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vkQuake is a port of id Software's Quake using Vulkan instead of OpenGL for rendering. It is based on the popular QuakeSpasm and QuakeSpasm-Spiked ports and runs all mods compatible with QuakeSpasm like Arcane Dimensions.

Improvements over QuakeSpasm include:

Installation

Windows

It is recommended to use the installer on Windows. This sets up start menu entries for the original and remastered Quake versions. Save data and config files will be written to the user folder (%APPDATA\vkQuake) instead of the Quake data folder.

Otherwise copy all files inside the vkquake-<version>_win64 or vkquake-<version>_win32 folder in the zip to the Quake base directory. Overwrite any existing files. Afterward to run the game just execute vkQuake.exe.

Linux

Copy all files inside the vkquake-<version>-linux64 folder in the tar archive to the Quake base directory. Overwrite any existing files. Run vkquake.AppImage.

Note
Make sure all data files are lowercase, e.g. "id1", not "ID1" and "pak0.pak", not "PAK0.PAK". Some distributions of the game have upper case file names, e.g. from GOG.com.

OpenBSD

OpenBSD includes vkQuake in the standard package repositories since version 6.6.

If you're running OpenBSD 6.6 or greater you can install the package with:

$ pkg_add vkquake

Quake '2021 re-release'

vkQuake has initial support for playing the 2021 re-release content. Follow installation instructions as above but copy the files into the rerelease folder.

Vulkan

vkQuake shows basic usage of the API. For example it demonstrates render passes & sub passes, pipeline barriers & synchronization, compute shaders, push & specialization constants, CPU/GPU parallelism and memory pooling.

Endianness

vkQuake only supports little-endian systems. The reason is, all known existing Vulkan-capable systems in the wild are little-endian. Consequently, all big-endian support from QuakeSpasm has been effectively removed. vkQuake wouldn't even start on an big-endian system, outputing a fatal error.

Building

Note
You will need at least Vulkan SDK version 1.2.162 or newer. When building for Linux this is not always the case for the SDK provided by the distribution. Install the latest LunarG SDK if necessary.

Windows

Clone the vkQuake repo from https://github.com/Novum/vkQuake.git

Prerequisites:

Visual Studio

Open the Visual Studio solution, Windows\VisualStudio\vkquake.sln, select the desired configuration and platform, then build the solution.

MinGW

Setup your MinGW-w64 environment, e.g. using w64devkit or MSYS2.

Build 32 bit (x86) vkQuake:

cd vkQuake/Quake
make -f Makefile.w32

Build 64 bit (x64) vkQuake:

cd vkQuake/Quake
make -f Makefile.w64

If you are on Linux and want to cross-compile for Windows, see the build_cross_win??.sh scripts.

Linux

Make sure that both your GPU and your GPU driver support Vulkan.

To compile vkQuake, first install the build dependencies:

Ubuntu:

apt-get install git meson gcc glslang-tools spirv-tools libsdl2-dev libvulkan-dev libvorbis-dev libmad0-dev libx11-xcb-dev

Arch Linux:

pacman -S git meson flac glibc libgl libmad libvorbis libx11 sdl2 vulkan-headers glslang spirv-tools

Then clone the vkQuake repo:

git clone https://github.com/Novum/vkQuake.git

Now go to the Quake directory and compile the executable:

cd vkQuake
meson build && ninja -C build

Note
The Meson version needs to be 0.47.0 or newer. For older distributions you can use make:

cd vkQuake/Quake
make -j

Meson is the preferred way to build vkQuake because it automatically checks for out of date file depenencies, is faster and has better error reporting for missing dependencies.

Note
vkQuake 0.97 and later requires at least SDL2 2.0.6 with enabled Vulkan support. The precompiled versions in some of the distribution repositories (e.g. Ubuntu) do not currently ship with Vulkan support. You will therefore need to compile it from source. Make sure you have libvulkan-dev installed before running configure.

MacOS

To compile vkQuake, first install the build dependencies with Homebrew:

brew install molten-vk vulkan-headers glslang spirv-tools sdl2 libvorbis flac opus opusfile flac mad meson pkgconfig

Then clone the vkQuake repo:

git clone https://github.com/Novum/vkQuake.git

Now go to the Quake directory and compile the executable:

cd vkQuake
meson build && ninja -C build

Note
The Meson version needs to be 0.47.0 or newer.

Optional - Music / Soundtrack

Note
This section only applies to older releases. For the 2021 re-release music will work out of the box.

The original Quake had a great soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails. Unfortunately, the Steam version does not come with the soundtrack files. The GOG-provided files need to be converted before they are ready for use. In general, you'll just need to move a "music" folder to the correct location within your vkQuake installation (.e.g /usr/share/quake/id1/music). Most Quake engines play nicest with soundtracks placed in the id1/music subfolder vs. sound\cdtracks

QuakeSpasm, the engine vkQuake is derived from, supports OGG, MP3, FLAC, and WAV audio formats. The Linux version of QuakeSpasm/VkQuake requires external libraries: libogg or libvorbis for OGG support, libmad or libmpg123 for MP3, and libflac for FLAC. If you already have a setup that works for the engine you're currently using, then you don't necessarily have to change it.

Generally, the below setup works for multiple engines, including Quakespasm/vkQuake:

See more: Quake Soundtrack Solutions (Steam Community)