Quakestarter 2.5.0

To use this package, most people should download quakestarter-2.5.0.zip from below.

Note: For a package WITHOUT the included Quake engine (Quakespasm-Spiked), download quakestarter-noengine-2.5.0.zip instead. This is intended for "power users" who already have Quakespasm-Spiked or who intend to use a different Quake engine. If you're not sure which package to get, that is probably NOT the one you want; get the usual quakestarter-2.5.0.zip package in that case.

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You may have noticed that there was a new Quakespasm-Spiked release that I haven't yet picked up for use here with Quakestarter. There's a concern with using new QSS builds that I'm chewing on here: #58

Please feel free to add comments on that GitHub issue if you have opinions about the solution.

Another relevant release that has happened sort of recently is Windows 11. I haven't done extensive testing on Windows 11, but initial feedback looks good and I have no reason to believe that Quakestarter will have any issues there.

But anyway, this Quakestarter version is about dealing with yet another release: the "enhanced" Quake rerelease, a neat thing that has shown up on some storefronts. In some ways Quakestarter can benefit from the rerelease (because it provides music soundtrack files) and in other ways we need to be careful that the rerelease doesn't cause problems (because it provides pak files that are "wrong" in that they are different from the original pak files).

So this release of Quakestarter has the following features:

• Add support for finding/copying music tracks from the Quake rerelease.

• Add pak file checksumming, to avoid accidentally picking up the rerelease pak files or the old 1.01 pak0.pak.

• General doc updates to take into account some implications of the rerelease.

Quakestarter 2.4.0

To use this package, most people should download quakestarter-2.4.0.zip from below.

Note: For a package WITHOUT the included Quake engine (Quakespasm-Spiked), download quakestarter-noengine-2.4.0.zip instead. This is intended for "power users" who already have Quakespasm-Spiked or who intend to use a different Quake engine. If you're not sure which package to get, that is probably NOT the one you want; get the usual quakestarter-2.4.0.zip package in that case.

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It's been a while since I've checked over the whole Quaddicted database again for qualifying releases, as opposed to just looking at new stuff as it comes in. Of course it's quite possible for the ratings of old stuff to change... and when you're dealing in Bayesian averages, the score for release X can change even if X didn't get any new ratings but Y and Z did.

Anyway, the "whole database scan" showed quite a few changes, mostly of things that had dropped below the ratings threshold. I don't know if that's because of the normal workings of the ratings system or because of some other changes in the Quaddicted backend; in any case, it didn't feel right to continue to apply the current criteria.

So I've lowered the bar on the score needed to qualify... more so for older releases. A few more details are in the "quakestarter_docs\other_stuff\selection_criteria.txt" doc, and as usual each of the main section installer scripts in "quakestarter_scripts" has the criteria for that section in comments at the top of script.

The upshot of applying this new criteria to the whole Quaddicted database is as follows. Several installables are still going to get dropped to the "legacies" section, but overall things are pretty stable and we even pick up four new installables.

New items added: Dead Memories, Jumpmod 2 + Triune Discovery, Alkaline Jam, and In The Shadows [Demo v1.1]

Existing items removed, i.e. moved to "legacies": (The Final) Descent, The Castle of Koohoo, The Slipgate Duplex, Contract Revoked: The Lost Chapters, This Onion, A Roman Wilderness Of Pain, The Anomaly, Deathmatch Classics Vol. 3, For My Babies - Bin Dunne Gorne 2, Func Map Jam 5 - The Qonquer Map Jam, Paradise Sickness, and Quake Sewer Jam

To keep the legacies menu manageable (one-page), I've also aged-out and removed the four oldest entries there: Red Slammer, Gloomier Keep, Midnight Stalker, and Func Map Jam 1 - Honey Theme. If you still have any of those mods installed you'll need to manage them outside of the Quakestarter menus.

Quakestarter 2.3.0

To use this package, most people should download quakestarter-2.3.0.zip from below.

Note: For a package WITHOUT the included Quake engine (Quakespasm-Spiked), download quakestarter-noengine-2.3.0.zip instead. This is intended for "power users" who already have Quakespasm-Spiked or who intend to use a different Quake engine. If you're not sure which package to get, that is probably NOT the one you want; get the usual quakestarter-2.3.0.zip package in that case.

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• Include an updated Quakespasm-Spiked (2021-10-14).

• Include latest Simple Quake Launcher 2 (2.5).

• Move the Unused Jam and the Blue Monday Jam to legacies (rating drop).

• Add the Punishment Due episode, the Snack Pack 2 episode, the Xmas Jam 2021 hub, the Alkaline 1.1 hub, the sm215 hub, and The Purifier to the installables.

• Updates to the docs about vkQuake and transparent water.

• Add mention of the Ironwail engine into the docs where appropriate, and detection of ironwail.exe for multigame support.

• Add some brief discussion of the Quake rerelease.

• Add some brief discussion of alternate Quake Injector projects that don't require Java.

• Make the latest version (1.17) of Copper installable, and do a few things to more gracefully handle new releases and outdated versions of AD and Copper:

  • If a newer version of AD/Copper is released before the next Quakestarter update, you can set this in your _quakestarter_cfg.cmd in order to make that newer version be the one that Quakestarter uses by default for relevant mod dependencies. See the comments in _quakestarter_cfg_defaults.cmd for the latest_ad and latest_copper settings.
  • You can manage any older installed versions of AD/Copper through the legacies menu, IF these are old versions that existed at the time of the Quakestarter release that you're using. So e.g. with this release you can do legacy-mod-management for AD 1.7, Copper 1.15, and Copper 1.16.
  • If you have previously run an AD/Copper-dependent mod using an older version of AD/Copper, the mod launch will give you the option to continue using that older AD/Copper version in order to not break your savegames. You'll keep getting that option for each launch of that mod until you choose to switch to using the latest AD/Copper for that mod.

Quakestarter 2.2.1

To use this package, most people should download quakestarter-2.2.1.zip from below.

Note: For a package WITHOUT the included Quake engine (Quakespasm-Spiked), download quakestarter-noengine-2.2.1.zip instead. This is intended for "power users" who already have Quakespasm-Spiked or who intend to use a different Quake engine. If you're not sure which package to get, that is probably NOT the one you want; get the usual quakestarter-2.2.1.zip package in that case.

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Tiny update here. This just adds a very-most-top-level short readme file ("how_to_use_quakestarter.txt") into the zip archive for a release, to make sure users know where to go first. It's nice for the archive to be self-contained in this way and not require any external info to get started with it properly.

Quakestarter 2.2.0

To use this package, most people should download quakestarter-2.2.0.zip from below. Unzip it, and start with the quakestarter_readme.txt file.

Note: For a package WITHOUT the included Quake engine (Quakespasm-Spiked), download quakestarter-noengine-2.2.0.zip instead. This is intended for "power users" who already have Quakespasm-Spiked or who intend to use a different Quake engine. If you're not sure which package to get, that is probably NOT the one you want; get the usual quakestarter-2.2.0.zip package in that case.

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• Include latest Quakespasm-Spiked (2021-03-06).

• Add the SMEJ2 episode, the Unused Jam, and Imhotep's Legacy to the installables.

• If you use _quakestarter_cfg.cmd to set your own quake_exe value, that value can now include any command-line arguments that should always be used.

• Default to skill 1 rather than skill 2 in autoexec.cfg.example.

• Set r_wateralpha to 0.65 for retrojam6; it's necessary for one of the maps (retrojam6_mjb) and doesn't hurt the others.

• Misc minor docs corrections and fixes.

Quakestarter 2.1.0

To use this package, most people should download quakestarter-2.1.zip from below. Unzip it, and start with the quakestarter_readme.txt file.

Note: For a package WITHOUT the included Quake engine (Quakespasm-Spiked), download quakestarter-noengine-2.1.zip instead. This is intended for "power users" who already have Quakespasm-Spiked or who intend to use a different Quake engine. If you're not sure which package to get, that is probably NOT the one you want; get the usual quakestarter-2.1.zip package in that case.

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Most of the changes in this release are because of me revisiting the cool qbism Super8 engine (https://super8.qbism.com/) and taking care of some quirks that prevented it from working well as an alternative Quake engine launched from Quakestarter. Note that there is absolutely no guarantee that Super8 will be able to play all of our installables... but it should be able to handle most of them.

• Various doc changes to accomodate Super8 differences.

• Implement an "auto" setting for multigame_support (and make it the default). This will look at the Quake engine program name to try to figure out whether and how it handles activating multiple mod folders. The old "true" and "false" settings still exist as well. There's also the ability to exactly specify the multigame support syntax that your Quake engine uses. See the "quakestarter_docs\other_stuff\mod_requirements.txt" and "quakestarter_docs\other_stuff\advanced_quakestarter_cfg.txt" docs for details.

• Don't put quote marks around any of the command-line arguments sent to the Quake engine. Engines that still use the original command-line parsing code (e.g. Super8) won't be able to handle that.

• Work around some Super8 bugs in how it handles startdemos.

• Put a couple of mod content patches (for "Epochs of Enmity" and "Warpspasm") into pak files, rather than leaving them as loose files. In these two cases the existing mod content is also in pak files, so if we want to modify/override that content we should pak up the new bits too. For Quakespasm-Spiked this actually is not necessary, as QSS will prioritize "loose files" over pak file contents, but for almost all other Quake engines it is necessary.

• Supply smaller quake.rc files for Arcane Dimensions and any releases based on AD, so that they can work in Super8 (and any other Quake engine that retains the original limits on the amount of config text that can be executed). These quake.rc files still function the same; they're just way less chatty. The originals are still available there for reference.

• Make autoexec.cfg.example a lot smaller and slightly more opinionated. This helps with engines like Super8 that have strict limits on the amount of initial config stuff that can be executed through quake.rc; it's now slightly nicer/easier to just instantly rename and start using this file; and I don't have to keep trying to maintain cut-down versions of the discussions in the annotated version.

• Add the Blue Monday Jam to the installables (episodes/hubs, new hotness menu).

• Always some doc improvements here and there!

Quakestarter 2.0.2

To use this package, most people should download quakestarter-2.0.2.zip from below. Unzip it, and start with the quakestarter_readme.txt file.

Note: For a package WITHOUT the included Quake engine (Quakespasm-Spiked), download quakestarter-noengine-2.0.2.zip instead. This is intended for "power users" who already have Quakespasm-Spiked or who intend to use a different Quake engine. If you're not sure which package to get, that is probably NOT the one you want; get the usual quakestarter-2.0.2.zip package in that case.

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Changes in this release:

• Final pass through 2020 releases looking for installables. The only change is to add Xmas Jam 2020.

• Improve (again) the documentation of transparency-related settings in the example autoexec.cfg files.

• A little discussion about vkQuake not supporting the two described gl_ console vars.

• Other minor docs/messages updates.

Quakestarter 2.0.1

To use this package, most people should download quakestarter-2.0.1.zip from below. Unzip it, and start with the quakestarter_readme.txt file.

Note: For a package WITHOUT the included Quake engine (Quakespasm-Spiked), download quakestarter-noengine-2.0.1.zip instead. This is intended for "power users" who already have Quakespasm-Spiked or who intend to use a different Quake engine. If you're not sure which package to get, that is probably NOT the one you want; get the usual quakestarter-2.0.1.zip package in that case.

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Changes in this release:

• Improve the documentation of transparency-related settings in the example autoexec.cfg files.

• Provide a bundle WITHOUT Quakespasm-Spiked as an alternative download for power users.

Quakestarter 2.0.0

To use this package, download quakestarter-2.0.0.zip from below, unzip it, and start with the quakestarter_readme.txt file.

The most visible change in this version is that Quakespasm-Spiked is now the bundled Quake engine, rather than Mark V. The number of "installables" has also increased from 58 to 75, including coverage up through October of this year.

There are a lot more changes though! See the changelog for full details.

If you're intending to replace an existing 1.x version of this package, see the upgrading_quakestarter.txt doc.

Quake SP starter pack 1.10

• Updated with the rest of the qualifying releases from 2018. Among "Latest episodes", added: the DLC patch for DM4 Jam, Halloween Jam, and Xmas Jam. Among "Other highly-rated maps", added The Grim Outpost. Will probably add 2019 releases soon-ish but I want to make sure scores have had time to settle.