Those issues have been there for years and nobody has worked through them. But, I'm not really sure if anybody was really trying to. Valve isn't going to bother and iD didn't need to. GOG is probably going to contact Trent's people and see if they can work something out.

My guess is that it'll be added as a goodie at some point. How the payments on that work is going to be rather tricky as I doubt that Bethesda is going to want to take a haircut to include it and I'm not sure if Trent's going to be willing to give it away for free.

I have the ogg files, put then in id1/musc folder as a post said to do, but don't get the music. With my original quake cd in the drive the music sounds perfectly but if it was possible i would prefer to just put the ogg files in the right place and don't use the cd, is really a way to make this or with the new installer is impossible?

"Goodie"? Do you mean as bonus content or otherwise? I guess I'm confused: the point of this thread is that GOG had to remove the music from the Windows version of the game, right? Assuming it would "cost extra" to have it as bonus content, wouldn't GOG just want to pay to have it amongst the game files?

I think I'm just confused. But in any case obviously I and others hope it can be worked out, especially given how excited people were over this.

Well, it's an easy if a little lengthy process. You could mount the CD image that comes with the DOS version via a tool like Daemon tools, rip the music off it and convert it to OGG.

IF there is a file called "winmm.dll" in the folder where the executable of the Windows version is located the only thing left to do would be putting those OGGs into a subfolder called "Music". If winmm.dll is missing you would first have to get that one from somewhere like one of the many other GOG releases that come with it (for instance Outlaws) and put it there.

I haven't tried it with the GOG version of Quake yet but that's generally how it works.

The problem is that Bethesda probably doesn't own the rights to distribute the audio. They have a license with Trent to cover the original CD release, but they may not have the rights to distribute it in other ways. The Steam version of Quake hasn't had the music.

Distributing it as a goodie isn't that much different than how they handle OST's that presumably have a different license from the game they go with.

This is why I think it may just be a better idea to adjust the Quake engine to play audio from a binary CD image. Provided of course the problem is in the format shifting and it is OK for people to continue to distribute the CD image complete with CD audio.

Certainly a big job and apparently one Bethesda/id aren't interested in, but not an impossible one given the nature of the Quakes source release years ago.

If GOG aren't willing or can't spare the time to do it themselves, that's not even a major problem. There are dozens of variants of the Quake engine out there, and a small army of capable coders that would be willing to give up their time to kick the tyres of the official Quake engine and drag it kicking and screaming into this millennium (myself included). All people would want to get a Quake engine rejuvenation project off the ground would be the nod from someone like GOG/id/Bethesda that they'd be open to distributing it officially if it's up to scratch. You'd probably wind up with a few competing projects. Hell, you could probably turn it into competition for Quake's 20th anniversary and get some serious work done, like overhauling the multiplayer code too.

Quake deserves better than these re-releases of archaic code, the problems with it are only going to get worse as time goes on and Quake is one of the very, very few commercial megahits that people can actually give their time to fix thanks to its source code being released.

You guys requesting refunds or refusing to buy because the music isn't included aren't getting it. The music is STILL there. And LOSSLESS at that! It's still the only release that HAS the music included.

I'm a little confused by all this.

Does someone just have a problem with the fact that you were distributing your own compressed .OGG versions of the tracks without the rights to do so, or is there a problem with the music being included in any format whatsoever? If the latter... is keeping the original loss-less audio in the disc image supposed to be some kind of legal loophole?

Also, I assume the mission packs are unaffected (seeing as how their soundtracks weren't from Trent Reznor), right? I'm only interested in buying this for the mission packs anyway - and would like to know.

Questions aside, thanks for being transparent about this.



So what should the ogg files be named?

I would assume something like "track02", "track03" and so on (Track 1 would be skipped). That's how it is with Darkplaces and other fan-made source ports that support .ogg playback. I believe it's also what GOG uses in their DOSBox wrappers for various other games.

Just want to also put it out there that you can mount .iso/.cue (disk images) straight from vanilla Win 8.1 for anyone with that version of Windows.
Considering he made a new original album in 2008 (The Slip), and released it for free in a multitude of audio formats, maybe if we're lucky and it really is that simple, Trent Reznor might be able to wave the whole issue and allow GOG.com to roll the audio back to the way it was in their original release. Maybe someone should tweet him about this...

That's a fine, educated guess, but it didn't work.