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Fancy playing Quake with the Vulkan API? Now you can

By - | Views: 24,155

I'm a little late on reporting this due to being ill, but Quake has been ported to Vulkan and it's open source of course.

Thanks to "sub" for sending it in 4 days ago, but I just haven't had time to cover it until now.

It was done by Axel Gneiting who actually works for id Software as an Engine Programmer, which is pretty cool:

My Vulkan Quake 1 Port running "In the Shadows" mod. Some stuff still missing. Code is here https://t.co/FDJtk2QNOz pic.twitter.com/SIcWroQOwr

— Axel Gneiting (@axelgneiting) July 21, 2016


He didn't actually do the work to get it on Linux, he stated in another tweet a friend did that for him.

You can find the source code on github here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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24 comments
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Sslaxx Jul 25, 2016
People at id still use Linux post-Carmack, huh? Hmmm. Not that it means much, but it is interesting to note.
Liam Dawe Jul 25, 2016
Quoting: SslaxxPeople at id still use Linux post-Carmack, huh? Hmmm. Not that it means much, but it is interesting to note.
Well, no. As pointed out, he didn't do the Linux side of it.
tuubi Jul 25, 2016
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Quoting: SslaxxPeople at id still use Linux post-Carmack, huh? Hmmm. Not that it means much, but it is interesting to note.
The article states "a friend did that for him." Gneiting did the Vulkan part. The Linux friend could be this gentleman if the github changelog is anything to go by.


Last edited by tuubi on 25 July 2016 at 7:30 pm UTC
Cheogh Jul 25, 2016
Can someone explain how to get this running?
t3g Jul 25, 2016
I'd love for someone to get this up and running, packaged, and put up on something like http://www.playdeb.net
Kristian Jul 25, 2016
So anyone know which source files are supposed to have the Vulkan bits?
sub Jul 25, 2016
Quoting: KristianSo anyone know which source files are supposed to have the Vulkan bits?
Vulkan API naming convention for functions is a "vk" prefix followed by a capital letter.

All source files containing at least one matching function can be listed with

grep -r "vk[A-Z]+*" * | sed -nre "s@(^.*):.*@\1@p" | uniq


Last edited by sub on 25 July 2016 at 9:39 pm UTC
sub Jul 25, 2016
I can only test it on my Haswell notebook, but it seems the warning
QuoteVulkan Initialization
WARNING: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete
should be taken seriously. :D
At least it quits with
QuoteQUAKE ERROR: Couldn't create Vulkan device
Kithop Jul 25, 2016
I managed to get it working on my system, with the nvidia-367 drivers (that break NVENC in OBS, sadly), but I can't, for the life of me, get Vsync to disable so I can benchmark it. :p

If you adjust any of the video settings in-game and try to save it, it segfaults, but you *can* get it to pick up the normal quakespasm command line options for e.g. setting your window size.

Oh, and forcing fullscreen also segfaults.

No combination of 'vid_vsync 0' in various config files including autoexec.cfg, or even as '+vid_vsync 0' on the command line gets it to stop capping itself.

It does run, though, if you specify -width and -height.

After you've checked it out from git, check out the Quake/Makefile and look at the different options. Assume for every 'USE_THIS_THING' that you want to set to '1', you need to look for the 'libthing' and 'libthing-dev' (or your distro's equivalents) and be sure they're installed as dependencies first. If you try to compile it then and it complains about a missing header file, that's probably the thing-dev you need. :)

If anyone cracks how to disable vsync properly for benchmarking though, let me know. :/
ProfessorKaos64 Jul 25, 2016
Totally making a package out of this for SteamOS. drool
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