quake: play the 1996 id software game

this input node cannibalises quakespasm to read quake input geometry and textures. the data is provided as output connectors, to be used with the rt module. please see the example in examples/ad.cfg for a test setup. the quake module assumes that you have the original game data installed in /usr/share/games/quake/ or .quakespasm/. this module is optional, you need to have compiled with VKDT_USE_QUAKE=1, see config.mk.defaults.

for added fun, you may want to install the excellent arcane dimensions mod. it installs additional pak files to /usr/share/games/ad/ or .quakespasm/ad/. for more detailed textures, get the hd textures from the quake revitalisation project. place these in the /usr/share/games/ad subdirectory too, use consecutive numbers in the pak filenames. i don't know how these interact with the newfangled re-release of quake, so be sure to use the original game paks from your 1996 cdrom in your drawer. the examples/ad.cfg example assumes arcane dimensions is installed (much nicer more complex and modern maps).

cli operation

render to jpg image and only output the last frame:

vkdt cli --last-frame-only -g examples/quake.cfg --audio quake.aud --format o-jpg \
  --output main --config frames:40 fps:24

or, to render out a video directly:

vkdt cli -g examples/quake.cfg --format o-ffmpeg --filename qu.vid --audio qu.aud \
  --output main --config frames:3000 fps:24
ffmpeg -i qu.vid_0001.h264 -f s16le -sample_rate 44100 -channels 2  -i qu.aud \
  -c:v copy quake.mp4

(add -r 60 before -ito resample for different frame rate) (replace -c:v copy by -vcodec libx264 -crf 27 -preset veryfast for compression)

you probably want to use the svgf module to remodulate the albedo and apply temporal anti aliasing after this module.

screenshots

these are taken with the hd textures and the ad mod, using an rtx 2080ti device.

connectors

ui renders some ui (health bar) to be re-composited on the final render
dyngeo dynamic geometry, to be wired to a bvh module
stcgeo static geometry, to be wired to a bvh module
tex the texture array, to be wired to the rt module

parameters

cam grab the mouse/keyboard input to play the game
pause frame number after which to pause the game. useful for reference renders. will also set a fixed quake time per frame. zero means no pause
exec command string to execute after loading quake. use with cli/config files. accepts ';' separated lists of commands

October 2025