> Quake was build for 320x200 (VGA) as primary resolution target. Wasn't it Mode...

bluedino · on June 23, 2016

    vid_describemodes

    Lists all available video modes, built-in and VESA.

    vid_mode #

    Switches the video mode to mode #.  Quake has 11 built-in modes:

    0:  320x200
    1:  320x200
    2:  360x200
    3:  320x240
    4:  360x240
    5:  320x350
    6:  360x350
    7:  320x400
    8:  360x400
    9:  320x480
    10: 360x480

    0 is the default mode.  Modes above 10 are not built in, but are VESA
    modes which may be supported by Quake and your hardware.  Use
    vid_describemodes to see the available VESA modes.

ekekekekekekl · on June 23, 2016

I was always super disappointed they didn't use Mode-X by default.

As a result, even though you could set Mode-X explicitly, it wasn't optimized so it went slower than plain 13h and wasn't even page-flipped. So there wasn't a compelling reason to use it, except for the square pixels.

animal531 · on June 24, 2016

Ah, good old Mode X hackery; all that effort for 40 extra scanlines (and paging).