Quake II

(1997) is the second installment of the Quake series, following Quake. The game moves away from the original Gothic theme and instead, making the game more sci-fi aesthetic.
Quake II runs on updated version of engine, with new features added, such as radiosity lighting, along with other improvements.
== Relevance to Valve engines == 
Like its predecessor, , Valve's engine also used most of the code from as far back during its early development, though later in the final version it used the heavily modified , with only a little Quake II engine code. uses additional code from Quake II, such as for collision and alpha sorting, and Source's BSP format is based upon Quake II's BSP format.
Half-Life also introduces new engine features such as Radiosity lighting, which are first introduced in Quake II.
== Features ==
* Radiosity lighting
== Releases ==
=== Original ===
 was originally released in December 1997 for PC, then later ported to both Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1 in 1999, along with , and BeOS operating systems, which all of them are also released in 1999. It is also ported to , available on Quake 4 bonus disc.
=== Quake II RTX ===
In March 2019, a remaster of Quake II, called Quake II RTX was announced by , and later released in June 6 for both and . As the name suggest, you need a NVIDIA RTX, Intel Arc or RX 6000 series card in order to enable ray-tracing, but the game offers software fallback for cards that are fast enough. 
It is available for free on Steam with three demo levels included, but RTX version was able to play the full game as long the original game files were installed.
=== 2023 Kex Engine remaster ===
Also known as Quake II Enhanced, and colloquially referred to as Q2EX.
Another remaster of Quake II was released for the , , , , and on Aug 10, 2023 during QuakeCon. These runs on Kex Engine on top of modified version of id Tech 2 engine.
This is a first time that Quake II was officially ported to modern consoles, with 1080p 60FPS rendering on 8th gen consoles, while Windows, PS5, Xbox One X, and Xbox Series XS are able to run on 4K (or higher on PC) up to 120FPS (or more on PC). It also introduced new single-player expansions, "Call of the Machine", which was designed exclusively for the remaster by Bethesda studio , comprising 28 additional levels and a new Deathmatch map. A Nintendo 64 port of the game was also bundled with the remaster, as a bonus game.
Additionally, the game runs at a 40 Hz tickrate as opposed to the original's 10 Hz, and it does not use any bilinear filtering for the textures at all unlike the original with OpenGL mode. 13 new achievements has been also added to the game.
== Source ports ==
Thanks to the release of the Quake II source code, there have been many source ports that seek to supersede the vanilla engine. The following modern source ports are actively or semi-actively developed:
* Yamagi Quake II - Vanilla-friendly source port. Singleplayer-focused; multiplayer may be too insecure for netplay.
* Q2Pro - Multiplayer-focused source port, with added security fixes, optional anticheat, and many enhanced graphical features.
** Q2RTX (Quake II RTX) - Fork of Q2VKPT (which itself forked from Q2Pro) with real-time raytracing.
* KMQuake II - Feature-focused source port, aimed at removing limits to increasing mapping potential.
* Quake II XP - Graphics-focused source port, porting the graphics pipeline to modern GLSL. Aims to remaster the visuals without sacrificing the original "style" of the game.
For more source ports, see .
== Bugs/Limitations ==
=== Original version ===
==== Only in modern versions of Windows or modern PC ====
Like most unpatched games from the 1990s, the game can usually have issues and bugs when played on modern systems and modern version of . You can check the for more information.
=== Enhanced version (2023 Kex Engine remaster) ===
== System requirements ==
=== Original version ===
Minimum:	Recommended:
* Processor (CPU): 90 MHz Intel PentiumPowerPC 603e (Mac)
* Graphics (GPU): Optional, otherwise Software renderer.
* Memory: 16 MB (Windows & Linux)48 MB (Mac)
* Storage: 25 MB
* Sound card: Any
* OS: Windows 95, 98 / NT 4.0 or laterMac OS (Classic) 7.5.3Linux kernel v2.0.24
*	
* Processor (CPU): 133 MHz Intel Pentium
* Graphics (GPU): Any graphics card with Glide (3dfx MiniGL), OpenGL support.
* Memory: 24 MB RAM
* Storage: 400 MB
=== Enhanced (2023) ===
Minimum:	Recommended:
* Processor (CPU): Intel Core i5-3570 3.4 GHzAMD Ryzen 3 1300X 3.5GHz
* Graphics (GPU): GeForce GTX 650 Ti</br>AMD Radeon HD 7750</br>Direct3D 11 (DX11) or Vulkan capable</br>1 GB of VRAM
* Memory: 8 GB
* Storage: 2 GB
* Sound card: Any
* OS: Windows 10
*	
* Processor (CPU): Intel Core i5-6600k 3.5 GHz</br>AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 GHz
* Graphics (GPU): Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070</br>AMD RX Vega 56</br>8 GB of VRAM
== See also ==
* Quake II.fgd
== External links ==
* Original engine and game DLL source code - Does not include game DLL source code for expansions
** 2023 remaster game DLL source code - Includes original and remastered game code for the base game and both expansions, as well as FGDs for 
* Quake 2 Tools source code - Source code for original 1997 tools, such as map compilers. Provided for reference only; third party tools such as ericw-tools were used for the 2023 remaster.
== References ==
wolfinston85 on Steam Community:Does Steam Cloud only support options and not saves? - last accessed on 2023-08-11
Quake II History · Change #19910560 · SteamDB - last accessed on 2023-08-16
Category:Quake
Category:Open source mods and games