vkQuake

About

Quake is a 1996 first-person shooter developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive, in which a lone soldier travels through teleportation "slipgates" to stop a monstrous invading force, blending military science fiction with gothic fantasy settings inspired partly by H. P. Lovecraft. vkQuake is a Vulkan-based port of id Software's Quake, built on top of the QuakeSpasm and QuakeSpasm-Spiked source ports. It supports Windows, Linux, and macOS (plus official OpenBSD and FreeBSD packages), runs mods compatible with QuakeSpasm such as Arcane Dimensions, and requires the original Quake data files, which it can auto-detect from existing Steam, GOG, or Epic Games Store installs. Development is active.

How it differs from the original

Relative to the original 1996 release and to QuakeSpasm, vkQuake adds multithreaded rendering for better performance, frame rates uncapped from the original's 72Hz physics limit, true-color textures and skins, optional ray-traced dynamic shadows and lights, both classic and enhanced (MD5/MD3) model support, and compatibility with the 2021 Quake re-release's content.

Getting started

On Windows, an installer sets up Start Menu entries for both classic and remastered Quake and automatically finds Steam, GOG, or Epic installs (or asks once for the game folder). On Linux, the release archive is extracted over an existing Quake installation and launched via its AppImage; original data files need lowercase names, since some distributions (e.g. GOG) ship them uppercase.

Known issues & limitations

• vkQuake only runs on little-endian systems; QuakeSpasm's big-endian support was removed since no Vulkan-capable big-endian hardware exists.

Additional notes

Quirk

The Steam release of Quake doesn't include the original Nine Inch Nails soundtrack; GOG's music files need to be converted and placed in a specific folder to enable it.