The game variable "r_wateralpha" allows for water transparency - but most maps
don't have the necessary "vis" information. There are two ways to get this.
After setting r_wateralpha < 1.0, issuing the
console command r_novis 1 enables the game to calculate it's own vis
information at the penalty of cpu cycles. Alternatively, vispatch is a utility
that patches your Quake/QuakeWorld levels to support transparent water.
Vispatch was originally written by Andy Bay but has not had much support since
and is finicky to use. Old Linux binaries on the web won't work, and
the utility itself has a rigid structure. To patch the main data files in "id1" -
from your Quake directory - type vispatch -dir id1 -data id1.vis
These tweaks are for users with a GeForce video card (or better) and Nvidia's
proprietary drivers. They are accessed using the bash command export
{variable}={value} and then starting the Quake engine from the same
command line. Alternatively, recent drivers have a nvidia-settings
command which starts up a user-friendly control panel.
Full details of these tweaks are in the Nvidia README, normally installed at "/usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/README"
Full Screen Antialiasing
export __GL_FSAA_MODE={value}
video card effect value
=====================================================
all disable 0
-----------------------------------------------------
GeForce, GeForce2 1.5x1.5 Supersampling 3
2x2 Supersampling 4
-----------------------------------------------------
GeForce4 2x Bilinear 1
2x2 Supersampling 4
-----------------------------------------------------
GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, 2x Bilinear 1
GeForce FX 4x Bilinear 4
-----------------------------------------------------
Synchronize Picture Redraw
export __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=1
Synchronizes GL output with your monitor's vertical refresh,
giving a more stable image especially on slower video cards.
The author has limited experience with this OS and currently uses FreeBSD 5.3 with Nvidia's
proprietary drivers.
Darkplaces and
Hammer of Thyrion work well with this system.
QuDos has recently ported several
engines to Linux and
has recently started work on FreeBSD compatibility. His great
Quake II project is
also now BSD friendly.
For basic GLQuake support, you can find a hacked FreeBSD binary and source
tarball
here.
QuakeForge is a comprehensive Quake project,
but may have installation issues with newer FreeBSD releases. The memory
allocator routine "alloca" is not correctly detected on FreeBSD 5.3. The fix
is, after running "configure", to add "#define C_ALLOCA 1" to
"include/config.h" and undefine other ALLOCA variables. Another issue is the
opening of plugins. If the project builds, but you can't get the console or
menus, you may have to enable static plugins using configure
LDFLAGS=-lpthread --with-static-plugins.
QNX is a commercial real-time operating system, probably most notable
to hobbyists as being a successful microkernel OS.
SDL Quake-1.0.9
compiles and runs on QNX-NC-6.2.1 after running configure --host=QNX
and then making these changes:
Because of the way the original game renders the sky, any map with
numerous outdoor enemies suffers a big performance hit.
You can jump further when strafing than when going forward or back 8-)
The timedemo demo1 command is a great way to benchmark your system.
Rocket-jumping is the technique of using a rocket or grenade
explosion to jump further than normal. For a demonstration see the
Scourge done Slick speed run.
Popular games derived from the Quake engine include -
Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Half-Life, Star Trek Voyager - Elite Force,
Soldier of Fortune, American McGee's Alice, and - distantly - Doom III.
John Carmack -
"At this time (march '97), the only standard opengl hardware that can play
glquake reasonably is an intergraph realizm, which is a VERY expensive card"
From the original Quake How-To -
"Hardware-accelerated OpenGL Quake is Quake the way God intended it to
be. There is no substitute, and once you've experienced it there's no
going back."
Func Message Board -
"... This Will Produce A Fully Functional Bouncing, Exploding Zombie."
Sounds like fun :)
Quake Wikipedia -
"Quake and its three follow up games, Quake II,Quake III Arena
and Quake 4 (which many do not regard as true sequels), have sold over
4 million copies combined. In 2005, a version of Quake was produced
for mobile phones."
Moby Games
(by Pathogen)
"... Quake was the first FPS to introduce realistic lighting and
shadows. Of course, this came at a price. Quake has taken a lot of
flak because it's all dull brown and grey. This was necessary because
it was the only way to get the lighting to work properly. Since each
surface needs a wide variety of reserved colors for displaying
darkened/brightened portions of the surface, the game was limited to
just a few colors and all their respective shades."
(by Ashley Pomeroy)
"Almost incidentally, Quake introduced the now-standard concept of a FPS
'console', and popularised 'mouselook' as *the* absolute standard
control interface. Although the specifications required a Pentium,
Quake ran acceptably well on a 486 DX4/100"
Slashdot Tenebrae Forum -
... this ... now officially labels this guy as a badass graphics programmer. I can hear it now:
MR. BURNS: "I need a programmer! Get John Carmack on the line!"
SMITHERS: "He's unavailable sir."
MR. BURNS: "Then get me his non-union Belgian equivalent!"
Application Program Interface. The computer libraries
which are used when programming, and link the game to the hardware.
Bot
A computer generated player with artificial intelligence (cough), in
a multiplayer game. Used to play multiplayer when no-one's around or not
connected to a network.
Client
This word is used in two subtly different ways. In single player,
the Quake game is known as a client, with different clients using their own
graphics libraries (for example, the GL client "quake.glx" or the X11 client
"quake.x11"). The usage is similar in multiplayer games, but also means the
per-user program which connects to a single "server" program which lets all
the players exist in the same world.
FPS
First Person Shooter. A shooting game viewed from the "first person" perspective.
Mod
Modification to the original Quake game varying from a complete game
overhaul (total conversion) to simple map/model reworks. Quake was designed to
allow for ease of platform portability with it's own computer language "Quake
C" giving mappers control over most every aspect of their Quake world.
Noob
Newbie. Someone new to a computer related topic.
Patch
A software patch (or diff) is a single file used to alter
a source code tree before compilation. It is often used to fix bugs or
add new features that the original author didn't include.
Usage of the GNU patch utility is of the form patch [--dry-run] -pNUM
<FILE where NUM is the number (usually 0 or 1) of directories to
strip from the patch file. This number is not obvious except to unix gurus, but
using the "--dry-run" option will let you test run patch so you can find the
correct NUM. ...Using the wrong number will make patch output all sorts of
cryptic messages which can be terminated with a control-C character.
Of course you could always type man patch and learn for yourself
how to use this powerful unix command. ;-/
A program central to multiplayer games to which every player connects.
Tarball
An archive file such as somefile.tar created by the
"tar" program. It is often compressed using the programs
"gzip" or "bzip2", in which case it will normally end in the letters
.gz or .bz2. The extension .tar.gz
is often shortened to .tgz.
