QuakeSpasm

Debian’s quakespasm 0.96.3, unpatched, with the Quake shareware data. It plays the shareware’s demo1 timedemo at 91.0 steady fps with almost no stalling (batch 2026-10-18-mesa-407-switches), and its played session of 2026-10-26 (the GLSL launcher) had a 70 fps median with a 1% low of 42 and no audible dropouts: one of the games that meet the 60 fps target with room to spare.

Packages, data and settings

• quakespasm from Debian, nothing of ours in the binary. Two menu entries of ours (desktop/launchers) replace Debian’s (diverted): “QuakeSpasm (GLSL)” and a -noglsl one, both -basedir /usr/share/games/quake -nopackedpixels -width 1920 -height 1080 -fullscreen, packed hidden (NoDisplay=true, X-Walnut-Requires=/usr/share/games/quake/id1/pak0.pak, which the shareware and the full game both have), so they show only with the original game’s data; a third, Quake (2021 re-release), for the re-release’s own folder (below). Don’t install the quake launcher package: it pulls GTK 4.
• -nopackedpixels: 0.96.3’s packed-pixel lightmaps give wrong colours and dlight wraparound on big-endian (quakespasm issue #114). Upstream master disables the path on big-endian; nv30 has no 10-bit format anyway.
• The data (licensed, not in the public suite): quake-shareware (/usr/share/games/quake/id1/pak0.pak, Quake 1.06 shareware, 18 MB, demo1-3), built once on the PC by game-data-packager 89 (make game-data, the Debian games builder with lhasa; the shareware archive downloaded from id’s mirrors and kept in build/downloads/game-data) as quake-shareware_89_all.deb, Section non-free/games, and published once to our licensed suite, since game-data-packager’s output isn’t reproducible: the version 89 files the LAN repository published are in the retirement backup’s ps3-licensed-debs/, and make publish DEBS="<those files>" before the next make game-data keeps them the same. Install it by name or from Walnut Games (ps3-games-licensed, which pulled it in, is retired). A registered Quake needs the player’s own id1/pak0.pak and pak1.pak (the data guide on the game’s page).

How it performs

• Bench (batch 2026-10-18-mesa-407-switches, the kicker on, same boot): steady 91.0, 1% low 48.6, 2.5 s of gameplay stalls (10 frames over 100 ms), longest 393 ms, 44 MB free at the lowest, 49 MB of VRAM, 5 underruns. Mesa’s NV30_TRANSLATE_LUT=1 changed nothing in fps (90.9/91.0 against 91.0/90.8) but saved about 3% of the CPU.
• Memory: 58 MB Rss, its 256 MB heap mapping 24.8 MB touched. The cache inside the heap never needs flushing at this size, so sounds and models stay loaded; nothing to cut (MEMORY.md).
• How it got there: the first runs on 2026-10-17 gave 59.2 fps without GLSL, 64.8 with, 70.3 with the gamma pass, colours right; Mesa ps3.262 took it from 70.5 to 78.6 (+11%, batch 2026-10-17-mesa-262).

The recipe (benchmark/recipe.sh) can’t use +timedemo on the command line: the shareware’s own quake.rc runs startdemos demo1 demo2 demo3 after the command line and the attract loop replaces the timedemo, and the shareware refuses -game directories. So a quake.rc of ours in ~/.quakespasm/id1 loops the timedemo by frame count (bench starts it and waits 1100 host frames; demo1’s timedemo is 969 frames), since QuakeSpasm has no hook at a demo’s end: about 5 warm-up passes of 13 s, then about 9 measured. A line starting with -1 frames means a timedemo started before the last one ended. Base keeps GLSL on with gamma at 1.0, so the full-screen gamma pass doesn’t run; variants noglsl and glslgamma.

The 2021 re-release

QuakeSpasm 0.94 and later play Nightdive’s 2021 re-release (its Quakespasm.txt, “Quake ‘2021 re-release’”), and Debian’s 0.96.3 does it on the PS3 unchanged: started with -basedir on a folder holding the re-release’s id1, it loads the strings of the new QuakeC (“Loaded 1317 strings from ’localization/loc_english.txt’”), runs the demo loop (demo1 in the Necropolis) and +map e1m1, with the right picture (xwd fullscreen, looked at) and id1/music/track06.ogg open for e1m1.

• What GOG’s installer holds. setup_quake_enhanced_1.0_(60828).exe (607645056 bytes, sha256 da3b4acc…4cff, “Quake Enhanced”, GOG game id 1739637082): id1/pak0.pak (180815252 bytes, 1121 entries: 70 BSPs, 42 .lit coloured-lighting files, md5 models and animations, PNG menu art, the Kex engine’s bots and controller rumble files, a new progs.dat); id1/music/track02-11.ogg, byte for byte the Ogg rip game-data-packager already knows as quake_campaign_soundtrack.zip; QuakeEX.kpf (a zip of the Kex engine’s shaders and text: QuakeSpasm reads only localization/loc_english.txt from it, from the base directory or the kpf there); the add-ons’ re-release paks (hipnotic 76 MiB with music, rogue 42 MiB with music, dopa 39 MiB, mg1 474 MiB, ctf 20 MiB); the Kex engine’s executable, DLLs and movies. No pak1.pak: the re-release’s pak0 is the whole game, so it can’t stand in for quake-registered’s paks.
• Memory. The same as the original game: VmHWM after 40-60 s on e1m1 was 71.5 and 72.3 MB against 71.1 MB for quake-registered’s paks, and 56.4 against 53.9 MB in another pair (game mode’s reclaim moves the figure by more than the edition does); 25-28 MB free at the end of each run.
• Packaging. game-data-packager 0012 adds quake-rerelease (edition remaster) in /usr/share/games/quake-rerelease: the pak, the strings taken out of QuakeEX.kpf (77 KB, not the 13.5 MB kpf) and the music as optional files (gdp makes quake-music only as an expansion of quake-registered, so the re-release carries its own copy). GOG’s installer is unpacked with innoextract for it. Our launcher quakespasm-rerelease.desktop (Quake (2021 re-release), GLSL, NoDisplay with X-Walnut-Requires on the pak) starts it with -basedir /usr/share/games/quake-rerelease -game rerelease (its own user folder, below). The import on the PS3 found two gdp bugs, fixed as 0013 and 0014: -p given before the game name was reset by the quake subparser’s shortcut options, so with quake-registered installed gdp also built quake-music and quake-dimension-of-the-machine from the installer (walnut-data refuses a deb it did not ask for); and a GOG setup_*.exe gave every package an icon converted from the installer’s .ico (python3-pil), which the manifest can’t know.
• Its own user folder. QuakeSpasm 0.96.3 has no -userdir: Debian builds it with DO_USERDIRS=1 and Sys_GetUserdir (sys_sdl_unix.c) fixes it at ~/.quakespasm from the passwd entry ($HOME only when that fails), whatever -basedir says. What it does keep apart is the game directory: COM_AddGameDirectory adds <basedir>/<game> and ~/.quakespasm/<game> for id1 and for a -game, and config.cfg and the saves go to the last one (com_gamedir). So the launcher passes -game rerelease: at start-up -game needs no such folder in the base directory (only the game console command checks), the re-release’s id1 stays the base, and its settings and saves land in ~/.quakespasm/rerelease. ~/.quakespasm/id1 is still on the search path behind it: on its first start the re-release reads the original game’s config.cfg (once; it writes its own on quit), and an autoexec.cfg or quake.rc there applies to both. Checked with Debian’s 0.96.3 amd64 build as a dedicated server (below): “Playing registered version” with -game rerelease, and the map loads.
• The add-ons. The installer’s hipnotic (79928896 bytes), rogue (44490612) and dopa (40600041) paks are the re-release’s own builds, each with its own progs.dat (with quake.rc and default.cfg for hipnotic, quake.rc for rogue); mg1/pak0.pak is the one game-data-packager already knows as Dimension of the Machine. QuakeSpasm 0.94 added the re-release’s builtins (PR_PatchRereleaseBuiltins) and 0.94.2-0.96.3 fixed DOTM maps. Debian’s 0.96.3 amd64 binary as a dedicated server (-dedicated 1 -basedir <the installer's files> -game <dir>, map for every BSP of each pak through a pty, status after each) spawned all of them with the re-release’s QuakeC and no Host_Error: hipnotic’s 18 maps, rogue’s 17, dopa’s 13, mg1’s 25 (horde1-7 too) and ctf’s 10. The only warnings were map ones (no external .vis, mg1’s visleafs over the old 8192 limit, two textures not 16-aligned). That covers the server side; the picture, the HUD (-game hipnotic and rogue set QuakeSpasm’s mission-pack status bars) and the music are the PS3’s check (TESTS, Scheduled). game-data-packager 0015 packages them as expansions of quake-rerelease in its folder: quake-rerelease-armagon (the pak and hipnotic/music/track02-09.ogg, the re-release’s own encodes, not the johnnylaw rips gdp knows), quake-rerelease-dissolution (likewise for rogue), quake-rerelease-dopa and quake-rerelease-dimension-of-the-machine; the music is optional, as for quake-rerelease. QuakeTask wrote hipnotic-tryexec.sh/rogue-tryexec.sh into /usr/share/games/quake for any package with a hipnotic or rogue file (the quake wrapper’s detector; it would clash with quake-armagon’s and the helper would refuse it): 0015 writes it only for packages in $assets/quake. Launchers quakespasm-rerelease-{armagon,dissolution,dopa,mg1} (Quake (2021): Scourge of Armagon and so on), -game hipnotic|rogue|dopa|mg1, NoDisplay with X-Walnut-Requires on each pak. Their user folders are ~/.quakespasm/<dir>, shared with the classic packages of the same add-on (quake-armagon and the rest), which Walnut doesn’t offer. Steam’s re-release and other GOG builds are unchecked (other checksums would need alternatives).
• Not packaged. ctf/pak0.pak (Threewave CTF, 20 MiB): multiplayer only, and QuakeSpasm has no bots; it loads (10 maps in the dedicated-server check).
• Space. The four add-ons built from the installer on the PC with gdp 89+ps3.965~dev (-p for each, as walnut-data runs it) in 26 s: 107.7, 72.8, 40.7 and 496.9 MB debs beside quake-rerelease’s 263.5, every file accepted by walnut-games-helper’s manifest check. Walnut Data’s space check counts every package of the game an installer may hold (1.1 GB with the add-ons, the music at 12 MB a track), so a plain walnut-data import quakespasm <installer> now asks for about 4.4 GB free in the cache’s file system, where it asked about 1.8 GB before; -p quake-rerelease alone about 1.9 GB. The PS3 had 3.4 GB free after the re-release’s import.

Known problems

• ~/.quakespasm/id1 is behind the re-release’s own ~/.quakespasm/rerelease on its search path (above): its first start takes the original game’s settings, and an autoexec.cfg there applies to both editions.

• The interface text is tiny at 1080p (8 px; -15 on the session’s Display score).

• A DualShock 3 plugged in by USB but not yet activated (PS button) made the menu cursor run up by itself: hid-sony left the idle sticks at 0 (full up and left). Kernel local/0050 starts the sticks centred; its PS3 check is pending (docs/TESTS.md, batch kernel-0050).

• QUAKE ERROR: You must have the registered version to use modified games (one run, 2026-10-16) was a launch-option error: the shareware refuses -game.

Research

What the surveys and plans said about it, newest first; each line names its source, the section and the date.

• 2026-10-16, game-candidates.md, “Candidates”: ezQuake 3.6.8 (Debian ezquake, 6 MB) was the other Quake engine looked at: big-endian fixes upstream, a modern GL 4.x renderer (tier X) and a classic path (tier C, untried); left out because QuakeSpasm covers Quake (ezquake).
• 2026-10-15, the user’s first wish list (backlog.txt, commit 7d58e3d), “2. GPU driver and game support”: a strong candidate: Quake 1, GL 1.x, a tiny footprint, PPC-friendly.