Text hints that they are not giving any game for free. Just mod. That's why they mention having Full or Shareware version.

One thing that has always bothered me about Quake 2 was how some of the weapons just didn't have muzzle flashes when firing. I mean, even Wolfenstein 3d had that (for all of its three weapons...)

I have quake 2 in gog. Unless the RTX thing is available there too, I hope I can just copy over the files and make it work with the steam version of q2 rtx ... if it doesn't run at 15 fps or whatever on my 1070 :P

Great game for its time, sure. But today its an archaic piece of junk. RTX on it is the proverbial lipstick on a pig. Shoot an enemy and he breaks up into pixelated, blocky chunks. Gameplay, combat mechanics is just too primitive for today. What next? RTX on Minecraft?

alanm:

Great game for its time, sure. But today its an archaic piece of junk. RTX on it is the proverbial lipstick on a pig. Shoot an enemy and he breaks up into pixelated, blocky chunks. Gameplay, combat mechanics is just too primitive for today. What next? RTX on Minecraft?

Already been done. [youtube=ekG2q_eYCAM]

Dat cool old music Quake 2 awesome.

SweenJM:

Quake 2 was probably my favorite of all quake games. The weapons were so awesome, and the multiplayer ran so nice (even on dial-up!)

Memories from old good days.

alanm:

Great game for its time, sure. But today its an archaic piece of junk. RTX on it is the proverbial lipstick on a pig. Shoot an enemy and he breaks up into pixelated, blocky chunks. Gameplay, combat mechanics is just too primitive for today. What next? RTX on Minecraft?

This comment is pretty dumb. Especially considering the resurgence of games with similar gameplay and graphics and how popular they are. Raytracing on Minecraft has already been done and looks amazing. Get your foot out of your mouth. If any critique is to be leveraged here it's that the aesthetics of the RTX version differs too much from the original game.

I think I'd just like to play Q2 again - regardless of the lick of paint it has got.

Is it just me or did the RTX version lose some details in the Nvidia supplied picture?

I wonder if it can be enabled on a GTX 10 series card since they can now do ray tracing albeit slower.

AlmondMan:

This comment is pretty dumb. Especially considering the resurgence of games with similar gameplay and graphics and how popular they are. Raytracing on Minecraft has already been done and looks amazing. Get your foot out of your mouth. If any critique is to be leveraged here it's that the aesthetics of the RTX version differs too much from the original game.

The main reason Quake 2 with RT is generating (mild) interest is due to the nostalgia with the game. Its an iconic shooter that so many, incl myself, had tremendous fun with back in the day (last century). If it were a game that never existed but just released today in its same clunky, primitive form we see now, it would be pilloried and shot down by critics as an insult to gamers, RT notwithstanding. Minecraft is something entirely different. Its purely based on gameplay, thinking, survival tactics, strategy, etc, in other words a lot going on that keeps players deeply involved. It actually looks nice with a touch of RT (surprisingly). But its gameplay fundamentals is what keeps it a huge draw to so many people. Quake 2 otoh, as a shooter, is primitive in all aspects in terms of gameplay. And thanks for noting that those with differing opinions are just plain dumb. Maybe the game devs who make Crysis, Tomb Raider, Ass Creed, Metro, etc, can learn something and return to blocky, pixelated textures and reverse the increasing hardware requirements to run these games. Maybe put less effort in gameplay realism as well. It would certainly cut down massively on development costs. Since Quake 2 is now part of this great "resurgence" sweeping the gaming world, right?

I love how they're selectively using modder's assets for this (textures, etc). Cheeky! I'd like to try it out, although without RTX (my poor GTX 970 would 'splode)

I already play q2 rtx alpha release on gtx 1080 sli, it works @1080p, I didnt notice anything life changing though

alanm:

The main reason Quake 2 with RT is generating (mild) interest is due to the nostalgia with the game. Its an iconic shooter that so many, incl myself, had tremendous fun with back in the day (last century). If it were a game that never existed but just released today in its same clunky, primitive form we see now, it would be pilloried and shot down by critics as an insult to gamers, RT notwithstanding. Minecraft is something entirely different. Its purely based on gameplay, thinking, survival tactics, strategy, etc, in other words a lot going on that keeps players deeply involved. It actually looks nice with a touch of RT (surprisingly). But its gameplay fundamentals is what keeps it a huge draw to so many people. Quake 2 otoh, as a shooter, is primitive in all aspects in terms of gameplay. And thanks for noting that those with differing opinions are just plain dumb. Maybe the game devs who make Crysis, Tomb Raider, Ass Creed, Metro, etc, can learn something and return to blocky, pixelated textures and reverse the increasing hardware requirements to run these games. Maybe put less effort in gameplay realism as well. It would certainly cut down massively on development costs. Since Quake 2 is now part of this great "resurgence" sweeping the gaming world, right?

Yeah, I don't think Quake 2 ray traced looks particularly good, and definitely looks dated even with ray tracing, but what are we to expect. I see it as a curiosity mainly, because all the lighting is done with ray tracing, which is unique in today's ray traced games - modern games only have the power to add a few reflections or other effects, but at least we get to see all lighting, shadows and reflections resolved with ray tracing in Quake 2 (I don't think anything is 'baked'), so it's kinda just a curiosity of the RTX tech, kinda like RTX to the max of what is possible with this gen of ray tracing tech. Yeah, and the Quake 2 gameplay is not sophisticated in comparison to shooters of today, so that value is diluted for me - it's just a curiosity, but might be fun for some. I might try to get it to run on my GTX 1070 out of technical curiosity.

i have quake 2 on disc someplace, but it having ray tracing? isnt gona get me to want to install the game again. dont get me wrong i like quake 2 and the strogg invasion, but I fail to see how quake 2 being as old as it is was good choice to show off ray tracing?, maybe the performance hit being non existent on such old game make good choice?

I'll check it out just to see how it runs and looks.

https://github.com/cschied/q2vkpt/releases

tsunami231:

i have quake 2 on disc someplace, but it having ray tracing? isnt gona get me to want to install the game again. dont get me wrong i like quake 2 and the strogg invasion, but I fail to see how quake 2 being as old as it is was good choice to show off ray tracing?, maybe the performance hit being non existent on such old game make good choice?

Yeah, I think that's the point, the original game is so non-taxing to run (as well as being share ware), that in order to have 'everything' done through ray tracing meant using an old game with virtually no existing rendering overhead, which enables pretty much all of the frametime to be dedicated to ray tracing processing. This gen of ray tracing hardware isn't powerful enough to do 'full raytracing' on a significantly more complex game, and I guess the shareware nature of the game meant no legal issues with adding ray tracing to it, plus it's an iconic game so a good choice for NVidia from that point of view.

when moh aa when:( they get rtx on that I will buy a rtx card