Winquake sound problem

[Orchid87]

So, when playing Q1 I want it to be as oldschool as possible. Considering that my PC struggles to run Quake through DOSBox at anything higher than 320x240 I am stuck with Winquake. And here's a problem. Quake tech manual says that setting sound higher than 11025 Khz doesn't make a difference since all the sounds are 11025 Khz. But it DOES make a difference for me. DOSBox internal sound quality setting makes the sound crisper, and DOS Quake's own -sspeed command line parameter can make it even more crisper. Well, at 44100 it's a bit distorted because of the aforementioned quality of the sound samples, but at 22050 it sounds just fine! The problem is - -sspeed parameter does not work in Winquake. I am stuck with a really lo fi sound when compared to DOSBox Quake.

How can I make Winquake sound better? Or, are there any source ports that look just like DOS Quake/Winquake and just correct their problems?

[talisa]

try using another engine, winquake has huge problems running on modern OS

and about retaining the original look, of course, just look on ther right of the mainpage, below the servers and recent threads list, theres a list of the best quake clients.
we got qrack, proquake, darkplaces and directQ


i dunno which engine retains the most original look closest, but i personally prefer darkplaces cuz it allows for replacement textures and models and effects and such. although it can run quake without them too, and then you'll have original quake as well



oh and btw, welcome to the forums Orchid87

[Orchid87]

Thanks for your welcome! Darkplaces is nice but I can't find a console parameter to get the "ripple" effect on the water, lava and teleporter surfaces which the original Quake had.

[Spirit]

Darkplaces is nice but the complete opposite of oldschool or faithful (in some cases).

I would recommend makaqu - Quake game engine - Google Project Hosting or qbism game engine if you want to keep the software renderer/look. Of the engines with graphic acceleration only DirectQ has the fluid warping as far as I know. That one is a great choice as faithful modern engine.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

r_waterripple

darkplaces isn't where you want to be for nostalgia "software quake" look.

If your having issues running software quake I recommend directQ, it has a DX8 version. If your hardware is older than DX8 IDK to tell you, other than try downloading ProQuake 4.5ish from ProQuake 4: The official continuation of ProQuake

It comes with DX8 version of ProQuake, "software" WinPro type version , GL version, etc etc. It has multiple flavors including the one you specifically are asking about, software quake.

[MH]

Much of this depends on your 3D hardware.

The reality is that the original look of software Quake flat-out cannot be replicated without pixel/fragment shaders. Software Quake had per-pixel effects and full-screen post-processing effects; many hardware accelerated engines try to fake it with a finer level of detail at the per-vertex level, but - while it's close - if you know what to look for and where to look you can still see the flaws.

This isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of mathematical fact - sine waves and square roots are curves; they don't linearly interpolate.

With DirectQ I deliberately raised the hardware requirements to resolve this; if you can meet those raised hardware requirements (currently some form of D3D9-class gfx card, soon to go to D3D10/11) then it will give you what I believe is as close as it's possible to get to the original software Quake quality.

Regarding sound, there are two things going on here. Most of Quake's source sounds are 11khz (one or two are 22khz) so it's true that you can't get higher quality out of them. That's the nature of digital audio - once you remove something it's gone forever. Quake's sound "upsampling" doesn't give better sound quality, it just sounds different. It can't restore the missing data - digital audio, gone forever - so what it does instead is pitch-shift the sound. You're hearing higher frequencies, but they're at the expense of a thinner and less substantial bottom-end. Your personal preference may be that this is better, and that's OK, but be aware of what is actually happening here.

[bluntz]

Try using the wq.bat file and put this in it
wq fastsnd