How to use the new HD models in Quakespasm Spiked

Do you like Nightdive's models in the remaster, but still want to use Quakespasm Spiked? This will help you port the models over.

Requirements

The following steps listed here will NOT permanently change your .pak files and it is easily reversible.

This requires Quakespasm Spiked, regular Quakespasm will not work. To get Quakespasm Spiked go here.[fte.triptohell.info] Make sure to get the latest version, as the feature was added recently. Spiked has numerous improvements to Quakespasm, such as support for higher framerate and custom huds, and I highly recommend it.

This patch also requires a tool called QuArK or "Quake Army Knife". This tool will allow you to open and edit the .pak files that quake uses to store most of its files. I can't legally share the pre-patched .pak files so you have to use QuArk to patch it yourself. You can get QuArK here.[quark.sourceforge.net] Note: QuArK is a very picky program, and you might encounter problems using it.

Editing the pak files with QuArK

QuArK is a very complicated software, but luckily you won't be doing much to make this patch.

• First, and I cannot stress this enough: Make copies of your .pak files

  This patch wont change anything with them but you still don't want to accidentally overwrite any of them because recovering them requires re-downloading Quake.
  

• Make a copy of "Quake\rerelease\ID1\pak0.pak" and store it somewhere like your desktop.

  That is, the re-release pak with the HD models, not the one in "Quake\ID1".
  

• Open the re-release pak0.pak copy in QuArK

  Open QuArK and click "File" then "Open" and navigate to the copy of pak0.pak you made.
  
  You should see something like this:
  
  

• Highlight and delete all files and subfolders but "progs" and "sound"

  Progs are the models and they contain the md5 models that are in the re-release. The folder "sound" isn't necessary if you don't want the HD sound effects from the re-release.
  
  It should look like this after you've deleted the files:
  
  

• Click "File" then "Save as file..." and save it as "pak2.pak"

  It's important to name it pak2.pak and not pak0 or pak1 because quake loads packs by their number and will load pak2.pak last.
  Do NOT save it over any base game file like pak0.pak

At this point you should have the file ready.

Adding it to Quake

• Drag your new pak2.pak file to "\Quake\ID1\" or wherever you installed QSS.

  You can also create a new folder like "\Quake\ID2\" if you don't want to add it to the base game.
  Make sure you are NOT overwriting anything. If you already have a pak2.pak from some other patch, just rename the file containing the models to pak3.pak and so on.
  
  ID1 should look like this with 3 .pak files:
  
  

• You can now launch QSS

  If you used a different directory than "ID1" you need to launch that version using "game <game-directory-name>".
  
  

• Make sure "Options>Extra Options>Replacement Models" is set to "On"

  As you see here:
  
  

• Enjoy the HD makeover

  

[DUMFAYCE !!]

cool

[Digit]

Thanks for responding, it shows when developers care about their work! I meant .rc and .src, not sure how I miss-typed both of those. I don't know if .src is common in .pak files but I have seen them in Arcane Dimensions. Also the rerelease has .json files, so there should be a way to right click and view as plain text. I can't remember specifics of what was happening when I had to restart, but I know it happened a few times. I'll keep an eye out if it happens again though.

[danielpharos]

CONCHARS: I've figured out why that's happening: they are incorrectly stored in the .wad file. I'm already implementing a workaround.
.rcz, .srcz: Please excuse my ignorance, but what kind of files are these?
Errors that go away after restarting: sounds like a game file incorrectly got unloaded by QuArK. Do you happen to remember what you were doing when that happened? (As in, if I can reproduce that bug myself, I can hopefully fix it.)
Multiple instances: I'll see what I can do to make that a bit more stable.

Oh, and by the way, forgot to mention it last time: I do like your guide! Awesome to see people still working with the good old games. :)

[Digit]

I know this probably isn't very helpful, as I don't have many specific examples, but from what I can remember:
QuArK throws an error when trying to view CONCHARS, says structure invalid
I had to restart the program a lot because something would stop working, and when I restarted it was fine.
QuArK doesn't know how to view some plain text files like .rcz .srcz and .xml.
Trying to view a skybox from Arcane Dimensions, got nonfatal error:
Access violation at adress 005A4B3A in module 'QuArK.exe'. Read of adress 00000010. Worked fine after a restart.
I experienced a lot of errors and problems when running more than one instance of QuArK, and to be fair it is warned not to.

[danielpharos]

> Note: QuArK is one of the buggiest pieces of software I have ever used, and you might encounter problems using it.
Hi, QuArK developer here. I'm interested in learning what bugs you encountered, so I can fix them and make QuArK better. Can you please elaborate on them?