vkQuake2

Build status

Overview

This is the official Quake 2 code v3.21 with Vulkan support and mission packs included. The goal of this project is to maintain as much compatibility as possible with the original game - just pure, vanilla Quake 2 experience as we knew it back in 1997. There are, however, a few notable differences that made the cut for various reasons:

• world colors have been slightly upgraded - the game's original, darker look can be toggled with the vk_postprocess console command
• 64-bit support, additional screen resolutions and DPI awareness have been added
• underwater vision warp effect similar to software renderer has been implemented and enabled by default
• antialiasing and sample shading is now natively supported
• anisotropic filtering toggle has been added
• players can now change texture filtering modes from within the video menu
• mouse acceleration has been disabled
• console contents can be scrolled with a mouse wheel
• HUD elements, menus and console text are now scaled accordingly on higher screen resolutions (can be overridden with the hudscale console command)
• viewmodel weapons are no longer hidden when FOV > 90
• Vulkan renderer fixes broken warp texture effect (water, lava, slime) seen in OpenGL
• software renderer has been completely replaced with KolorSoft 1.1 - this adds colored lighting and fixes severe instabilities of the original implementation
• triangle fans have been replaced with indexed triangle lists due to Metal/MoltenVK limitations
• on Linux, sound is now handled by ALSA instead of OSS
• support for OGG/FLAC/MP3/WAV music has been added in addition to standard CD audio
• music volume slider has been added (OGG/FLAC/MP3/WAV only, CD music still plays at full volume as originally intended)
• game menus have been slightly improved
• added Nightmare/Hard+ skill to the game menu
• added the aimfix console command, backported from Berserker@Quake2

A more detailed description of the thought process behind this project can be found in my blog post, where I explain the overall design, how I attacked some of the problems and also how things developed after the initial release.

Building

For extra challenge I decided to base vkQuake2 on the original id Software code. Because of this, there are no dependencies on external SDL-like libraries and the entire project is mostly self-contained. This also implies that some of the original bugs could be present.

Windows

• download and install the latest Vulkan SDK
• install Visual Studio Community 2022 with the latest Windows SDK and C++ MFC for build tool and C++ MFC for x64/x86 in case you're using Visual Studio Community 2026
• open quake2.sln and choose the target architecture (x86/x64) - it should build without any additional steps

Linux

Unfortunately, Linux code for Quake 2 has not aged well and for that reason only the Vulkan renderer is available for use at this time. Build steps assume that Ubuntu is the target distribution:

• install required dependencies:

sudo apt install make gcc g++ mesa-common-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libxxf86dga-dev libxxf86vm-dev libasound2-dev libx11-dev libxcb1-dev libxext-dev

• Install the latest Vulkan SDK - the easiest way is to use LunarG Ubuntu Packages - just follow the instructions and there will be no additional steps required. If you decide for a manual installation, make sure that proper environment variables are set afterwards by adding the following section to your .bashrc file (replace SDK version and location with the ones corresponding to your system):

export VULKAN_SDK=/home/user/VulkanSDK/1.4.350.0/x86_64
export PATH=$VULKAN_SDK/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$VULKAN_SDK/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export VK_LAYER_PATH=$VULKAN_SDK/etc/explicit_layer.d

• make sure your graphics drivers support Vulkan (run vulkaninfo to verify) - if not, you can get them with:

sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers

• enter the linux directory and type make release or make debug depending on which variant you want to build - output binaries will be placed in linux/releasex64 and linux/debugx64 subdirectories respectively

MacOS

• download and extract the latest Vulkan SDK
• install XCode 10.1 (or later) and add the VULKAN_SDK environment variable to Locations/Custom Paths - make it point to the downloaded SDK
• open macos/vkQuake2.xcworkspace - it should build without any additional steps
• alternatively, you can compile the game from the command line - modify your .bash_profile and add the following entries (replace SDK version and location with the ones corresponding to your system):

export VULKAN_SDK=/home/user/VulkanSDK/1.4.350.1
export VK_ICD_FILENAMES=$VULKAN_SDK/share/vulkan/icd.d/MoltenVK_icd.json
export VK_LAYER_PATH=$VULKAN_SDK/share/vulkan/explicit_layer.d

• enter the macos directory and run make release-xcode or make debug-xcode depending on which variant you want to build - output binaries will be placed in macos/vkQuake2 subdirectory
• it is also possible to build the game with Command Line Developer Tools if you have them installed: enter the macos directory and run make release or make debug - output binaries will be placed in macos/release and macos/debug subdirectories respectively

This project uses the Vulkan loader bundled with the SDK, rather than directly linking against MoltenVK.framework. This is done so that validation layers are available for debugging. Builds have been tested using MacOS 10.14.2.

FreeBSD

• install required Vulkan packages:

pkg install vulkan-tools vulkan-validation-layers

• make sure your graphics drivers support Vulkan (run vulkaninfo to verify) - if not, you should either update them or find a package that is best suited for your hardware configuration
• enter the linux directory and type make release or make debug depending on which variant you want to build - output binaries will be placed in linux/releasex64 and linux/debugx64 subdirectories respectively

Raspberry Pi 4

Thanks to the effort of Igalia and their V3DV Driver, it is possible to compile and run vkQuake2 on Raspberry Pi 4. Same build instructions as for Linux apply.

Running

Windows

The Visual Studio C++ Redistributable is required to run the application: 32-bit or 64-bit depending on the chosen architecture. These are provided automatically if you have Visual Studio installed.

All platforms

The release package comes only with the Quake 2 Demo content to showcase Vulkan functionality. For full experience, copy retail .pak, model and video files into the baseq2 directory and run the executable. For mission packs, copy necessary data to rogue ("Ground Zero"), xatrix ("The Reckoning"), zaero ("Quake II: Zaero") and smd ("Slight Mechanical Destruction") directories respectively. You can then start the game with either ./quake2 +set game rogue, ./quake2 +set game xatrix, ./quake2 +set game zaero or ./quake2 +set game smd.

Music

This project uses Miniaudio for music playback if the original game CD is not available. For standard Quake 2, copy all tracks into the baseq2/music directory following the trackXX.[ogg,flac,mp3,wav] naming scheme (so track02.ogg, track03.ogg... for OGG files etc.). For "Ground Zero" and "The Reckoning", copy the tracks to rogue/music and xatrix/music directories respectively. For additional control over the playback, use the miniaudio [on,off,play [X],loop [X],stop,pause,resume,info] console command.

Console commands

The following commands are available when using the Vulkan renderer:

Command	Action
vk_validation	Toggle validation layers:
0 - disabled (default in Release)
1 - only errors and warnings
2 - full validation (default in Debug)
3 - enables VK_VALIDATION_FEATURE_ENABLE_BEST_PRACTICES_EXT
vk_strings	Print some basic Vulkan/GPU information.
vk_mem	Print dynamic vertex/index/uniform/triangle fan buffer memory and descriptor set usage statistics.
vk_device	Specify index of the preferred Vulkan device on systems with multiple GPUs:
-1 - prefer first DISCRETE_GPU (default)
0..n - use device #n (full list of devices is returned by vk_strings command)
vk_msaa	Toggle MSAA (multisampling):
0 - off (default)
1 - MSAAx2
2 - MSAAx4
3 - MSAAx8
4 - MSAAx16
vk_sampleshading	Toggle sample shading (supersampling) for MSAA. (default: 0)
vk_mode	Vulkan video mode (default: 11). Setting this to -1 uses a custom screen resolution defined by r_customwidth (default: 1024) and r_customheight (default: 768) console variables.
vk_flashblend	Toggle the blending of lights onto the environment. (default: 0)
vk_polyblend	Blend fullscreen effects: blood, powerups etc. (default: 1)
vk_skymip	Toggle the usage of mipmap information for the sky graphics. (default: 0)
vk_finish	Inserts a vkDeviceWaitIdle() call on frame render start (default: 0).
Don't use this, it's there just for the sake of having a gl_finish equivalent!
vk_point_particles	Toggle between using POINT_LIST and textured triangles for particle rendering. (default: 1)
vk_particle_size	Rendered particle size. (default: 40)
vk_particle_att_a	Intensity of the particle A attribute. (default: 0.01)
vk_particle_att_b	Intensity of the particle B attribute. (default: 0)
vk_particle_att_c	Intensity of the particle C attribute. (default: 0.01)
vk_particle_min_size	The minimum size of a rendered particle. (default: 2)
vk_particle_max_size	The maximum size of a rendered particle. (default: 40)
vk_lockpvs	Lock current PVS table. (default: 0)
vk_clear	Clear the color buffer each frame. (default: 0)
vk_modulate	Texture brightness modifier. (default: 1)
vk_shadows	Draw experimental entity shadows. (default: 0)
vk_picmip	Shrink factor for the textures. (default: 0)
vk_round_down	Toggle the rounding of texture sizes. (default: 1)
vk_log	Log frame validation data to file. (default: 0)
vk_dynamic	Use dynamic lighting. (default: 1)
vk_showtris	Display mesh triangles. (default: 0)
vk_lightmap	Display lightmaps. (default: 0)
vk_aniso	Toggle anisotropic filtering. (default: 1)
vk_vsync	Toggle vertical sync. (default: 0)
vk_postprocess	Toggle additional color/gamma correction. (default: 1)