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2. General Info

2.1 Getting Started

Installing Quake requires a few basic steps.

Getting the game data files is normally done by installing the game using Microsoft Windows, or a Windows emulator such as Wine, and then copying the id1 directory of the installed game to your Linux Quake directory (making sure all files are in lowercase).

You can then install a game engine and execute this program to play Quake.

For example, if you installed Jörgen's glquake, typing from an xterm window glquake.glx -fullscreen -width 800 -height 600 will start the game at 800x600 resolution in fullscreen mode.

This sounds simple, but if you are new to Linux and you are not familiar with the Linux command line try one of these links for more information:

2.2 Command Line Options

Quake has a large number of command line options, some of which vary from engine to engine. The most useful/common ones are:

-window

Run the game in windowed mode

-game NAME

Load the mod NAME.

-mem N

Reserve N megabytes of memory for the internal heap. This generally defaults to 8 or 16 meg, but must be increased when playing larger mods.

-width WIDTH

window/fullscreen width

-height HEIGHT

window/fullscreen height

-sndspeed MHz

Set sound sampling rate (eg. 44100, 22100, 11025)

-sndbits N

Set sound bits to N = 8 or 16

-nosound

Disable sound. Necessary when sound is absent/unconfigured to stop the game from crashing.

-listen N

Allow a maximum of N players/bots to join multiplayer games.

-cddev DEVICE

Use DEVICE for playing the cd music

-nocdaudio

Disable cd audio

-nomouse

Disable pointer support

You can also append Quake commands to the Linux command line by prefixing them with a plus sign. For example, to automatically start a new game at hard skill, use glquake.glx +skill 2 +map e1m1.

2.3 Trouble Shooting

Other trouble shooting resources can be found at: Jörgen's GLQuake Site, the old version of this how-to, and Linux Gamers FAQ

Program dies at startup

This is not good, but some simple options to try are:

Files not lowercased or Data files missing.

Linux Quake requires (most) filenames to be in lowercase. If you get an error similar to "Error: W_LoadWadFile: couldn't load gfx.wad" it means the game can't find the data files, possibly because they are not all lowercase.

"Memory overwrite in Sys_Printf"

Program dies loading level

Sound problems

An error such as: "/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy" indicates some program is already using your sound card, and you will have to halt this program to get Quake sound effects.

"Quake engine games exit, and I see an error about mmap!"

Sound stutters or is not very good.

Mouse look

"This game won't let me look around properly. %$!$@"

Mouse doesn't work properly

Try the following -

Crazy polygons

Some mission-packs/mods for Quake can cause existing player/monster models to be drawn with lines all over the place. To fix this, delete the directory "quake/id1/glquake". When you next run the game, it will remake this directory and everything should be fine.

Lines on screen

A common problem with 3dfx cards is a shower of flickering lines on the screen.

2.4 Hardware Acceleration

Setting up hardware GL acceleration under Linux used to be a big deal, but modern distros should now handle this automatically. Of course there are exceptions..

Nvidia's drivers for all of their modern video cards are not open source. Because of this many distributions do not include them. If your Nvidia card is running slowly this is probably the cause, and you should visit http://www.nvidia.com to download the Linux installer. In my experience these drivers are great, but not all versions work 100% with all cards. If you have a misbehaving Nvidia video card, try a different driver.

While new versions of XFree and Xorg have great support for Voodoo 3, 4 and 5, early 3dfx hardware such as Voodoo1, Voodoo2 and Rush are no longer hardware accelerated. To get OpenGL working for these cards, you'll need to download, install and/or compile the software libraries called Glide and Mesa. Here is a detailed README on old 3dfx cards.

2.5 Game Console Commands

For more info see http://www.planetquake.com/console/commands/quake.html

The console is an in-game command line at which you can issue commands, change variables and cheat. It is toggled by pressing the tilde "~" key when in a game. The main commands include -

god

Invulnerability

noclip

Walk through walls

notarget

Enemies won't attack player

timedemo DEMO

Play DEMO (eg. "demo1") at top speed and show frame rate

impulse N

Issue "impulse N"

These are in-game commands which can be given special uses. The most common cheat is impulse 9 which gives all weapons.

bind key "command"

Bind a key to perform a command

map MAP

Load MAP

changelevel MAP

Load MAP without resetting player settings

quit

Exit to system

skill VALUE

value = 0 (easy) - 3 (impossible)

Degree of difficulty. Level must be restarted to take effect

r_wateralpha VALUE

value = 0.0 - 1.0

Opacity of water

_snd_mixahead VALUE

value = 0.1 - 1.0

Raising this value is a good way to speed up the game at the expense of some sound lag. I use 0.3

r_shadows FLAG

flag = 0 | 1

Display model shadows

vid_wait FLAG

flag = 0 | 1

Sync video output with screen refresh

chase_active FLAG

flag = 0 | 1

Show player from third person perspective

2.6 Miscellaneous


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