QuakeSpasm: old-Mac port

QuakeSpasm as one fat binary for PowerPC, Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. At boot it reads the machine model (sysctl hw.model) and loads per-machine settings.

Tested machines

Machine	CPU	GPU	OS	Default res
Yosemite (PowerMac1,1 B&W G3, 1999)	449 MHz PPC 750	ATI Rage 128 16 MB	10.3.9 Panther	800×600
Yosemite on Tiger (same Mac, 2nd partition)	449 MHz PPC 750	ATI Rage 128 16 MB	10.4.11 Tiger	800×600
Sawtooth (PowerMac3,1 G4 AGP, 1999)	500 MHz PPC 7400	NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 32 MB	10.4.11 Tiger	1024×768
Quicksilver (PowerMac3,5, 2001)	733 MHz PPC 7450	ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 64 MB	10.4.11 Tiger	1024×768
Mac mini G4 (PowerMac10,1, 2005)	1.25 GHz PPC 7447A	ATI Radeon 9200 32 MB	10.4.11 Tiger	1024×768
iMac G5 (PowerMac8,2, 2005)	2.0 GHz PPC 970	ATI Radeon 9600 128 MB	10.5.8 Leopard	1440×900 (native)
Mac mini (Macmini3,1, 2009)	2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo	NVIDIA GeForce 9400 256 MB	10.6.8 Snow Leopard	1024×768
Mac mini Intel (Macmini2,1, 2007)	2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo	Intel GMA 950 64 MB	10.7.5 Lion	1024×768
iMac 27" (iMac19,1, 2019)	3.7 GHz Core i5-9600K	AMD Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB	15.7 Sequoia	2560×1440
Power Mac G5 (dual, three partitions)	2.7 GHz PPC 970 ×2	ATI Radeon 9600	10.3.9, 10.4.11, 10.5.8	native
MacBook Air (Mac17,4, 2026)	Apple M5	Apple M5 GPU	26.6 Tahoe	native

On the GeForce 9400 Mac mini, the GLSL alias-model renderer made the driver log GPU channel faults and could panic the Mac, so it is off by default on that GPU (-glslalias turns it back on). Details in #57.

Which OS each CPU needs

The binary carries one slice per CPU family, each stamped with its exact CPU subtype:

CPU	Slice	OS needed	Tested on
G3 (750)	ppc750	10.3.9 Panther or later	10.3.9 and 10.4.11
G4 (7400 / 7450 / 7447A)	ppc7400	10.3.9 Panther or later	10.4.11
G5 (970)	ppc970	10.3.9 Panther or later	10.3.9, 10.4.11 and 10.5.8
Intel, 32-bit (Core Solo / Duo)	i386	10.4.11 Tiger or later	not yet run on hardware
Intel, 64-bit	x86_64	10.6 Snow Leopard or later	10.6.8, 10.7.5 and 15.7
Apple Silicon	arm64	macOS 11.0 Big Sur or later	macOS 26

dyld picks a slice by CPU alone; the OS plays no part in it. A Mac running an OS older than its slice needs gets that slice anyway rather than falling back to a lower one, and won't launch, which is why the G3 and G4 slices are both built at min 10.3 even though no G4 here runs Panther. A G4 on Panther should work but has not been run on hardware (no such machine in the fleet).

Framerate

timedemo demo1, with each Mac's shipped per-machine settings (translucent water, shadows, dynamic lights, trilinear), median of runs 2 & 3:

Machine	1024×768	640×480
Yosemite (G3 / Panther / Rage 128)	17.2	33.6
Yosemite (G3 / Tiger / Rage 128)	15.9	32.5
Quicksilver (G4 / Radeon 9000)	63.6	71.2
Mac mini G4 (Radeon 9200)	48.7	86.0
Mac mini Intel (Lion / GMA 950)	71.3	161.4
Sawtooth (G4 / GeForce2 MX) †	40.5	55.8

† Sawtooth was offline for this round; its figures are from the previous release. Everything else is measured on the v1.14 build.

The iMac G5 runs native 1440×900 only (its Leopard driver hangs on a mode switch) at ~102 fps; the 2019 iMac runs over 1500 fps. The G3 defaults to 800×600, where demo1 runs 25.5 fps on Panther and 25.1 on Tiger. Targets: ≥ 25 fps on the G4/G5/Lion machines, ≥ 20 on the G3. Full history and all three demos in benchmarks/results.csv.

How it's built and benchmarked

One modern Mac drives the fleet over SSH. A Lion Mac mini cross-builds the five PowerPC/Intel slices; arm64 is built on an Apple Silicon Mac.

Features

• One fat binary (six slices: ppc750, ppc7400 with AltiVec, ppc970, i386, x86_64, arm64); runs on Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther through modern macOS. Every PowerPC slice carries its exact CPU subtype (ppc750 / ppc7400 / ppc970) so Tiger and Leopard grade it correctly on a G3.
• Per-machine settings picked at boot via sysctl hw.model, each Mac gets a config tuned to stay playable on it. Every setting is a runtime cvar.
• Visual features, trilinear + up to 16× anisotropic filtering, alias drop-shadows, translucent water / lava / slime / teleporters, watervis on un-vis'd maps, emissive-fullbright dynamic lights, gl_zfix, and 8× MSAA on the modern iMac.
• Weapon damage decals, bullet holes, nail pocks, axe slashes, scorch stars, burn scars and lightning scars on walls, floors and ceilings (a BSP fragment clipper ported from the sister Quake II port; gated via r_decals).
• Online multiplayer, a server browser (DPMaster query) plus in-protocol auto-download, so a 449 MHz G3 and a 2019 iMac can share the same public server. Downloads off by default (allow_download 0).
• Optional Apple Watch "tactical computer" companion (watchlink), streams the ranger's live state to an iPhone + Watch; off by default. Shared with the Quake II port (quake2-tactical-watch).

The Linux dedicated server

There is also a headless Linux server, so a game does not have to be hosted on one of the old Macs. It builds from the same tree and ships as its own release (server-v*), for x86_64 and aarch64. It needs glibc 2.31 or newer, so Ubuntu 20.04 or Debian 11 upward, and it ships no content.

Read server/README.md before putting one on the internet. NetQuake has no password and no rcon, so who can reach the port is the only access control there is.

The always-on public servers this game's server browser talks to are deployed and kept running from a separate repo, retro-server-infra, not this one.

Get the latest release

Download the latest disk image from Releases (QuakeSpasm-OldMac-<version>.dmg). The image is built on Tiger so it mounts on 10.3.9 through current macOS.

Open the .dmg and drag the whole Quakespasm folder (not just the .app) to /Applications or anywhere else. It holds the app, quakespasm.pak, an empty id1/ and a fix script. Add your own pak0.pak (shareware) or pak0.pak + pak1.pak (registered, from your own copy of the game) into that folder's id1/, then double-click Quakespasm.app.

If it shows a couldn't load gfx.wad error, or does nothing at all: open the Quakespasm folder, right-click Fix Launch Problems.command and choose Open (once -- this app isn't Developer ID signed, so any unsigned script needs one right-click-Open bypass instead of a plain double-click), then try Quakespasm.app again. See "Where to put it" below for why this happens. Not needed before 10.12 Sierra (no App Translocation there); the script checks the OS version. Apple Silicon runs the native arm64 slice, and Core Duo / Core Solo Macs run the i386 slice.

Sister projects

Same machines, same tooling, other id engines: old-mac-quake2 (Quake II) and old-mac-quake3 (Quake III Arena).

License

GPL-2.0-or-later, inherited verbatim from upstream QuakeSpasm. See LICENSE.txt. Chain: id Software (1996–2001) → John Fitzgibbons / FitzQuake → QuakeSpasm developers (sezero/quakespasm). Bundled SDL 1.2.15 is LGPL-2.1; the vendored SDL2 2.32.4 build (arm64 only) is zlib.

Where to put it on Apple Silicon and modern macOS

Two separate issues; only the second depends on where the folder is:

• App Translocation (macOS 10.12 Sierra and later only), wherever the folder lives: a quarantined app can run from a random, sandboxed copy of itself instead of its real folder, so it can't see id1/ next to it -- couldn't load gfx.wad, Basedir is .../AppTranslocation/.... Fix Launch Problems.command, inside the Quakespasm folder, clears this; doing it by hand from inside that folder is xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine .
• The Desktop-permission prompt, only if you put the folder on the Desktop: macOS asks an app for permission before it may read files in Desktop, Documents or Downloads, and asks again on every launch for an app it can't identify consistently. Putting the Quakespasm folder in /Applications instead avoids this prompt entirely; there's nothing to clear by hand for it.

PowerPC and Intel Macs running 10.3 through 10.7 have neither of these and can keep the folder wherever you like.