Quake II potential remaster to be revealed this quakecon?

[,,,]

French gaming magazine claiming to have obtained the ESRB and PEGI records for Quake 2 Enhanced, and that it will be released on August 11th. They are using the word "enhanced" to refer to the remaster as was done with Quake 1. It is rated for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch releases. They say it'll probably be on Xbox Game Pass on release day too.

 

 

 

 

[scalliano]

Something just occurred to me.

 

If this is happening, what happens widescreen weapon models? The BFG10K will at the very least need to have the position of the arm adjusted because neither it nor the Phalanx play nicely with widescreen.

 

Unless we're going back to Xbox 360 FOV again...

[BGreener]

6 minutes ago, scalliano said:

Something just occurred to me.

 

If this is happening, what happens widescreen weapon models? The BFG10K will at the very least need to have the position of the arm adjusted because neither it nor the Phalanx play nicely with widescreen.

 

Unless we're going back to Xbox 360 FOV again...

 

I'd hope it would get the same kind of boost that the first Quake got with upgraded models, but as you suggest it would also be "fixes" in Quake 2's case. I also could have sworn there was something on moddb for 2 that had a "kind of fixed" BFG viewmodel...I think there's one in this?

[,,,]

1 hour ago, scalliano said:

Something just occurred to me.

 

If this is happening, what happens widescreen weapon models? The BFG10K will at the very least need to have the position of the arm adjusted because neither it nor the Phalanx play nicely with widescreen.

 

Unless we're going back to Xbox 360 FOV again...

Oh wow, thought Yamagi fixed that.

[Chezza]

I'm not quite following this Quake 2 remaster thing. Didn't they already create an RTX version with new textures?

[Faceman2000]

For Quake they remade all of the weapons (and most/all other models) to be higher-def, so I imagine it’s a safe assumption that they’ll modify these models to play well with widescreen - prolly just make the arms longer.

[Bauul]

58 minutes ago, Chezza said:

I'm not quite following this Quake 2 remaster thing. Didn't they already create an RTX version with new textures?

 

You're probably thinking of the nVidia RTX version of the game. It was done with Bethesda's blessing (presumably) but AFAIK was entirely handled by nVidia and focused solely on the lighting model. The underlying game was identical though, and all the original assets remained untouched. They just added a bunch more assets (like texture physical properties and light sources) so the ray tracing would have something to work with.

[Rexen²]

Plus consoles don't have said version and not ever pc can handle ray tracing so it makes sense for them to still make an enhanced Quake 2.

[,,,]

3 hours ago, Chezza said:

I'm not quite following this Quake 2 remaster thing. Didn't they already create an RTX version with new textures?

The RTX version was a promotional thing for Nvidia graphics cards and it's not great. This new remaster is what they did with Quake 1 in 2021, just for Quake 2 this time.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Individualised

[scalliano]

13 hours ago, Faceman2000 said:

For Quake they remade all of the weapons (and most/all other models) to be higher-def, so I imagine it’s a safe assumption that they’ll modify these models to play well with widescreen - prolly just make the arms longer.

I'm pretty sure that the clipping is caused by the model intersecting with the camera frustrum, simply lengthening the arms might not work. Perhaps removing the right arm altogether might work. But hey, I trust the devs to sort it out one way or another. As long as we don't get those horrendous Q2RTX models, I'm good.

[,,,]

I wonder if the source files for the FMVs are still around. Would be cool to see them re-rendered in HD and widescreen. If not, I wonder if they'll just leave them as is or crop them for widescreen displays

[BGreener]

15 minutes ago, Individualised said:

I wonder if the source files for the FMVs are still around. Would be cool to see them re-rendered in HD and widescreen. If not, I wonder if they'll just leave them as is or crop them for widescreen displays

 

That would be tasty. I'd also recommend watching the intro remade in Blender if you haven't already; it's pretty groovy.

[scalliano]

The 360 port cropped the FMV's. It worked for the intro/outro, not so much for the mission briefs.

[,,,]

I checked out the 360 port and it seems pretty janky. The music doesn't even seem to change properly during map transitions unless that's a vanilla quirk I'm unaware of.

[FecalMystAche]

I remember the 360 version playing OK, but for some reason running that specific disc made my 360 loud as hell at all times the game was running.

[Cutman 999]

I personally think Q2 is kind of mid, but yeah i would like to see a remaster as good as quake 1's

[Terrcraft]

1 minute ago, Cutman 999 said:

I personally think Q2 is kind of mid, but yeah i would like to see a remaster as good as quake 1's

I mean yeah its pretty weak for an ID software game but I thought it was fun. But the way ID/Bethesda has been treating ID's backlog has been good. with the best commercial rereleases of Doom 1/2/64 and quake. Especially on console. Im happy that quake II is getting a remaster. hoping for a wolf3d/Q3/RTCW to get remastered sometime.

[,,,]

31 minutes ago, FecalMystAche said:

I remember the 360 version playing OK, but for some reason running that specific disc made my 360 loud as hell at all times the game was running.

You just brought back memories of "Do not move the console or you will damage your disc.". I wonder why that was an issue with the 360 and not the other 7th generation consoles.

 

Oh, and the way you would get kicked from Xbox Live if you tried to launch a game that had an update available even before you pressed "Yes" on the update confirmation dialog. Meaning if you were in a party you'd have to quickly reboot and hope your friends hadn't left so you could tell them you needed to update before you could play. I don't miss that and I'm glad it's not an issue with modern consoles, but somehow I still have nostalgia for these little quirks from a time when consoles didn't just run a full Windows or Linux installation.

[scalliano]

12 hours ago, FecalMystAche said:

I remember the 360 version playing OK, but for some reason running that specific disc made my 360 loud as hell at all times the game was running.

The Quake II disc is one of those rarities that WILL NOT allow you to install to the 360's HDD. My only issue with it was the aforementioned microscopic FOV that carried on into the system's port of Quake III.

 

Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if the Q2 disc is the reason Q4 isn't on back-compat, like an "all or nothing" policy...

 

[,,,]

1 hour ago, scalliano said:

Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if the Q2 disc is the reason Q4 isn't on back-compat, like an "all or nothing" policy...

Possibly as Microsoft have strict rules about parity, though that mainly applies to Xbox Series games.

[Midway64]

I think the miniscule FOV may be due to the widescreen implementation of both games.

 

The vanilla Quake III executable applies widescreen by zooming in, which takes part of the FOV (resolved by adding 16 to the FOV value).

But I never noticed it when playing Quake Arena Arcade...

[scalliano]

32 minutes ago, ValveMercenary said:

I think the miniscule FOV may be due to the widescreen implementation of both games.

 

The vanilla Quake III executable applies widescreen by zooming in, which takes part of the FOV (resolved by adding 16 to the FOV value).

But I never noticed it when playing Quake Arena Arcade...

Fire up QAA and QL side-by-side, you'll definitely see the difference.

[Midway64]

Forgot to mention it was before I bought Quake III on GOG...

The FOV didn't feel off, probably because I was used to low FOV values.

 

Now I make sure the FOV is set to the intended way in every widescreen game.

 

Halo 1? Set to 86 for widescreen FOV. Half-Life? Set to 106 for widescreen. You get the point.

[Kyle07]

I bought Quake II on GOG some time ago, because Steam never listed it for Germany. The game was unbanned already in Germany when the RTX version came out.

 

I guess I will need to rebuy Q2 on Steam. If it will be low price, I will get it for the Nintendo Switch too. I hope the multiplayer will be alive as it was for the Q1 remaster.

[Terrcraft]

new steamdb branch for old version of Quake 2. just like Quake 1 before that remaster was announced. 



Probably will make a new thread for the q2 remaster once it is offically announced tomorrow.

[Terrcraft]

3 hours ago, Kyle07 said:

I bought Quake II on GOG some time ago, because Steam never listed it for Germany. The game was unbanned already in Germany when the RTX version came out.

 

I guess I will need to rebuy Q2 on Steam. If it will be low price, I will get it for the Nintendo Switch too. I hope the multiplayer will be alive as it was for the Q1 remaster.

It will probably come to gog at some point but probably not the same time as it comes out to steam.

[,,,]

AWWW SHIT it's happening

[Dweller Dark]

1 minute ago, Individualised said:

AWWW SHIT it's happening

 

What's happening?

[,,,]

...the topic of this thread? I posted that in response to the fact that it's scheduled for release tomorrow, and we're already seeing SteamDB be updated

[Dweller Dark]

Oh. I thought you were talking about QuakeCon/the Q2 remaster going live. Was kind of confused until you clarified.