Quake 4
1 recomp and 1 port
Quake 4 (openQ4)
themuffinator/openQ4
openQ4: it replaces Quake 4’s engine and game libraries with a GPL-licensed engine, based on the Doom 3 and Doom 3 BFG Edition code that id Software released, and with game code from the Quake 4 SDK, which remains under that SDK’s license. It runs with the game’s original files and doesn’t support mods built on its original DLLs. It’s in beta. It runs at any resolution, on ultrawide and multi-monitor setups, and on 144 or 240 Hz displays it draws the camera, weapons, and objects interpolated between the game’s 60 ticks per second without changing its timing. It adds optional effects (bloom, HDR, anti-aliasing, soft particles, baked indirect lighting, cel shading, a CRT filter, and shadow maps), a new interface alongside the classic one, swimmable liquids in maps built for them, OpenAL audio with the game’s reverb and 3D headphone sound, a separate dialogue volume and subtitles, controller support, an experimental virtual reality mode for PC headsets, menus in twelve languages, an arena campaign with bots, the campaign of Quake 4: The Awakening, an unfinished expansion that was never released, if you supply its content, multiplayer with a server browser, bots, and voice chat, a demo library and player, a Vulkan renderer (stable on Windows and experimental on Linux and macOS), and PBR materials for mods. There are packages for Windows, Linux, Steam Deck, and Apple silicon macOS (preview), plus an experimental Android APK. The latest tagged version is 0.14.000 (October 12). Its README calls it “proudly vibecoded,” meaning written with AI, and one of its last 100 commits lists Claude as a co-author. The repository includes the game’s text (dialogue and objectives) in English and other languages, and about 3 GB of data generated from the game’s maps: baked lighting and loading screen images captured inside the maps themselves.
You needYour own copy of Quake 4 for PC, from Steam or GOG: the complete q4base folder, with the unnumbered language archive (such as zpak_english.pk4); The Awakening also needs its own content, installed separately. Plus Windows 7 or later (x64; ARM64 experimental), 64-bit Linux (x86-64, or ARM64 as a preview), SteamOS 3 on Steam Deck, or macOS 11 or later on Apple silicon (preview); a 64-bit CPU, 4 GB of RAM, a graphics card with a compatibility-profile OpenGL driver, and about 12 GB of free space.
Quake 4 (Xbox 360)
cyberheater/Xbox-360-Quake4-decomp
A static recompilation of the Xbox 360 version for Windows, built on the ReXGlue SDK. The author started it to get a smooth version with the console’s joypad support and auto aim (the original ran at a frame rate between 10 and 60). It boots straight to the title screen, and menus, intro movies and the first level run, at a locked 60 fps, with a settings menu (F10) and a frame counter (F9). v0.2.0 (October 22) adds a native Direct3D 11 renderer, a q4hle.exe, a 120 Hz game tick, a graphics page in the game’s own options menu with resolution up to 5120x2880, FXAA, texture filtering and side-by-side stereoscopic 3D, and a CRT filter. The author says only the first levels have been tested and that crashes are to be expected further in; an earlier hand-written runtime is also kept, as source only. It contains no recompiled code, executable or game data; the download is a 0.4 MB installer that sets the project up. It states it was made with the help of Claude; all 11 of its commits list it as a co-author.
You needYour own copy of Quake 4 for Xbox 360 (the disc or its ISO): the game reads the ISO directly or an extracted folder, and asks where it is if it can’t find it. Windows with Visual Studio 2022 (C++, Clang tools and CMake workloads) and Git for the setup; paths are currently hard-coded to C:\Quake4.
Installs with
Questions
Can you play Quake 4 natively on PC?
Yes, though unfinished. The catalog has 1 recomp and 1 port, and one of them is already playable.
What do I need to play it?
Your own copy of Quake 4 (Windows). Recompendium only links projects that don’t distribute the game, and each entry says which version or region you need.
Which one is the most popular?
Quake 4 (openQ4), with 175 stars on GitHub.