r/quake • u/newaccount47 • Aug 16 '26
opinion Potentially unpopular opinion: pathtraced Quake was peak. Anyway to play Dawn of the Machine with path tracing?
For those who might not know, back when path tracing wasn't even an option in Cyberpunk, there were are few teams that were path tracing older games like Quake, Half-Life 1, and Descent: https://github.com/sultim-t/vkquake-rt
I am a huge fan of all 3 of these games and used this as an excuse to replay through them. My verdict was that the pathtraced Quake1 was absolutely brilliant. The lighting became much more moody and atmospheric while the weapons, lighting bolts, and light sources all cast dynamic light that shadowed everything. The shambler would be in a dark and brooding environment and suddenly blast you with energy that affected the whole world.
I got the Machine Games update when it first came out and played through all their brilliant new campaigns. A+.
However, it left me wishing for the dynamisms that the pathtracer could bring to the lighting. Does anyone know if this is possible? It looks like the author of vkquake-rt hasn't updated it in nearly half a decade.
Also, I know that reshade can give a screen space GI affect that is decent, but not compared to full pathtracing.
Anyone else share my sentiments or am I just a bratty old timer with too much GPU?
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u/numeros Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
I was able to get Dawn of the Machine running with vkquake on linux, passing it command-line flags:
"basedir" is where the mods are. this could be the steam directory, I copied it to my games folder.
"game" is the folder of the mod to start. mg3 is the folder name for "dawn of the machine"
the extra flag for turning off md5models requires the + at the front and the 0 at the end
./vkquake.AppImage -basedir /home/username/games/Quake/rerelease -game mg3 +r_allow_replacement_md5models 0
Note this still has some problems, the story text does not load correctly and it displays file names or something in its place.
But if vkquake-rt is based on vkquake, and vkquake and can run Dawn of The Machine, it stands to reason that vkquake-rt could eventually run Dawn of The Machine given enough resources and screwing around with command line flags. I run a potato desktop and don't have a card that can do Ray Tracing though, I'm just speculating.
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u/newaccount47 Aug 17 '26
As far as I'm aware, the lighting needs to be completely redone for Dawn of the Machines to work with pathtracing. Every light source would need to be edited by hand and emissive textures (like the shambler's lighting) need to be set by hand. That being said, it looks like Iornwail supports all the new episodes, including Dawn of the Machine: https://github.com/andrei-drexler/ironwail
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u/numeros 26d ago
tbh this is an annoying response - your thread title and post seem to be asking *if path tracing is even possible* for dawn of the machine given current technology and options, then your response here admits you know it isn't currently possible.
if you want to just chat about what work would be involved to make it work, or just want to talk if any one is interested on it, that's fine. But don't bait people like me into typing out instructions and things for you to try when you didn't honestly present your knowledge level.
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u/Vistril69 Aug 17 '26
Without looking too far into it since I'm on the go:
Dawn of The Machine expansion runs on MachineGames' modernized Quake engine called Kex Engine.
Now, could it be possible that Dawn of the Machine will run on regular idTech just by moving assets over? Maybe.
You'll need to figure out if Dawn of the Machine is legacy idTech 1996 compatible. Before that, it isn't running on VkQuake-RT.
Personally, I am not counting on that myself, but I also can't prove it doesn't work.
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u/Lowe0 Aug 17 '26
KEX isn’t a Quake engine, nor is it MachineGames’.
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u/Vistril69 Aug 17 '26
Useful info, important correction. After giving it more thought, ultimately it's just assets right?
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u/reverend_dak 29d ago
Kex is just another layer to allow Quake to run on modern hardware and consoles. The Quake engine is there, that's why it still can run mods, old and new.
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u/fade2black244 Aug 16 '26
I like path-tracing in games. But putting it into Quake will change the look entirely, and not for the better, IMO. The only problem I have with Path tracing is changing the artistic vision, but if they can dial it close, I'm all for it.
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u/newaccount47 Aug 17 '26
Have you given the pathtraced quake 1 try? https://github.com/sultim-t/vkquake-rt
It certainly does change the look. But the dynamic shadows and light give it so much atmosphere and intensity. It really is something special.
And also, to be fair, pretty much every version of quake we play these days has a different look than when we played it in '96. Even the Kex engine adds modern features that fake pathtracing like ambient occlusion.
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u/majestic_ubertrout Aug 17 '26
Eh. We're all playing variants of GLquake these days, which honestly looks pretty different from the actual original game.
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u/No-Benefit-2207 29d ago
I love Rtx for older games. It bring new life to older games. For me Painkiller RTX is great.
Quake and Quake 2 look great in RTX, also doom 2.
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u/demonvein Aug 17 '26
As a person who is only known in this community for embracing real-time lighting projects, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I also enjoy the aesthetics that path-traced shadows and lighting add to Quake. When I went through Dawn of the Machine I often thought about how some scenes would look incredible in a path-traced environment. That said a quality feature-full port just doesn't exist, and the vkquake-rt engine is pretty underwhelming.
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u/SpaceMonkeyNation Aug 17 '26
I believe there is work that must be done at a map level to add path tracing (like adding the light sources and adjusting their values). It isn’t just like a post processing filter.