Quetoo..
Quake2 for Deathmatch HaX0rs
"The fastest way to do something is to not do it." -- Lon Koenig
Introduction
Initially a fork of the Quake2Forge project, Quetoo aims to be fast, stable, compatible, and secure.
The goal is to provide a minimal, speedy Quake2 engine best suited for deathmatch play.
Quetoo is primarily developed on GNU/Linux, and also builds and runs on FreeBSD. Quetoo builds with
GNU Automake, and uses Simple Direct Medialayer (SDL) for sound and OpenGL context management. If
your platform has Automake and SDL, Quetoo may work for you, as well.
The Details
Since you're probably thinking "Great, yet another cut-and-paste engine," let's clarify some
of the points which set Quetoo apart.
Security
In the beginning, I provided 6 security patches to the Quake2Forge
project, as Quake2 originally suffered from some serious vulnerabilities to hackers. My patches are
sitting in Quake2Forge subversion, but the project is, well.. dead. Forking my own engine seemed like
the most straightforward way to get these fixes to the public.
Simplicity
After deciding to fork my own project, I realized that I could remove a lot of features that I don't really
care for. This would mean less code to maintain and, hopefully, better performance. My main goal became
to strip the Quake2 renderer down to its very core, but maintain backwards compatibility with all original
game media.
Enhancements
R1Q2 Protocol 35 support, as well as Quetoo-specific
protocol extensions, are in place to save bandwidth. High color Targa images are supported for all
models, status bar pics, and world textures. Location file (.loc) support allows you to alert your
team mates to your position. Mono (white) lightmap interpolation optionally provides
neutral world lighting for higher visibility in pro and tournament deathmatch play. A transparent netgraph, friendlier
console, smarter sound mixing, and some less-busy combat effects are all there too. Take a moment to
digest the README and familiarize yourself with Quetoo's features.
Random
You even get an optional deathmatch mod which provides a powerful level rotation scheme and can log
frags to a MySQL database like this. Voting,
alternate gameplay modes, team play, and an optional Lithium II style grappling hook are also available.
Full documentation for the mod lives here.
Performance
So how do you make Quake2 faster? A lot of ways. A smarter gl_ztrick is a good
start. I've also removed all dynamic lighting (no, this is not the same as gl_dynamic 0).
Animated explosions have been replaced with simple particle effects. Shadows are gone.
Particles are 30% faster. A hundred other things have been tweaked or trimmed. Here are some
benchmarks for you:
System: XP2500m, Linux 2.6.15.4, ATI Radeon IGP
Benchmark: timedemo 1; demo1.dm2
|
Quake2Forge
|
37.4fps
|
|
Quetoo
|
94.9fps
|
Screenshots
Who would download a game engine without first seeing some obligatory screenshots? These shots actually
show off the unfinished Retexture project, which you are free to
preview.
Download
The current stable release is 0.6.0. There are two distributions. The standard distribution should be
suitable for clients, while the full distribution contains additional game modules which may be
helpful to server administrators.
Standard Distribution
quetoo-0.6.0.tar.bz2
Mirrored by Tastyspleen.net
quetoo-0.6.0.tar.bz2 Local Mirror
Full Distribution
quetoo-0.6.0-full.tar.bz2
Mirrored by Tastyspleen.net
quetoo-0.6.0-full.tar.bz2 Local Mirror
To get the most out of this engine, I very strongly recommend viewing the
Wiki Page as well as the README.
Support
For help building or running Quetoo, you may join us in #quetoo irc.freenode.net, or you may
subscribe and post to the mailing list. More information is
available on my Quake page.
Development
Quetoo is one of the few game engine projects which encourages involvement from the entire community.
You are free to browse the source code and create tickets on the Trac installation.
Subversion write access can be arranged for those who wish to contribute on a regular basis.
The Boring
Quetoo is available under the GPL. Do with it what you will. I would
appreciate feedback and improvements if you have any to offer.
