Quake II on Vulkan API Now Available on GitHub

Megalith

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Just in time for Quake II’s 21st anniversary, programmer Krzysztof Kondrak has released his vkQuake2 to the public via GitHub. vkQuake2 is essentially Quake II code v3.21, but with the Vulkan renderer: “What you can expect however is a pure, vanilla Quake II experience. Exactly how it would play back in 1997.”

It requires the Visual Studio 2017 C++ Redistributable (32 bit) to run the application. The release package comes with game data used in the demo version – for full experience, copy all retail Quake II data paks (pak0.pak, pak1.pak, pak2.pak) into the baseq2 folder and run the executable. The mission packs should theoretically work as well.
 
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Anyone else having an issue getting to the Vulkan SDK over at LunarG's site?


[edit]
nm...LunarG site doesn't like IE, but works fine with Edge and Chrome
 
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At this Quake 2 is old enough to be running 120 fps in a browser
 
Old games keep getting better while new games keep getting shittier. :D

I disagree fully. In the early days of 3D gaming there wasn't much to compare to, no games to use as a "benchmark", so games just seemed awesome. While I still play the original Doom/Doom2 (modded) and enjoy the heck out of them, it's easy to see their limitations and how basic and rudimentary they are compared to some of today's great games.

Sorry, maybe I'm just spouting off because I thought Quake 2 was absolute shit when I first played it on release and I still do.
 
I disagree fully. In the early days of 3D gaming there wasn't much to compare to, no games to use as a "benchmark", so games just seemed awesome. While I still play the original Doom/Doom2 (modded) and enjoy the heck out of them, it's easy to see their limitations and how basic and rudimentary they are compared to some of today's great games.

Sorry, maybe I'm just spouting off because I thought Quake 2 was absolute shit when I first played it on release and I still do.

I am a bit in that boat. I played a lot of Quake, but perhaps more accurately - Quake 1 and mods. I did like one of the expansions a lot. The one with the dragon? Man, memory is not what it used to be.

Quake 2 was fine, but didn't really lift the skirt much. I appreciated some parts of it, but overall it kinda felt flat. It felt like iD trying to do things that iD wasn't good at.
 
I know jack about game development but I downloaded everything in the GitHub, then all the tools the instructions said to get to the best of my abilities. I think I configured Visual Studio correctly and I loaded the folder.

Selected the vs project file and hit Build.

Well, it worked, I think. I got a "Quake2" folder with the executable inside but the game immediately crashes noting something about not being able to find a colormap.. file.

Well, there was an attempt. Lots of prior knowledge expected with the instructions on GitHub.
 
I know jack about game development but I downloaded everything in the GitHub, then all the tools the instructions said to get to the best of my abilities. I think I configured Visual Studio correctly and I loaded the folder.

Selected the vs project file and hit Build.

Well, it worked, I think. I got a "Quake2" folder with the executable inside but the game immediately crashes noting something about not being able to find a colormap.. file.

Well, there was an attempt. Lots of prior knowledge expected with the instructions on GitHub.

I think it has more to do with what you played first. I started with Quake 2 and I still love it. OG Quake feels a bit claustrophobic and samey, though I still think it's tons of fun. To me, Quake2 still felt much more polished and it cohesive.
 
I think it has more to do with what you played first. I started with Quake 2 and I still love it. OG Quake feels a bit claustrophobic and samey, though I still think it's tons of fun. To me, Quake2 still felt much more polished and it cohesive.

Well, some of us played Quake 1 because Quake 2 wasn't out yet :p.
 
There's a pre-built exe in the releases, no need to compile anything.
Hmm.. did not see that.

Although it gave an interesting morning project to setup Visual Studio, Vulkan SDK, etc.
Managed to compile them ok.

It seems to be buggy though, as it randomly, but reproducible, crash on loading a saved slot or changing level/map.
 
Q2 runs great on a raspberry PI, under Linux; Gotta keep the interns in line, lol. :)

I wonder how the Crakwhore skins look in this release?

I remember getting it to run on openGL mode on an S3 Virge card with 4MB of Vram, back about 20 years ago; after all that effort, it ran 4 frames/second.

That led to my TNT or TNT2 card purchase, IIRC.

:)
 
Crap! It crashes on launch.

I guess I've missed some dependencies, lol.

Works great in openGL or software, so it's Vulcan.

Vulcan works under DOOM, so I'm betting it's the C runtime; off to M$ I go, lol.
 
I think it has more to do with what you played first. I started with Quake 2 and I still love it. OG Quake feels a bit claustrophobic and samey, though I still think it's tons of fun. To me, Quake2 still felt much more polished and it cohesive.

Hm, did you quote the wrong person?
 
When this is mature and bug free I hope it becomes available in Yamagi and Q2Pro (the actively maintained source ports).

Edit: The Q1/Q2 debate in here is funny. I liked both; they were technical marvels with unique mod communities and the reasons for existence of other games such as Half-Life. My only preference is that I wish Quake 2 had a different name for its own branch of storyline and series.
 
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When this is mature and bug free I hope it becomes available in Yamagi and Q2Pro (the actively maintained source ports).

Edit: The Q1/Q2 debate in here is funny. I liked both; they were technical marvels with unique mod communities and the reasons for existence of other games such as Half-Life. My only preference is that I wish Quake 2 had a different name for its own branch of storyline and series.
While I agree that both were good games in their own right, I'd really like to see a continuation of the original game. One can only hope that since Quake Champions is bombing that they'll revisit it and come out with a great single player experience as they did with Doom.
 
Well, some of us played Quake 1 because Quake 2 wasn't out yet :p.

Heck i still played quak1 when quake2 was out.
quake1 just had a lot more trickg s olean to it.
Quake2 was very washed down in skill wise and the game was just slower paced
 
Heck i still played quak1 when quake2 was out.
quake1 just had a lot more trickg s olean to it.
Quake2 was very washed down in skill wise and the game was just slower paced

I agree. It wasn't bad per se. It was just different than Quake 1. I still like Quake 1 better to this day.
 
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