DarkPlaces

About DarkPlaces

The Darkplaces Engine is a completely unique development for Quake and Quake Engine based games.

Developed under the open source licenses GPL-2.0 by LadyHavoc, this engine brings a wide range and improvement.
These include dynamic shadows, interpolated animations, soft particles, Bloom, real-time reflections and much more.
In addition, the support for various 3D, map and audio formats has been extended.

So it is possible to load Half Life 1, Quake 2 and Quaker 3 Maps with the Darkplaces Engine.
Furthermore, the server and client skills have been improved to provide a better multiplayer experience.

Meanwhile, there are a variety of games that are based on the Darkplaces Engine or are playable with it.
Even commercial titles like WRATH: Aeon of Ruin are based on the Darkplaces Engine.

An extensive list of all modifications compared to the Quake Engine can be found in the Official ReadMe.

While not originally created for Quakeworld, support was added for it in its later stages, and Darkplaces can join MegaTF servers but is not highly recommended since the gameplay experience might be sub-optimal for this mod. Use at your own discretion!

Download DarkPlaces

Available for Windows / Linux / Mac, the Latest stable/official releases are from 2014 (as of November, 2025).
However, the official Darkplaces Github page suggests development continues, and new unofficial Linux builds can be found in the Artifacts of recent Actions