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Install Quake and the Arcane Dimensions Mod on a modern Windows system

How to Install Quake and the Arcane Dimensions Mod

Assumptions

This guide assumes you're using Windows 10 and the Steam version of Quake. Although it might work for other systems I don't have access to said systems. We will use Quakespasm as the Quake Engine.

Install Quake

  • Download and Install Quake from Steam
  • You can also install Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon and Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity, if you like. Scourge of Armagon is seen as the better of the two.

Install the Soundtrack

Steam doesn't provide the Soundtrack for the game but there is a way.

  • Go to the Quake Soundtrack Solutions Guide on Steam.
  • Download the soundtrack files
  • Find your Quake install directory, C:\Program File (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Quake or similar. If you can't find it, you can use the Steam interface to do so:
    • Right click on Quake, click Properties then Local Files and finally Browse Local Files
  • You should have an id1\music directory for Quake, for Mission Pack 1 a hypnotic\music direcory and for Mission Pack 2 a rogue\music directory
  • Unzip the files you downloaded from the Steam Guide and copy the contents of the music directory to the respective directories shown in the previous step.
  • Say yes if asked to overwrite existing files in the destination directory

Install Quakespasm (Quake Engine)

  • Download Quakespasm for your OS
  • Extract or copy the contents to your Quake directory. Don't copy the directory itself, copy the contents of the directory. Quakespasm needs to see the id1 directory to work.
  • Test Quakespasm is working by opening quakespasm.exe from your Quake directory

Change Quake Defaults

Run quakespasm.exe again if it's not still open.

Movement Options

  • Navigate to Options using your keyboard
  • Set Always Run to Quakespasm by moving to the option and pressing enter to cycle through the options
    • According to the Quakespasm release notes for 0.93.0 the always run options do the following:
    off (cl_alwaysrun 0, cl_forwardspeed 200, cl_backspeed 200)
    vanilla (cl_alwaysrun 0, cl_forwardspeed 400, cl_backspeed 400)
    quakespasm (cl_alwaysrun 1, cl_forwardspeed 200, cl_backspeed 200)
    
  • Check that Mouse Look is set to On and Lookstrafe and Lookspring is set to Off

Video Options

  • Navigate to Video Options and set your resolution, refresh rate and turn fullscreen on
  • Test Changes then Apply Changes if there are no problems

Anti-Aliasing (Optional)

These instructions are for Nvidia but should be similar for AMD Radeon cards.

  • Open Nvidia Control Panel by right clicking the Desktop and choosing Nvidia Control Panel
  • Click Manage 3D Settings then Program Settings
  • Click Add and locate the quakespasm executable (quakespasm.exe)
  • Choose the following settings and adjust them if you need to for your particular system:
    • Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
    • Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting
    • Antialiasing - Setting: 8x

Console Options

Press ` or in some cases Esc to activate the console menu. You can also use Options > Go to Console

FOV

  • Type fov to see your field of view. For screens 27" or greater set it to 115 to 120. If smaller, try 100 to 110. For example: fov 115 sets it to 115. You can confirm with fov

Crosshair

  • Type crosshair 1 to enable the crosshair
  • Type scr_crosshairscale 2 to make it bigger

Install Arcane Dimensions

To fully appreciate AD, I recommend you play through Quake using quakespasm first.

Download Arcane Dimensions

Go to www.quaddicted.com and download both ad_v1_70final.zip and the patch ad_v1_70patch1.zip

Copy Files

  • Create a new directory called ad in your Quake installation directory
  • Unzip both zip files you downloaded to your desktop or somewhere convenient
  • Copy the contents of ad_v1_70final to the ad directory
  • In the next step you will be overwriting some of the files you just added. I found it safer to copy the files first and then the contents of each directory
  • Copy the contents of ad_v1_70patch1 to the ad directory. You can do it however you want but make sure you say yes to any overwrite prompts.

Create Shortcut

  • From inside the ad directory, right click and choose New Shortcut
  • Navigate to the quakespasm executable quakespasm.exe. It's in your Quake directory. Click Next.
  • Type in a name for the shortcut, something like quakespasm_ad.exe
  • Right click the shortcut and choose Properties. In the Target field and outside the double quotes, type -game ad. Click OK.
    • For clarity: "C:\Program File (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Quake\ad\quakespasm_ad.exe" -game ad

Launch Arcane Dimensions

Open quakespasm_ad.exe and you should see AD written on the menu. If not you have a problem somewhere and you need to retrace your steps.

That's it, if you want to play Quake, you open the quakespasm.exe in your Quake directory and if you want to play Arcane Dimensions, you open quakespasm_ad.exe in your ad directory. You can save your game via Esc > Single Player > Save for both versions.

Resources

Resources I used to write this guide:

@larsonmpdx
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after adding the soundtrack, my music volume was too low to fix with the in-game sliders. I deleted the .ogg files and used mp3gain to set dB to 100 and it was good

@JHerseth
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Thanks. Good writeup.

@J-JLucas
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thank you, very helpful!

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