Quake II engine

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Quake II engine

The Quake II engine (id Tech 2.5[citation needed]), is a game engine developed by id Software for use in their 1997 first-person shooter Quake II.[1] It is the successor to the Quake engine. Since its release, the Quake II engine has been licensed for use in several other games.[2]

Quick Facts Developer(s), Final release ...
Quake II engine
Developer(s)id Software (John Carmack, John Cash, and Brian Hook)
Final release
3.21 / December 22, 2001; 23 years ago (2001-12-22)
Repositorygithub.com/id-Software/Quake-2
Written inC, Assembly (for software rendering & optimization)
PlatformWindows, Mac OS 8, Linux, PowerPC Macintosh, Amiga, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Xbox, PlayStation 2
PredecessorQuake engine
Successorid Tech 3, GoldSrc
LicenseGNU GPL-2.0-or-later
Websitewww.idsoftware.com/business/idtech2/ 
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One of the engine's most notable features was out-of-the-box support for hardware-accelerated graphics, specifically OpenGL, along with the traditional software renderer.[2] Another interesting feature was the subdivision of some of the components into dynamic-link libraries. This allowed both software and OpenGL renderers, which were selected by loading and unloading separate libraries. Libraries were also used for the game logic, with consequences including:

  • Since they were compiled for specific platforms, instead of an interpreter, they could run faster than Quake's solution, which was to run the game logic (QuakeC) in a limited interpreter.[3]
  • id could release the source code to allow modifications while keeping the remainder of the engine proprietary.[4]

The level format, as with previous id Software engines, used binary space partitioning. The level environments were lit using lightmaps, a method in which light data for each surface is precalculated (this time, via a radiosity method) and stored as an image, which is then used to determine the lighting intensity each 3D model should receive, but not its direction.[5][6]

id Software released the source code on December 22, 2001, under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.[7][8]

Games using the Quake II engine

Games using a proprietary license

More information Year, Title ...
Year Title Developer
1997 Quake II id Software
1998 Quake II Mission Pack: The Reckoning Xatrix Entertainment
Quake II Mission Pack: Ground Zero Rogue Entertainment
Zaero (unofficial expansion for Quake II)[9] Team Evolve
Juggernaut: The New Story (unofficial expansion for Quake II)[9] HeadGames Publishing
Heretic II Raven Software
SiN Ritual Entertainment
1999 SiN: Wages of Sin 2015, Inc.
Kingpin: Life of Crime Xatrix Entertainment
2000 Soldier of Fortune Raven Software
Daikatana Ion Storm
2001 Anachronox
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Games based on the GPL source release

More information Year, Title ...
Year Title Developer
2000 D-Day: Normandy[10][11] D-Day: Normandy Team
2003 UFO: Alien Invasion UFO: Alien Invasion Team
2008 Gravity Bone Blendo Games
2012 Warsow[12][13] Warsow Team
Thirty Flights of Loving Blendo Games
2017 Alien Arena: Warriors of Mars COR Entertainment, LLC
Quetoo[14] Quetoo Team
2019 Warfork[15] Warfork Team
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Ports

  • Jake2 – a Java port of the Quake II engine's GPL release. It has since been used by Sun as an example of Java Web Start capabilities for games distribution over the Internet.[16] In 2006, it was used to experiment playing 3D games with eye tracking.[17] The performance of Jake2 is on par with the original C version.[18]
  • Quake2Forge – one of the earliest community produced source ports. [19]
  • Quake2xp – a port of Quake II to modern operating systems.[20][21][22]
  • KMQuake2 – an upgraded engine for Quake II.[22][23][24]
  • Quake2maXOpenGL focused source port.
  • Quake 2 Evolved – early graphically enhanced game engine.[25][26][27][28]
  • Quetoo (formerly Quake2World) – multiplayer focused port derived from Quake2Forge.[14][29]
  • Berserker@Quake2 – graphically enhanced Quake II port.[30]
  • Yamagi Quake II – a port of Quake II to modern systems which aims to preserve the original gameplay.[31][32][33][34][22]
  • vkQuake2 – the original Quake II engine with additional Vulkan renderer created by Krzysztof Kondrak, a programmer from Poland. It was originally released in December 2018 under the GPLv2.[35][36]
  • CRX Engine – custom version for CodeRED: Alien Arena.[37][38][39][40]
  • Qfusion – a modification of the GPL version of the engine. The engine was used in the 2012 game Warsow.[41][12][13]
  • Q2Pro – a mutliplayer oriented port, which was also used as the basis for Quake II RTX.[42][43]
  • R1Q2 – another multiplayer focused port.[22]
  • DirectQIIDirectX oriented source port.
  • Fruitz of Dojo – a source port aimed at Mac OS X.[44][45][46]
  • Q2DOS – a backport of the game to MS-DOS.[47][48][49]

See also

References

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