Where it stands
Evil Engine finds Quake on its own and mounts both editions in the install as two games, since they sit side by side and share no files: the 1996 original, 715 files across id1 and its two mission packs, and the rerelease, 2,509 files across its seven game folders. Each game folder is fingerprinted on its own with id1 under it, so a server running one of the rerelease’s episodes only asks for that one. Every file matched Steam’s own checksums.
Every map of both editions, 73 from the original and 171 from the rerelease, converts and loads from the Singleplayer menu with nothing failing, listed by the game’s own level names, and you can fly around inside it. The original draws the way its software renderer did, every pixel one of the game’s 256 palette colours. The rerelease draws its own look, worked out from screenshots of the rerelease and matching them closely from the same spot. The monsters, weapons and items that fill those levels aren’t converted yet, so the maps are empty for now.
Known issues
- Clip brushes, the invisible walls that keep players out of corners, are left out until the collision format can carry them.
- The rerelease’s skybox images and fog aren’t read yet, and neither are the smoothed surface normals in Dawn of the Machine, so its surfaces shade flat.
- The original’s look was built from a written description of its renderer and hasn’t been compared against the original running yet. The rerelease’s water ripple and sky smoothing still need checking against screenshots with them in view.
- In the map list, the rerelease’s maps are grouped by folder name (
mg3,dopa) rather than by episode.
Next up
- The rerelease’s skyboxes and fog, and the smoothed normals.
- Checking the original’s look against the game itself, once it runs.
- A first launch of each edition and a downloaded add-on, to see what they write and where, before mods and add-ons can be turned on.