Go to: - Main page - Explorer - Configuration - Map editor - Model editor - Plug-ins - Map tutorial - Model tutorial - FAQ - Glossary

Welcome! This is the program Quake Army Knife, also known as QuArK, made by Armin Rigo.

QuArK is an all-purpose editor for the game Quake, by id Software, and derived games Hexen II, Quake 2, Heretic II, Half-Life, and Sin. QuArK focuses on map editing, but is not limited to it.

QuArK version 5.x is a major rewrite of the old QuArK 4.07. Their main common point is the famously easy-to-use interface of the map editor.

QuArK is Free Software, as stated by the GNU General Public Licence. Be careful! This expression has the following meaning:

• "Free software" means freedom, in that anyone who receive or buy the software can do whatever he wants with it, including giving it to other people, either gratis or for a fee; he just can't remove the "free" status of the software.
• "Free software" is about freedom, not price. If anybody wants to distribute such a software, he can make people pay for it, and he can make money out of it.
• "Free software" is not "public domain". The author (me) of the software remain its owner, with the usual intellectual property rights.

All this means that free software may be commercial as well, with technical support, etc. (there is an Ada compiler in this case.) On the other hand, there is gratis software that is not "free": most "freeware" or promotional software. QuArK is "free" but not "gratis".

What the "free" status adds, is that anyone who received or bought the program has access to the source code as well. Anyone may modify the program, or make something else using my code and sell it, and so on, as long as the resulting program is also "free", in the same sense.

Once again, "free" does not means "gratis"! It is about freedom!

Previous versions of QuArK were Shareware, with a modest registration fee of 20$. In this "free" version, 20$ is the fee for downloading the software from my web page: download QuArK, and if you use it, please pay me. Of course, this is legally less strict as "shareware": if you can get QuArK from a friend instead of from Planetquake, you don't owe me anything. But anyway, who pays the shareware registrations? Fans! And if you are so enthusiast and want to send me 20$, you are welcome!

In summary: if you download QuArK from the PlanetQuake web site, and if you use it regularly, you are required to pay me 20$. Please -- QuArK represents a lot of work for me.

I call this fee a "registration", mainly to show the analogy with Shareware, and because people who register will be added to my official list. Of course, people who registered the Shareware QuArK should not register again !

I tell people who register how they can remove the flashing text about "free software" that cause delay when QuArK starts up. Note to programmers: the GNU General Public Licence prevents you from distributing modified versions of the program that don't display this text!

I don't live in the U.S. But it might be a bit complicated to make international cheques for such a small sum. So I think the easiest for you is to mail me a $20 bank note under cover (in a letter) along with your name and your e-mail address, if any. If you don't live in the U.S, just send me the equivalent sum in your currency.

Put $20 in a letter (shipping is $0.60 from the U.S.) and post it to:

             Armin Rigo
             La Cure
             CH-1854 Leysin
             Switzerland

A single registration is valid for all current and future versions of QuArK.

The official QuArK web site: http://www.planetquake.com/quark.

What you will need to make maps and play them, is:

• First, Win95/98 or NT, and one of the original games (Quake, Hexen II, Quake 2, or Heretic II), of course.
• You need a Python interpreter to run QuArK. Download the "Mini Python Pack" from the web site.
• You need QuArK itself, but I guess you already have it if you are reading this, else download it from the web site.
• To run your maps in the game, you need some utilities that will translate QuArK's output into an optimized file that the game can load. Download one of the "Build Packs" from the web site.

The site always contains the most up-to-date versions of QuArK, and its download page has all the required utilities. See below for installation instructions.

Officially; Quake, Hexen II, Quake 2, Heretic II and Half-Life are supported. Sin support is present but untested.

Unofficial support for other games may be created by anybody in the form of a QuArK add-on. I have also been asked to design QuArK for another company planning to use it to design the maps of a new game based of Quake 2.

Before you can install QuArK, you must install a "Python" interpreter on your system. Be sure you downloaded and installed the "Mini Python Pack" from the QuArK web site. You must install it before you can proceed with the installation of QuArK, because the installer of QuArK itself is written in Python.

Once you downloaded and installed Python and QuArK, you can use QuArK. When QuArK will need to load data from the game, for example to display the list of textures, it will prompt you for the path where the game is installed.

When you have made a first map and want to try it in the game, you will need to "compile" the map first. This is done by the utilities you downloaded in the "Build Pack", but QuArK can call these programs for you, so that all you have to do is unzip the "Build Pack" somewhere and tell QuArK where you unzipped them. You will also be automatically prompted for this when required, or you can configure it in this window.

QuArK is divided in several modules, and each of them can edit a particular type of Quake file. The central module, the "QuArK Explorer", lets you group and organize several files into a single one. Files creates by the Explorer have the extension ".qrk" and can contain absolutely any other file, organized in group and sub- groups.

The file type you are likely to use the most often is "Quake map". A map is a level for the game that you design in 3D space by assembling polyhedrons and positionning entities between them. For a general overview about how to make Quake maps, there are a lot of good sources at http://www.planetquake.com.

To learn more about map building, see the documentation about the map editor.

QuArK 5.x is based on Python, which is a macro programming language. You will see all the behaviours of the map editor in the files *.py found in the folders "quarkpy" and "plugins". All the features of the map editor are found there, and can be changed. New features can be added a plug-ins. If you know the basics of programming, you can have a look there. There is a forum on the QuArK web site devoted to Python programming in QuArK. For more information about Python itself, see the Python web site at http://www.python.org.

NO WARRANTY

BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

I, Armin Rigo, am the author of QuArK, but QuArK would certainly never have been what it is today without the continued support and feedback of hundreds of users. I would like to thank them all here. The complete list would be quite long, and I must admit I didn't wrote and updated such a list... so please excuse me if I forgot you on the small list below. I would like to give special thanks to, in no particular order:

Christophe Weibel

An old friend, the only Quake friend I visually know.

Derrick McKay

for the web site and comments and help for QuArK the former QuakeMap, up to versions 4.xx, when he had to left the Quake community.

Decker (Bent P. Svendsen)

He supported QuArK by releasing a lot of add-ons, such as new monsters. He helped a lot in the old times of QuArK. More recently, he also sorted Quake 2 textures and made all the Half-Life support.

SpaceDog (Kasper Kystol Andersen)

for Quake 1 & 2 entities and textures for QuArK 5.

Brian Wagener

helped reviewing the Quake 1 entities and textures.

Akuma

Lots of help. He gave me a valuable support. He also worked for Quake 2 support. He enters the list of people that have been helping for QuArK for a very long time.

Paniq (Leonard Ritter)

The #1 source for tips and good ideas. A special thanks to him. He actively debugged QuArK 5.1. He's the person to thank for lots of old and new features in QuArK. He's also the designer of the new look; he made most icons in 5.1 and the splash screen.

Chen Ken

for his freeware Delphi component "MarsCaption", offering QuArK its colorful caption bars.

Jordan Russell

for his freeware component suite Toolbar97. The docking toolbars are done with his code.

Gryphon (Dudley Bryan Jr.)

He is the web site manager now. He gave the whole site a very nice design. He also designed icons for QuArK; mainly, all icons that represent file types.

Tiglari

A great Hexen II fan. Thank to him, you have good Hexen II support in QuArK. All entities and textures are from him. The Hexen II master! Now reconverted in Heretic II support.

Robert

for completing Hexen II support with .mdl file names, so that models can be displayed in the 3D views. Robert and Tiglari did this almost at the same time! Sorry Tiglari, I finally chose Robert's version.

Scott

for additionnal help on Hexen II textures.

Richard Hatch

for his review of Quake 2 entities.

Taufik Purnomosidi

Taufik has always been in the vicinity of QuArK.

Patrick Steele

Help for the recent developments of QuArK. Patrick, Paniq and Tim beta-tested QuArK 5.1.

Eoghan Murray

Tons of suggestions.

Dariusz Emilianowicz

The polnish QuArK antenna. He made a lot of comments. He also did H2 textures sorting.

Denis Dratov

He made the Compass, VBar and ZoomBar images for 5.0.c4.

`eNtiTy

He prefers QuArK 4.07 than 5, but I don't give up : I will continue to fight to make QuArK 5 always better!

Tim Smith

Tim gave me incredible help for QuArK 5. He is a programmer, and without even having access to the source code, he located many many bugs! He fixed tons of Python problems and designed several complete plug-ins.