This past month of August, I was feeling like replaying the Nintendo 64 version of Quake 2, mainly because I couldn’t remember any of the game’s maps apart from them being completely different from the PC version. Alas, after getting my console from storage and setting it up, I found out it died while in its sleep.
Since the game doesn’t seem to work very well on the emulators I tried it with (items and enemies are seen through walls), I searched the web to find out if someone had done a PC port of the game, similarly to the Doom 64 total conversion available. Since all I could uncover were
forum posts of people complaining that said mod was nowhere to be found I got frustrated.
Due to boredom, I started to recreate the big water room from the first map. After completing it, I figured, “I’ll just make the next room as well” until I ended up completely making the first map from scratch. Again, struck by boredom, completed the second map, then the third and finally just settled on completing the first planet from the game.
It’s a pretty cool version. Surely some maps would end up not looking very good, like the caves area, as I’m not that great with outdoors / natural stuff, but I guess they could end up close enough to the source material. Most significantly, it would require at least some custom coding for the N64 exclusive items and in game stuff, like a trigger to change gravity used in maps up ahead and I’m having trouble finding tutorials on how to do that kind of thing. Q2 modding tutorials seem to have fallen off a cliff.
[quote=dwere]MaxED started the same kind of recreation not too long ago, except his demo has only one level.
OTOH, it has textures and ambient music from the N64 version.[/quote]
I’d be interested in checking that map out, just to see how different ours are, do you happen to know where I can download it?
I was going to include the original ambient music as well, but then I got scared off because of copyright. There was this tool to extract assets from N64 rom files, but it didnt seem to work on Quake2 or I would have tried that too.
Hot damn, his version looks much closer to the original, thanks to the textures. I wonder if he’s also making the maps from scratch or adapting the ones in the rom somehow.
I guess I should have searched the web better before doing anything x) Still happy with my end result though.
Thank you so much for this, I had dreamed of the day someone would do it.
Quake 2 it’s not my favorite, I just love the first one way too much, but for some reason I always wanted to play a PC mod of Quake 2 64. Not sure why, maybe because of the very fact of being unavailable (playing through an emulator -Project64- was a PITA). It reminded me the time I waited years for the release of Half Life Decay, a similar fan project. There’s something about these obscure, rare releases that makes you wanna play them.
Of course there is a bit of nostalgia, getting your hands on “new” content for a classic. Also, call me crazy, but I think the small levels are cute, like those 1024 Congestion/Claustrophobia compilations the Doom community produces. Modding is truly one of the great things about gaming!
Again, I really appreciate your generosity in sharing your work, Joca64. It would be great if you decide to continue, here’s a cheering to that.
PD: thank you dwere for the links, I wasn’t aware of that project either.
[quote=Joca64]Hot damn, his version looks much closer to the original, thanks to the textures. I wonder if he’s also making the maps from scratch or adapting the ones in the rom somehow.
I guess I should have searched the web better before doing anything x) Still happy with my end result though.[/quote]
You should contact MaxED. As I said earlier, you could merge your two projects and work together to make faster progress and avoid redundancy.
It should be possible to extract BSP’s from N64 rom image, but don’t ask me how to do it ^^ There is a guy that did this with Quake1 Sega Saturn → http://richwhitehouse.com/index.php?postid=68
Well at least two pairs of hands work faster than one and you could help him with the less complex parts. MaxED still has only one map done and I’d hate that either of you gets discouraged by the size of the task ahead, because I’d really like to play this version of Q2.
The github repository actually has the first 3 maps completed now. But yeah, if I can help, I’ll try to. Being able to play the full N64 version with mouse+keyboard controls would be great.
Yeah. I still have my N64 stashed somewhere but even if it still works, I certainly won’t touch another FPS with that horrid gamepad ever again. Or with any other gamepad for that matter. Good to know that MaxED has made progress.
This is really cool, would love to see the full game available to play some day! Though I bet it would be a lot easier than the PC Quake 2 since it was designed to be played with the tie fighter gamepad.
Not necessarily. I played Quake64 on that monster of a controller and I don’t recall it being any different than the PC version. BTW, you might want to rethink your “TIE fighter gamepad” designation: TIEs are supposed to be the most agile fighters in that galaxy far, far away, not cumbersome disasters-waiting-to-happen.
Ha! Fair enough on the controller comparison, Just trying my hand at some light humor.
The reason I say that about the Quake 2 version could be easier is while Quake 64 is basically the pc game on a cartridge, Quake 2 on N64 is an different/new game. I would think that it was designed specifically for play on the n64 controller?
