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WinQuake, a forgotten gem

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First post, by Lo Wang

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It just hit me once again how wonderful WinQuake is; with the right tweaks and running on the right system.

As touching the DOS-Windows porting efforts that went into it, I find it quite remarkable how well it runs, how nothing's missing, how everything functions exactly as in the DOS version. Truly a remarkable piece of software, specially (if not somewhat exclusively) to Quake purists.

Nevertheless, there's this one thing I believe would bring it up to perfection: model/movement interpolation.

Any binaries that fit the bill? I'm talking plain ole' WinQuake + interpolation here, no more, no less.

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" - Romans 10:9

Reply 1 of 20, by mr_bigmouth_502

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Hardware accelerated rendering would be nice, as would 32-bit color and the ability to load a FLAC soundtrack. 😉 Other than those few things, I wouldn't change a thing about it.

Reply 2 of 20, by leileilol

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I don't know. I heard there was this source port that added interpolation, fog and colored lighting but forgot its name. The crazy thing is that it was still software rendered

WinQuake does miss some things the DOS version has, like the 200 height skin crash, the sound attenuation range in 1.00-1.06, the -sndspeed parameter, serial play, and the menu background fade of the 1.00-1.06 versions (Because that required an expensive memory read and doesn't scale well with high resolutions)

Furthermore the 1.09 GPL source release changed a few undesirable things in WinQuake it didn't have before, like having some brown border around the screen and suspiciously faster swimming speed

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Reply 3 of 20, by Lo Wang

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leileilol wrote:

I don't know. I heard there was this source port that added interpolation, fog and colored lighting but forgot its name. The crazy thing is that it was still software rendered

Yes, heard about it...but I couldn't get it to vsync and vid_mode 3 was not available (both work ok in vanilla WinQuake)

leileilol wrote:

WinQuake does miss some things the DOS version has, like the 200 height skin crash, the sound attenuation range in 1.00-1.06, the -sndspeed parameter, serial play, and the menu background fade of the 1.00-1.06 versions (Because that required an expensive memory read and doesn't scale well with high resolutions)

Honestly I can't remember any of these ever having had any impact for me, but save for serial connectivity, sounds rather like a "good" kind of missing!

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

and the ability to load a FLAC soundtrack

Well, the way I see it, if the game's soundtrack isn't ambient-oriented, the kind of music that sets the mood for the map, might as well just leave a flac player running in the background.

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" - Romans 10:9

Reply 4 of 20, by King_Corduroy

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I wasn't aware any version of quake was forgotten... the game runs on everything and was a huge smash hit that spawned four other games. 🤣

It's like saying Doom that forgotten classic... Classic yes, forgotten? Uh no...

Check me out at Transcendental Airwaves on Youtube! Fast-food sucks!

Reply 6 of 20, by Harekiet

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I remember quakeworld much more though, my old cyrix struggling to run 320x240 while playing team fortress 😀

Reply 8 of 20, by leileilol

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The Winquake sourceport was included in all later SKUs starting from the Activision rerelease as well as the digital releases. Forgotten, nope

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Reply 9 of 20, by Chaniyth

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leileilol wrote:

I don't know. I heard there was this source port that added interpolation, fog and colored lighting but forgot its name. The crazy thing is that it was still software rendered.

Was it Tenebrae or perhaps Telejano?

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you... but first they must catch you. 😁

Reply 10 of 20, by leileilol

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Those aren't software rendered.

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Reply 11 of 20, by noshutdown

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its not forgotten, i've been playing winquake as my main quake program since 1998. i have trashed dos quake since, and glquake was only good for watching demos.

Reply 12 of 20, by Iris030380

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There is something about WinQuake that is so pure. Of course DOS mode on a fast socket 7 system is the most pure, but WinQuake retains the original visceral feeling to the combat and the insane pace. GLQuake (especially the early incarnations), while jaw dropping back in the VooDoo days, was just too plastic. Of course we overlooked that, because we had bilinear filtered Wizards Manse, running silky smooth in 640x480. But you have to admit the Flashblend and Polyblend effects looked very fake. Quake running under original GL is just too plastic...

WinQuake is pretty much as good as it gets. Having spent probably close to 5000 hours playing Quake in one form or another, whenever I play Quake for a quick run through even today (which is around every month) I always play in WinQuake at 512x384. Even with all the goodies of Darkplaces engine, Tenebrae, DirectQ... nothing can touch WinQuake for pure adrenaline.

I did install Quake on the K6-3 550 machine I built last week and had a quick blast. The PS2 ball mouse, 19" CRT and (dare I admit it?) ... INCONSISTENT framerate brought back a feeling inside I havent had since 1997 and my Pentium 200 vanilla. I was 16 all over again.

Timerefreshing the start position on that system gave 43fps if I recall. And the timedemos ranged from 52-68fps. All of those were in 320x240. Pure bliss...

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Reply 13 of 20, by mr_bigmouth_502

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Lo Wang wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

and the ability to load a FLAC soundtrack

Well, the way I see it, if the game's soundtrack isn't ambient-oriented, the kind of music that sets the mood for the map, might as well just leave a flac player running in the background.

A lot of people suggest this, and honestly, this won't do for me. I like the idea of actually being able to play the levels with the background music they're supposed to have, rather than just whatever my external music player happens to be playing. The game should be able to switch tracks when appropriate.

Reply 14 of 20, by King_Corduroy

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Lol my father used to but a CD of Stevie Ray Vaughn in when playing quake so it would play the tracks off the CD as he progressed through the game. I always thought that was cool.

Check me out at Transcendental Airwaves on Youtube! Fast-food sucks!

Reply 15 of 20, by Lo Wang

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mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
Lo Wang wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

and the ability to load a FLAC soundtrack

Well, the way I see it, if the game's soundtrack isn't ambient-oriented, the kind of music that sets the mood for the map, might as well just leave a flac player running in the background.

A lot of people suggest this, and honestly, this won't do for me. I like the idea of actually being able to play the levels with the background music they're supposed to have, rather than just whatever my external music player happens to be playing. The game should be able to switch tracks when appropriate.

The original Quake levels are supposed to go with the original soundtrack that's already on the CD, so no real use there. Third party levels, as many as I remember, were either designed with the original soundtrack in mind or rather didn't care what tune would be playing, so no use there either.

Any new vanilla Quake map being worked on right now...well, you could make the argument, but do consider that distributing flacs would probably be illegal, unless we're talking these cheese, generic, royalty free tunes or your very own compositions (yet composing and recording an original song or even coming up with a mere arrangement is likely to be a lot more cumbersome and time consuming than mapping something worth playing to begin with)

If anything, I'd have gladly supported the implementation of midi playback. That I dearly missed from Doom.

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" - Romans 10:9

Reply 16 of 20, by ratfink

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Best Quake music track I ever heard was some semi-operatic heavily-accented chef singing about the joys of chopping things up and cooking them. Imagine that as you run around firing your rocket launcher and gunning mobs.

I was somewhat disappointed when I determined that this fantastic sound track came courtesy of a Reader Rabbit CD that had been left in the drive...

Reply 17 of 20, by leileilol

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ROFL

I first played Quake shareware with some sort of compilation CD. Some of the tracks seemed to fit, like sweet home alabama for e1m1 and celebration for completing e1m7, forgot the rest though

Was a little disappointed the NIN soundtrack wasn't a "NIN" soundtrack. Ambience is cool, but I was expecting catchy industrial stuff 🙁

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Reply 18 of 20, by King_Corduroy

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The NIN soundtrack was always much too grunge for me, never liked it either.

Check me out at Transcendental Airwaves on Youtube! Fast-food sucks!

Reply 19 of 20, by SpeedySPCFan

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Trent's industrial type stuff would have worked better, it'd strike a nice balance between intense beats and atmosphere (which, frankly, I feel Quake falls somewhere in between action packed and atmospheric)

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