Installing Quake requires a few basic steps.
Getting the game data files is normally done by installing the game using Microsoft Windows, or a Windows emulator such as Wine, and then copying the id1 directory of the installed game to your Linux Quake directory (making sure all files are in lowercase).
You can then install a game engine and execute this program to play Quake.
For example, if you installed Jörgen's glquake, typing from an xterm window glquake.glx -fullscreen -width 800 -height 600 will start the game at 800x600 resolution in fullscreen mode.
This sounds simple, but if you are new to Linux and you are not familiar with the Linux command line try one of these links for more information:
Quake has a large number of command line options, some of which vary from engine to engine. The most useful/common ones are:
Run the game in windowed mode
Load the mod NAME.
Reserve N megabytes of memory for the internal heap. This generally defaults to 8 or 16 meg, but must be increased when playing larger mods.
window/fullscreen width
window/fullscreen height
Set sound sampling rate (eg. 44100, 22100, 11025)
Set sound bits to N = 8 or 16
Disable sound. Necessary when sound is absent/unconfigured to stop the game from crashing.
Allow a maximum of N players/bots to join multiplayer games.
Use DEVICE for playing the cd music
Disable cd audio
Disable pointer support
You can also append Quake commands to the Linux command line by prefixing them with a plus sign. For example, to automatically start a new game at hard skill, use glquake.glx +skill 2 +map e1m1.
Other trouble shooting resources can be found at: Jörgen's GLQuake Site, the old version of this how-to, and Linux Gamers FAQ
This is not good, but some simple options to try are:
Files not lowercased or Data files missing.
Linux Quake requires (most) filenames to be in lowercase. If you get an error similar to "Error: W_LoadWadFile: couldn't load gfx.wad" it means the game can't find the data files, possibly because they are not all lowercase.
"Memory overwrite in Sys_Printf"
An error such as: "/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy" indicates some program is already using your sound card, and you will have to halt this program to get Quake sound effects.
"Quake engine games exit, and I see an error about mmap!"
Sound stutters or is not very good.
"This game won't let me look around properly. %$!$@"
Try the following -
Some mission-packs/mods for Quake can cause existing player/monster models to be drawn with lines all over the place. To fix this, delete the directory "quake/id1/glquake". When you next run the game, it will remake this directory and everything should be fine.
A common problem with 3dfx cards is a shower of flickering lines on the screen.
Setting up hardware GL acceleration under Linux used to be a big deal, but modern distros should now handle this automatically. Of course there are exceptions..
Nvidia's drivers for all of their modern video cards are not open source. Because of this many distributions do not include them. If your Nvidia card is running slowly this is probably the cause, and you should visit http://www.nvidia.com to download the Linux installer. In my experience these drivers are great, but not all versions work 100% with all cards. If you have a misbehaving Nvidia video card, try a different driver.
While new versions of XFree and Xorg have great support for Voodoo 3, 4 and 5, early 3dfx hardware such as Voodoo1, Voodoo2 and Rush are no longer hardware accelerated. To get OpenGL working for these cards, you'll need to download, install and/or compile the software libraries called Glide and Mesa. Here is a detailed README on old 3dfx cards.
For more info see http://www.planetquake.com/console/commands/quake.html
The console is an in-game command line at which you can issue commands, change variables and cheat. It is toggled by pressing the tilde "~" key when in a game. The main commands include -
Invulnerability
Walk through walls
Enemies won't attack player
Play DEMO (eg. "demo1") at top speed and show frame rate
Issue "impulse N"
These are in-game commands which can be given special uses. The most common cheat is impulse 9 which gives all weapons.
Bind a key to perform a command
Load MAP
Load MAP without resetting player settings
Exit to system
value = 0 (easy) - 3 (impossible)
Degree of difficulty. Level must be restarted to take effect
value = 0.0 - 1.0
Opacity of water
value = 0.1 - 1.0
Raising this value is a good way to speed up the game at the expense of some sound lag. I use 0.3
flag = 0 | 1
Display model shadows
flag = 0 | 1
Sync video output with screen refresh
flag = 0 | 1
Show player from third person perspective