Preface

If you don't plan on modifying the engine, then you can grab binaries from FTEQW and move them into the root directory.

Dependencies

Nuclide is entirely game-logic oriented, so it only requires a working QuakeC compiler. In our case FTEQCC. Which you can also build with:

$ make fteqcc

The resulting binary ./fteqcc will then be used to build the game-logic related targets.

Besides a working C compiler, such as gcc or clang, the QuakeC compiler shouldn't need any other dependencies. Click here for a full list of dependencies for the various optional components.

‍[!tip] make help will always show a list of available targets, including their purpose.

Keeping Up-To-Date

You can issue the following to check for updates of tools/dependencies:

$ make update

Building Game-Logic

You can build games by running the following command:

$ make game GAME=base

Adjust the GAME argument to select which game you want to build. The game base is the assumed, default target.

Usually, the resulting files are progs.dat, csprogs.dat and (sometimes) menu.dat. Those are the libraries dealing with the Server, Client and Menu aspect of the game respectively.

They are accompanied by name-matching .lno files. These contain extra debugging information helpful to the engine. They can be stripped from a shipping build of your game.

‍[!tip] You do not need to rebuild the logic for each and every platform. The results will be identical, since QuakeC is not machine code.

Building the Engine

Issue the following to build a generic version of the engine FTEQW:

$ make fteqw

Which you can then run with ./fteqw -game base. For more information on launching games, mods, check out the page on Launching.

Some engine features are only available as a plugin. See $ make help for info on how to build them.

Optional: Custom Branding & Features

If you want to build a custom version of the engine, with custom branding and the ability to strip unneeded functionality out of the binary, you can make a copy of ThirdParty/fteqw/engine/common/config_fteqw.h, adjust it and save it under your game directory as engine.h. When issuing the command:

$ make engine GAME=yourgame

It will then look for yourgame/engine.h, and build a copy of FTEQW against it. The output will normally be something along the lines of yourgame_x64. The name can be changed by passing NAME=YourGame to the make program.

Building the Level Editor

Issue the following to build GtkRadiant:

$ make radiant

A launcher will be created in the root directory allowing you to launch it via ./radiant.

For documentation regarding Radiant and general id Tech level design, you can visit this page.