Obtaining asset files ===================== vkQuake is an open source Quake engine, it does not ship with any proprietary assets (textures, sounds, etc) from the original game. If you want to play the game in all of its glory, you'll need to obtain these assets. Either the original, or the Enhanced (2021) version by Nightdive Studios should work. There are many ways to obtain these assets: game-data-packager ------------------ This is the recommended, Debian-native way to obtain and manage Quake 1 (and other) game asset files. You can either point it to an existing directory or let it download the shareware version of the game from the internet. It'll then compile the found assets into one or more .deb files for installation and management by the Debian package manager. Install the game-data-packager package and read game-data-packager(6) for more information. Proprietary game stores ----------------------- vkQuake has support for auto discovering your already-installed Quake game if it was purchased from Steam, GOG, or the Epic Game Store. If it matters to you: GOG will provide you with a *DRM-free* game. Once purchased, you should be able to just launch the game and have it auto discover the installed game and its assets. You can tweak which game store(s) to probe using the -[no]egs, -[no]steam, -[no]gog launch flags. Copy the assets manually ------------------------ Or, you could also manually create a .vkquake directory in your home directory and copy over the 'id1' directory from your installed game. It should contain at least a 'pak0.pak' file. Please not that these paths are case-sensitive; use lowercase. If you're using the remaster, you can copy 'QuakeEX.kpf' to the .vkquake directory instead. ~/.vkquake is the default "base directory", you can change where the game finds this by using the -basedir argument. If you have both the original game AND the remaster installed, you can use the -original/-remaster flags to prefer one or the other. Any mods that are included with any of these installs can also be copied over, e.g. the hipnotic, ad, rogue subdirectories. They can be launched from the in-game menu, or via the '-game ' argument, where is the directory's name. Launching the game ================== By default, vkQuake will look in ~/.vkquake for your game data (or use the store detection logic described above), this can be changed with the -basedir argument, e.g. vkquake -basedir /usr/share/games/quake This will point vkQuake to use the assets installed from the .dpkg files you created and installed if you used game-data-packager mentioned above. You can also launch a mod directly using the -game flag: vkquake -basedir /mnt/games/quake -game qbj3 This will launch you into the Quake Brutalist Jam III mod, which can be downloaded for free from: https://www.slipseer.com/index.php?resources/quake-brutalist-jam-iii.549/ It must be extracted to a "qbj3" subdirectory in your base directory (-basedir). The quake package ----------------- You could also install the quake package, which will provide you with a more Debian native way to discover (using the alternatives system) and launch your preferred Quake engine with any necessary arguments to use the assets installed by game-data-packager. It also provides desktop launchers for the base Quake game and any discovered mods. User data ========= By default, vkQuake will use the .vkquake base directory to store its user data (configs and save files), this can be changed by supplying the '-multiuser' flag, which will cause the game to better follow the XDG Base Directory standard, and instead store these files in ~/.local/share/vkQuake. -- John Rowley Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:50:23 +0100