What Quake port is best for me?

[Marscaleb]

I was playing some classic Quake this weekend, and I came to realize that the only source port I have for it is the GLQuake that Id released.

 

I was looking around for a better source port, but there's quite a large list of them, and to compound matters, the most popular ones are touting features I don't really want.

I'm really looking for a "Chocolate Quake" (or a Crispy Quake).  I want to maintain the closest I can to the original software renderer, and the only thing I want to add is support for a widescreen high-res display, and maybe some limit lifting in case I want to play some custom maps.  But I'm not interested in all these dynamic lights and animation smoothing stuff, and honestly, I'm not 100% which source ports will actually let you disable that kind of stuff.

[Jello]

I think Quakespasm might be what you're looking for.

 

http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/download.htm

 

Pretty much bare-bones, just adds support for widescreen resolution, but it keeps pretty much everything else intact. It doesn't have flashy lights, new textures, filters, what have you, but it is limit removing.

[Marscaleb]

I should say, I don't mind if it has the flashy extras, so long as I can easily disable all of them to play the classic experience.

I saw a video showing quakespasm and the FOV looked off.  Don't know if it was a setting or not.

[Jello]

It defaults to FOV 90, same as the original Quake. If you don't like the FOV you can change it with a console command. The command is FOV<space>number. And the <space> is literally a space. So to change the FOV to 100 you would type FOV 100. To change it to 80 it's FOV 80.

 

But Quakespasm by default doesn't have any flashy extras. It's literally just a modern limit removing sourceport. So you can play mods that have flashy extras with it, but by default it doesn't have that.

 

I've found that with widescreen monitors I prefer between FOV 100 and 110 depending on the game, otherwise it does look stretched out. And maybe that's why it looked stretched out when you saw a video, they may have just been using FOV 90 on a widescreen monitor.

[Mayomancer]

9 minutes ago, Marscaleb said:

I should say, I don't mind if it has the flashy extras, so long as I can easily disable all of them to play the classic experience.

I saw a video showing quakespasm and the FOV looked off.  Don't know if it was a setting or not.

long time since i last played quake but pretty sure you can mess with the settings to change it. If there's no option in the menus there you can do it with the console commands. There's a nice article here, too, to help you out: https://www.quaddicted.com/engines/adjusting_fov_for_widescreen

[Marscaleb]

You touched up on the real point though, and that is that it is hard to set up a proper FOV when you switch to widescreen.
If you just properly match the width of your view, then you've cut off the top and bottom of the screen.  Ideally you want the view to show you exactly what you'd see on a 4:3 screen, plus some extra to the side.  And you can't just assume that the FOV should be a specific angle, because the renderer might have been changed to subtly fit player preferences.  I'd prefer a port that has already set that stuff up.

[[McD] James]

 

[Marscaleb]

Well that's pretty definitive.  Can't argue with the Romero.

[Jello]

Ok, that's my suggestion. I think it's the right one, and the one you're looking for. But if you don't want to try it I can't force you.

[SOSU]

Just use Quakespasm already >:O!!!

[[McD] James]

It really comes down to either Darkplaces or Quakespasm. Darkplaces has a bunch of flashy graphical enhancements, but Quakespasm offers a much higher range of mod compatibility. To my knowledge, I only know of two mods that will work with Darkplaces, but not Quakespasm. Nowadays there's a lot of stuff coming out that will only work with Quakespasm and nothing else.

 

I used to be all about Darkplaces, but I switched to Quakespasm and haven't looked back. I recommend it wholeheartedly. It's an all-around phenomenal source port, and will always have a special place in my heart. 

[Jello]

Yeah, the two that I use are Darkplaces and Quakespasm. I didn't suggest Darkplaces simply because it alters the graphics so much that it didn't seem to apply to what Marscaleb wanted. Thus why I recommended Quakespasm instead. And honestly I stopped using Darkplaces a few years ago simply because it did alter the graphics to such a degree that it hardly looked like Quake anymore. It was kind of like using the Cinematic Mod for Half-Life 2; technically it didn't change the gameplay, but it just ended up looking garish.

[[McD] James]

Darkplaces looks pretty nice when you apply a small number of the graphical enhancements (smoke and blood effects, in particular, look good), but when you turn all of them on, it looks downright weird and nothing at all like Quake. 

[Marscaleb]

I'm liking about 90% of what Quakespasm is doing so far.  But is there a way to disable the animation interpolation, and set the texture filtering to nearest?

I also notice it doesn't do the proper underwater distortion effect.  That's why I was hoping someone was doing a "Chocolate Quake" port.  I thought there would be a bit more demand for a port like that.
Well, it still gives me marginally-close classic Quake without resizing everything on all my monitors, and that's really what I wanted.

[Deleted_Account]

You might like fitzquake.

[Jello]

I completely forgot about Fitzquake. Yeah, that's probably as close to the original GLQuake as a person is going to get. And it is limit removing. So if that doesn't tickle your fancy, then I don't think anything will. 

[Marscaleb]

Hm, fitzquake has every minor complaint I have about quakespasm, but without HUD scaling.

[[McD] James]

Quakespasm is a fork of Fitzquake. 

[Remilia Scarlet]

36 minutes ago, Marscaleb said:

I'm liking about 90% of what Quakespasm is doing so far.  But is there a way to disable the animation interpolation, and set the texture filtering to nearest?

In the console, set these two CVARs:

 

r_lerpmodels 0

gl_texturemode GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST

 

You may be interested in this page as well: https://www.quaddicted.com/engines/software_vs_glquake

 

And just for the record, yeah, go with Quakespasm :-P

[CARRiON]

Didn't the underwater distortion effect in GL mode cause weird tearing or something like that? I recall it doing something weird.

[Marscaleb]

It had all the geometry on the screen just wobble in a weird way.  It was like every vertex in the level was just being pulled in random directions; one wall is moving in one direction while another wall is pinched in another.  I've never seen another game come close to that effect.

 

GL Quake actually does this, but it doesn't manage to render the effect in quite as stable a manner as the original software renderer; you can see some geomerty being pulled apart, especial near the edges of the water.  I'm like 90% sure that never happened in vanilla quake.
Still, I prefer this effect to quakespasm and fitzquake's method of adjusting the vertical FOV and horizontal FOV separately to make it look like the whole screen is uniformly wobbling.

[CARRiON]

Yeah, software did it differently to GL. GLQuake came out later down the line even though Quake wasn't really designed around it so I can't blame them. I remember the original GL port also breaking brightmaps in Quake.

 

I remember running Half-Life in software and the underwater distortion being present, but later when using a different renderer it was gone. Everything has a trade-off.

[Woolie Wool]

13 hours ago, Marscaleb said:

I was playing some classic Quake this weekend, and I came to realize that the only source port I have for it is the GLQuake that Id released.

 

I was looking around for a better source port, but there's quite a large list of them, and to compound matters, the most popular ones are touting features I don't really want.

I'm really looking for a "Chocolate Quake" (or a Crispy Quake).  I want to maintain the closest I can to the original software renderer, and the only thing I want to add is support for a widescreen high-res display, and maybe some limit lifting in case I want to play some custom maps.  But I'm not interested in all these dynamic lights and animation smoothing stuff, and honestly, I'm not 100% which source ports will actually let you disable that kind of stuff.

Qbism Super8 and Mark V WinQuake are excellent software rendered ports compatible with modern Quake mods. Qbism has more modern features like a distinctly odd but high-performance implementation of colored lighting and Gouraud shaded monsters, but these can be turned off in the console. Mark V WinQuake is the original WinQuake engine with FitzQuake Mark V/QuakeSpasm compatibility. Be aware that software renderers will be much slower than GL renderers when rendering especially large or complex maps! Qbism even has pixel scaling so you can get a nice chunky VGA-ish look, though I'm not sure if it can 100% replicate 320x200. 320x240 would certainly be doable though.

 

There is also a MS-DOS version of WinQuake Mark V that is fully compatible, but it requires a very strong system to run demanding maps--a Pentium III 500MHz (native hardware) or AMD Ryzen/Intel Kaby Lake processor (DOSBox) will just barely be enough for a map set like Honey at 320x200. Stuff like the Rubicon Rumble Pack and the Map Jams will probably run like absolute shit no matter how fast your PC is.

[-Votterbin-]

I still use DarkPlaces; it isn't in development anymore iirc but I like how it smooths out the animations.

[Taw Tu'lki]

Prepare to play WinQuake.