About Open Quartz How do I get the most out of Open Quartz? Well, basically by playing it and by developing for it. In this section, you will read about some hidden features and other possibilities to make Open Quartz a better gaming experience.

    The engine of choice

Open Quartz is only the game data, you can use it with any Quake engine out there. Examples are (in no particular order):

  • QuakeForge - Those guys originally startet Open Quartz
  • Dark Places - The engine that ships with Open Quartz
  • Telejano - Rather experimental, has a lot of features
  • QMB - Quake made better
  • FuhQuake - One of the best Quakeworld clients
  • Tenebrae - Darkplaces is often mistaken for this engine
  • zQuake - Another Quakeworld client
  • MacGLQuake Quake client that runs on MacOS and MacOSX
A lot of information about features and the current state of development of these engines (and many more) can be found at Quakesrc.org.
You might have noticed that the Open Quartz playable game is shipping with the Dark Places engine. The reasons why we have chosen this engine are: It's cross-platform and pretty fast. It has many extra features that can be used to enhance the gaming experience while keeping compatibility with pure Quake. And last but not least it's still actively developed with LordHavoc being the lead programmer.


    Playing Open Quartz
Let's assume you are using the "playable game" package and thus your engine of choice is Dark Places. Maybe you first want to know how to start the game. Well, in Windows it's quite obvious - double-click the executable file. On Linux the most convenient way is to open a console and go the directory where you unpacked it. Then run the executable by typing ./openquartz-glx
The first time you start Open Quartz, you will surely begin a single player game. (You can get to the menu by pressing ESC.) You'll see the evil trees and kill them all. Maybe you will even try it on different difficulties and maybe you even find out about the secrets. But wait - the current single player is only a kind of demo. The real fun is with multiplayer modes. Even if you don't know anyone to play against there are still bots waiting to be fragged. To start a multiplayer game go to Multiplayer - New Game. Hit OK to confirm. On the next screen you can set options like the map you want to play on. Note that you have to move around using the arrow keys of your keyboard. No mouse support in the menus, sorry.

Level Selection
Use the arrow keys (left and right) to select the desired episode and level.

The switch "public" server is for people who have an Internet connection running. If you set it to yes, your server will be listed by the master server so other people will be able to see it when they search for games. We recommend setting this to "yes" when you are connected to the Internet. The gametype should be "Deathmatch" for our purpose.
Once you created the game you can spawn bots by hitting the "end" key repeatedly or by typing "impulse 101" on the console. The console is a very nice tool and we'll learn more about it later on. For now it's enough to know that you can bring it down by hitting the key just beyond ESC (on the upper left side of the keyboard).
For multiplayer Open Quartz also has an own gamemode - Deathmatch 7. Quake originally had 3 deathmatch modes that could be set through the "deathmatch" command at the console:
  • 0 - deathmatch disabled.
  • 1 - deathmatch enabled, picked up weapons disappear but respawn, ammo and powerups respawn. Default value when you start a deathmatch game.
  • 2 - deathmatch enabled, weapons stay, ammo and powerups don't respawn. Pretty much like Doom dethmatch
  • 3 - deathmatch enabled, weapons stay, ammo and powerups respawn. My favourite of those three.
In Open Quartz, you also have "deathmatch 7". This gamemode is just like deathmatch 1, but if a map has monsters on it in single player, those monsters will also be there in multiplayer and will respawn. You can even add bots! This gamemode was also offered in Doom. To try it out, type "deathmatch 7" on the console. Now we need to switch to a map to play on. Unfortunately when doing this through the menu, the deathmatch value will be reset. So we need to do this directly at the console. Type "map box" on the console to switch to the map called "box". It is an Open Quartz map that has all the available monsters in it. Some other Open Quartz maps also have monsters. For example the map "start". Playing deathmatch 7 on the start map will result in an endless battle against ever-respawning trees, dolls and wheels :-)


    Playing Quake maps with Open Quartz
You think that the levels shipped with Open Quartz suck? Well, first of all they don't :-) And second: You can play any Quake deathmatch map with Open Quartz! Single player maps are not yet supported due to the lack of some monsters, sorry.
To play a custom map you have to create a folder named "maps" in the "id1" directory of Open Quartz. Put the maps you want to play in it. Quake maps have the ending .bsp - but make sure that it is a Quake 1 map. In order to launch the map you have to use the console. By typing "map nameofmap" on the console you can switch to the desired map. But make sure to have the deathmatch switch turned to 1 or 2 or 3 and have more than one player slot open ("maxplayers 8" on the console should do the trick).
Let's try it by example. Go to Aardappel's Quake Maps and grab the map E1M2-ish. Unzip it into your id1/maps folder and launch Open Quartz. Bring down the console and type "deathmatch 1" "maxplayers 8" and "map e1m2ish".
Even though Quake is quiet old, there is still an active community and people are still creating maps. Check out the following sites if you want Quake maps:

    Playing Quake mods with Open Quartz
A reason why Quake has been popular for several years now is all the modifications and total conversions available for it. You can play most of those mods with Open Quartz. That means Open Quartz can be customized to be a lot more than just a simple shooter. There are teamplay mods like Quake Fortress or total conversions like Airquake.
In order to play a mod, you have to put it into a directory besides "id1". Then you have to launch Open Quartz using the "-game moddir" switch. In Linux the best way to do this is using the shell. In Windows you can achieve this by creating a link to the Open Quartz executable and then editing it to add the -game switch.
Once again let's do it by example. Go to HondoBondo and grab my all-time favorite mod - Bondo's SuperDuper Quake. The Download link is at the bottom of his page. Unzip the contents into a directory named "bondo" that is besides the "id1" directory of Open Quartz. Now run the game by typing "./openquartz-glx -game bondo" at the Linux shell or by creating and editing a link in windows. Once you play it be aware that this mod has some different key bindings - "impulse 200" at the console spawns a bot for example.
Just like the mapping community the Quake modding community is still very active - check out these sites if you want to get some cool mods:

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