The ezQuake GL client is far and away the most popular these days. But what options do people that want to play in software have?

I grabbed the most recent ezQuake software nightly from here, but: (1) it appears to be older than the GL client, (2) it seems to be missing some features (or at least UI tweaks) of the GL client, and (3) it seems to have bugs/config issues with my setup.

Bug-wise, the client enters some sort of rainbow-colored gibberish mode every time I alt-tab.



I'm also getting the error below when I attempt to join a server or play with bots. Hopefully this one is a quick fix on my end.



And finally, the SW client is giving me only 4:3 video modes to choose from.



Any help with these issues would of course be appreciated, but I have some more general client questions as well...

Why isn't there a software client included with the Nquake installer?
How does the software client compare, feature-wise and stability-wise, to the GL client?
Are there any plans to update the software client or compile a more recent build?
If not, are there any other software clients with similar features?

It'd be nice to get some definitive, searchable answers to these questions for any future QW players who, like me, miss the "feel" of the SW client.

I used software for a long time in linux with svgalib outside X, however it's hard to get high fps with svgalib.

After that i tried fodquake-sw (*linux only) but 320x200 did'nt work on my machine and 640x480/640x400 was just to laggy. The ezquake-x11 binary is just a joke and there's missing mouse input other than the default which really sucks

I think ezquake developers have abandoned development for software as no one uses it and it's really waste of time.

You can still use fodquake-sw but i really don't think you can have very high fps with it.

Try command line option -nodirectdraw to have widescreen modes.
ezquake -nodirectdraw

Unfortunately no one have enough passion to support software version.

I suppose I can live with the GL client if I have to, seeing as how it is phenomenal.

I will say that it's interesting how almost everyone has moved over to GL. When I was playing circa 2003, I remember most people still using SW over GL for exactly the reason I gave in the original post: SW feels different - to me it's more crisp and immediate. Most people seemed to have decent vid cards back then, so I don't think that was the issue. Nowadays GL dominates, even though modern computers should have no trouble holding an adequate framerate in either SW or GL mode. Funny that.

Whenever I get a chance to figure out why bots aren't working in SW, I'm going to compare DMM4 LG percentages in GL vs SW and see which wins out.