The ''Quake II'' engine is a

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software i ...

developed by

id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and ar ...

for use in their 1997

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

Quake II ''Quake II'' is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. It is the second installment of the Quake (series), ''Quake'' series, but not a direct sequel to ''Quake (video game), Quake''. The game ...

''. It is the successor to the ''Quake'' engine. Since its release, the ''Quake II'' engine has been licensed for use in several other games. One of the engine's most notable features was out-of-the-box support for hardware-accelerated graphics, specifically

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

, along with the traditional software renderer. Another interesting feature was the subdivision of some of the components into

dynamic-link libraries Dynamic-link library (DLL) is Microsoft's implementation of the shared library concept in the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems. These libraries usually have the file extension DLL, OCX (for libraries containing ActiveX controls), o ...

. This allowed both software and OpenGL renderers, which were selected by loading and unloading separate libraries. Libraries were also used for the game logic, for two reasons: *id could release the source code to allow modifications while keeping the remainder of the engine proprietary. *Since they were compiled for specific platforms, instead of an interpreter, they could run faster than ''Quakes solution, which was to run the game logic (

QuakeC QuakeC is a compiled language developed in 1996 by John Carmack of id Software to program parts of the video game '' Quake''. Using QuakeC, a programmer is able to customize ''Quake'' to great extents by adding weapons, changing game logic and ...

) in a limited interpreter. The level format, as with previous id Software engines, used

binary space partitioning In computer science, binary space partitioning (BSP) is a method for space partitioning which recursively subdivides a Euclidean space into two convex sets by using hyperplanes as partitions. This process of subdividing gives rise to a represen ...

. The level environments were lit using

lightmap A lightmap is a data structure used in lightmapping, a form of surface caching in which the brightness of surfaces in a virtual scene is pre-calculated and stored in texture maps for later use. Lightmaps are most commonly applied to static o ...

s, a method in which light data for each surface is precalculated (this time, via a radiosity method) and stored as an image, which is then used to determine the lighting intensity each 3D model should receive, but not its direction. id Software released the source code on December 22, 2001 under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.

Games using the ''Quake II'' engine

Games using a proprietary license

*''

'' (1997) by

**'' Quake II Mission Pack: The Reckoning'' (1998) by

Xatrix Entertainment Gray Matter Interactive Studios, Inc. (Gray Matter Studios; formerly Xatrix Entertainment, Inc.) was an American video game developer based in Los Angeles. History Drew Markham and his business partner Barry Dempsey founded Xatrix Entertain ...

**'' Quake II Mission Pack: Ground Zero'' (1998) by

Rogue Entertainment Rogue Entertainment was an American computer game developer based in Dallas, Texas, which was active in the late 1990s. It was founded by Rich Fleider, Steve Maines, and Jim Molinets in 1994. Rogue Entertainment's office was in the same buildin ...

*''

Heretic II ''Heretic II'' is a dark fantasy action-adventure game developed by Raven Software and published by Activision in 1998 continuing the story of Corvus, the main character from its predecessor, '' Heretic''. It is the fourth game in the '' Hexen: ...

'' (1998) by

Raven Software Raven Software Corporation is an American video game developer based in Wisconsin and founded in 1990. In 1997, Raven made an exclusive publishing deal with Activision and was subsequently acquired by them. After the acquisition, many of the stu ...

*''

SiN In a religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, s ...

'' (1998) by

Ritual Entertainment Ritual Entertainment was an American video game developer established in 1996 by Robert Atkins, Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dosé, Richard 'Levelord' Gray, Michael Hadwin, Harry Miller, and Tom Mustaine. Based in Dallas, Texas, Ritual Entertainment wa ...

**'' SiN: Wages of Sin'' (1999) by Ritual Entertainment *'' Kingpin: Life of Crime'' (1999) by Xatrix Entertainment *'' Soldier of Fortune'' (2000) by Raven Software *''

Daikatana ''Daikatana'' is a 2000 first-person shooter game developed by Ion Storm. It was published by Eidos Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Kemco for Nintendo 64. Players control a swordsmaster who travels through various time periods in an effor ...

'' (2000) by

Ion Storm Ion Storm, L.P. was an American video game developer founded by video game industry veterans John Romero and Tom Hall, both formerly of id Software. Despite an impressive pedigree and high expectations, the company only produced one commercial ...

*'' Anachronox'' (2001) by Ion Storm *''Dawn of Darkness'' (1999) by Ward Six Entertainment

Games based on the GPL source release

*'' UFO: Alien Invasion'' (2003) by UFO: Alien Invasion Team *'' Gravity Bone'' (2008) by

Blendo Games Blendo Games is an American independent video game development company based in Culver City, California. It was founded by Brendon Chung in 2010 and is primarily a one-person effort. Blendo Games gained more widespread exposure with the short fo ...

*'' Warsow'' (2012) by Warsow Team *''

Thirty Flights of Loving ''Thirty Flights of Loving'' is a first-person adventure video game developed by Brendon Chung under the name Blendo Games. It was published in August 2012 for Microsoft Windows, in November 2012 for OS X, and in December 2021 for Linux. The ga ...

'' (2012) by Blendo Games *'' Alien Arena: Warriors of Mars'' (2017) by COR Entertainment

Ports

* Jake2 is a

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

port of the ''Quake II'' engine's

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

release. It has since been used by

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

as an example of

Java Web Start In computing, Java Web Start (also known as JavaWS, javaws or JAWS) is a deprecated framework developed by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) that allows users to start application software for the Java Platform directly from the Internet using a web br ...

capabilities for games distribution over the Internet. In 2006, it was used to experiment playing 3D games with

eye tracking Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research ...

. The performance of Jake2 is on par with the original C version. * Yamagi Quake II is a port of ''Quake II'' to modern systems which aims to preserve the original gameplay. * vkQuake2 is the original ''Quake II'' engine with additional

Vulkan Vulkan is a low- overhead, cross-platform API, open standard for 3D graphics and computing. Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media. Vulkan is intended to offer higher perfor ...

renderer created by Krzysztof Kondrak, a programmer from Poland. It was originally released in December 2018 under the

GPLv2 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

References

External links

*
Official ''Quake II'' engine source code, as originally released
at

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

Official ''Quake II'' engine source code, version 3.21
at id Software {{Video game engines 1997 software Formerly proprietary software Free game engines Game engines for Linux Id Tech Quake (series)