QWCD Quake Bootable Linux CD Released

Ozh writes "QuakeWorld players will want to try this interesting light Penguin-powered 'live distro' : QWCD provides a ready-to-frag nothing-to-install QuakeWorld installation, playable from the bootable CD. It includes popular Quake clients FuhQuake and MWQCL, comes with an up-to-date Kernel, and every piece of software a player should need (ATI and nVidia drivers, internet connexion and browser, IRC client...). Has Quaking at the office ever been easier?"

Comments

Only 46MB

[SpaFF]

The ISO is only 46MB, which means you could put this thing on a business-card CD and tote it around in your wallet. How cool is that!

Re:Only 46MB

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it would beat actually talking to people.

Re:Now the question is...

[cjpez]

You can buy them from ID Software if you don't mind paying fucking $20 or more for it. ID's pricing really pisses me off for their older stuff. I mean, yes, Quake was a great game, but $20? And that's for them to ship you a physical CD of the thing. If you want just a little digital download of the thing, it's an extra five bucks! That makes no sense at all. Also note that Quake 3 only costs $20 as well.

Also notice how Wolfenstein 3D is $20, but for only $5 more you can get Return to Castle Wolfenstein. WTF? That's one hell of a $5 bill.

more!

[Apreche]

I can't wait for pc games to be officially released in LiveCD format. It would definitely give a much needed boost to PC gaming. Making it easier to make games run and not having to configured crazy drivers and such makes it better for all gamers.

Not only that, but having the game be the only thing occupying your system gets rid of a whole heck of a lot of useless overhead and can help to crank up the fps and such on lower powered machines. Lower system requirements means more potential customers. No software dependency means linux and windows users will both be all over it.

Maybe Carmack will make a Doom 3 livecd, we can only hope.

Re:more!

[Jahf]

So load the games off CD with an option to install locally.

A number of folks still don't have 3D working on their Linux box, so it is a convenience for them. If you are one of those who take the time to get it all working, use the copy option to get better speed.

I admit that having to reboot to play a game can be annoying (it's been awhile since that was a common practice), but it makes a good option. Plus, if done right and the game is small enough, you could have a bootable Linux version -and- an installable Windows version on the same disk.

Take for instance Neverwinter Nights ... the big difference between the two platforms (Linux/Windows) is in the executables, which are fairly small. We know you can get a bootable Linux gaming distro into about 30MB. Make it a bootable Linux CD but -also- have a Windows installable executable on it (and a copy option to copy the Linux binaries down to disk). Put all of the data on the other disks if you need more space (or on a DVD but I don't think that is quite to the pervasive level yet).

If the developer takes the time to create a multiplatform game, then they can be guaranteed of shipping an OS that meets their dependencies while also giving options for you to use it in your native OS installation.

I thought

[stienman]

Since Emacs is an OS, why don't they port quake to it, and then make a boot CD out of that? Quake under Emacs should only be a 2-3 line script anyway.

-Adam

Game OS?

[Fiz Ocelot]

This just gave me an idea. What if game devs were to do this, like a customized operating system for their game? It could be just like this, stripped down bare bones, just enough to run the game very well.

It sounds cool from a pure performance stand point, but of course you'd be missing a lot too. None of your custom configs and other programs etc. But just performance wise, it could be awsome.? Well overall it would be inconvenient, yet another crazy idea.

Re:Game OS?

[CableModemSniper]

They did do this, they were called custom boot floppies and they were a pain in the neck to setup. I think gaming has become much less of a hassle now that those days are over.

Re:Game OS?

[Fiz Ocelot]

Technically yes it's what a console is, but I'm just talking about PC games. As in a particular developer, lets say Epic made a linux distro called Unreal OS. Or ID made DoomX. A custom distro on a developer/game basis instead of how it is with a console.

It might make for an interesting project for fun.

Legal Quake datafile replacements

[0x0d0a]

Are there any freely available Pak files that can be used as replacements to the originals?

There is a free reimplementation of the textures.

There is a free reimplementation of the audio effects.

It is extremely unlikely that there will ever be legal full "drop-in replacements" for the id pak files simply because the maps must be identical to interoperate (not just "kinda work similarly) and the maps are copyrighted by id and were never made free-as-in-beer.

It is entirely possible that people will just start using new (freely-available) maps, however. For example, the Team Fortress maps are freely redistributable.

I am not sure if there has been a project to fully reimplement the Q1 models (it'd be neat if someone did higher-poly-count versions).

Re:Uhh... Quake is like, OLD man

[colk99]

hrm I guess this quake install that I just did should be impossiable seeing as I have XP:) yes the dos version of quake (the orignal) probly did require dos but their was a quake pack released with the expansions that had winquake and glquake (which runs at > 200 fps on todays machines. Which installs just fine under windows XP