About
Quake is a 1996 first-person shooter developed by id Software, in which a soldier travels through interdimensional "slipgates" to stop a monstrous invasion of Earth, blending science-fiction military settings with gothic, Lovecraft-inspired horror. TurboQuake (formerly 486Quake) is a fork of the original Quake source code aimed at older, era-appropriate x86 hardware, including restored MS-DOS support. Rather than adding new features or bugfixes, it focuses on engine optimization, with hand-written assembly tuned for Intel 486, Pentium, and Cyrix 486 processors, and general renderer optimizations that also benefit non-x86 platforms.
How it differs from the original
It doesn't add gameplay content or bugfixes beyond the original Quake release; the difference is purely performance and platform support, restoring DOS compatibility and hardware-specific optimizations, while still requiring the original Quake game data to run.
Getting started
Building it requires a Unix-like host with a DOS cross-compiler (djgpp) toolchain; running the build command from the source directory produces the default binary, or a separate script can build all variants at once. Build options let you target a specific CPU and control whether hand-written assembly and link-time optimization are used.
Additional notes
- Trivia
- The README includes benchmark tables showing frame-rate gains over stock Quake on several 1990s-era CPUs and motherboards.