Linux Quake HOWTO

1.1. Feedback, Comments, Corrections

This document certainly does not contain everything there is to know about Linux Quake. With your help, though, we can bring it closer to that ideal. I want this HOWTO to be as complete and accurate as possible, so if you notice mistakes or omissions, please bring them to my attention. Feel free to comment on any aspect of this HOWTO. If I'm not totally snowed under with work, I'll respond to each email personally. Comments, questions and corrections should be sent to me, Peter Jay Salzman <p@dirac.org>.

1.2. Acknowledgments

This HOWTO was originally written by Brett A. Thomas <quark@baz.com> and Mike Hallock <mikeh@medina.net>. Bob Zimbinski <bobz@mr.net> rewrote and expanded the original document.

Special thanks to the following people for bringing us Quake for Linux:

• John Carmack and the rest of id Software for these great games.

• Dave 'Zoid' Kirsch for the Linux ports of Quake 1 and Quake 2.

• Dave Taylor for starting this whole wacky Linux port business.

• Daryll Strauss <daryll@harlot.rb.ca.us>for the Linux Glide 2 ports.

• Brian Paul <brianp@elastic.avid.com> for the Mesa graphics library.

• David Bucciarelli <tech.hmw@plus.it> for the Mesa/glide driver.

1.3. Latest Versions and Translations

The latest version of this HOWTO can be obtained at my website, http://wwww.dirac.org/linux/writing. The version that's currently at the Linux Documentation Project is currently so outdated that it's not doing anyone much good.

1.4. Authorship and Copyright

Much care and feeding has gone into this HOWTO. Its authors are Brett A. Thomas, Mike Hallock, Bob Zimbinski, and Peter Jay Salzman.

This document is copyright (c) 2001 Peter Jay Salzman, <dirac.org>. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1, except for the provisions I list in the next paragraph. I hate HOWTO's that include the license; it's a tree killer. You can read the GNU FDL at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.

If you want to create a derivative work or publish this HOWTO for commercial purposes, contact me first. This will give me a chance to give you the most recent version. I'd also appreciate either a copy of whatever it is you're doing or a spinach, garlic, mushroom, feta cheese and artichoke heart pizza.

2.1. Modifications (mods)

Like Doom, id Software allows people to modify Quake in many different ways. With some programming, graphics and sound skill, you can make Quake do pretty much whatever you want. A modification, also called "mod", is usually a file or set of files that are used to modify the Quake engine to do something different from what the stock id Software engine intended. Some mods make small changes, like making weapons more powerful or using different sounds for various actions. Other mods are more complex and will create a total conversion.

2.2. Total Conversion (tc)

A total conversion is a mod which is so extensive and changes so much of the stock Quake engine, that it basically amounts to creating a completely new game. An example of a total conversion is Metroid for Quake II or Urban Assault for Quake III

3.1. History

Quake I is a tremendously popular game written by John Carmack and released by id Software in 1996. The next year, id released two Quake I mission packs: Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity. While id's previous series, Doom, is the most important game to the first person shooter genre, Quake I took FPS from cartoon to realism, from simulated 3D to real 3D. Deathmatch, popular in Doom, flourished with Quake I.

In December 1996, an employee of id Software and early Linux enthusiast, Dave Taylor, ported Quake I to Linux. This was nothing short of astounding since this was way before Linux was a household term. Just as amazing was the fact that John Carmack and id Software supported Dave in his Linux porting efforts. While id Software didn't officially support Linux Quake, it gave Dave the permission to release his ports for free (you still had to purchase the map files) and allowed him to work on company time. The ports were a very good effort at the time, and 4 sets of binaries were released: an X11 version, an SVGAlib version, an OpenGL version and Quake World. At the time, only 3dfx's Voodoo cards were available to Linux users for accelerated 3D graphics, so the OpenGL version was only available linked against the 3dfx Mesa library.

Dave eventually left id Software to form a gaming company Crack.com so they began looking for someone to maintain the Quake I Linux port. A 26 year old programmer and Quake fan named Dave "Zoid" Kirsch, who wrote a wildly popular CTF mod for Quake I (the first CTF anyone wrote for any game), volunteered for the job. He became the Linux Quake maintainer and later that year became an official contractor at id Software.

December 1999, the Linux community received one of the biggest gifts it has ever gotten from a commercial entity: id Software released the source code for Quake under the GPL. Almost immediately, a number of people took the code base and started working on it. Since then, the codebase has forked almost as much as the Doom codebase. A group comprised of representatives from nearly every known Quake source project formed the Quake Standards Group (QSG). They aim to ensure that all the different clients and servers run with other clients and servers as well as providing uniform and effective cheat prevention methods.

These days, John Carmack and id Software are stronger than ever with their recent releases of Quake III, Return To Castle Wolfenstein and the upcoming release of Doom III. Zoid is still working at id Software but now that the open source community is maintaining high quality Quake ports for Linux, he's no longer maintaining the original Quake codebase. Currently, Dave Taylor is coding for Transmeta. If you're interested in the original source code, you can still download it from id Software's ftp server.

3.2. The Game

Description of Quake I goes here.

There are 4 Linux ports of Quake I:

• Quakeforge

• NPR Quake

• Project Twilight

• Dark Places

3.3. Quakeforge

Quakeforge is easily the most mature, featureful and actively developed of the Quake ports. It tries to be as portable and widely available as possible. For instance, it can use OSS or Alsa for sound drivers. You can play it in X or in console. You can use accelerated OpenGL or not. You can play it on any platform that supports SDL, including Linux, Win32 and MacOS.

      tar -zxvf quakeforge-current.tar.gz
      tar -jxvf quakeforge-current.tar.bz2
      unzip -L quakeforge-current.zip
						

      cd quakeforge
						

      cvs login
      cvs update
						

      $ cd quakeforge
      $ ./bootstrap
      $ ./configure
      $ ./make
      $ su
      Password: 
      # make install
			# ldconfig
						

      cvs login
      cvs update
						

3.4. NPR Quake

NPR, or non photo-realistic rendering is the art of taking a 3 dimensional scene and rendering it so that it looks hand-drawn. NPRQuake is Quake I, but the rendering has been changed to NPR style rendering. To paraphrase their website, http://www.cs.wisc.edu/graphics/Gallery/NPRQuake it's kind of like running around in a painting or drawing.

NPRQuake began as a project for a computer animation course at University of Wisconsin, Madison by professor Michael Gleicher. Basically, his class took the Win32 GLQuake I engine, ripped out the renderer and wrote 3 replacement renderers:

The source code, of course, is freely available and they even give you instructions on how to make your own NRPQuake renderer. As mentioned, this project was done with Win32 GLQuake. So why mention it here? Jeremy Green <coolguywithgun@yahoo.com> ported this work to SDL, and Ryan McDougal fixed some bugs and set up a page for the Linux downloads at http://216.127.157.102/users/ryan/. You can download their SDL source code or precompiled binaries.

The whole thing is just very cool, although it's hard to discern lava or poisonous liquid, so you need to be careful about where you jump :).

On his website, Jeremy says the Linux NPRQuake is not being maintained (professor Gleicher's Windows version isn't being maintained either). So this project is dead until someone takes it over.

3.5. Dark Places

Dark Places was conceived by Forest 'Lord Havoc' Hale <havoc@gamevisions.com>, a former Quakeforge developer who had conflicts with the direction of Quakeforge. This project is being moved to icculus.org from sourceforge.net. As of

In Forest's own words, Dark Places aims to help mod developers and satisfy his own desire to improve the Quake I experience. There are two components to Dark Places. First, Forest has been working with the Quake I engine to improve the quality and speed of the OpenGL renderer. Second, Dark Places is also a mod that delivers effects like flying shell casings, alpha blended explosions and blood splattered on the walls.

Dark Places is undergoing constant development but infrequent releases. As of 2002-01-16, the last release of the Dark Places mod is 2001-07-27 and the last release of the engine is 2002-01-21. It can be compiled by gcc under Linux, Visual C++ 4.0, 6.0 and mingw.

3.6. Project Twilight

Project Twilight was conceived by Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> as a Quake effort that concentrated on keeping code clean and simple so talented coders who wanted to help with the project wouldn't have as high of a learning curve in order to jump into the project.

The port uses SDL, so it can compile and run on any platform that supports SDL. The current stable version as of 7 August 2002 is 0.1.0. You can download the source code in tarball format, but Win32 binaries and source code via CVS is also available.

      $ cd twilight-0.1.0
			$ ./configure
			$ make
				

      cvs -d ":pserver:anonymous@cvs.icculus.org:/cvs/cvsroot/twilight" login
      cvs -d ":pserver:anonymous@cvs.icculus.org:/cvs/cvsroot/twilight" co twilight
					

      cd twilight
      ./bootstrap
      ./configure
      make
      FIXME
					

3.7. Add-Ons And Mods

      cd /usr/local/games/quake
      mkdir ctf
      cd ctf
      unzip -L /wherever/you/put/it/3wctfc.zip
					

3.8. Other Software

4.1. Quake II

4.2. Installation

4.3. Mods

4.4. Add Ons

4.5. Serving

4.6. Other Software

5.1. History

Quake III was developed by id Software, ported to Linux by Loki Software and published by Activision. Loki originally provided support and updates, but later id took these tasks over. Nobody really knows why; perhaps id knew that Loki was headed for trouble. The development process of this game was more visible to the public than most games. In March 1999, id released a beta version named q3test for free as a public test of the Quake III engine's networking and graphics code. Q3test spread over the Internet like wildfire, accompanied by multitudes of .plan updates from id employees, fan websites, illegal mods and rampant speculation about what the final game would look and play like.

The Quake III engine has been used by many other games, like Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Clive Barker's Undying, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, Jedi Knight II, James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire, and many others.

Quake III is the first game ever to come from id to be released simultaneously for more than one platform. The Linux, Macintosh and Windows versions were released simultaneously in late 1999.

5.2. The Game

While Doom II is considered to be the canonical FPS, most people consider Quake III to be the canonical modern FPS. Some prefer Half-Life, and some prefer the Unreal games, but Quake III is still the measuring stick by which all other FPS games are measured. In fact, you'll see Quake III used as one of the standard ways to benchmark CPU's and video cards. I even think that most of us take the Quake III benchmarks more seriously than we do, say, the Winstone benchmarks.

The engine is still strictly commercial software, so no open source efforts have been started. Arguably, there's not many engines that can top Quake III, so it's still commercially viable. If id Software's past history is any indication, once it deems the engine as being less commercially important, the Quake III engine source code will be released. And when that happens, you better believe that people are going to snatch up the code and start hacking on it.

The latest release of Quake III is 1.31 as of January 2002.

You can purchase Quake III from a variety of places like tuxgames and the Activision web-store. The Windows version and many games based on the Quake III engine are known to work under wine/winex.

There are two modes of play: single player and multi-player.

In single player mode, the Vadrigar, the mysterious Arena Masters, built the "Arena Eternal" for their amusement, many centuries ago. Nobody knows much about them, but the arena is stocked with the greatest warriors in the universe. You are portrayed as "Sarge", a mighty warrior who has joined their ranks and must fight them to the death. When you are "fragged", you're immediately re-spawned back into battle, to fight for the next kill. The gladiator with the most frags at the end is hailed as the victor. The Vadrigar have set up the matches in tiers: there are 6 tiers of 4 arenas each, with a seventh tier with a single arena for Xaero, the deadliest of all warriors. After being the victor in all the arenas within a tier, you procede to the next tier to face new and tougher opponents, until you face Xaero, the Lord of the Final Arena. After winning this battle, you win the game. However, don't let any of this fool you. The plot is truly completely irrelevent to the game. The basic plot is nothing more than to kill or be killed. The instruction booklet says it best in the introduction: The plot is to kill anything that's not you.

Many people agree that this game isn't even about single single player mode; it's about multi-player internet and LAN deathmatch against human opponents. Here, all pretense of plot is dropped. It's all about pure and simple deathmatch.

5.3. Installation

5.4. Serving

There are two types of servers: listen and dedicated. Listen is in-game and is the easiest to set up. The dedicated is a separate binary called q3ded, and is strictly console mode. To join your own game, you need to run the quake3 client.

The first step in setting up a server is to make sure you have the most recent versions of the dedicated server and the quake3 client. The version as of March 2002 is 1.31.

5.5. Add-Ons And Mods

5.6. Other Software

6.1. Quake Tools

Anybody care to contribute some info about qcc, bsp and all that?

8.1. Installing Quake II

8.2. Adding the Linux Binaries **

There are four Linux Quake II packages available for download:

• a libc5 tar.gz package

• a glibc tar.gz package

• a libc5 rpm package

• a glibc rpm package

See the Section 8.1.1 section for the location of the Linux Quake II files.

8.3. Setting Permissions **

If you ran rpm or tar as root when installing the Quake II package on your system, the file permissions should be properly set already. The quake2 executable was installed setuid root so that it can access the graphics devices on your system. For security, the ref_*.so rendering libraries are owned by root and writeable only by him. If root doesn't own the libraries, or they're world writeable, quake2 will refuse to run.

8.4. The X Renderer

Quake II should be ready to run under X now. Give it a try:

cd /usr/local/games/quake2 ./quake2 +set vid_ref softx

If all is well, after a pretty significant pause, a small Quake II window will appear with the first demo running in it. You should hear sound effects and possibly music, if the CD is mounted. If any of this fails to occur, please see section Section 10 for help.

8.5. The SVGAlib Renderer

You need SVGAlib installed and configured if you're going to use either the ref_soft or ref_gl renderers. (Quake II uses SVGAlib to process keyboard and mouse input, in case you're wondering why you'd need it for the GL renderer). SVGAlib comes with most modern distributions, and must be properly configured before Quake II will run correctly outside of X.

libvga.config is SVGAlib's configuration file. On most systems you'll find it in either /etc or /etc/vga. Make sure the mouse, monitor, and video card settings in this file are correct for your system. See the SVGAlib documentation for more details.

If you don't already have SVGAlib on your system, download it from the location mentioned in FIXME above. If you have a RedHat 5.x or other glibc-based Linux distribution, see Section 10.1.2 in the Troubleshooting/FAQs section for important information about compiling libraries for Quake II. A precompiled libc5 SVGAlib binary is available at http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/libs/graphics/svgalib-1.3.0.libc5.bin.tar.gz for those who don't want to deal with the hassle of compiling for libc5.

You should run Quake II from a virtual console when using the ref_soft or ref_gl renderers. It won't run from X unless you're root when you start it, and that's not advisable. So if you're in X, do a CTRL+ALT+F1, login and then:

cd /usr/local/games/quake2 ./quake2

Section 11.1 in the Tips & Tricks section below explains how to launch SVGA and GL Quake II from X without manually switching to a virtual console.

8.6. The OpenGL Renderer

Hardware-accelerated OpenGL Quake is Quake the way God intended it to be. There is no substitute, and once you've experienced it there's no going back.

To run Quake II in GL mode, you need a 3D card with the Voodoo, Voodoo2 or Voodoo Rush graphics chipset on it. There are specific issues to be dealt with if you have a Voodoo Rush card, and I won't go into them now because frankly, I wouldn't know what I was talking about. A future version of this HOWTO will cover Rush issues (If somebody wants to write about Voodoo Rush issues, I'll gladly include it here).

The SVGAlib, Glide, and Mesa libraries must all be installed and configured properly on your system for quake2 to work. The following sections will very briefly cover what you need to do to get them going.

Bernd Kreimeier's (bk@gamers.org) Linux 3Dfx HOWTO (http://www.gamers.org/dEngine/xf3D/howto/3Dfx-HOWTO.html) is good source for further information.

The 3dfx.glide.linux newsgroup on the 3dfx news server (news.3dfx.com) is another good source of information about the intersection of Linux, glide, Mesa and Quake.

8.7. The GLX Renderer **

ref_glx.so is linked against standard OpenGL libraries instead of Mesa. This allows Quake II to run on other 3D hardware that is supported by other OpenGL implementations. At this time, I dont' know of any OpenGL implementations that support hardware other than 3Dfx, but this renderer ensures that when they appear, we'll be able to play Quake II with them.

This is a GLX application, and as such, must be run from X.

You can use this client with Mesa/3Dfx if you install Mesa and Glide as explained in the previous section, then set the $MESA_GLX_FX environment variable to "fullscreen" before you run quake2:

export MESA_GLX_FX=fullscreen ./quake2 +set vid_ref glx +set _windowed_mouse 1

Why the +set _windowed_mouse 1 option? Remember that this is an X application which happens to use your 3Dfx card. Even though the display takes up your entire screen, Quake II is stil running in a window. This means that if you're not very careful, you could move the mouse pointer outside the Quake II window, and Quake II will suddenly stop responding to mouse and keyboard input. +set _windowed_mouse 1 avoids this problem by telling quake2 to grab the mouse and not let it move outside its window.

8.8. Linux-Specific Command Line Options

This section will cover command line options that are specific to the Linux version of Quake II. There are plenty of other Quake II options, but they're beyond the scope of this HOWTO. Check out some of the sites listed in section Section 12.3 for this kind of information.

These are actually cvars (client variables) that you can set in the Q2 console, but it makes the most sense to set them on the command line. Set them with +set on the command line, like:

./quake2 +set cd_dev /dev/hdc

8.9. Quake II Servers

Linux's strength as an internet server make it a perfect platform for running an internet Quake II server. This section will touch on the basics and Linux-specific aspects of starting up a Quake II server. More detailed information about running Quake II servers is available elsewhere (see section Section 12 earlier in this document.

8.10. Mods & Addons

Quake II modifications like Capture the Flag, Jailbreak, and Lithium II are very popular extensions of the original Quake II game. Some mods reside entirely on the server (Lithium), and some also require changes to your client (CTF). For server only mods, you just connect normally and play. Client-side mods require you to install additional files in your quake2 directory before you can play.

9.1. QStat

Qstat is a command line based program that returns the status of internet Quake, QuakeWorld, and Quake 2 servers created by Steve Jankowski mailto:steve@activesw.com.

Here's the feature summary from the QStat homepage:

• Supports Windows 95, NT, and most Unixes

• Comes with C source code and a binary for Windows

• Supports old Quake (NetQuake), QuakeWorld, Hexen II, and Quake II servers

• Can display all available statistics, including player info and server rules

• Output templates for automatic HTML generation

• Raw display mode for integration with HTML page generators

• Built-in host name cache

• Sort by ping time, game, or both

• More options than you can wiggle a mouse at

Qstat is a must-have tool if you're planning on doing any net play. A number of front-ends for qstat have been written as well. Some of them are listed later in this section.

You can get the latest version of qstat from the QStat Homepage (http://www.activesw.com/people/steve/qstat.html.

9.2. XQF

XQF is a graphical front-end to QStat that uses the GTK toolkit. This is the best QuakeWorld/Quake2 server browser that currently exists, and Roman Pozlevich (roma@botik.ru), is still cranking out revisions at the rate of about one per month.

If you're familiar with GameSpy for the Windows platform, this is the closest thing to it for Linux.

The XQF homepage is at http://www.linuxgames.com/xqf.

9.3. QuickSpy

QuickSpy is a text-based QuakeWorld server browser. It's another front-end to QStat and it works pretty well. If you don't run X and you don't have Quake II, this is a decent option. Beware though, it's no longer under development.

You can get QuickSpy at http://diana.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~rht96r/quake/quickspy/.

9.4. QPlug for Linux

Qplug is a Netscape plugin which retrieves and displays QuakeWorld and Quake II server information embedded in a web page. A Windows Qplug has been around for some time. The author, Olivier Debon (odebon@club-internet.fr) wrote the Linux version from scratch without ever having seen the Windows version.

QPlug for Linux can be got at http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Labyrinth/5084/qplug.html.

9.5. qkHacklib

David Bucciarelli (tech.hmw@plus.it), author of the 3Dfx driver for Mesa, has written a library called qkHack, which tries to emulate all the SVGAlib/fxMesa functions used by Quake and Quake II. This would remove the need for SVGAlib when running glquake or Quake II with ref_gl. Other features from the qkHacklib README:

• You can dynamically switch between fullscreen rendering and the in window rendering just pressing the TAB key (you must start your X server in 16 bpp mode in order to use this feature)

• You can press Ctrl-C in the shell or kill the Quake process without problems

• you can enable/disable the mouse and keyboard 'grabbing' pressing F11/F12

• you can iconify and pause Quake pressing the F10 (it will not eat more CPU cycles). You can restart everything with a double click in the "****" icon

• you can run Quake with any Mesa driver (for example with the X11 driver but you must recompile the Mesa without the Voodoo driver)

• you can run Quake under any Linux box and get the hardware acclerated output on a SGI box (OK, this is a bit exotic and theoretical as feature but it is an example of how powerful can be an GLX/OpenGL application)

I've tried qkHacklib and it works great for Quake on my system. In Quake II, however, the mouse response becomes really slow. Others report complete success, though, so give it a try it it sounds like something you need.

David Bucciarelli's qkHacklib web page is at http://www-hmw.caribel.pisa.it/fxmesa/fxqkhack.html.

9.6. GiMd2Viewer

GiMd2Viewer is a Quake 2 model viewer written for Gtk and OpenGL by Lionel Ulmer (bbrox@mygale.org). It loads models and textures from either plain files or .PAK files. It will also animate the models (with frame interpolation).

This program is still under developement and I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds pretty nifty. Check it out at http://www.mygale.org/~bbrox/GiMd2Viewer/.

9.7. QIPX

QIPX is a set of programs that allow Linux Quake clients (using TCP/IP) to connect with DOS Quake clients (using IPX). I guess this is useful if you're playing netquake on a LAN. QIPX is available at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/6083/qipx.html.

9.8. Ice

Ice is a Quake map editor for UN*X created by C.J. Beyer and John Watson. I haven't used this program, nor do I know what its development status is. The Ice homepage is at http://styx.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~ice/.

9.9. Q2getty

Q2getty is a hack of mingetty by Mike Gleason (mgleason@ncftp.com) that allows you to automatically run and respawn a program (like a Quake server) on a virtual console. This program is available in the files section at http://www.ncftpd.com/unixstuff/q2getty.html.

9.10. rcon

Rcon is a pair of tools that allow remote administration of a Quake II server using the RCON protocol. Michael Dwyer (michael_dwyer@mwiworks.com) is the author. Rcon 1.1 is available at �.

9.11. qlog ++

Qlog is a GPL'ed QuakeWorld/Quake II server log parser that generates comprehensive player statistics. Craig Knudsen (cknudsen@radix.net) is the author. The qlog homepage is http://www.radix.net/~cknudsen/qlog/.

9.12. Cheapo **

Cheapo is a proxy that can be used to route QuakeWorld network traffic. Additionally, the proxy can modify the data and has features for enhancing gameplay. You can connect to cheapo as if it were a Quakeworld server, and then give it commands that forward you to a real server. The proxy can also be run on a firewall machine incapable of handling Quake traffic, so that machines inside the firewall can be used for playing. The Cheapo homepage is at http://www.saunalahti.fi/~softech/.

9.13. qgraph **

QGraph (Quake Graph) is a utility to help people in managing Quake's DeathMathes, turnments and Quakeworld games. QGraph is a program who connects (via Lan or the Internet) to a Quake, QuakeII, Quakeworld and Hexen2 Servers and shows you realtime data about the game running on that server.  The QGraph homepage is at http://www.frag.com/qgraph.

10.1. General

10.2. Quake/QuakeWorld

10.3. Quake II

      for i in fixperms.sh quake2.conf
      do
      mv $i $i.bak
      tr -d '\r' < $i.bak > $i
      done
     
					

11.1. Running SVGA and GL games from X **

The GLX Quakeworld and Quake II clients are native X applications, but since they use Mesa rather than the 3Dfx mini-driver, they're slower than the lib3dfxgl.so versions. For this reason, you may still favor this way of starting games from X over using the GLX clients.

This is based on a Linux Gazette Tip by Joey Hess <joey@kite.ml.org>. The original is at http://www.ssc.com/lg/issue20/lg_tips20.html#squake

Yes, it's possible to run the Quake games from X if you're root, but such behavior is naughty, and you still run the risk of having Quake crash and leave the console unresponsive. With a little work you can make it possible for a regular user to run SVGA and GL Quake from X AND automatically switch back to X when the program is finished, regardless of whether it exited normally or not.

Note: when I say "Quake" in the text below, I really mean "quake, glquake squake, qwcl, glqwcl, qwcl.x11 or quake2".

• First, you'll need the open(1) package by Jon Tombs. This is a set of two very small programs that allow you to switch between virtual consoles and start programs on them. Download open from http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/console/. You shouldn't have to do much more than make;make install to compile and install it. Once it's installed, you need to make the open and switchto executables setuid root. So do this:

  cd /usr/local/bin chown root open switchto chmod 4755 open switchto

• Next, save the following code to a file called getvc.c:

  /* getvc.c * Prints the number of the current VC to stdout. Most of this code * was ripped from the open program, and this code is GPL'd * * Joey Hess, Fri Apr 4 14:58:50 EST 1997 */ #include <sys/vt.h> #include <fcntl.h> main () { int fd = 0; struct vt_stat vt; if ((fd = open("/dev/console",O_WRONLY,0)) < 0) { perror("Failed to open /dev/console\n"); return(2); } if (ioctl(fd, VT_GETSTATE, &ero;vt) < 0) { perror("can't get VTstate\n"); close(fd); return(4); } printf("%d\n",vt.v_active); } /* End of getvc.c */

  Compile it and install it somewhere in your $PATH:

  gcc getvc.c -o getvc strip getvc mv getvc /usr/local/bin

• Now create a script called runvc: your $PATH:

  #!/bin/sh # Run something on a VC, from X, and switch back to X when done. # GPL Joey Hess, Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:27:08 -0400 exec open -s -- sh -c "$* ; chvt `getvc`"

  Make it executable and put it somewhere in your $PATH:

  chmod 755 runvc mv runvc /usr/local/bin

  Now you can use the runvc command to start Quake. Continue to use whatever command line you usually use to start your game, but put runvc at the beginning:

  runvc ./quake2 +set vid_ref gl +connect quake.foo.com

  You'll automatically switch to a VC, run Quake and then switch back to X when it's done!

11.2. Keeping the mouse inside the window in X

From the Quake II readme.linux file: "By default, the mouse will not be 'tied' to the Quake2 window. To cause Quake2 to grab the mouse, select 'Windowed Mouse' from the video menu, or type '_windowed_mouse 0' at the console. Do the reverse to release it. You can bind keys to grab and release the mouse in the console, like so: bind i "_windowed_mouse 1" bind o "_windowed_mouse 0" Then "i" will grab the mouse and "o" will release it."

11.3. 3Dfx "tweak" settings work in Linux too

You may have seen or heard mention of ways to "tweak" Quake's OpenGL performance by setting various environment variables. These variables are equally valid under Linux. You just set them slightly differently. If a Windows/DOS "tweak" guide tells you to:

SET SST_GRXCLK=59

Under Linux, do it like this:

export SST_GRXCLK=59

11.4. The Poor Man's Server Browser

Joe S. (jszabo@eden.rutgers.edu) suggests:

a trick I do with qstat: I make a file of my favorite servers, then do qstat -f /C/quake2/file.txt | less

hit control z to suspend, then copy the ip address or hostname I want with gpm to a command line like:

./quake2 +connect expert.eqclans.com

Then I can use fg to go back to the list later...

11.5. Using lib3dfxgl.so for Quake I **

You can use the 3Dfx mini-driver (lib3dfxgl.so) from Quakeworld or Quake II with glquake too. Simply copy the glqwcl.3dfxgl or quake2.3dfxgl scripts to a new file, say glquake.3dfxgl. Then edit the glquake.3dfxgl script so it runs glquake instead of glqwcl. The same restrictions about running as root apply here, as do the differences between running under glibc and libc5. See the FIXME or FIXME sections for more information on lib3dfxgl.so.

12.1. Linux Meta Gaming Resources

• The Linux Gamers' Howto http://www.linuxdoc.org

• Linux Meta Gaming Website http://linuxgames.com

• The Linux Game Tome http://happypenguin.org

12.2. Linux Specific Quake Resources

• Canonical Linux Quake Pages: http://www.linuxquake.com/

• Planetquake's Linux Page is down. As of Feb 2002, the maintainer said it'll be back up in a couple of months: http://www.planetquake.com/linux

• Very outdated. Kept here for historical purposes. The last update was 2 years ago. http://www.quakeworld.net

12.3. General Quake Resources

• id Softwarehttp://www.idsoftware.com

• PlanetQuake http://www.planetquake.com

• Farenheit 176 Console Command Listing http://www.planetquake.com/f176

• rec.games.computer.quake.* newsgroups