The Best Way to Play Quake 1

All you need to know

  1. Install "Quake" on Steam. When the game asks you on first launch if you want to enable any accessibility options, press "Disable all". This version of the game is good for playing the base game in singleplayer and co-op, but it doesn't support certain features used by popular custom maps and mods.
  2. Install and use vkQuake or IronWail for full custom map and mod support. They will use the game files from your Steam installation.
  3. Install the Arcane Dimensions map pack and the Alkaline map pack. (Unzip them into separate folders inside of C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Quake\rerelease, and then pick either through the in-game Mods menu.) They're the two best map packs for Quake 1, better even than the official Dimension of the Machine episode. Even if you're only checking out Quake 1 briefly, these are levels you want to play.

If you use vkQuake, then set the following options:

  • In Options -> Graphics:
    • Set "Textures" to "Classic"
    • Set "Antialiasing" to "4x"
    • Set "Anisotropic" to "On (16x)"
    • Set "Particles" to "Classic"
  • In Options -> Game:
    • Set "Gun Kick" to "Smooth"

Details

The official Steam release defaults to having all "accessibility" settings turned on, which is a terrible default: this replaces the menu graphics with a terrible plain font that doesn't fit the game, and even changes all of your chat messages in multiplayer to be done over text-to-speech. This is in the running for the single worst default configuration in a game. The game does prompt you on startup with an option to disable this madness, but if you click through the menu too fast then the game will just be bad.

IronWail and vkQuake both handle high framerates better than the official release and add support for mods to manipulate the HUD so new weapons can be added.

vkQuake supports some particle effects used by Arcane Dimensions, which will not look as good in other ports like IronWail.