Anime Is there any mod that makes Quake 2 not suck?

[Wunderbar]

FYI, lowering the resolution to 720p and disabling Global Illumination makes the game run fairly well on non-RTX hardware, and it still looks very sweet. Worth a try.

it gives me "No ray tracing capable GPU found" error.

 

[Morgoth]

FYI, lowering the resolution to 720p and disabling Global Illumination makes the game run fairly well on non-RTX hardware, and it still looks very sweet. Worth a try.

it gives me "No ray tracing capable GPU found" error.

Still needs a Pascal GTX/Turing GTX and newest drivers (v430.86) as a minimum I believe.

 

[Wunderbar]

Updated to the newest drivers. Got 21 fps with regular 1070.

 

[commie]

The edge is strong here....first they shit on Q2, now they shit on a free Ray tracing option if you have the damn thing already saying it doesn't match the aesthetics of Q2; the same aesthetics that were being shat on just a few pages ago!

Don't ever change boyos!

 

[Owl]

The edge is strong here....first they shit on Q2, now they shit on a free Ray tracing option if you have the damn thing already saying it doesn't match the aesthetics of Q2; the same aesthetics that were being shat on just a few pages ago!

Don't ever change boyos!

Q2 wasn't the best looking game in the first place, but they somehow managed to make it look even worse aesthetically (fancy reflections and lighting nonwithstanding). That's an impressive feat... Yeah it's free, but if the goal was to showcase their amazing raytracing tech, it's failed. I don't believe many people will run out and buy RTX cards after seeing this. But maybe others are more easily impressed, I don't know.

 

[Lyric Suite]

LMAO the fuck is this shit:



I don't know what's worse, the "enhancements" like the serene blue sky instead of the red skybox or watching this faggot play.

 

[DalekFlay]

Just tried Quake 2 RTX myself recently and again tonight. It really is an anti-advertisement for nVidia, because even on a 2070 it runs like garbage on even the low ray tracing setting at 1440p. Also the de-noising looks like garbage too, and if that becomes the new standard then fuck me it's worse than TAA.

Also yeah, the lighting might be impressive technically but artistry wise it looks like shit and not at all like Quake 2.

 

[otsego]

Q2 single player was a bit of a slog but the weapons were awesome... cooking and tossing those grenade (you can all hear the ticking of the timer and pinging of the grenade on the geo right now, don't lie) was a blast.

MP is where it shone though (on THE ZONE... remember that?). I remember a mod that gave every weapon a ton of alt fires similar to the Heretic power upgrade. I specifically remember tossing "cataclysmic grenades" and using a grappling hook.

Anyone remember the name of it?

 

[Lyric Suite]

Just tried Quake 2 RTX myself recently and again tonight. It really is an anti-advertisement for nVidia, because even on a 2070 it runs like garbage on even the low ray tracing setting at 1440p. Also the de-noising looks like garbage too, and if that becomes the new standard then fuck me it's worse than TAA.

Also yeah, the lighting might be impressive technically but artistry wise it looks like shit and not at all like Quake 2.

What kills me is that there's supposed to settings in the RTX version that would help making it look like the original (to wit, you can change the skybox into a red one), but i have yet to see anyone using them.

 

[Daemongar]

Eh, I completed Q2 and lived. Unlike the original, I don't think I ever replayed Q2. Only played it after heavily modifying my bindings and settings to make it playable, and then gave it hell. I don't remember anything about the game. I don't remember if there were even bosses - just remember the secret room at the end with the programmers pictures and such.

It was obvious the focus was more on lighting, graphics, and explosions rather than gunplay. This made the game look nice but completely lost focus on what people were after - a hyper-dynamic feel like Quake 1.

 

[Morgoth]

Quake 2 RTX was just updated to v1.2 with a shitton of improvements:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1089130/Quake_II_RTX/

Hey, everyone! Today we're releasing v1.2.0, coming with fixes and improvements. Read our full article here.

New Features:

• Added support for dynamic resolution scaling that adjusts rendering resolution to meet an FPS target.
  
• Added support for multiple reflection or refraction bounces.
  
• Added light coloring by tinted glass.
  
• Added support for security camera views on some monitors in the game.
  
• Added god rays in reflections and refractions, improved god rays filtering.
  
• Added a spatial denoiser for the specular channel.
  
• Added support for loading custom sky (portal) light meshes from .obj files, and added portal light definitions for many maps in the base game.
  
• Added triangular lights for laser beams: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/43
  
• Added “shader balls” to the shipping builds.
  
• Added cvar `pt_accumulation_rendering_framenum` to control how many frames to accumulate in the reference mode.
  
• Added cvar `pt_show_sky` to make analyzing skybox geometry easier.

Fixed Issues:

• Fixed the stutter caused by Steam overlay by updating to the latest version of SDL2.
  
• Fixed Stroggos atmospheric scattering (sky color) and overall sky brightness.
  
• Fixed light scattering on the clouds.
  
• Fixed the issue with overexposed player setup screen: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/18
  
• Fixed the sudden darkening of the screen: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/26
  
• Fixed the "PF_centerprintf to a non-client" warnings that happened on the "command" map when the computers are blown up, instead of informative on-screen messages.
  
• Fixed missing GI on reflections of the first person model.

Denoising and image stability improvements:

• Improved image quality and temporal stability of reflections and refractions by computing correct motion vectors for reflected surfaces and surfaces visible through flat glass.
  
• Disabled the pixel jitter when temporal AA is turned off.
  
• Added sample jitter to the spatial denoiser to improve the noise patterns that appear after light invalidation.
  
• Improved image stability around blinking lights by using the light intensities from the previous frame on gradient pixels.
  
• Improved stability of indirect lighting from sphere lights by limiting their contribution.
  
• Added storage scaling for all lighting channels to avoid color quantization.
  
• Fixed flickering that happened when the number of dynamic lights changes.
  
• Improved sharpness of textured glass and similar transmissive effects by passing them around the denoiser.
  
• Added multiple importance sampling of specular reflections of direct lights.
  
• Replaced sphere lights that were used for wall lamps (mostly in the “train” map) with polygon lights to reduce noise.
  
• Added an upper limit on sky luminance to avoid oversampling the sky in shadowed areas and thus reduce noise from direct lights.
  
• Added light sampling correction based on statistical per-cluster light visibility. The idea is, if we see that a light is usually not visible, let's not sample it so much.

Material improvements:

• Metals are now rendered much better thanks to the denoiser and BRDF improvements.
  
• Over 400 textures have been adjusted or repainted.
  
• Removed the nonlinear transform from emissive textures, and reduced the negative bias applied to them.
  
• Force light materials to be opaque to make the laser lights in mine maps appear in reflections.
  
• Restore specular on materials with roughness = 1, but make specular on rough dielectrics much dimmer.

Shading and BRDF improvements:

• Fixed scaling of diffuse and specular reflections: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/37
  
• Fixed relative brightness and spotlight terms for different light types.
  
• Hemisphere sampling for indirect diffuse tuned to make the results better match the cosine-weighted sampling in reference mode.
  
• Trace more specular rays for shiny metals that do not need indirect diffuse lighting.
  
• Fixed the misdirection of second bounce lighting into the diffuse channel when the light path starts as specular on the primary surface: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/25
  
• Replaced regular NDF sampling for specular bounce rays with visible NDF sampling: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/40
  
• Tuned fake specular to be closer to reference specular.
  
• Added normalization of normal map vectors on load to avoid false roughness adjustments by the Toksvig factor.
  
• Improved roughness correction to not happen on texture magnification, and to better handle cases like zero roughness.
  
• Fixed the computation of N.V to avoid potential NaNs: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/23

Misc Improvements:

• Removed the multiplayer specific sun position setting, and changed the remaining setting to be morning by default.
  
• Changed the default value of texture LOD bias to 0 for extra sharpness.
  
• Use nearest filter for upscaling from 50% resolution scale (a.k.a integer scaling).
  
• Made the brightness of sprites, beams, particles, smoke, and effects like quad damage be similar to overall scene brightness, to avoid having them washed out under direct sunlight.
  
• Made the explosions and other sprites appear in low-roughness specular reflections.
  
• Changed the flare lights to be derived from the flare model entity instead of the effect event, which makes the lights follow the flares smoothly in flight, and reduces flicker that was due to frequent light creation and destruction.
  
• Removed insane and dead soldiers with `nomonsters 1`.
  
• Random number generator now produces enough different sequences to cover thousands of frames for reference mode accumulation.
  
• The `pt_direct_polygon_lights` cvar has a new meaning when set to -1: all polygon lights are sampled through the indirect lighting shader, for comparison purposes.
  
• Moved the first person player model a bit backwards to avoid having it block reflections.

Also don't forget to use the new GameReady driver:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/155056/en-us

 

[Silly Germans]

They should remake Alien vs Predator 1999 with ray tracing. I would love to replay it with proper lightning, unless they decide to brighten everything. That would suck.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

PSX Quake 2 looks gorgeous with all that tweaks and and shit. Plus, it has regular mouse support.

Behold hidden PC gem released from its console limitations.

 

[Tehdagah]

It's the same thing of the first game but with less hitscanners

 

[Tito Anic]

Play Soldier of Fortune instead

 

[aweigh]

been playing Quake 2 RTX with the new card i bought with my Trump Money, good game! never played it before now. also the OST is killer! really fucking good.

on rtx 2060 super i get 50-52fps average at native1080p on default RTX settings. However it goes up to locked 60fps if i use the built-in dynamic resolution scaler; the dynamic res will usually hover around 85% of 1080p to keep it at 60fps.

tried playing the multiplayer and it was fun, got absolutely creamed by everyone else though. Fun game.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

good game! never played it before now.

I wish to get my memory erased to experience Q2 goodness for the first time once again, propably best geam ever.

PS. play The Reckoning.

 

[Viata]

For some reason I hate the guns in Quake 2.

 

[Lyric Suite]

For some reason I hate the guns in Quake 2.

They tried to revert back from the "floaty" style of Quake 1 to a more solid and punchy Doom-like approach but they erred in the opposite direction. Many of the guns feel kinda of cumbersome to use but the worst is what they had to do to the AI to compensate for that, by making them pause or trip over themselves randomly and once you figure out their movement you can basically run circles through all of them.

That, and the excessively samey art style are the biggest problem with the game. Everything else is pretty good. Level design is excellent, some of the weapons are still great to use, chief among them the rail gun i just love that thing and there's reason it ended up in Quake 3, sound track is great and people swear by the multiplayer though never got into it much myself and at this point it's moot since only autists are probably still playing it.

BTW, did i mention the soundtrack? Shiiiet:

 

[Twiglard]

Quake 2 7/10
q2dm1 10/10

 

[schru]

I wouldn't say the level design is excellent compared to what Id created for Doom and the first Quake. For the most part, you have a linear path to follow, which isn't a problem in itself, but the occasional secret detours, the branching paths when you need to do something to open an important door, or the way side-maps tend to loop back to the main route is more about creating the impression of complexity and interconnectedness of levels. However, those things have more to do with the style or presentation than with active exploration.

Certainly, at times there are enough possible paths at a time to make things a little interesting and give the player something to work with, but it's not the same as what Id did before. Doom and Quake's maps were quite compartmentalized in themselves, given the key-based design, but they still often had more than one way of approach and the maps sustained a more interesting flow of exploration. In Quake especially, the secrets were often parallel to the areas with monsters in a way that made them much more ‘dynamic’, providing an alternative approach with some power-ups or such. The levels were also more compact, providing an interesting web of interconnected rooms and passages to figure out, while in Quake II you usually had to back away from secret areas or places where you were not supposed to go yet. Only the palace at the end of Quake II had a genuinely elaborate structure. Still, the approach Id took was interesting enough as there were all those small bits of interactivity and the locations were very different in terms of ideas and form.

 

[Lutte]

What is sad is that no matter how decline Quake 2 was compared to other id games, you can see it still had the sort of design that required at least a wee little bit of perception when you look at the footage of dumbfucks like cohncarnage fumbling around quake 2 rtx without 'getting it' (see him at the start of the game complaining about the weak pistol because he totally missed the path that gives you the shotty. You see him at the start of the level look exactly toward the path with the shotty, with the place where you can crouch through, but he just ignores it like it's an element of the decor and proceeds to the right path)

I still don't think much of this game, but seeing moderntards play it gives you.. perspective.

 

[DraQ]

Is there any mod that fixes enemies mechanically (damage, armor mechanics, weapons) and in terms of AI?
RTX is nice and all, but gameplay is where Q2 needs help the most, especially enemies and related mechanics.

Fix that and Q2 becomes, maybe rather bland and definitely not non instant-classic tier, but a solid (say, 7/10) FPS nevertheless.
But without fixing those it's turbo-casual bad joke of an FPS.

For some reason I hate the guns in Quake 2.

Eh, guns are mostly ok. Pretty bland and pedestrian, like most of the stuff in game, just a reiteration of iso standard classic FPS arsenal (that Id itself pioneered), but workable and even fun to use.
Two exceptions in the positive sense would be CG and HB. Both are rotary guns but each has its own mechanical quirks making it feel unique and not just a rapid fire gun that happens to have a gatling 3D model - you feel that gatlingness.

Many of the guns feel kinda of cumbersome to use but the worst is what they had to do to the AI to compensate for that, by making them pause or trip over themselves randomly and once you figure out their movement you can basically run circles through all of them.

That, and the excessively samey art style are the biggest problem with the game.

The most important flaws summarized.

The guns did feel clunky-ish, but the devs didn't HAVE to fuck up the AI, weaksauce the enemies AND half the enemy damage because of that. They chose to do that make the game casul and retard friendly.

That, combined with the monotony of the locations and gameplay ensures that there isn't much of a reason to play Q2, unless you're part of some MP community for which SP flaws are irrelevant.

 

[Twiglard]

Is there any mod that fixes enemies mechanically (damage, armor mechanics, weapons) and in terms of AI?

No, single-player is fail. Play some duels on a mod like opentdm on q2dm1.

Eh, guns are mostly ok. Pretty bland and pedestrian, like most of the stuff in game, just a reiteration of iso standard classic FPS arsenal (that Id itself pioneered), but workable and even fun to use.

The weapons have their strategic differences, compare rg/rl/cg, of course on q2dm1.

Two exceptions in the positive sense would be CG and HB.

Unless you're purri, using the hyperblaster will result in failure. Including on q2dm1.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I wouldn't say the level design is excellent compared to what Id created for Doom and the first Quake. For the most part, you have a linear path to follow, which isn't a problem in itself, but the occasional secret detours, the branching paths when you need to do something to open an important door, or the way side-maps tend to loop back to the main route is more about creating the impression of complexity and interconnectedness of levels. However, those things have more to do with the style or presentation than with active exploration.

Well, i guess it's good relatively speaking. The game is inferior to Quake 1 that's a given.

I'll say though, one has to keep in mind that the hub system changed certain aspects of the design of the single levels, just as it did with Hexen (a superior game, to be sure, but one that still has some limitations if you look at the design of the maps when taken by themselves). Also, with Quake 2 they tried to introduce a bit of realism. The maps still feel pretty boxy because of the engine but one can already see the change of direction that was happening in shooters which eventually culminated in Half Life. It's still not there but you can see they tried to make the locations feel like locations instead of abstract places build entirely with gameplay in mind.

Lastly, one thing i liked was the pacing. Or at least back then when i played it i found the levels getting slightly more imposing as the game went on. When i was a kid i definitely felt a well thought out increase in the difficulty curve. With the skill set i have now alas that went out of the window as the whole game is in the "kinda easy" category, but ho well.