After many years away from Quake I and Quakeworld, I've recently installed MS Virtual PC 2004 SP1 on my Windows XP Pro machine and am treking back in time to days I loved.

I've installed Windows 98SE in MS Virtual PC and installed the original Quake, which works great! However, years ago I was a huge fan of Quakeworld and want to do it again. So, I installed Quakeworld client version 2.30, which I got from FilePlanet after reading there that it is the latest version (I'm not so sure it is though).

The problem I have is that I cannot get ANY quakeworld executable to run. The qwcl.exe will launch, but then goes to a totally blank, black screen and stops, permanently. Once this happens, there is no escape other than shut down and reboot the virtual OS.

I'm doing just like I did years ago in that I'm using Gamespy to locate servers and launch a game, but the same problem happens if I launch qwcl.exe directly, without Gamespy.

If there is more info I need to provide, please tell me, but I truly hope that someone can help me fix this problem. This old man, at 54, would love to get his FRAGS again!

dcalhoun38581
AKA Grasshopper

why not use nquake ? www.nquake.com

If you can get normal Quake to run on your virtual pc, then indeed, install nquake and see if that works. You might also read about extra commandline options.

Thanks for the current insight. I've downloaded nquake, but I noticed in the popup text of the link that it's for use on Windows 98/2K/XP/Vista and I'm confused about something.

Because it's DOS based, the original Quake will not run on any Windows OS newer than Win98SE. So how can nquake run on the newer OSes? Could I copy files from original Quake onto my XP machine and install nquake and run it with the Virtual PC not involved?

Thanks for helping me on this. I'm YEARS out of touch on the whole Quake scene.

dcalhoun38581

yes no need for virtual PC that it runs on 98>vista is not a lie. just install nquake on XP and copy over pak1.pak when it ask's for it in the installation. nothing more needed

lol, I was actually wondering why you were using VirtualPC. Yes. You don't need any virtualization to run Quake/Quakeworld these days. Id software released the source-code, and since then a lot of updates has happened. Quakeworld runs on Windows, Linux and Mac natively. Dunno about Quake (NQ as it's called). The most actively developed NQ client is Darkplaces AFAIK.

AFAIK you should be able to run the original Id qwcl exectuable on modern computers also, but what's the point? :-)

Geesh! I am SO behind on all this stuff!

If i'd know of this I'd probably have done it a LONG time ago. Thanks a million!

dcalhoun38581
Grasshopper will rise to frag again!

hope you will be at least mildly impressed by nquake

Well, I've got nquake installed now, but it still won't work. When I launch it I get a message like I did when I tried before to launch GLQuake. It's telling me that a required file cannot be found, that being GLIDE2X.DLL.

So, I'm going to try installing nquake directly on my XP system, with no virtual OS involved.

dcalhoun38581

Frustration is setting in, deeply.

The web page that I downloaded the installer for nquake from has no instructions on it. So, I'm not usre how to do what. I tried installing only the nquake on my XP machine, but found that it will start to run and then get stuck. When I ried to start a game, I typed in FFA, hit ENTER, then hit F3 and it responded "unknown command "ready"".

I thought, maybe it requires quakeworld to be installed, so I tried to install Quakeworld. The installer searches for my Quake folder, but fails to find one because I don't have Quake installed. So, I tried to install Quake and it responded, "Quake for DOS will not run on NT".

How on earth is anyone supposed to know what to do to make this work? I haven't got a single thing that works yet and I've spent this entire day trying. Bummer

dcalhoun38581

maybe some nquake specific problem then.. maybe try just vanilla ezquake

Sometimes starting over is the solution. I uninstalled nquake, deleted all the leftovers, reinstalled it and viola! It works great!

First impression: the graphics are incredible, the screen resolution is awesome, gamep play is FAST. This is wonderful!

A few tweaks to the config, a couple additional aliases, a LOT of practice and I'll be on the Frag again.

Thanks, immesurable.

dcalhoun38581