Quark - Quake Army Knife

Author: Armin Rigo

Downloads Page
Quark Information Base
Official Site

Quake Army Knife (QuArK) is a multi-purpose tool for the games using engines similar to or based on the Quake engine by id software. QuArK has the ability to directly edit maps, and to a limited extent, models, and can import, export and convert sounds, textures and various other game assets. It is also able to modify .pak and .pk3 files, as well as importing compiled BSP's in order to study the entities as well as add/change/delete entities from these files. No other game editing tool available has the ability to do all of these things. QuArK is completely different from the desktop publishing program Quark.

One difference between QuArK and many other editors is a consistent emphasis on an easy-to-use and intuitive interface, with extensive flyover hints and other forms of in-program documentation. No need to remember 50 combinations of hot keys to produce a map. Initial configuration is simply a matter of filling in fields indicating where the games you're editing and their compiling tools are located, and when you start the map editor for the first time, you're presented with a basic map than you can run by hitting the 'GO' button.

There has also been extensive development of tools such as 'duplicators' and 'shape builders' to help in creating complex patterns such as stairs, arches and other sophisticated architecture. If you know you need a row of pillars but can't make up your mind about what texture to use on them, you can use a duplicator, and changing the texture on the original will automatically update the copies.

A final difference is that QuArK is as far as we know the only GPL (Gnu Public License) game editor that is being actively developed, and is easy to extend to accomodate a wide range of different games. The GPL means, among other things, that the QuArK developers can't impose any restrictions at all on what you do with it, unlike editors supported by games companies, which can't be used for games produced by other companies. So if you are an aspiring game-developer you can adapt QuArK for your own project, without having to reveal editor source until you release the editing tools for your game (actually you don't even have to do that, though we would certainly hope that you would).