The Quake II We Deserve
Introduction
The Quake series, developed by id Software, is one of those gaming series that defined PC gaming in the 90’s. It is beyond iconic, beyond a classic. It is the foundation that not only defined a generation, but also pushed the boundaries of computer hardware appealing to gamers and hardware enthusiasts. Words simply cannot emphasize the impact of this series on PC gaming as a whole. It is therefore no surprise that to demonstrate the flexibility, power and potential of today’s latest raytracing technology, NVIDIA has chosen a game that is so iconic. NVIDIA has chosen Quake II and dubbed it Quake II RTX.
Quake II is a first-person shooter released in 1997. Yes, it is a twenty-two-year-old game, and if you haven’t played it, you absolutely must. Quake II was developed by id Software and uses the id Tech 2 gaming engine (formerly called the Quake II engine) which is the successor to the original Quake engine. The graphics engine was well known for its hardware-accelerated graphics using OpenGL. The environments were lit by using lightmaps which are precalculated. This is important to note because twenty-two years later NVIDIA has taken this game to a level that was never imagined.
Quake II RTX – Get the Game and Information
On June 6th NVIDIA released the full Quake II RTX to players that own the full game. You can now enjoy the entire game with “Path Traced” raytracing using NVIDIA RTX GPUs. That is only the tip of the iceberg however. First, you can go to steam here and grab Quake II RTX. If you do not own Quake II you can play the first few levels “shareware” style for free. However, if you want to play the entire game you will need to own it before you add Quake II RTX. Thankfully the game is cheap these days at only $5.
NVIDIA has a bunch of information available to learn about Quake II RTX, we are going to link to that material here to be informed. The official Quake II RTX webpage is located here and the official announcement trailer is here. The official launch trailer is here. Remastering 1997’s Quake II with Ray Tracing video is here. You can find the Quake II RTX Installation guide + Multiplayer + FAQ posted on STEAM here.
A very complete page of what’s new in the game and how to use it is posted on NVIDIA.com here. There are also two detailed PDFs full of information. There is a Getting Started Guide PDF. Finally, there is an Advanced User Guide PDF.
It is important to note the requirements to run this. OS: Windows 7 64-bit or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64-bit. Processor: Intel Core i3-3220, or AMD equivalent. Memory: 8 GB RAM. Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, or higher. Storage: 2GB available space.
While it does say it needs a GeForce RTX 2060 the GeForce GTX series will work, albeit very slowly. You will also need the latest OS updates. Remember, DirectX RTX support was introduced in the 2018 Fall Windows 10 update. NVIDIA recommends installing the Windows 10 May 2019 update. However, take note that this game is using the Vulkan API. Also, very importantly you need driver version 430.86 at a minimum, the game will refuse to run if you have any driver lesser than this.