Quake engine

The Quake engine is the game engine developed by id Software to power their 1996 video game Quake. It featured true 3D real-time rendering. Since 1999, it has been licensed under the terms of GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.

After release, the Quake engine was immediately forked. Much of the engine remained in Quake II and Quake III Arena. The Quake engine, like the Doom engine, uses binary space partitioning (BSP) to optimize the world rendering. The Quake engine also uses Gouraud shading for moving objects, and a static lightmap for non-moving objects.

History

The Quake engine was developed from 1995 for the video game Quake, released on June 22, 1996. John Carmack did most of the programming of the engine, with help from Michael Abrash in algorithms and assembly optimization.

John Romero initially conceived of Quake as an action game taking place in a fully 3D polygon world, inspired by Sega AM2's 3D fighting game Virtua Fighter. Quake was also intended to feature Virtua Fighter-influenced third-person melee combat. However, id Software considered it to be risky, and it would have taken longer to develop the engine. Because the project was taking too long, the third-person melee was eventually dropped.

Derivative engines

On December 21, 1999, John Carmack of id Software released the Quake engine source code on the Internet under the terms of GPL-2.0-or-later, allowing programmers to edit the engine and add new features. Programmers were soon releasing new versions of the engine on the net. Some of the best-known engines are: GoldSrc – The first engine to be created by Valve. It was used in the Half-Life series, and gave rise to the Source and Source 2 engines. The Xash3D projects, as well as the FreeHL and FreeCS ports, use Quake source code in part to recreate this engine, even with a wrapper for running the game. DarkPlaces – A significantly modified engine used in several standalone games and Quake mods. Although the last stable release was on May 13, 2014, it has received numerous updates through its SVN repository since then. Its home page was hosted on Icculus.org until 2021, when the engine switched to a Git repository hosted on GitHub. The developers of Xonotic provide mirrors of DarkPlaces source code on various social coding platforms since the game is built on and distributed with the development version of the engine. QuakeForge - One of the earlier major community ports. NPRQuake - Fork of Quake featuring non-photorealistic rendering giving it a pencil drawn look. Tenebrae - Custom Quake engine with real time lighting and bumpmapping among other features. TyrQuake - A conservative focused source port. Fisheye Quake - Custom Quake engine with fisheye distortion by the author of PanQuake. Blinky - Fork of the fisheye view along with the TyrQuake software renderer. WinQuake Engoo (Derivative of WinQuake) - Graphically enhanced software renderer based port. Fruitz of Dojo - Source port aimed at Mac OS X. NehQuake - Custom engine for the Nehara mod. GLQuake FitzQuake (Derivative of GLQuake) - Seminal port whose SDL version was later forked into numerous others. MarkV (Derivative of FitzQuake, successor to DirectQ) - Came in both GLQuake and WinQuake derived versions. Quakespasm (Derivative of FitzQuake) – Commonly used source port. Quakespasm-Spiked (Derivative of Quakespasm) - Limit-removing fork. vkQuake – (Derivative of Quakespasm) – Uses Vulkan API for rendering programmed by id Software employee Axel Gneiting, released under the GPLv2. Ironwail - (Derivative of Quakespasm) – An engine aiming at maximum performance. FTEQW (Derivative of QuakeWorld) - A modern client for online multiplayer. FuhQuake ezQuake (Derivative of FuhQuake) - Multiplayer focused port often paired with the nQuake launcher. JoeQuake (Derivative of FuhQuake) - A port popular with speedrunners.

Games using the Quake engine Games using a proprietary license

Year Title Developer(s) Publisher(s) 1996 Quake id Software GT Interactive 1997 Quake Mission Pack No. 1: Scourge of Armagon Hipnotic Interactive 3D Realms Quake Mission Pack No. 2: Dissolution of Eternity Rogue Entertainment 3D Realms Hexen II Raven Software id Software, Activision Malice Ratloop Quantum Axcess X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse Zero Gravity Entertainment WizardWorks 1998 Hexen II Mission Pack: Portal of Praevus Raven Software id SoftwareActivision 2000 Laser Arena Trainwreck Studios ValuSoft

Games based on the GPL source release

Year Title Developer(s) Publisher(s) 2000OpenQuartzOpenQuartz TeamSourceForge 2001TransfusionTransfusion ProjectSourceForge 2005 Nexuiz Alientrap Alientrap 2007 The Hunted Chris Page ModDB 2011 Xonotic Team Xonotic Team Xonotic Steel Storm Kot-in-Action Creative Artel Kot-in-Action Creative Artel 2012 Forced: Leashed Kepuli Games Kepuli Games RetroBlazer Hydra Game Works Hydra Game Works2013Chaos Esque Anthology Chaos Esque Team Chaos Esque Team2015Rexuiz Rexuiz Team Rexuiz Team2017FreeCSFreeCS TeamGitHub 2018 FortressOne FortressOne Team FortressOne Team The Wastes Vera Visions L.L.C Vera Visions L.L.C 2019 LibreQuakeLibreQuake TeamGitHub 2021 Doombringer Anomic Games Anomic Games 2024 Wrath: Aeon of Ruin Killpixel 3D Realms1C Entertainment2025Brazilian Drug Dealer 3: I Opened a Portal to Hell in the Favela Trying To Revive Mit Aia I Need to Close ItJoevenoJoeveno, NoQuarter2026MeowGun: Hell Denizen SusaDeBastet SusaDeBastet2026Brazilian Drug Dealer Before 4: Demons From The Portal To Hell I Opened Are Still In The Favela And Now I Have To Save Mamadas From Ronaldo JoevenoJoeveno, NoQuarter

Quake engine

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