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id Tech 2, formerly known as the Quake II engine is a game engine developed by id Software for use in their games, most notably Quake II. Since its release, id Tech 2 has been licensed for use in several other games.

One of the engine's most notable features was out-of-the-box support for hardware-accelerated graphics, specifically OpenGL, along with the traditional software renderer.^{[citation needed]} Another interesting feature was the subdivision of some the components into dynamic-link libraries. This allowed both software and OpenGL renderers, which were switched between by loading and unloading separate libraries.^{[citation needed]} Libraries were also used for the game logic, for two reasons:

• id could release the source code to allow modifications while keeping the remainder of the engine proprietary.^{[citation needed]}
• Since they were compiled for a native platform, instead of an interpreter, they could run faster than Quake's solution, which was to run the game logic (QuakeC) in a limited interpreter.^{[citation needed]}

The level format, as with previous id Software engines, used BSP. The levels were lit through a lightmap method, in which light data for each surface is precalculated (this time, via a radiosity method) and stored as an image in the level file, which is then used to determine how much lighting intensity each model should receive, but not its direction.

John Carmack released the source code on 2001-12-22 under the terms of the GNU General Public License.^[1]

• Quake II (1997) – id Software
• Heretic II (1998) – Raven Software
• SiN (1998) – Ritual Entertainment
• Kingpin: Life of Crime (1999) – Xatrix Entertainment
• Soldier of Fortune (2000) – Raven Software
• Daikatana (2000) – Ion Storm
• Anachronox (2001) – Ion Storm

• AprQ2
• EGL
• Jake2 (Quake II engine ported to Java)
• NoCheat
• q^2
• Q2Pro
• Quake II AbSIRD (Renders Quake II in Single Image Random Dot Stereogram imagery)
• Quake II Evolved
• Quake II for Mac OS X
• Quake2maX
• Quake2XP
• Qfusion
• R1Q2
• Quake2 .NET (Quake II engine ported to .NET)

Free software Portal

• First person shooter engine
• id Tech 3
• id Tech 4
• id Tech 5
• List of game engines
• Quake engine
• Quake series

1. ^ http://slashdot.org/games/01/12/22/053211.shtml

• Official id Tech 2 licensing page
• Quake II engine full games list

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