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Want another game engine reimplementation to play Quake II? Yamagi Quake II is another that's quite advanced and big new release is available with Vulkan support.

The main point of this client is to provide a fully stable platform for keeping Quake II alive. The graphics and gameplay remain the same but there's a number of quality of life upgrades. Some of the main features include:

  • A modern OpenGL 3.2 renderer, providing a greatly enhanced look and feel. The original OpenGL 1.4 and even the Software renderers are still supported. Both 3D accelerated renderers support anisotropic filtering and multisampling anti aliasing.
  • Full support for widescreen displays and arbitrary resolutions. The HUD can be scaled to be readable on HiDPI displays.
  • Support for surround sound, from stereo up to 7.1 channels and even HRTF. The background music can be played from OGG/Vorbis files, a CD drive is no longer necessary.
  • A rewritten savegame system. Yamagi Quake II savegames are completely reliable and backward compatible between releases.
  • Highly precise timings. For example, on a flat panel display with a 59.95 hertz refresh rate and vertical synchronisation (vsync) enabled Yamagi Quake II is running at exactly 59.95 frames per second.
  • In comparison with the original client over 1.500 bugs were fixed. The Yamagi Quake II client is very well tested and stable. The dedicated server is able to run for weeks without a single restart. Last but not least the code is fully 64 bit clean and highly portable.

Yamagi Quake II version 8.00 was released on June 14 with numerous enhancements, the main one being client support for the optional Vulkan rendering mode. You can find the optional Vulkan rendering code on GitHub, which is currently a separate project based on vkQuake2. It also fixes auto-save bugs, adds newly discovered map fixes and removes some hardcoded map fixes with optional parts and a few other smaller fixes and improvements.

Nice to see Vulkan added to more projects like this.

Find out more on the official site and GitHub. Instructions to install can be found 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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3 comments

ageres Jun 16, 2021
The Vulkan renderer is not included, in order to use it you'll have to compile this: https://github.com/yquake2/ref_vk
Liam Dawe Jun 16, 2021
Quoting: ageresThe Vulkan renderer is not included, in order to use it you'll have to compile this: https://github.com/yquake2/ref_vk
Sorry if it wasn't clear enough on that, have adjusted :)
Avehicle7887 Jun 16, 2021
Yamagi has always been the go-to engine for my Quake 2, I wonder how the Vulkan renderer will fare against OpenGL on my low-end laptop :D
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