Qrack: A new breath of life in to an old classic

[mikeTOOtall]

The other day I was introduced to the world of Qrack by Yellow No. 5 and I must say I was VERY impressed! This mod, along with the addon textures, skins, and models, takes this old classic to a whole new level. If you haven't already given Qrack a shot, you owe it to yourself as a true QuakeOne DM'er to install this bad boy! I must note that it is not as easy as just unzipping and running, theres a little tweaking you have to do on the command line to get it running to its full potential. Below is the command line Yellow No. 5 gave me to get me running:

-noforcemparms -conwidth 640 -conheight 480 -width 1024 -height 768 -zone 1024 -bpp 32 -mem 64

The most important command that made a HUGE difference for me was the "-bpp 32" as Qrack takes FULL ADVANTAGE of those extra 16 bits of color. I noticed a big change in quality when I added that to my command line. Perhaps r00k (the almighty creator of Qrack!) could make that a default setting, as I think the majority of DM'ers now a days have video cards that are capable of this.

Another thing I hope r00k has looked in to implementing, would be a cheat free version of Qrack, similar to ProQuake. If it could possibly even be backwards compatable with older versions of ProQuake, that would be even better!

Well I hope you go out and give Qrack a shot, because I was really amazed at how much it made me love a game I already loved to death even more! My hope is that if enough people start using it and the word spreads enough, Qrack could become sucessor to ProQuake, and take old skool netQuakeing to a new level!

Thats all for now... Happy DM'ing!

[HighwayMan]

Maybe stupid question but I can't figure how to DL Qrack :/

[HighwayMan]

I found.

Seems that HOME, FORUMS etc. buttons under main banner are not working in Opera, in IE works well.

[Solecord]

What version of Opera are you using? Qrack site works fine for me in Opera 8.02

[Monster]

I will try it again when they make a cheat-free module.

[CheapAlert]

to me, qrack seems like an average engine with some texture pack bundled with it :\

[R00k]

Cheapy is right, its an average engine, of compiled tuts and shared threads and a bit homebrewed. But the thing about Qrack, (name is cause quake is addictive, and i think earthquakes make cracks..), its a community shared project geared to the player. I'm not trying to reproduce a new prediction protocol, nor advent new md3 techniques etc. Its just basically for me and my friends. I started playing quake on a low end machine and tried to tweak anything to get the best performance. Slowly as my game box got better, i wanted more features. But always with the backwards ability to still run well on that old geforce2mx.
There are a great deal of engine projects out there. Alot of which seem like a science fair project, as in after the show u put it in the closet. But for me, its just something i use to enjoy Quake that much more as my computer platform grows. I hope others get some enjoyment too, as there are 100% better coders, and engines out there to support, but in all, I hope its still Quake in the end.

[Yellow No. 5]

I use Qrack cause it plays exactly like proquake, but with 100x better graphics. Sure there are more advanced clients, but I don't find them appropriate for online play like clients like Qrack and Fuhquake are. A lot of the "advanced" clients seem to be trying to recreate q3, and if I wanted that I'd play q3.

Most people need help setting it up to get the most out of it, so here's settings that I like to run it with:

(you can put these in a text fine in quake/qrack/ named "autoexec.cfg")

scr_conspeed "900"
gl_flashblend "0"
r_rockettrail "3"
r_grenadetrail "1"
gl_conalpha ".65"
scr_printstats_style "1"
scr_printstats "0"
r_glowlg "1" //makes lg bolt glow blue
r_novis "1"
r_outline "1"
gl_deathblur "0"
gl_lavasmoke "1"
cl_maxfps "100"
r_celshading "0"
vid_vsync "1"
cl_autodemo "0" //set to 1 to automatically demo every game
cl_maxfps "100" //(or whatever your -refreshrate is)
cl_teamskin "1" //only use if you have the 24bit skins pak
cl_teamflags "1" //for ctf
r_wateralpha_radius "768"
gl_caustics "1"
cl_sbar "1" //remove for fullscreen
gl_consolefont "charset-1"
loadsky "morose"
r_wateralpha ".4"
r_novis "1"
r_rocketlightcolor "1"
r_rocketlight "1"
r_powerupglow "1"
r_glowlg "1"
pq_scoreboard_pings "1"
gl_anisotropic "8"
gl_q3particles "0"
gl_vertexlights "1"
gl_waterfog "0"

and here's my command line:
glQrack.exe -noforcemparms -conwidth 640 -conheight 480 -width 640 -height 480 -zone 1024 -bpp 32 -refreshrate 100 -mem 64

[Monster]

You should make a Qrack- EZ start up like Baker is doing with JoeQuake, so people can easily mess with commands and know what they are.

[HighwayMan]

What version of Opera are you using? Qrack site works fine for me in Opera 8.02

I'm using testing build of Opera 9 so maybe it's the reason

--

Nice graphics in that engine, but I get big slowdown (few times) when enabled cellshading on my Gf4MX.

[mikeTOOtall]

to me, qrack seems like an average engine with some texture pack bundled with it :\

I think you are missing the point. Qrack is not about making something new, its about taking an old classic and making it better. I think Yellow is right in saying that there ARE better engine remakes out there, but the point of this is to keep the engine how it is. The feel of the original quake engine is what I love most about it, and its the reason I still play it today. Qrack allows me to keep that old skool feel, while giving me visuals that are more pleasing to the eye than the original.

[Baker]

to me, qrack seems like an average engine with some texture pack bundled with it :\

Cheapie, if you look underneath the surface you'll find JoeQuake and QRack have some enhancements for user-friendliness, some inherited from ProQuake.

You can record demos when connected to a server, sounds like common sense but ironically last time I checked (Aug 2005ish) you actually cannot do this with DarkPlaces.

Map menus, demo menus, built in name maker (in JoeQuake for sure, I think it's in QRack), built in server list capability (in JoeQuake for sure, I think it's in QRack), pings in the scoreboard, etc.

One thing I do know, watching the Nehahra movie without a JoeQuake style demo fastforward / rewind capability is utterly painful.

I'm sorta of a prude, I worry about things like single player compatibility, which isn't really something that most multiplayer types even care about.

One other thing to consider, JoeQuake/QRack recorded demos can be played in other engines. I've noticed that if you mess with the packet max size (or whatever it is called) in DarkPlaces, the demos can't be played in most other engines.

I feel that however one likes to play Quake, the "likes to play Quake" is the important part.