Schnapple ports Quake 2 to iOS and Apple TV

Quake 2 is a very divisive entry in the franchise's history. Some players hated the relatively clunky gameplay, while others relished in the delightful new world of railguns. Not many folks would ever think about playing Quake 2 on current gaming hardware, and even less probably want to play it on iOS, but that hasn't stopped one intrepid Shacker. Schnapple, Tom Kidd, has ported Quake 2 to Apple's iOS and tvOS and has provided a ton of details behind his process.

Schnapple's iOS port of Quake 2 features onscreen buttons and virtual analog.

In a massive deep dive posted to his blog, Schnapple details the challenges he faced in accomplishing this port. He described it on our Shacknews Chatty forum as "the most challenging id Tech game to port, simply because as far as I can tell no one has ever done it for iOS before." Schnapple goes on to explain that he began work on this port before his port of Quake 3, but ran into some issues implementing a solution to load the game libraries.

Schnapple has really outdone himself with this Quake 2 port. He has posted the source code for his project to Github. Schnapple also posted a guide for folks who want to try Quake 2 on iOS or Apple TV out themselves:

Since I don’t own the rights to distribute the games, all I can do is publish source code and it’s on the end users to compile it themselves.
You will need a Mac, a copy of Xcode (which is free), an Apple Developer account (also free), and copy of the games.
Clone the project in git, drag and drop the folder references, push to your phone, and it should work. I’ve got at least one person on Reddit who has it going now.
If you’re not a developer, or own a Mac, and/or all of that sounds too involved, I usually tell people: make friends with someone who has a Mac, preferably someone who is also already a developer.
Or failing all of that write to id Software and tell them to put it on the App Store. But that seems unlikely to happen :)

If you have been living under a rock, you might have missed out on Rocket Jump. Check out David Craddock's massive long read about Quake and the golden age of first-person shooters.