VOGONS


First post, by Old_mATX

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Hi guys,

I’m playing through all the old Quake series including level packs, etc. My retro machine is P4 with GeForce FX Ultra 5700, Audigy 2 ZS and Win ME. I’m also collecting all CD’s regarding old Quakes and ordered Q1 off of eBay.

Can someone help me to understand how to play Quake 1 under Windows and 3D card?

Am I correct that first I need a full version of Q1 and install GLQuake patch for 3D acceleration to work?

What about the audio part?

Thanks.

Reply 1 of 8, by leileilol

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

You could find out by running it. Trial & error is part of the allure of 'retro computing'.

GLQuake will probably fail from extension overload as it's a newer, 2001+ video card from the "way it's meant to be played" king of regressions nVidia. That engine was written in 1997 and hasn't had any official updates since. There's some here who will prefer to run that on a 3dfx Voodoo/Voodoo2 Pentium/6x86/K6 system as that'll have more familiar performance, a working gamma ramp, and be approrpiately dithered (nvidia's dither table for 16-bit color is very ugly). A "3d card" is what used to be 3d-only video cards that would be installed in addition to a video card, such popularized with the Voodoo Graphics (which originally provided arcade machine graphics). It's been a dead term since video cards started to have decent 3D acceleration standard equipped by 1999...

As for later quakes on the thing, that's a good soundcard for Quake 4 (to handle EAX etc) but also a terrible videocard for Quake 4..... as it's PCI sound, for DOS quake it'll likely cause a segfault and the CPU's way too fast for DOS quake anyway as you'll be stuck running that under Windows where the timer will behave differently.

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 2 of 8, by Old_mATX

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
leileilol wrote on 2025-06-17, 02:41:

You could find out by running it. Trial & error is part of the allure of 'retro computing'.

GLQuake will probably fail from extension overload as it's a newer, 2001+ video card from the "way it's meant to be played" king of regressions nVidia. That engine was written in 1997 and hasn't had any official updates since. There's some here who will prefer to run that on a 3dfx Voodoo/Voodoo2 Pentium/6x86/K6 system as that'll have more familiar performance, a working gamma ramp, and be approrpiately dithered (nvidia's dither table for 16-bit color is very ugly). A "3d card" is what used to be 3d-only video cards that would be installed in addition to a video card, such popularized with the Voodoo Graphics (which originally provided arcade machine graphics). It's been a dead term since video cards started to have decent 3D acceleration standard equipped by 1999...

As for later quakes on the thing, that's a good soundcard for Quake 4 (to handle EAX etc) but also a terrible videocard for Quake 4..... as it's PCI sound, for DOS quake it'll likely cause a segfault and the CPU's way too fast for DOS quake anyway as you'll be stuck running that under Windows where the timer will behave differently.

Still in a mail, so I wanted to collect the puzzle pieces before it arrives. I guess Quake 4 is bit too new for this hardware and OS. So I'm focusing on Quakes from 1-3, besides Quake 4 I like it less.

Of course I will have to try, but is it even possible to play it with sound and good FPS on my hardware?

Reply 3 of 8, by Mondodimotori

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Here's what I did for running it on a WinMe machine with an Athlon 1400 and a Radeon 9250 PCI:

  • Got myself a disc ISO + all official patches (including GLquake),
  • Installed the game with all the patches,
  • Crancked up Gamma in the Radeon driver (in game gamma slider is borked), If you don't do this, the game will be bloody dark on a correctly setup CRT.
  • Launched from GLQuake with the ISO mounted in Daemon Tools (for CD audio)
  • Game just works at 600x480 32bit, maxing out the 85hz of my monitor,
  • If I try to go higher resolutions, it just shows a black screen with sound or crashes the game (probably because I also have an onboard AGP card that conflict with some stuff),
  • The same issue happens if I try to run the DOS version or WinQuake in fullscreen. WinQuake works in windowed mode but, being it software rendering, playable framerates are achievable only in very tiny windows.
  • All of this, theoretically, should work even if you use the actual phisical disc. For convenience I decide to not use it, and just mount an ISO.

This is my experience running the original Quake on a Win9x machine with a more recent GPU than those available in 1997. You'd probably have a better experience on a machine without the quirks mine has.

Reply 4 of 8, by GemCookie

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Just to dispel the FUD, both DOS Quake and GLQuake work fine on my Pentium 4 toaster with a GeForce 6600.

Old_mATX wrote on 2025-06-16, 23:44:

Can someone help me to understand how to play Quake 1 under Windows and 3D card?

Set up DOS Quake, then install WinQuake (DirectDraw, 2D acceleration) or GLQuake (OpenGL, 3D acceleration) in the directory where it's located.

Am I correct that first I need a full version of Q1 and install GLQuake patch for 3D acceleration to work?

GLQuake works with the shareware version of Quake as well.

What about the audio part?

Both WinQuake and GLQuake use the waveOut* API for audio. I would expect no issues there.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

Gigabyte GA-8I915P Duo Pro | P4 530J | GF 6600 | 2GiB | 120G HDD | 2k/Vista/10
MSI MS-5169 | K6-2/350 | TNT2 M64 | 384MiB | 120G HDD | DR-/MS-DOS/NT/2k/XP/Ubuntu
Dell Precision M6400 | C2D T9600 | FX 2700M | 16GiB | 128G SSD | 2k/Vista/11/Arch/OBSD

Reply 5 of 8, by Old_mATX

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

THANK YOU everyone, I just received my Q1 CD! I will update later whether it works my expectations. }-

Reply 6 of 8, by smtkr

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

The Quake 1 release I have on CD includes GLQuake on the CD. There is an issue with it--it has an opengl dll in the install directory that is a 3dfx minigl driver, if I remember correctly. In order to force it to use nvidia drivers, I have to delete that file from the installation directory.

If you run into that issue, that's the solution.

Reply 7 of 8, by Old_mATX

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I was going to user ver. 0.97. But good to know about this culprit!

Reply 8 of 8, by leileilol

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
smtkr wrote on 2025-06-22, 19:06:

The Quake 1 release I have on CD includes GLQuake on the CD. There is an issue with it--it has an opengl dll in the install directory that is a 3dfx minigl driver, if I remember correctly. In order to force it to use nvidia drivers, I have to delete that file from the installation directory.

If you run into that issue, that's the solution.

That shouldn't be a problem on the later release because it asks during install if you have a 3dfx card before it copies the ye old ancient minigl (it's fine to say no if you don't have a Voodoo1/2). Also that version has VQUAKE for some reason (in 2001!!!!!!!)

apsosig.png
long live PCem