Beware traveler, you approach a portal to a new layer of QUAKE.

Quick Start

You want to just jump in and play some mods, right? I got you.

Append the following to your Quake Launch options:

+ui_addonsBaseURL http://kexquake.netlify.app/ - [netlify.app]

Launch Quake, and check out the Addons menu.

Developers, Developers, Developers

Mapping

If you’re looking to create or edit maps for Quake, you might find it easiest to use the J.A.C.K. level editor, which you can find right here on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/496450/JACK/ – [steampowered.com]

Alternatively, there’s some additional editors like TrenchBroom – [github.io] , netradiant – [github.io] , and many others – [quakewiki.org] .

No Intro Movies

We all hate the endless logos that show up when the game starts, especially when modding – let’s get rid of them with the following Launch Option:

-skipmovies

You can also completely delete the movies folder inside of Quake’s game directory to save some space.

Manual Mod Installation

If you want to manually download and install a mod, here’s the general process:

• Unzip the archive and place the files inside a subfolder located in the game folder. For example, Steam/steamapps/common/Quake/rerelease/ad/pak0.pak for the Arcane Dimensions mod.
• Now you can launch the game using the launch option “-game ad” to launch directly into the mod or type “game ad” into the ~ console. Again, “ad” in this example stands for Arcane Dimensions, the name of the mod. Replace it with whatever your mod is called.
• Manually installing mods does not require them to all be in a single PAK file like running your own addon server does.

 

Is it even Quake?

The 2021 rerelease of Quake is based on Nightdive’s Kex engine. From what I understand, it’s not entirely Kex but rather a hybrid that includes QuakeC, a simplified C language for Quake modding, which is why existing Quake mods work so well.

Whereas Quake is Free and Open Source Software that spawned a lineage of various projects and forks, Kex is Nightdive’s proprietary engine without source code available.

Right now mod compatibility is certainly not perfect. We can make slight tweaks to the mods themselves to make them work a little better here and there, but at the end of the day it’s up to Nightdive to update Quake 2021 to increase mod compatibility.

If you want the best modding support, you should look into using one of the Quake source ports:

• vkQuake – [github.com]
• DarkPlaces – [icculus.org]
• Quakespasm – [github.com]
• FTEQW – [triptohell.info]

 

Custom Addon Servers

Creating a custom addon server that provides more than Quake 64 is totally possible, and actually pretty easy. The variable ui_addonsBaseURL specifies which server to fetch the mods from.

Mod data is stored in a “content.json” file located at that URL:

{
 "addons": [
 {
 "name": "Quake 64",
 "author": "Midway Games",
 "date": "1998/3/24",
 "size": 101636600,
 "description": {
 "fr": "While DOOM was ported to many platforms throughout its lifetime, Quake only saw two ports due to its much higher system requirements. One of those ports was to a 32-bit console, and the other was Quake 64. While both ports featured modified versions of the original levels in order to run on the hardware at the time, Quake 64 featured a few changes that differentiated itself from the original 1996 release. Colored lighting, a brand new soundtrack by acclaimed composer Aubrey Hodges, and two player split screen multiplayer were all unique to this version of the game. The unique nature of Quake 64 has caused it to be looked back on fondly by some players over the years, which is why we are happy to be able to bring it into modern times, with the original soundtrack intact.",
 "it": "While DOOM was ported to many platforms throughout its lifetime, Quake only saw two ports due to its much higher system requirements. One of those ports was to a 32-bit console, and the other was Quake 64. While both ports featured modified versions of the original levels in order to run on the hardware at the time, Quake 64 featured a few changes that differentiated itself from the original 1996 release. Colored lighting, a brand new soundtrack by acclaimed composer Aubrey Hodges, and two player split screen multiplayer were all unique to this version of the game. The unique nature of Quake 64 has caused it to be looked back on fondly by some players over the years, which is why we are happy to be able to bring it into modern times, with the original soundtrack intact.",
 "de": "While DOOM was ported to many platforms throughout its lifetime, Quake only saw two ports due to its much higher system requirements. One of those ports was to a 32-bit console, and the other was Quake 64. While both ports featured modified versions of the original levels in order to run on the hardware at the time, Quake 64 featured a few changes that differentiated itself from the original 1996 release. Colored lighting, a brand new soundtrack by acclaimed composer Aubrey Hodges, and two player split screen multiplayer were all unique to this version of the game. The unique nature of Quake 64 has caused it to be looked back on fondly by some players over the years, which is why we are happy to be able to bring it into modern times, with the original soundtrack intact.",
 "en": "While DOOM was ported to many platforms throughout its lifetime, Quake only saw two ports due to its much higher system requirements. One of those ports was to a 32-bit console, and the other was Quake 64. While both ports featured modified versions of the original levels in order to run on the hardware at the time, Quake 64 featured a few changes that differentiated itself from the original 1996 release. Colored lighting, a brand new soundtrack by acclaimed composer Aubrey Hodges, and two player split screen multiplayer were all unique to this version of the game. The unique nature of Quake 64 has caused it to be looked back on fondly by some players over the years, which is why we are happy to be able to bring it into modern times, with the original soundtrack intact.",
 "es": "While DOOM was ported to many platforms throughout its lifetime, Quake only saw two ports due to its much higher system requirements. One of those ports was to a 32-bit console, and the other was Quake 64. While both ports featured modified versions of the original levels in order to run on the hardware at the time, Quake 64 featured a few changes that differentiated itself from the original 1996 release. Colored lighting, a brand new soundtrack by acclaimed composer Aubrey Hodges, and two player split screen multiplayer were all unique to this version of the game. The unique nature of Quake 64 has caused it to be looked back on fondly by some players over the years, which is why we are happy to be able to bring it into modern times, with the original soundtrack intact.",
 "ru": "While DOOM was ported to many platforms throughout its lifetime, Quake only saw two ports due to its much higher system requirements. One of those ports was to a 32-bit console, and the other was Quake 64. While both ports featured modified versions of the original levels in order to run on the hardware at the time, Quake 64 featured a few changes that differentiated itself from the original 1996 release. Colored lighting, a brand new soundtrack by acclaimed composer Aubrey Hodges, and two player split screen multiplayer were all unique to this version of the game. The unique nature of Quake 64 has caused it to be looked back on fondly by some players over the years, which is why we are happy to be able to bring it into modern times, with the original soundtrack intact."
 },
 "gamedir": "q64",
 "download": "q64.pak",
 "screenshots": [
 "q641.jpg",
 "q642.jpg",
 "q643.jpg",
 "q644.jpg"
 ],
 "id": "q64"
 }
 ]
}

Some things to note:

• Size must be the correct size of the file or the addon will not download. On Linux I fetch this with a simple “ls -l”, on Windows you could use the same command with WSL.
• Descriptions can be localized to certain languages, but even the official description for Quake64 hasn’t made use of this feature. French (fr), Italian (it), German (de), English (en), Spanish (es), and Russian (ru).
• In this example, q64.pak is the same as q64/pak0.pak – You need the whole mod to fit in this single PAK file.
• If the download is not available or the download server is not online, the download will appear to complete instantly and attempting to activate the mod will crash the game.
• If the content.json has a typo it will cause the game to crash when the addons menu is accessed.
• Screenshots should be 640×480 (4:3) resolution, not a 960×540 (16:9) resolution like the Quake 64 screenshots are – they’re getting squished. You can have a max of 7 screenshots, after that they start to overflow off the side of the menu. Here’s my imagemagick command for generating these screenshots:
   

  mogrify -resize '640x480^' -extent '640x480^' -gravity center -thumbnail '640x480^' -auto-orient -background black -quality 90 -flatten -format jpg ./*

• Download and screenshots can be a subfolder, but you can’t traverse up the tree with ../ nor can you specify a file located at another domain. However it’s possible to redirect to another domain or location with a code 301.

 

Available Servers

Here’s all the known mod servers right now:

• http://kexquake.netlify.app/ – [netlify.app]  – Currently contains mods like Alkaline, Arcane Dimensions, Copper, Quake 64, and X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse.
• http://kexquake.netlify.app/testing/ – [netlify.app]  – Contains currently broken and untested mods.
• https://q1-rerelease-addons.herokuapp.com/ – [herokuapp.com]  – Currently contains just the Clan Arena mod.
• https://q1mods.xyz/ – [q1mods.xyz]  – Contains a few mods in various states of functionality.

 

Linux/Steam Deck

You’re a Linux or Steam Deck user? Well friend, you’re in good company. I’m going to go over every tip and trick I know to get this game working properly.

Broken multiplayer?

Yeah, same here! Thankfully it’s a pretty easy fix:

protontricks 2310 win7

 

Sounds terrible?

It’s a problem with a lot of games, try this:

PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 %command%

 

Graphical issues?

This is a Vulkan game, but for compatibility reasons let’s let DXVK work its magic:

%command% +r_rhirenderfamily d3d11

 

 

 

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