Category: QUAKE

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Team Beef Quake 3 Arena Quest 2 Port Now Available Via SideQuest

The latest Team Beef port for Quest 2, Quake 3 Arena, is now available via SideQuest.

As usual for Team Beef ports, you can install the app completely free of charge, but some functionality won’t be available until you take extra steps to add the full PC game files yourself, from a copy you own. You’ll also need to enable developer mode on your Quest first, as per usual for SideQuest. If you haven’t done this before, you can read more in our guide to setting up and using SideQuest.

As it stands, installing the Quake 3 Arena port directly from SideQuest includes the official (and free) id software demo. This means you’ll be able to play some of the single-player for free with just the SideQuest install, alongside multiplayer on specific servers marked as ‘DEMO’.

The SideQuest install also comes with a companion app called Q3 Launcher that adds additional functionality, such as changing your player name and installing mods, new single-player campaigns and map packs.

If you want to play the full game, you will need to own a legal copy of Quake 3 Arena for PC on Steam or elsewhere. Once you locate your installed PC files for Quake 3 Arena, all you need to do is copy all the PK3 files in the baseq3 folderinto the /ioquake3quest/baseq3 folder on your Quest, using SideQuest or Windows explorer.

The port includes full tracked VR weapons, intuitive VR weapon selection, support for 90, 80 and 72Hz framerates, along with cross-platform play with PC and Android players.

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Quake 3 Arena VR Is The Latest Team Beef Quest Port, Open Beta Now On

Team Beef is back with its last Quest mod, this time for Quake 3 Arena in VR.

Quake3Quest is currently in open beta, and allows you to access both online and single-player portions of the competitive arena shooter. First released in 1999, Arena was the first game in the series to ditch a single-player campaign (solo modes are simply against bots). It offers incredibly fast-paced combat with chunky weaponry and pickups.

As with other mods from the team, you can expect full motion control support and uncompromising smooth locomotion, making this one of the faster VR experiences out there. Check out some gameplay from a recent stress test below.

Quake 3 Arena VR Goes Into Open Beta

You can sign up to Team Beef’s Discord to try the open beta for yourself. You’ll obviously need to own the game on PC as with other Team Beef ports, and be aware there are six servers available – three for the EU, three for the US. Full instructions on how to get the mod up and running can be found here.

Team Beef has become well-known in the Quest community for its excellent work porting 90’s era shooters to the standalone headset. You can already play Half-Life and all of its expansions as well as other Quake and Doom games. Almost a year ago now we spoke to team leader DrBeef about his journey into the world of VR modding.

There are also other ways to play Quake in VR, of course, including this rather excellent PC VR mod for the first game in the series.

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DrBeef: Half-Life 2 Port For Quest 2 Will ‘Probably Never Happen’

In an excerpt from our upcoming interview with community modder Simon ‘DrBeef’ Brown, he said that he would love to port Half-Life 2 to Quest but that it will “probably never happen.”

The reason is mainly practical — all of Team Beef’s ports are possible because the games’ original engines are open source, allowing them to be ported to Android for a Quest release.

Half-Life 2 runs on the Source engine, which is free to use for Steam users but not exactly open source (pun sorta intended) and therefore any Quest ports of the game would not be direct translations of the original. Open source engines also allow modders to port the engines in full without running into any issues.

Here’s DrBeef’s response in full:

UploadVR: I’m wondering if you decided to port something that was Quest 2-only how recent do you think you could go with a game. And is there a dream game that you would like to see ported? Or have you already gotten there?

DrBeef: The problem is there’s a dependency on the actual software being open source. As far as modern games go, I think Doom 3 is kind of — I’m quite happy to be corrected — but Doom 3 is probably one of the most recent well-known popular games that actually has its engine code open source. After that point, I think, id software stopped doing that. There’s not many games studios where they actually open source their engine software. It’s a bit of a shame.

The game I would most like to do, but I think will probably never happen is Half-Life 2. Because I’m slightly ashamed to admit I’ve never played all the way through it. And also I got halfway through playing it on the original dev kit, but never finished it. You know, it’s one of those games that we get asked about all the time. There’s somebody who’s managed to do some sort of Android port somehow. I don’t know how they’ve done it, but it’s, you know, it’s not like a truly open source engine port.

So I think there would be some risks entailed with trying to pick that up. So as it stands, I think that game is out of reach, but, yeah, that would kind of be the dream game to bring to the Quest, but I fear it’s probably never going to happen.

Keep your eyes open for our the rest of our interview with DrBeef, which releases tomorrow on our YouTube channel and here on the site as a transcription.

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John Carmack Hopes For id VR Ports On App Lab With Microsoft Approval

John Carmack hopes there’s a path to getting the popular unofficial ‘ports’ of id Software games like Quake onto Oculus App Lab, with some help from Microsoft.

Facebook’s Consulting CTO for Oculus had a brief exchange with modder Simon “DrBeef” Brown on Twitter discussing the possibility of bringing the developer’s community-made VR ports of classic games to App Lab.

The exchange started with DrBeef stating that him and Team Beef “intend to get some of the ports listed on App Labs [sic]”, starting with Quake.

Team Beef are behind a plethora of VR ports of classic 90s games such as Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and many more. These run as standalone VR ports that can be sideloaded onto Oculus Quest.

The games’ engines are ported over into VR and shipped with community-made “shareware” versions of the original assets for legal reasons, so that the content can be legally distributed online. Users who want the authentic experience can transfer in the original textures and assets on their own, using a purchased version of the original games for PC.

App Lab is Oculus’ new method for easy distribution and installation of non-Store Quest content, providing an easier method than traditional sideloading and with less strict content restrictions. That being said, the nature of Team Beef’s VR ports might make an App Lab listing legally complicated.

DrBeef said on Twitter that the App Lab listings for these classic ports would use the shareware versions of each title and tagged Carmack asking him what he thought. You can read his response below:

In another follow-up tweet replying to Carmack, DrBeef indicated that he would “postpone the App Lab application for now and hope that things progress in our favour.” DrBeef and Carmack are referring to Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax Media, which includes the studio behind the Quake franchise, id software.

Microsoft could hypothetically give their blessing for the ports to be listed as App Lab apps once the acquisition is finalised. However, until then, it looks like we’ll be installing the ports through traditional sideloading methods.

Many of Dr Beef’s port are available to install through using SideQuest. You can read more about how to get started with sideloading here. 

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New id Software VR Game Listed By Australian Classification Board

A new listing from the Australian Classification board may have leaked a new id Software VR game.

The listing (pointed out to us by Twitter user GamerToTheEnd) for a project codenamed ‘Project 2021A’, was awarded an R 18+ classification for ‘high impact violence’ and ‘online interactivity’ on January 22nd, and has a ‘Year of Production’ listing for 2021. The listing confirms Bethesda Softworks as the publisher and id Software as the author, and the filing was made by the Australian branch parent company Zenimax (which itself is now owned by Microsoft).

New id Software VR Game Spotted

This wouldn’t be id Software’s first VR game. In 2017 the studio released Doom VFR which tied into the 2016 series reboot, reusing some of its assets and levels along with all-new content. 2020 saw the studio release the next full sequel, Doom Eternal, so it’s possible this project could again remix content from that campaign.

Then again, the mention of ‘online interactivity’ might suggest the game has a multiplayer component. Doom Eternal had no multiplayer to speak of, but perhaps this could link to Quake, Doom’s sister series also developed by id. 2018’s Quake Champions was online-only, after all.

Of course, it could be entirely unrelated to either franchise and either be a new original project or tied to the Rage series. Either way, it’s encouraging to see Bethesda releasing new VR content – despite early support with Doom VFR, Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim VR — all of which sold ‘really well‘ — it’s been a while since the publisher’s last VR releases, which included the underwhelming Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and optional VR modes for Prey. Curiously, though, this new title couldn’t release on Microsoft’s new Xbox consoles in their current form, as they don’t support VR headsets. Hopefully, that may one day change.

We also have to wonder if this game might release on Facebook’s VR platforms. Zenimax famously took the social networking giant to court over a dispute about the involvement of id’s John Carmack, who went from the company to a CTO role at Oculus. Bethesda even claimed it made the first VR headset, the prototypes for the Oculus Rift, during one E3 presentation. Could the Microsoft acquisition help patch things up between the two?

Need more VR Doom? A new mod recently brought Doom 3 to Oculus Quest, and it’s really rather great.

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Quake VR Mod Update Adds Multiplayer, Finger Tracking And Custom Maps

An update for Vittorio Romeo’s fantastic Quake VR mod added a wealth of new features, including multiplayer support, finger tracking on Index, custom maps and much more.

The new content is part of the v0.0.5 update, which is available now. The biggest addition by far is support for multiplayer, allowing you to play against other Quake VR players with optional bot support. Quake’s official Mission Pack #2 — Dissolution of Eternity — is also now supported.

Index users will also be happy to hear that finger tracking has been implemented into the mod as well, allowing you to make as many rude gestures as you like in-game. There’s also now support for custom maps, via an in-game menu, and lots of other minor quality of life changes.

For newcomers, a tutorial map has been added, including a gun range in which you can try everything out properly before heading into any single player or multiplayer games.

You can seem gameplay footage of all of these features in the trailer embedded above. This update comes after v0.0.4, which added a Gravity Glove-style system that lets you flick and pull items into your hand from far away, just like in Half-Life: Alyx.

To read more about this Quake VR mod, you can take a peek at Jamie’s write up from March. The v0.0.5 update is available to download for PC VR from the Quake VR site, however, you will need to own a copy of Quake itself in order to use the mod. To read the full patch notes for v0.0.5, check out the mod’s GitHub page.

The post Quake VR Mod Update Adds Multiplayer, Finger Tracking And Custom Maps appeared first on UploadVR.

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This Fan Brought ‘Quake’ to VR, Including 6DOF Controls & Melee

Quake (1996) from id Software defined the real-time 3D shooter genre, and now you can dive back into the ’90s head-first with this fan-built Quake VR mod.

Yes, we know what you’re thinking. Quake has been playable in VR at home since at least 2013, but never like this.

Created by indie developer Vittorio Romeo, Quake VR includes support for 6DOF controllers, and a host of other goodies that make it feel more like a proper port than the gamepad/3DOF headsets of old provided.

Now in its 0.0.4 version, Quake VR boasts dual-wielding weapons, which includes guns and melee weapons too. Punching, throwing axes, and force-grabbing objects is all supported. A body and holster system also allows you to easily store your weapons and switch between guns, just like native VR games do.

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Although the grappling hook is technically a cheat in the original game, which breaks some of the level progression if used liberally, you can use it in VR now too. Best of all, Romeo is making his work on Quake VR both open source and free to download, although he is also accepting donations.

Quake VR supports SteamVR headsets; users may need to modify controller setting in Steam’s binding menu first though to make sure all buttons are mapped correctly.

Romeo also says that since the VR version heavily relies on modified QuakeC files, mods or expansion packs may not be compatible out of the box, however they should be easy to port.

The post This Fan Brought ‘Quake’ to VR, Including 6DOF Controls & Melee appeared first on Road to VR.