Quake 4 (openQ4)

Game: Quake 4 → (Windows, 2005)

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.

How it gets to PC

Port of the released source code

Console

Microsoft Windows

Original studio

Raven Software

Year

2005

Author

themuffinator

Stars

175

Last activity

2026-10-31 · today

Latest version

v0.13.2 · 2026-09-14

License

GPL-3.0

Language

C++

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