort to replicate these non-square pixels in the menus. This essentially means that most people cannot viably experience true vanilla Quake without having to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it working in some sort of VM or suffering with DOSBox's terrible performance handling. 

But enough talk about resolutions, what about QuakeWorld? There are very, very few QuakeWorld source ports to choose from, which is kind of a shame in my opinion. FTEQW does come admirably close to a semi-vanilla experience, but can be incredibly bloated at times. Sure, there is the qwcl.exe that comes with your copy of Quake, but it's 

So what could be done about this?

Think about Doom source ports. The ones like Chocolate Doom or Crispy Doom. They render the game in 320x200 (or up to 640x400 in Crispy Doom), squeezed to 4:3, and then scaled up to your monitor's native resolution. 

I propose creating a sort of "Chocolate Quake", that would consist of the following.

• All resolutions from the DOS version are supported 

  • With support for non-square pixel resolutions, in a manner akin to Chocolate/Crispy Doom

• .MP3/.OGG support for the soundtrack

• NetQuake protocol 15 support

• A QuakeWorld variant
  • Extended compatibility for modern QuakeWorld (like from ezQuake/nQuake) mods, protocols, etc.

So what's my point?

My point is to start a dialogue, create interest in making the original experience from 1996 and '97 more accessible. If anyone here knows how to work with Quake's source code and is interested in this idea, contact me on discord at OpenRift#8470. If I knew how to code, I'd do this myself, but the most I know how to do is edit .cfg files. I can't really tech myself either, since I'm knee-deep in college as of writing. Thank you.

Edited October 13, 2019 by OpenRift

[Linguica]

I agree with the principle but are you sure you are on the right website? Isn't there a "Quake community" somewhere?

[OpenRift]

1 hour ago, Linguica said:

I agree with the principle but are you sure you are on the right website? Isn't there a "Quake community" somewhere?

I did post this on quakeone.com, but I wanted to put it here too so that word gets around a bit more.

[Vorpal]

doombutalsoquakeworld.com

 

might as well absorb our slipgate rocket jumping shambler slaying brothers at some point

[boris]

How do you know the tall pixels are the intended ones? It's pretty clear with Doom, since 320x200 was the only supported resolution, but as your own screenshots shows Quake supported a ton of different resolutions. Looking at round shapes in the textures there is no consistency. Some are very clearly designed with 1.2 tall pixels in mid, others are not.

[Space Marinara]

It is possible to render with tall pixels without changing the aspect of the underlying scene. Doom stretched both together but I don't think Quake did.

[BBQgiraffe]

1 hour ago, Vorpal said:

doombutalsoquakeworld.com

 

might as well absorb our slipgate rocket jumping shambler slaying brothers at some point

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED 

[geo]

I have a CD copy of Quake 1. I'm pretty sure it's preserved. Do you want me to put it in a museum with a 486 PC?

[OpenRift]

7 hours ago, boris said:

How do you know the tall pixels are the intended ones? It's pretty clear with Doom, since 320x200 was the only supported resolution, but as your own screenshots shows Quake supported a ton of different resolutions. Looking at round shapes in the textures there is no consistency. Some are very clearly designed with 1.2 tall pixels in mid, others are not.

Look at the Quake logo in the 200p screenshot. It it's more proportionally accurate to the actual logo. Also, same with the id software logo.

[Immorpher]

I didn't realize this about the aspect ratios!

[[McD] James]

OP is right.

[Doomkid]

I feel like a like isn't enough so I'm making a filler post to express that I agree

[ReaperAA]

I agree with OP too. 

[OpenRift]

*bump

[Devalaous]

I cant even see a difference >.>

[GuyMcBrofist]

So, stretched pixels are all sorted out in Doom's source ports, but not in Quake's?

[Graf Zahl]

In the game all is fine, but applying scaling to the HUD was simply not an option when Quake was released, i.e it looks really bad to scale from 640x400 to 640x480 without some sort of compensation like texture filtering or alternative assets.

The scaling factor for a HUD is normally small, so you end up with different pixel proportions which makes the whole thing very uneven.

Once you reach 5-6x the original asset size on your display, i.e. full HD monitors, it will no longer distract but on anything smaller it'd look bad, unless you apply texture filtering.

 

That's why ZDoom-based ports (and probably others as well) do not scale all 2D elements by this 1.2 factor, in particular the fonts. When this code was written it wasn't an option and changing it now will cause its own share of problems because many mods were designed for a HUD with a 1:1 pixel ratio.

 

[Linguica]

I don't want to be drawn into an argument over this but it seems clear the Quake menus and HUD are meant to be stretched vertically. The game runs in DOS at 320x200 VGA which means the artists were working in the same milieu as they had been for all their previous games and it is beyond dispute that they were aware of non square pixels. For further proof look at the menu itself:

 

 

There's the id logo of course, which only looks correct with stretched pixels, but also notice the seemingly pointless graphic on the side has been drawn so that it precisely fits in the space above the full status bar. That is not an accident.

[fraggle]

I'd propose someone make a Chocolate Quake but isn't the game brown enough already?

[Woolie Wool]

10 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

In the game all is fine, but applying scaling to the HUD was simply not an option when Quake was released, i.e it looks really bad to scale from 640x400 to 640x480 without some sort of compensation like texture filtering or alternative assets.

The scaling factor for a HUD is normally small, so you end up with different pixel proportions which makes the whole thing very uneven.

Once you reach 5-6x the original asset size on your display, i.e. full HD monitors, it will no longer distract but on anything smaller it'd look bad, unless you apply texture filtering.

 

That's why ZDoom-based ports (and probably others as well) do not scale all 2D elements by this 1.2 factor, in particular the fonts. When this code was written it wasn't an option and changing it now will cause its own share of problems because many mods were designed for a HUD with a 1:1 pixel ratio.

 

Quake was meant to be displayed on a CRT. The display would not scale from 640x400 to 640x480; it would run in 640x400 natively and draw 400 lines on your 4:3 monitor, and their wider spacing compared to 480 lines would "stretch" the "pixels". There are no pixels on a CRT, only lines.

 

Also I've been playing Quake in square pixel 4:3 for years and years and somehow never noticed this despite my familiarity with Doom and Wolfenstein. I've previously always played "low-res" Quake in 640x480, even in DOS. There exists a limit-removing DOS Quake called QDOS, but it is even less accessible than original DOS Quake and running modern maps will often demand more memory than the DOS allocator can deal with and crash the game.

Edited October 13, 2019 by Woolie Wool

[fraggle]

[Woolie Wool]

Ranger has always looked kind of monstrous and inhuman himself, compared to the mugshots of earlier Id shooters.

[Loud Silence]

Oh no, i was playing Quake in 640x480... Not too late to fix that.

[OpenRift]

3 hours ago, fraggle said:

I'd propose someone make a Chocolate Quake but isn't the game brown enough already?

*nudge-nudge* kek

 

 

....unless?

[DoomedFox]

3 hours ago, fraggle said:

I'd propose someone make a Chocolate Quake but isn't the game brown enough already?

Cappuccino Quake? 

[OpenRift]

2 minutes ago, DoomedFox said:

Cappuccino Quake? 

There's already a map pack called Coffee Quake with a focus on vanilla style maps. Nice try though ;)

[Loud Silence]

But why official WinQuake and GLQuake didn't support 640x400?

[OpenRift]

2 minutes ago, Loud Silence said:

But why official WinQuake and GLQuake didn't support 640x400?

WinQuake does support 320x200 and 640x400 on some setups. But here's the thing. It doesn't correct the image to 4:3 on modern systems. However, it DOES correct it on Windows 9x versions. But there is no way to do it on modern Windows 10 hardware to my knowledge.

[unerxai]

"vid_wait 1" (or a different value, can't remembrer very well) I remember fixing the weird speed issues I used to have with DOSBox Quake. As I increased the cycles to make the game run smooth, the game would start skipping or running too fast. Maybe you're talking about a different issue though.

[Xcalibur]

I'm all for preservation and redundancy of games. it's surprising how easily data can be lost. there are popular games for which we don't have the source code, in fact, the Prince of Persia source code was only recently rediscovered on floppy disks buried in a closet somewhere.