Welcome to me releasing a demo of OzarQ!

What's the purpose of a demo of an asset?

Well, the purpose of the demo is twofold, to get feedback from the public on the various systems at play, and to give the end users an idea of how the maps they make will perform when compiled to Windows with the YYC compilation module.

Why not just release the asset?

Well, Jimothy, I can't, not yet, not legally, yet. You see, the original Quake source code is licensed under GPL, this is a severely limited free-use license. Anybody that makes a product using GPL-licensed assets is not legally allowed to distribute said assets to various big name distribution platforms, like game consoles, and IOS. Before I can share my source code, I need to make sure that I scrub through everything to make sure there's not an ounce of any potentially GPL-licensed code. If I were to release the source code as it is, under the MIT license (which is my current goal), if I've accidentally left any GPL code up in this mother, I could face penalties. Furthermore, if someone were to use my code and distribute to one of the restricted platforms, well we'd both be liable and that's just a whole mess of worms that I don't feel like wiggling my toes around in.

So, to be safe, I'm holding off on releasing the code, and instead, am releasing a fun demo for y'all to play with!

This demo is just a simple recreation of the basic fps gameplay made famous by retro boomer shooters of yore, such as Quake and Doom, blah blah blah. There are enemies with pain states, death states, and they are gibbable with the right weapons. There's no AI though, so they just kinda stand around ( lol ). You have access to every quake 1 weapon, albeit with the open source Librequake assets instead of the copyrighted Quake assets since I don't want to be sharing anyone else's copyrighted materials. Run around, jump, swim, shoot, swing an axe, pick up weapons, teleport, ride trains and other moving platforms, and shoot secret doors to open them! (There's a bug with secret door audio not stopping when the door stops, it's on my agenda )

In order to use this demo successfully, you must adhere to the Quake 1 file folder structure, which is typically something along the following:

C:\Quake\ID1

Drive letter doesn't matter. ID1 in this case is just the base quake game directory. If you wanted to work on your own game instead of copying all of the Quake assets, you'd made a new folder inside of C:\Quake called "whateveryourgameiswithnospaces."

Inside of this folder you must (if you want everything to work as intended) have the following subfolders:

MAPS/

MUSIC/

PROGS/

SOUND/

Maps is self explanatory, each level must be compiled to the bsp format and stored in this folder.

Inside the Music folder is where you'll store the .ogg files in track##.ogg naming convention. Each level can have a custom track number assigned to it. If you don't adhere to the track##.ogg naming convention, music simply will not play.

Progs is the folder where you'll be storing your mdl files, the 3d animated model format used by Quake 1, and OzarQ. In order for MDL models to be utilized successfully, you will need to adhere to the filenames and folder names used by Quake 1, but just for this demo. In the final release of OzarQ you will be able to define your own MDLs for custom classes.

Sound is also pretty explanatory. When creating levels, some entities have a sound key that you can assign a filename to. Keep in mind that GM can only use .OGG for external audio sources currently. I plan to implement wav files with loop cues eventually.

Great!

You've followed the file folder structure rules, now what? Wellllllllll, you have two options. Obtain compiled BSP maps to play with by downloading them from the internet from sources like slipseer.com, or start making your own! 

How the heck do I make a BSP map???

Why, it's easy as pie, Samandra! Alls you gotta do is go to youtube, and type "How to make Quake 1 BSP" ;)

I jest, you're going to want to download a mapper, I recommend Trenchbroom. There are loads of tutorials on how to make maps using it by a fella named Dumptruck_ds, check him out on youtube.

In addition to the map editor itself, you're also going to need some compiling tools, I recommend Ericw's compiling tools:

https://ericwa.github.io/ericw-tools/

To learn how to use all of these things together, scrape your eyes against dumptruck_ds's youtube channel. Everything you need to get started is in there, and there are likely mountains more tutorials to follow in other canals on youtube!

Once you've gotten the hang of making and compiling maps, you can simply open the map file by launching the OzarQ demo. This will create a new folder in your project directory call OZ_Dat. This is where map data gets compiled into by the system. It's usually a pretty fast process, but larger maps can take some time to compile. Luckily, this only needs to happen once. Subsequent loads will be magnitudes faster! If you've made a change to the structure of your level after it's been compiled, you will need to go into the OZ_Dat folder and delete the level's cached folders and files ( They have the same name as the map itself so it will be easy to do ). This will force the map to recompile with the new level structure, otherwise your cache won't update and you'll be stuck using older map builds.

Okay, that's the rundown! To get started, head over to OzarQ's main page and click download! Remember, it's free, but tips are welcome. ;)