Setting Up Quake Gold and Quake Platinum on PC

This guide will help users get set up with the latest Quake patches and enhancements as well as the game files from Quake Gold or Quake Platinum. Once you've gone through the guide, you'll be up and running launching Quake Gold or Platinum directly from Steam.

What is it?

Quake Gold and Quake Platinum are two different versions of Quake released by a Russian development team originally for the Dreamcast. Many who play these versions prefer them to the original game. Through this guide, you can run Quake Gold and Quake Platinum with your PC copy of Quake on Steam!

If all you need are the required PAK0.pak and PAK1.pak files, they are available here:

• Quake Gold: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gmHFbmuxIIZcO0U8wdW-86AbrYuHlwGp
  
• Quake Platinum https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pGDhJfqx3j_e5kgxAoVLTiJAuXJV9qFr

For those who want a better game experience with an enhanced engine, graphics, and more, continue reading.

What You'll Need

We'll walk you through how to get most of these items in the sections below, but for those interested in skipping the prose, here are the files you'll need:

• Quake on Steam.
  
• The latest Quake Ultimate Patch (version 1.11) from ModDB.
  
• The latest DarkPlaces game engine (at the time of this writing, either version 20140513 or 20170829beta1) https://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/download.html.
  
• Rygel's ultra textures pack https://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/download.html.
  
• Romi's rtlights file https://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/download.html.
  
• The Quake Bestiary archive available from the Quake Reforged site[quakeone.com].
  
• The PAK0.PAK and PAK1.PAK files from either Quake Gold[drive.google.com] or Quake Platinum[drive.google.com].

If you're already familiar with modding Quake, install Quake and apply the above patches and additions to it in the order we've listed them. For everyone else, more detailed instructions follow in the sections below.

Setup Instructions

Follow each of these steps in order, and you should be up and running in no time.

Step 1: Install Quake

Install Quake through Steam. Then, locate your game directory. The folder will usually be inside your main Steam folder, under SteamApps\common\Quake. If you are on a 64-bit Windows machine, and you installed Quake to the default directory, then it will most likely be located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Quake.

From now on, when we refer to the game folder or the Quake folder, this is the directory to which we mean.

If you've modded your Quake installation in the past, you might wish to either verify the files through Steam or simply uninstall and reinstall the game on Steam to force a clean installation of all the core game files and clean up anything extra which could interfere with the following steps.

Step 2: Install the Quake Ultimate Patch

The latest Quake Ultimate Patch at the time of this writing is version 1.11. It is available for download from this ModDB page.

Once downloaded, just double-click the .exe to start the installer. Make sure your game folder is the one listed when the installer starts, and then merely click Install.

Step 3: Install the DarkPlaces Engine

The Quake Ultimate Patch includes a slightly older version of the DarkPlaces engine. To make sure you're running the most recent release with all the latest fixes and enhancements, we recommend installing the latest DarkPlaces engine and mod over the top of the Quake Ultimate Patch.

First, visit the DarkPlaces download page[icculus.org], where you'll find links to the current versions of all files.

The DarkPlaces engine is available either in a release version, or a more recent beta version. Which you choose is up to you. At the time of this writing, the two options available are:

1. Version 20140513[icculus.org]
   
2. Version 20170829 beta1[icculus.org]

Download one of those versions (or a more recent version if available). Once downloaded, extract all of the contents of the zip file into your Quake game directory. You should now have a darkplaces.exe file within your Quake folder, and if you were to run it now, it should work.

There are two more steps to take to make the engine work more smoothly with Steam:

1. Rename **Winquake.exe** to **Winquake.exe.bak**.
   
2. Make a copy of **darkplaces.exe** and name it **Winquake.exe**.

These last steps will mean you can launch the game as you normally would through Steam.

Step 4: Install Rygel's Ultra Textures

Rygel's ultra textures are much larger than the original Quake game textures, and vastly enhance the game's appearance on modern PCs.

If you have over 1 GB of video memory, we recommend getting the full 2.7 GB pack from the DarkPlaces download page[icculus.org]. If you have less than 1 GB of video memory, it is recommended to download and install the 900 MB high res texture pack from the same page instead.

In either case, move the downloaded file into the Id1 folder in your game directory.

Step 5: Install Romi's Rtlights File

When using the Realtime World Lighting option in the DarkPlaces engine, using a replacement rtlights file can significantly boost performance.

Download Romi's rtlights file for Id1 from the DarkPlaces download page[icculus.org].

Simply move romirtlights_id1.pk3 into the Id1 folder in your game directory.

Step 6: Install Quake Reforged Bestiary

The Quake Reforged project is not fully released, but the Bestiary pack for the base game is available for download. This pack provides enhancements to the enemies for Quake.

Download the Quake Bestiary file in whichever quality you choose from the Quake Reforged site[quakeone.com].

You'll need 7zip (or a zip tool which supports 7zip files) to extract the downloaded files from the archive.

Unzip the downloaded file to a temporary folder on your computer. Once extracted, head into the QR_QuakeBestiary_[resolution]\For Darkplaces\id1 folder. Copy both folders here (progs and scripts) into the Id1 folder in your game directory.

Step 7: Replace PAK0.PAK and PAK1.PAK

The final step is to back up and replace the default game's PAK1.PAK and PAK2.PAK files inside the Id1 folder in your game directory with the ones included with either Quake Gold or Quake Platinum.

First, simply rename PAK1.PAK to PAK1.PAK.bak and PAK2.PAK to PAK2.PAK.bak. Next, copy your chosen PAK files into the Id1 folder where you just renamed the others.

As an extra step, we recommend that you make a copy of the PAK files you've chosen to use and keep them in the Id1 folder next to the originals, with an extension such as PAK0.PAK.gold and PAK1.PAK.gold. This way, if Steam ever overwrites your custom files with the originals, you can simply copy them back into place again from these extra backups.

You can also use the same tip to keep both Gold and Platinum editions of the PAK files handy, and just copy whichever one you choose in place of the original filenames when you wish to switch between them.

Pro Tip

Another way to keep all 3 versions of the game available (the original 1996 version, as well as Gold and Platinum) is to copy your entire Id1 folder and name it after the version you're installing, such as Gold. Then you can permanently leave the Gold edition PAK files in place in that directory, and let Steam maintain the original files in the original directory.

By adding a launch argument to the game through Steam (such as " -game Gold"), you can auto-launch the version of your choice when running the game. You may also load a different version of the game from within the console while running the game. Check out the DarkPlaces documentation for more details about these options.

Play the Game!

That's it! You should now be ready to launch Quake from Steam (or by running Winquake.exe) and play through the Quake Gold or Quake Platinum experience with the latest game patches and visuals available.

This guide was created by Ben McClure of Game Completionist[www.gamecompletionist.com] with assistance from KValda. You can find KValda's original Russian language guide here.

[Hardist]

Спасибо за хорошее руководство. Благодаря ему я увидел Quake в улучшенном, современном варианте.
Прошу Вас только добавить в руководство замечание, что при использовании DarkPlaces нужно удалять из директории программы файл opengl.dll во избежании появления ошибки.