Fancy playing Quake with the Vulkan API? Now you can

People at id still use Linux post-Carmack, huh? Hmmm. Not that it means much, but it is interesting to note.

People at id still use Linux post-Carmack, huh? Hmmm. Not that it means much, but it is interesting to note.

Well, no. As pointed out, he didn't do the Linux side of it.

People at id still use Linux post-Carmack, huh? Hmmm. Not that it means much, but it is interesting to note.

The article states "a friend did that for him." Gneiting did the Vulkan part. The Linux friend could be this gentleman if the github changelog is anything to go by.


Last edited by tuubi on 25 Jul 2016 at 7:30 pm UTC

Can someone explain how to get this running?

I'd love for someone to get this up and running, packaged, and put up on something like http://www.playdeb.net

So anyone know which source files are supposed to have the Vulkan bits?

So anyone know which source files are supposed to have the Vulkan bits?

Vulkan API naming convention for functions is a "vk" prefix followed by a capital letter.

All source files containing at least one matching function can be listed with

grep -r "vk[A-Z]+*" * | sed -nre "s@(^.*):.*@\1@p" | uniq


Last edited by sub on 25 Jul 2016 at 9:39 pm UTC

I can only test it on my Haswell notebook, but it seems the warning

Vulkan Initialization
WARNING: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete

should be taken seriously. :D
At least it quits with

QUAKE ERROR: Couldn't create Vulkan device

I managed to get it working on my system, with the nvidia-367 drivers (that break NVENC in OBS, sadly), but I can't, for the life of me, get Vsync to disable so I can benchmark it. :p

If you adjust any of the video settings in-game and try to save it, it segfaults, but you *can* get it to pick up the normal quakespasm command line options for e.g. setting your window size.

Oh, and forcing fullscreen also segfaults.

No combination of 'vid_vsync 0' in various config files including autoexec.cfg, or even as '+vid_vsync 0' on the command line gets it to stop capping itself.

It does run, though, if you specify -width and -height.

After you've checked it out from git, check out the Quake/Makefile and look at the different options. Assume for every 'USE_THIS_THING' that you want to set to '1', you need to look for the 'libthing' and 'libthing-dev' (or your distro's equivalents) and be sure they're installed as dependencies first. If you try to compile it then and it complains about a missing header file, that's probably the thing-dev you need. :)

If anyone cracks how to disable vsync properly for benchmarking though, let me know. :/

Totally making a package out of this for SteamOS. drool

I'd love for someone to get this up and running, packaged, and put up on something like http://www.playdeb.net

I am making a package tonight. I have to backport a few things, but i'll try to reply back here. I started some here, but I need to do some errands, then I'll finish it and test later.


Last edited by ProfessorKaos64 on 25 Jul 2016 at 11:29 pm UTC

I wanted to try but the web site to download the vulkan sdk is broken and it’s impossible to get it for me.

You should need just vulkan-dev (or whatever your distro calls it). Debian has this, starting with Debian Stretch. I backported this to SteamOS, which is based heavily off Debian Jessie:

http://packages.libregeek.org/SteamOS-Tools/pool/main/v/vulkan/

I'll probably make Debian packaging for this tonight. Maybe time for a small test.


Last edited by ProfessorKaos64 on 25 Jul 2016 at 11:14 pm UTC

@ProfessorKaos64 that would be awesome! I'm looking forward having a build script of some sort so I can publish binaries for Lutris :)

@ProfessorKaos64 that would be awesome! I'm looking forward having a build script of some sort so I can publish binaries for Lutris :)

There are some issues, but I believe I fixed one. You can follow the below thead (has a link to my fork). May take a little more work.

https://github.com/Novum/vkQuake/issues/4

Edit: author of the repository took my linux-fixes PR. I have an initial test Debian package at the below link. I haven't tested it (late here, time to settle down for the night). I'll likely have time to give it a test tomorrow. I merged in debian packaging from quakespasm. Probably adjustments to be made yet as well. I link quakspasm to 'vkquake' so you can use that, aside from the desktop file.

Please be aware there are fixes to be made yet in upstream code. Axel has noted that this should occur sometime after SIGGRAPH is over.

http://packages.libregeek.org/steamos-tools/pool/games/v/vkquake/

Trouble?

See: https://github.com/ProfessorKaos64/LibreGeek-
Packaging/blob/brewmaster/vkquake/debian/README.Debian

Tomorrow I'll take a look at an Arch Linux package.


Last edited by ProfessorKaos64 on 26 Jul 2016 at 6:34 am UTC

Can confirm it works! \o/
Had the following error message at first: "QUAKE ERROR: W_LoadWadFile: couldn't load gfx.wad"

Then I renamed PAK{0|1}.PAK to lowercase and it works great now, nice work ProfessorKaos64 :D

If you adjust any of the video settings in-game and try to save it, it segfaults

Yeah, I have the same problem. I'll see if I can work around it later today.

Silly question, but the libvulkan1-dev package on Ubuntu is the same one you used for Debian right?

@ProfessorKaos64

Totally making a package out of this for SteamOS. drool

While were on the topic, it would be totally cool to get a few Arch packages made up for this so its not just Debian / Ubuntu that get all the SteamOS fun..

https://launchpad.net/~mdeslaur/+archive/ubuntu/steamos

im using SteamOS session on my Debian build and id really like the feature for Manjaro/Arch <3


Last edited by on 26 Jul 2016 at 2:43 pm UTC

I'm completely useless at coding, but I did open an issue (really an enhancement request) regarding Vsync:

Vsync Modes

No amount of trying to mess with the vid_vsync cvar will work, because it looks like it's being totally ignored anyway, and the Vulkan 'presentation mode' is hardcoded to one with Vsync. Changing that one line in one source file and recompiling, though? Then you can disable Vsync for some good old fashioned timedemo action. :p

Obviously, this is absolutely silly on any machine modern enough to have Vulkan support, especially if the vkQuake renderer isn't feature-complete compared to Quakespasm's stock OpenGL one, but it is faster.

OpenGL: ~720fps
Vulkan: ~780fps

(i7-4790K + GTX 980)

It's a little hard to get a good CPU usage measurement when all of demo1 finishes in like 9 seconds, however. :P

@ProfessorKaos64

Totally making a package out of this for SteamOS. drool

While were on the topic, it would be totally cool to get a few Arch packages made up for this so its not just Debian / Ubuntu that get all the SteamOS fun..

https://launchpad.net/~mdeslaur/+archive/ubuntu/steamos

im using SteamOS session on my Debian build and id really like the feature for Manjaro/Arch <3

I started one at https://github.com/ProfessorKaos64/arch-aur-packages/, but it needs some work yet. When I feel satisfied, i'll see how I get that to the AUR.

I never have added something to the AUR, but I don't believe it's that difficult.


Last edited by ProfessorKaos64 on 27 Jul 2016 at 4:04 am UTC