Quake mods are game data archives that add new map levels, bots, and other features to Quake and can be run as a separate game. The Darkplaces engine supports Quake 1, 2 and 3 mods. To install and run a Quake mod, use the following procedure:
The amount of this guy's work is incredible, the mod is amazing, even better than Nvidia's Quake 2 RTX, which, in my opinion, it's a joke. You need to buy the next year GPU to run a 20+ years old game at a decent frame rate. This mod runs at ridiculously high frame rate (600 FPS) while still looks magnificent on my outdated (but reliable) GTX 770. For Quake 2 I can't recommend anything other than Quake 2 Evolved. I have the Berserker mod installed and boy does it look great.
Create a new folder with the name of the game in the same folder where Darkplaces was installed:
cd ~/darkplaces
mkdir newmod
Unpack the mod files into the new folder:
cd newmod
gzip newmod.zip
Run the mod:
cd ~/darkplaces
darkplaces-sdl -game newmod
List all map levels in mod
Open console: type ` (tick character on upper left of kb) or select options menu, console
In the console window type
maps
or type maps dm
to list all maps beginning with 'dm'Load and run a map level
map dm1
where 'dm1' is a map listed in console
Close the console and begin playing
Type ` again or esc
General notes about running mods on the PI
Many mods have been designed for desktop systems with high-end display cards and gigabytes of memory. The Raspberry PI on the other hand only has 512mb of memory of which only a portion is available to the gpu. Avoid mods with descriptions such as 'extreme hd' or anything that indicates it would require large amounts of memory to run. A large-sized game data archive is another sign that the mod that won't run well if at all on the Raspberry PI.
Another caveat with the current version of the Darkplaces engine is lack of support for native compression formats used by textures in some mods. This feature will be added later on when the open source gpu blob has been compiled and new extensions added to support compression formats used by Quake mods.
I am looking to play through the two games again but I'd like to upgrade. Just playing a little Quake 1 gives me a few problems: odd color artifacts where the colors are the reverse of what they should be until I go underwater; the framerate is capped at 60...until I alt-tab and then it is capped at 120(?); there is a lack of resolution options and having +mlook be automatic amongst other things. Some are solvable with a cfg file surely but if I can download a new engine and have it all in modern in-game menus I'd rather do that and be done with it.