Ports for a classic Q2 experience

[NightFright]

I was wondering about the ports available for Quake II which allow for a "classic" gameplay experience, i.e. providing minor visual improvements while maintaining the general original look of the game.

Currently, I am aware of three clients:

Unofficial v3.24 patch by Mark Shan
This one is actually almost perfect, supporting OGG music with anisotropic filtering, widescreen support and optional shadows. Only thing I am missing is an option to rescale the HUD - icons and fonts are really small in resolutions like 1920x1080.

Yamagi Quake II
Features look pretty complete to me actually. However, when I try to run it with my Windows 8.1 x64 system, the game simply won't load, no idea why. I don't even get an error message, after clicking quake2.exe, simply nothing happens. Anyone else with this problem maybe?

DirectQII
Not bad (DX11 support), but kinda lacks active development and some features, e.g. shadows, anisotropic filtering or OGG music support.

If anybody knows of recent updates for any of these ports, solutions for my Yamagi issue or other clients I haven't mentioned here, feel free to share!

[Adam]

FTE looks like it supports Quake2.

I plan on checking FTE out myself, at some point. I have heard good things about it.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I was wondering about the ports available for Quake II which allow for a "classic" gameplay experience, i.e. providing minor visual improvements while maintaining the general original look of the game.

Currently, I am aware of three clients:

Unofficial v3.24 patch by Mark Shan
This one is actually almost perfect, supporting OGG music with anisotropic filtering, widescreen support and optional shadows. Only thing I am missing is an option to rescale the HUD - icons and fonts are really small in resolutions like 1920x1080.

Yamagi Quake II
Features look pretty complete to me actually. However, when I try to run it with my Windows 8.1 x64 system, the game simply won't load, no idea why. I don't even get an error message, after clicking quake2.exe, simply nothing happens. Anyone else with this problem maybe?

DirectQII
Not bad (DX11 support), but kinda lacks active development and some features, e.g. shadows, anisotropic filtering or OGG music support.

If anybody knows of recent updates for any of these ports, solutions for my Yamagi issue or other clients I haven't mentioned here, feel free to share!

Add SweetFX to DirectQ II, and you'll get a whole plethora of features added, check it out.

SweetFX Shader Suite Download Version 1.5 <- standalone, requires editing config file
http://sweetfx.thelazy.net/wp-conten...eetFX_1.5.1.7z
^this new configurator is worth checking out. avoid requiring to edit file manually
No SweetFX running


SweetFX Running

* SMAA Anti-aliasing : Anti-aliases the image using the SMAA technique - see http://www.iryoku.com/smaa/
* FXAA Anti-aliasing : Anti-aliases the image using the FXAA technique - currently only work under DirectX9. Use the d3d9.dll found in \SweetFX\dlls\FXAA DX9 dll\ for this.
* Explosion : Scatters the pixels similarly to the Explosion filter in Irfanview
* Cartoon : Creates an outline-effect that makes the image look more cartoonish.
* Advanced CRT : Mimics the look of an old arcade CRT display.
* LumaSharpen : Sharpens the image, making details easier to see
* Bloom : Makes strong lights bleed their light into their surroundings
* HDR : Mimics an HDR tonemapped look
* Levels : Sets a new black and white point. A fast and easy way to increase contrast but it causes clipping. The Curves effect does this in a more subtle way without causing clipping.
* Technicolor : Makes the image look like it was processed using a three-strip Technicolor process - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor
* Cineon DPX : Makes the image look like it was converted from film to Cineon DPX. Can be used to create a "sunny" look.
* Monochrome : Removes colors from the image so it appears as if shot on black and white film.
* Lift Gamma Gain : Adjust brightness and color of shadows, midtones and highlights (and typically does it better then the Tonemap effect)
* Tonemap : Adjust gamma, exposure, saturation, bleach and defog. (may cause clipping)
* Vibrance : Intelligently saturates (or desaturates if you use negative values) the pixels depending on their original saturation.
* Curves : Contrast adjustments using S-curves - without causing clipping.
* Sepia : Sepia tones the image - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepia_tone#Sepia_toning
* Vignette : Darkens the edges of the image to make it look more like it was shot with a camera lens. - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vignetting )
* Dither : Applies dithering to simulate more colors than your monitor can display. This lessens banding artifacts - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditheri...age_processing )
* Border : Makes the screenedge black as a workaround for the bright edge that forcing some AA modes sometimes causes.
* Splitscreen : Enables the before-and-after splitscreen comparison mode.

Youtube video showing off SweetFX abilities

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyLOltubSsk]Battlefield 4 SweetFX ON/OFF Comparison - YouTube[/ame]

[Grim Warlock]

Wow very nice Mind, lol instead of making Quake II looked better I made Quake II look old school as fuck. I put on Advanced CRT and Dither :

[Johnny Law]

Yamagi Quake II
Features look pretty complete to me actually. However, when I try to run it with my Windows 8.1 x64 system, the game simply won't load, no idea why. I don't even get an error message, after clicking quake2.exe, simply nothing happens. Anyone else with this problem maybe?

Usually this is because you don't have openal32.dll in your Quake 2 folder, and you either don't have a system openal32.dll or else you have one that Yamagi doesn't like for some reason.

Search through the Readme at the Yamagi github repo for more about that library and where to get it. I would go into more detail, but last time I looked at the files provided at kcat.strangesoft.net they had changed the libraries that they package and I'm no longer 100% sure about the best way to use them with Yamagi Q2... your experiments would probably be as good as mine at this point.

If you can find built binaries of the older version 1.15.1, I think that's the one I used with Yamagi before. Also after I get home tonight I can find the library I'm using and put it on Dropbox for a while.

[Johnny Law]

OK I'll leave my openal32.dll here for a while: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...p/openal32.dll

[NightFright]

That's weird. I have a Soundblaster Z card, and the drivers automatically installed OpenAL. I will try to copy the dll from my system folder to the Yamagi one and see if that does the trick. Thanks for the hint!