Quake II DS Prerelease 1

Here’s some good news if you thoroughly enjoyed Simon Hall‘s release of the DS port of id Software’s Quake FPS. The dev has recently announced that he’s finished work on the pre-release build of a DS port for Quake II. Details regarding Hall’s recent achievement are in the full article.

Download: Quake II DS Prerelease 1

Just when you thought porting Quake to the DS was a big enough milestone, Simon Hall once again comes back at us with some more interesting news. The dev has recently announced that he’s completed a pre-release build of a DS port for id Software‘s Quake II. Hall explained that this project took particularly long to complete because of Quake II‘s overall size and processing requirements. As he explained in his dev site:

• the original game needed far more memory than is available in the Nintendo DS handheld system
• the original was designed to work on a system that also supports virtual memory, something that can’t be easily done on the DS
• Q2 stresses the CPU far more than Q1 does, and a lot of time had to be spent getting the game itself (not including rendering) running at a decent rate
• the models and levels in Q2 are far more detailed than the ones in Q1, and this was originally too much for the DS’ GPU to handle (oh, and there’s a lot more texture detail, too!)

Those interested in grabbing a copy of this homebrew game will need to know a couple of important details. First, you’ll need Quake II‘s data files, which are readily available if you own an original copy of the game. If you don’t, you can download up a sample copy via id’s site, which will give you access to only the first episode’s levels. You must also have a supported slot-2 flash card that contains a minimum of 16 megabytes of RAM. Quake II DS will be unable to run without this.

Full details regarding this game are available in the file bundle’s readme, and over at the drunken coders site (via the source link). We’ve also posted the current functions for Quake II DS’ first prerelease here (via Hall’s site) in case you’re curious. Enjoy the download!

• The Game
• every single level within the game can be loaded and played in single-player mode
• there is currently no wifi multiplayer
• the game can be run with either the demo or full retail pak files
• there is full control configuration
• there is an on-screen keyboard for use in-game and with the console
• there are eight “touch-buttons” which allow you quick access to in-game functions
• both manual and automatic game saving works
• mods and total conversions do not work, and are unlikely ever to – however new levels can be used
• Graphics
• nearly-all of the graphical effects have been have been moved to the DS’ 3D hardware
• most world textures are rendered correctly
• particles are supported, however sprites are not
• animated model skins are properly supported
• although the game does not use lightmapping, dynamic lighting is fully-functional
• Sound
• there’s a full-blown custom ARM7 sound effects system, and it totally r0x0rs
• the sound system uses proper spatial positioning (it is stereo though…) – plug it into your speakers and subwoofer to hear all the effort I put into this!
• Supported cards:
• ‘Proper’ SuperCards, eg the Lite, SD, MiniSD, and CF. The SuperCard Rumble and SuperCard One are not compatible.
• ‘Perfect’ M3s, eg the Lite Perfect, the Mini SD Perfect, and the SD Perfect. The Mini SD Pro, SD Pro, and Lite Pro are not compatible.
• EZ-Flash cards which have a slot-2 component and can play GBA games over 32MBit, eg EZ 3-in-1, EZ 4, EZ 5
• G6 Flash

Download: Quake II DS Prerelease 1

Via Drunken Coders