Quake Remastered

[Lila Feuer]

I think this was a superb above and beyond effort made for a re-release, it swung out the gate very strong compared to Unity Doom's initial release.

Also I thought Dimension of the Past was kinda garbage and had to cheat against the last two shamblers when I last played on PC. That new episode looks wicked though!

[silentzorah]

I don't remember the movement being so icy.  Maybe I'm just out of practice, it's been years since I played.

[wheresthebeef]

21 minutes ago, lazygecko said:

The enhanced models and textures are masterfully subtle in how they blend into the original game. Whenever PR people talk about updating graphics in remasters to make a game look "as you remember it" in these types of projects, I always wince because the changes they make can be so hit and miss. But in this case I really think it's a pitch perfect effort they did. Just very subtle improvements like a marginally better polycount on the weapons, and slightly improved color banding with a few more gradient shades on the super shotgun, etc.

 

Yeah, when I played one of the OG expansion packs and switched between the grenade launchers, it was very easy to the changes, and they were very very minimal.

Allowing you to set old models in the options was also a nice touch.

[Rexen²]

16 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

I think this was a superb above and beyond effort made for a re-release, it swung out the gate very strong compared to Unity Doom's initial release.

Also I thought Dimension of the Past was kinda garbage and had to cheat against the last two shamblers when I last played on PC. That new episode looks wicked though!

 

Speaking of cheats, I wonder how one enters cheat codes on consoles since we can't even open the console even if one uses a keyboard to play the game

[El Juancho]

this port its gonna be the "zandronum" sourceport of quake, only for multiplayer, im 100% sure. it was never so easy to create a server and play with friends on quake and that makes me very happy.

[msx2plus]

1 hour ago, lazygecko said:

The enhanced models and textures are masterfully subtle in how they blend into the original game.

agreed, the visual upgrade here is a masterclass in upgrading something to be the way you imagined it rather than the way it was. the models look like they have detail i lost by playing at 320x240 in the 90s. they're filling in the blanks, not reinventing them.

 

1 hour ago, Lila Feuer said:

I think this was a superb above and beyond effort made for a re-release, it swung out the gate very strong compared to Unity Doom's initial release.

this too, doom's port saw big upgrades after a rocky start and this is pretty phenomenal by comparison - excited to see where it goes

Edited August 21, 2021 by msx2plus

[Edward850]

3 hours ago, scalliano said:

Also, unrelated: how come this game doesn't have censored medkits?

We are actually quite surprised we got away with that. The answer is "very carefully" it seems.

[Marty2Doom]

I have tried out the Steam Version Enanced Version. I must  Wonder.

An extended port with poorer downscaled OGG Music soundtrack quality. Back in the 90s the graphics weren't that good, but the soundtrack from the CD was top quality. Why doesn't Kex Engine support a wave/Flac soundtrack?

[Edward850]

10 minutes ago, Marty2Doom said:

An extended port with poorer downscaled OGG Music soundtrack quality. Back in the 90s the graphics weren't that good, but the soundtrack from the CD was top quality. Why doesn't Kex Engine support a wave/Flac soundtrack?

Of course we support FLAC and WAV, what do you think the game sound effects are? However the music tracks are longer and are already CD Audio, and nobody can tell the difference between FLAC and OGG from transcoded CD Audio in a double blind, so it would be a pointless waste of file size.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Edward850

[A Nobody]

So who handled the port this time and how is it?

[Agent Slacker]

1 minute ago, The Strife Commando said:

So who handled the port this time and how is it?

It's a Nightdive Studios joint. 
So far reception seems to be very positive. I've played it quite a bit myself and I personally think it's a solid effort.

[Edward850]

2 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

So who handled the port this time and how is it?

Nightdive, id, Machine Games.

[A Nobody]

1 minute ago, Agent Slacker said:

It's a Nightdive Studios joint. 
So far reception seems to be very positive. I've played it quite a bit myself and I personally think it's a solid effort.

Nightdive again? Huh. So the Kex engine is at it again too I'm guessing.

Edited August 21, 2021 by The Strife Commando

[Agent Slacker]

1 minute ago, The Strife Commando said:

So the Kex engine is at it again too I'm guessing.

To quote a tweet

[A Nobody]

Well, you know what this means. Arena shooter fans rejoice! The genre's back! Well if many people play the multiplayer of course.

[VanaheimRanger]

The port is great and the new episode looks pretty dope, but I still want to use a source port sometimes.  Is there a way I can make the steam shortcut launch the classic Quake (which I have replaced with SQL)?

[Kinsie]

29 minutes ago, VanaheimRanger said:

The port is great and the new episode looks pretty dope, but I still want to use a source port sometimes.  Is there a way I can make the steam shortcut launch the classic Quake (which I have replaced with SQL)?

Clicking "Play" in the Steam client gives you a choice between the remaster and the original binaries. You could swap out glquake.exe for your source port of choice and it'll run fine. I used this to run Quakespasm for many years.

 

If you mean a desktop shortcut, the original binaries no longer have Steam DRM so you can just create regular shortcuts to them or throw your ports of choice in the folder.

 

If you mean a Non-Steam Game in the Steam Library, ditto.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Kinsie

[Azuris]

I wonder:

 

Playing on Switch online i see the Switch Logo on my Name, do i also see other Console Logos or do they all have just that roundy thing.

I guess the last, but just to be sure :)

[Edward850]

3 minutes ago, Azuris said:

I wonder:

 

Playing on Switch online i see the Switch Logo on my Name, do i also see other Console Logos or do they all have just that roundy thing.

I guess the last, but just to be sure :)

You only see user icons of the same platform you're on. You can't identify other platforms, and they will all show as the same globe icon.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Edward850

[Edward850]

On 8/20/2021 at 8:46 PM, TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

Yes. The game gets confused at points and tries to load completely wrong ogg track numbers. For example, the music disappeared for me when it tried to find "track98.ogg" after I started Scourge of Armagon and then returned to the main menu.

Fun fact: This is because the demo file itself tries to play track 98. That has nothing to do with the port, it's been that way forever.
Additional fun fact: Fixed. The demo file has an erroneous white space at the start which mucks up the force tack (it's supposed to play track 2). So we just ignore the white space and everything seems to magically work. Maybe this was some kind of thing the DOS version somehow ignored? Maybe the specs changed? Answers aren't clear.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Edward850

[SR388]

really loving this rerelease, but for the console peeps out there I hope they add deadzone and aim acceleration options, tried this port out on my old xbone and while its fun, that aiming is a bit stiff haha, you get used to it but man its a bit rough, hopefully they might do something about that

Edited August 21, 2021 by SR388

[A Nobody]

So what source port was used for this release?

[Edward850]

2 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

So what source port was used for this release?

Quake.

[VanaheimRanger]

2 hours ago, Kinsie said:

If you mean a desktop shortcut, the original binaries no longer have Steam DRM so you can just create regular shortcuts to them or throw your ports of choice in the folder.

This is what I meant, I replace glquake.exe with SQL.exe (renamed glquake.exe) so that Steam tracks my playtime even in source ports, launching from the Steam interface works but if I just create a shortcut to my SQL it doesn't get tracked.  For now I am just launching it from Steam, but that is just kind of annoying.

[Devalaous]

@Edward850 can you guys please disable the port forcibly turning on texture filtering everytime a saved game from Quake 64 is loaded? I've been playing base Quake and the 64 version back to back to see the changes in the levels to properly grasp how the geometry etc was changed, and I have to turn the filtering back off every single time. It really should respect my options setup.

 

The CRT mode should also be in the menu options rather than a hidden console thing; my brother cannot play Quake 64 as-is, as the CRT filter really hurts his eyes.

[Revenant100]

Is there any explanation behind why the lighting is largely fireblu'd up in the maps? This isn't the result of any display settings. This is the new baked lighting compiled into the BSPs themselves. The typical effect is that several areas are filled with the inexplicable addition of an abundance of overly bright lights, taking away all of the carefully placed shadows and atmosphere, and in the worst cases illuminating surfaces that were intentionally meant be in pitch blackness.

 

Some random comparisons, Quakespasm on the left and the new enhanced release on the right:

Edited August 21, 2021 by Revenant100

[Gez]

1 hour ago, The Strife Commando said:

So what source port was used for this release?

For legal reasons (they want to be able to release the thing on GPL-adverse platforms such as the current Xbox/PS/Nintendo offering), they cannot use any existing third-party source port out there. Which is too bad, would have been cool to use QuakeSpasm in there and offer Arcane Dimensions on consoles, but them's the breaks. However, id Software does retain the right to use whatever license terms they want on the original Quake codebase since after all, it belongs to them.

 

So it's a brand-new port made from the original source code.

 

4 minutes ago, Revenant100 said:

and in the worst cases illuminating surfaces that were intentionally meant be in pitch blackness.

Yeah, the ceiling in Shub's place is a particularly egregious example.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Gez

[Wavy]

8 minutes ago, Gez said:

Which is too bad, would have been cool to use QuakeSpasm in there and offer Arcane Dimensions on consoles

Could we still get AD in this new port though? I don't recall any Quakespasm specific features in AD except the use of Client-Side QuakeC, but even then those were special effects for ports that supported it.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Wavy

[Edward850]

29 minutes ago, Revenant100 said:

Is there any explanation behind why the lighting is largely fireblu'd up in the maps?

Somehow, the source maps have different lights than what was baked for the original Quake. E1M1 had no lights at all and needed to be entirely relit.

 

Rebuilding from source was used to help facilitate localisation (a completely absent aspect of the original engine) and upres the lightmaps with colour and bounce lighting and such.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Edward850

[Gez]

21 minutes ago, Wavy said:

Could we still get AD in this new port though? I don't recall any Quakespasm specific features in AD except the use of Client-Side QuakeC, but even then those were special effects for ports that supported it.

I'm no expert on Quake internals, but since v1.6 Arcane Dimensions has come with notice that you have to use the very very latest QuakeSpasm, no not the one you downloaded yesterday it's already too old, to be able to run it. It could be just from how thoroughly limit-removing the port has to be to support these giant mammoth maps. (They had to write their own tools, too, since the old compilers choked on their biggest maps.)