Quake Engine Comparison

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## Quake Engine Comparison

Something I had in the works for long is now in a state where I feel like releasing it. So here it is:

A comparison of Quake Engines focused on Singleplayer

Comments, critics, grammar/spelling correction are welcome.

06.04.2008 in quaddicted.com | 24 Comments »

### 24 Responses to “Quake Engine Comparison”

1. RickyT23 Says:
   06.04.2008 22:23

   Hi Spirit, FitzQuake does support transparency :-D

2. aguirRe Says:
   06.04.2008 23:32

   If you used warpc for test, it’s called “Sealed City”, “Nightmare Tangents” is warpd.

3. sielwolf Says:
   07.04.2008 02:04

   Nice work Spirit, thanks. Two things regarding DP:

   - typo “loads warpc” …and unplayable spf (=fps?)

   - there is a newer version than 20.11.2007? Where, because that one runs like a slug..

4. negke Says:
   07.04.2008 08:40

   “Seconds per frame” because it runs so slowly maybe.

   20072011 is the latest stable version, newer beta builds are released every few days: http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/files/?M=D

5. Spirit Says:
   07.04.2008 08:42

   RickyT23: Nope, it does not. I was very surprised by that. I will upload my test maps later.

   aguirRe: Oops, thanks. I didn’t doublecheck and my memory was wrong then.

   sielwolf: “spf” should mean “seconds per frame” but I will change it to “fps” as only I use that, heh. Thanks.

   Beta versions are in http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/files/?M=D

   I’ll fix the listing later today.

6. Spirit Says:
   07.04.2008 08:42

   damn you, !neg!ke!

7. aguirRe Says:
   07.04.2008 12:33

   After a quick test, I suspect that you’ve mixed up the results for Q2K4 for warpc/lr. It crashes on the former, but can load the latter with lots of overflows and stuttering.

8. dEus Says:
   07.04.2008 16:25

   cool list!
   please add: fitzquake now supports linux as well as mac os!
   (important for mac users as there aren’t a lot of good modern quake engines that support it!)

9. Spirit Says:
   07.04.2008 19:08

   No, I could write “there now is a beta version of a cross-platform SDL port of Fitzquake but it has some bugs at the moment”. ;)

   I think I will just wait until either it becomes the new official Fitzquake or stable enough.

10. dEus Says:
    07.04.2008 22:02

    oh, ok. i just fired fitzquake for mac up once to see if it works. it seemed pretty polished at first glance.
    it doesn’t really mention anywhere it’s just a beta, though. that’s a bit misleading imo.

11. goldenboy Says:
    08.04.2008 17:25

    Tyr-gl supports *BSD as well as Win/Lin.

    Tyr development version loads and plays marcher, lr, and the packet overflow map without any errors, in GL and software. warpc “not yet.”

    some things are moving :-)

    good work!

12. sielwolf Says:
    08.04.2008 19:36

    thanks for the link to DP betas guys :)

13. Gom Jabbar Says:
    08.04.2008 21:40

    dEus: The website for the SDL port says “This is a beta release. Please provide feedback…”. It’s not in the game itself, though, you’re right about that.

14. dEus Says:
    09.04.2008 11:53

    yeah, i missed that :)

15. sielwolf Says:
    10.04.2008 16:32

    hmm there has been quite some discussion about colored lights over at Func_ lately, and also some new maps with that feature (back2forwards and slave come to mind), maybe it´d be useful to add another column telling which engine supports lits ?

16. sielwolf Says:
    11.04.2008 05:07

    ok, tried it myself :) here´s a list telling which engine supports colored lights:

    WinQuake (id): no
    GLQuake (id): no
    FitzQuake: yes
    aguirRe: no
    Tyr-GLQuake: no
    Darkplaces: yes
    JoeQuake: yes
    Qrack: yes
    QMB: yes
    TomazQuake: yes
    Telejano: yes
    MHQuake: ? (couldn´t get it to run properly)
    ProQuake: no

17. RickyT23 Says:
    11.04.2008 12:09

    Very good idea Sielwolf! We need an engine (thats not DP) which will support maxed limits AND .lit files! :D

18. frag.machine Says:
    14.04.2008 00:57

    Hi Spirit,

    I already said that, but anyway: great job. I just want to point an important detail regarding the use of warpc.bsp as a “engine-killer-map”. While there is actually a bug in the original GlQuake (not fixed in most of engines) preventing this map to load, I think it does not qualify as a generic engine stress test because it violates the limit of 256 precached models that any Quake-compatible engine must respect. From what I understand the WarpSpasm pack was build up and meant to be played only with engines supporting a non-standard network protocol (10000 or something) which allows the precaching of more than 256 models, among other differences. So, although I fixed the crash in Q2K4 (sorry, no public updates), it still won’t run either warpc.bsp or warpd.bsp due the above mentioned reasons.

19. aguirRe Says:
    14.04.2008 10:32

    WarpSpasm doesn’t “violate” anything at all, any limitations found in the engines are internal only and can be solved either way you see fit.

    Just like the silly 600 edict limit, there’s no reason at all to let the internal engine protocol limit the maps. Just make sure you can communicate with engines or playback demos that have the std protocol 15.

20. ijed Says:
    14.04.2008 15:36

    Sorry I violated your engine, frag.machine.

21. Spirit Says:
    14.04.2008 18:27

    Phew, thanks for verifying, aguirRe. I was a bit worried already, heh. :)

    sielwolf: Awesome, thanks! I will add it once I update it.

22. frag.machine Says:
    15.04.2008 00:10

    aguirRe: If there were a new standard protocol to replace the ancient version 15 I would support it gladly. I just pointed that not running warpc.bsp doesn’t always means there’s a problem in the engine.
    ijed: no harm done, the only reason to exist limits are marking where starts our next goal. :D

23. aguirRe Says:
    15.04.2008 08:27

    Let me put it this way, if you actually fixed the most obvious limits and bugs that prevent the map from being loaded, you’d probably face more bugs and bottlenecks in your (or any other) engine than you expected.

    It’s not just being able to load a map, you should also be able to actually play it with e.g. 666 monsters running around.

    Spirit wanted the currently most demanding, published and still non-synthetic or otherwise corrupt map and this is it. I’ve plenty of maps that are even worse if you want to make your engine robust.

    And if any engine limit is reached, the engine should gracefully show an error message and abort, never crash like most engines do.

    As for protocol standards, if you make tests that I’ve done on most NQ engines, you may find that some engines can’t even talk to themselves …

    My engines default use extended protocols, but can also be set to use prot 15 and either way, produced demos can be converted into prot 15 with my ConvDem utility. No player is left in a proprietary mess that otherwise seems to be the norm.

24. goldenboy Says:
    23.04.2008 22:21

    Small remark (@sielwolf): Tyrquake of course supports Tyrlite’s variant of colored lights. .lit file support is in the air though. ;-)

    I agree with the gracefulness thing.

    I think prot15 should be the standard for some time to come. (yup, I partly support the “it’s the map’s fault” theory. Only up to a point though.) I agree that things like the edict limit are pretty ridiculous, or my favourite, static entities (more torches plz.)

    You can’t blame the mapper for grandiosity of vision. On the other hand, there is such a thing as “unoptimized pig maps”… I’m pretty sure warpc falls under the vision category though, not the UPM one. As does Marcher – Marcher is super-optimized. Count the torches there.

    Please do remember that maps can always be split up though, since map loading is almost instant. They have to be built for this from the start, though, and Marcher would be rather hard to split up.

    I also think that crossplatformness and compatibility are good style (TM). Remember an engine needs an operating system and hardware to run on. There are just some additional layers involved. So even if the mess doesn’t come from the engine, it’s indirectly introduced by OS-specific engines. This is where OS politics enter the picture.

    Id Software’s engine WAS crossplatform originally. So this is nothing that must be added, it’s something that was lost in some cases. It’s not something that can or must be requested, since it was originally part of the package.

    I’m pretty sure that Unix in some forms is going to stay a while longer (it’s much older than Windows and deeply rooted in the scientific community), and thus it would be wise to not lose support for POSIX compliant OSes in favor of the home gamer market (i.e. MS.)

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