DarkPlaces "Mark V" project

Zircon Engine

An open-source Quake engine built on DarkPlaces, with a mouse-driven menu everywhere, ALT-ENTER fullscreen switching and over a hundred other conveniences for players, mappers and mod authors. It stays fully compatible with DarkPlaces, so a mod can run on either engine.

Open sourceWindowsLinuxmacOSAndroidQuake Remaster support

Download ↗ Visual feature guide ↗ ModDB page ↗

What you get

Highlights from the project's change list; the visual guide on ModDB shows each one in action.

Mouse-driven menus

Every menu can be clicked through, so nobody has to memorise console commands just to start a game, load a map or change a setting.

Proper window handling

ALT-ENTER flips between fullscreen and windowed, the way players expect from any modern game.

Friendlier console

Select, cut, copy and paste right in the console. Always insert mode, no accidental overwrite.

Quake Remaster support

The Remaster HUD via sbar_quake 2 with automatic 2D scaling, plus r_waterwarp 2 and r_waterdeform 2.

Mapper and modder tools

tool_inspector 1 shows entity info in the 3D view. FitzQuake-style noclip, and familiar commands like sky, game, host_timescale, find, freezeall, edict and edicts.

Safer game switching

Models and sounds are purged when the game directory changes, which avoids crashes caused by stale assets from the previous mod.

.map pre-processor (WIP)

An in-progress Quake 3 style .map pre-processor with CSG carve, driven by the csg and csgout console commands.

Server console on Windows

Start with -dedicated for a real server console window with paste support.

Downloads

Builds are published on ModDB by the author.

Build	Date	Platforms	Notes
Beta #164x ↗	Aug 29, 2026	Windows 64-bit, with source	Work-in-progress; the author marks it unsupported. Code re-organisation and the new .map pre-processor.
Latest WIP source ↗	Oct 7, 2026	Source code	Rolling snapshots of the pre-processor overhaul (about 95% of actions reworked at last count).
Alpha 60 ↗	Oct 2, 2023	Windows 64/32-bit, Linux, Android APK	The release listed as current on the project page. Adds Quake Remaster support.
Alpha 60 (Mac) ↗	Oct 2, 2023	macOS	Mac binary of the same release.