Cardboard-looking rocket launchers, brown water forced into clear blue, and brown rock forced into green, etc. HD packs are a hyped up novelty that deface the game's strong atmosphere. I wouldn't recommend using any 'hd pack', especially for playing Quake for the first time. As an alternative to the original release, we highly recommend to try installing a Source Port for example: vkQuake, QuakeSpasm or. It is awesome for a multiplayer client though since it handles so many multiple protocols that fragment the multiplayer community. Of course one could use Darkplaces for a vanilla experience too by turning off the filtering, but the physics are slightly different and there's still no shader water effect.

It's a nice 'modern' one for the vanilla experience. My personal favorite accellerated port that I would consider 'best' for playing Quake is DirectQ, because it's pretty faithful to the game's software rendering to the point for being one of the only source ports that support pixel shaders for water and skies.

Quake 1 source port