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Quake III Arena
Developer(s)	id Software
Publisher(s)	Activision
Series	Quake
Engine	Quake III engine
Platform(s)	Dreamcast, Sgi IRIX, Macintosh, PC (Linux/Windows), PlayStation 2
Release	December 2, 1999 (NA)
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer

Quake III Arena or Quake 3, abbreviated as Q3A or Q3, is a multiplayer first-person shooter released on December 2, 1999. The game was developed by id Software and featured music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly. Quake III Arena is the third title in the series and differs from the previous Quakes in that it excludes the normal single-player element, instead focusing upon multiplayer action. The solo experience in Q3 is arena combat versus AI opponents, in a similar style to Unreal Tournament.

As with most multiplayer first-person shooters, the aim of Q3A is to move throughout the arena fragging enemy players and scoring points based on the objective of the game mode. When a player’s health points reach zero, the avatar of that player is fragged (they "die"), soon after the player can then respawn and continue playing with their health points full again but without any weapons or power-ups previously gathered. The game ends when a player or team reaches a specified score, or when the time limit has been reached. The single player mode of the game consists of the same thing against computer controlled bots. The game modes were deathmatch, Team deathmatch, Capture the flag, and tournament, in which players test their skills against each other in one-on-one battles, and an elimination ladder.

An expansion pack named Quake III: Team Arena was released in December 2000 by id Software. It focused on introducing team gameplay through new game modes and also included new weapons, items, and player models. However, Team Arena was criticized because its additions were long overdue and had been already been implemented by fan modifications. A few years later Quake 3: Arena Gold was released which composed of the original Quake III Arena and the Team Arena expansion pack bundled together as one game.

On August 19, 2005, id Software released the complete source code for Quake III Arena under the GNU General Public License, as they have done for their earlier Wolfenstein 3D engine, Doom engine, Quake engine and Quake II engine. This does not make the entire game GPL, however, as the textures and other data were not released. A project called OpenArena addresses this problem, creates open content and bundles it with the engine as a standalone Quake3 clone.

Comparison with Unreal Tournament

Quake III Arena was the direct competitor to Epic Games's Unreal Tournament which was released 10 days earlier. Both games were multiplayer-focused sequels to successful singleplayer games, both lacking a single-player component beyond fighting bots in multiplayer arenas. As such, frequent comparisons are made between the two games.

Unreal Tournament had superior bot AI and more varied weapons and multiplayer modes. In addition to the standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the flag, Unreal had pioneered several new game modes, namely Assault and Domination, which even the later Quake III Team Arena expansion did not measure up to. However, Quake III Arena was lauded for its streamlined gameplay which served to more successfully recapture the "classic" deathmatch experience pioneered by the original Quake. The Quake III engine has superior graphics and was more frequently licensed out to other developers.

Both UT and Q3A had a large number of mods created for them. Later installments in the Quake series include Quake 4 which continued the story of Quake II, and the upcoming Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, which is a prequel to Quake II. Further releases in the Unreal Tournament series include Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 2007.

Game Engine

One area of comparison was the movement physics of the games. Q3A had a tight movement system where the movement of the player models or bot models matched that of the distance travelled giving it a more "realistic" feel. UT the players and bots were able to travel greater distances in less time, but the movement of the player models or bot models made it appear that they were "sliding" in their movement.

Quake III Arena also had a considerably more colourful palette and higher polygon count, compared to Unreal Tournament's dull/drab colours. Part of this was attributed to Q3A's requirement for an OpenGL-compliant graphics accelerator, while Unreal Tournament had a software renderer, allowing it to be played on older machines without hardware graphics acceleration.

Weapons

Players could often associate weapons from one with the other, often based on visual indicators rather than practical usage. Unfamiliar players could easily mistake weapons from one as "ripoffs" of the other when both simply derive their weapons from the previous installment.

Quake III weapons and powerups were designed to be simple, specific, and conventional, like that of the past Quake series. There were no secondary fire modes, there were no overlapping roles between the weapons, and none of the weapons were innovative or unfamiliar with the deathmatch community, making gameplay streamlined.

In Unreal Tournament, the rocket launcher's projectiles travel slower and there is less splash damage. Instead, the main killing power of the rocket launcher is from taking advantage of the multi-loading function (by delaying fire, up to 6 rockets can be loaded) which is used to release a spread of missiles at the enemy (also, if the player delays fire while tracking the enemy, that will also give the missiles limited homing capability). In Quake III Arena, the rocket launcher is intended for firing off single rockets at a faster rate (as opposed to UT's barrage, as there is no multi-loading in Q3A), but the rockets travel significantly faster and have a wider area of splash damage. The idea is to repeated strike the foe in places around him; for instance, the floor, ceiling, and walls.

A similar comparison can be made between the UT rocket launcher secondary fire mode (grenade launcher) and the Q3A grenade launcher; players build up a barrage in UT but just release a constant stream of grenades in Q3A. UT's Flak Cannon secondary fire mode is perhaps similar to Q3A's grenade launcher, but the Flak Cannon must be aimed at an angle to be effective, Flak detonates on impact instead of bouncing, and it produced shrapnel instead of splash damage.

As Quake III's default weapon is the Machine Gun, it is only moderately effective at best. Unreal's default weapon is the weak Enforcer pistol, but there is a powerful rapid fire weapon in the form of the Minigun.

Quake III has a "conventional" shotgun, which fires a wide spread of pellets which is very effective at close range but dissipates at longer distances. Unreal Tournament's closest equivalent to the shotgun would have to be the Flak Cannon primary fire mode. The Flak Cannon is also a short range weapon but features a much tighter spread, requiring more precise aiming even in close quarters, although the shots unusually also riccochet off walls.

Quake III's railgun will not only kill an unarmored player at 100 health, it will punch through and kill/wound several players that are in the line of fire, but it has a slower rate of fire. Unreal Tournament's sniper rifle, which is considered more "realistic", does not penetrate through multiple targets and will only kill with a head shot, but it is semi-automatic and has a significantly higher rate of fire.

Another interesting factor in CTF play was the presence of the translocator and teleportals. The translocator an instrument of travel available to everyone but the flag carrier theoretically made offense more difficult in Unreal Tournament and often meant a flag runner could encounter resistance from the same defender at several entry/exit routes several times. Teleportals in Quake III Arena were often positioned to allow a defender move from a far off location directly to a position that may cut off the flag runner.

Modding

Another area where the two games diverged heavily was modding. Unreal Tournament, being based on an extremely elaborate runtime environment based around UnrealScript and data packages, was able to support interoperating mods (called "mutators") and game types, features. Because almost any type of data, including code, could be copied to almost any package, many later maps saw the inclusion of weapon modifications within the map itself, allowing for weapon or item mods that required the user to do nothing but download the map. Quake III on the other hand packaged all code in files where values could be changed and compiled thus making it possible to override any aspect of the game.

Conversely, modding for Unreal Tournament could be seen as significantly less intuitive. Starting a mod for Quake III was as simple as making an extra folder, adding files to it that would override the base files as well as new files, and packing them into a ZIP file upon completion. Adding assets required nothing more than copying files into the mod directory. Unreal Tournament, by comparison, required importing all assets through UnrealEd, sometimes requiring commands to be placed in scripts to do it (such as for models), managing default INI files for most packages, and most likely creating a "UMOD" package because the game's common "manifest" file has to be modified to install a mutator. While getting Quake III's game code to compile can be met with complication, any of the game code can be modified, making adding a new weapon as simple as making code similar to existing weapons code and compiling again.

Another problem was the awkwardness of several systems in Unreal Tournament itself, possibly due to it being layered on top of the original Unreal code base. For example, the same class would be used for a weapon held in-hand as lying on the ground, even though they use different models, and one is a touchable world pickup while the other is an in-hand item attached to an owner. Unreal Tournament modding was prone to artifacts from its "replication" system used to network objects not being required in single-player, so a modification that worked perfectly fine in practice mode could malfunction severely in a multiplayer setting, causing visual artifacts such as seeker rockets not appearing to "chase" targets, missing animations, or even weapons that simply would not fire. Modifications made for Quake III Arena worked well in single player mode and multiplayer mode and had few malfunctions.

The problem with Unreal Tournament was further exacerbated by lack of documentation for what was an extremely complex system, a problem eventually remedied by the inclusion of developer discs in later Unreal Tournament installments, as well as the creation of the Unreal Developers Network.

Other Versions

Dreamcast

Quake III Arena was released for the Sega Dreamcast in 2000 and featured 4 player online play versus Dreamcast and PC gamers. It is considered one of the best console ports of a PC first-person shooter because of its smooth frame-rate and online play. Before Activision could release the "official" Dreamcast Map Pack, a "hacked" copy of all the Dreamcast maps was released. This map pack included the maps specially created for Dreamcast split-screen play, which were never meant to be released. Once the "official" map pack was released, the other map pack became harder to find. PC Players were required to downgrade their installations to point release 1.16n to play alongside Dreamcast players, but the maps would work on the final 1.32 point release.

PlayStation 2

Quake III Revolution was released for the Sony PlayStation 2 in 2001 and featured several elements adopted from Team Arena. It was not as successful as its Dreamcast counterpart due to its lack of online play and because of the poor performance on the PlayStation 2 hardware during intense combat.

Point Releases

There are two major versions of the Quake III for the PC. Version 1.16 and 1.32. 1.16 supports the older protocol from the original retail version (1.11). Many players are in favor of this release and therefore many servers can be found on it. Reasons for this are that some people believe the gameplay is better. Others dislike the buggy implementation of PunkBuster, which has banned/kicked players for irrelevant reasons (i.e. Non-standard characters in name, non-default cvar settings). Also, the 1.32 version includes several bugs in the menu GUI, particularly in the server browser. The heavy use of both versions has lead some people to create Quake III version switchers which will quickly switch what version of Quake III loads allowing players to play on any release.

Technology

Graphics

Unlike most other games released at the time, Quake 3 requires an OpenGL-compliant graphics accelerator and does not include a software renderer. The graphical technology of the game is based tightly around a "shader" system where the appearances of many surfaces can be defined in one of many text files referred to as "shader scripts." Shaders are described and rendered as several layers, each containing one texture, one "blend mode" which determines how to superimpose it over the last one, and texture orientation modes such as environment mapping, scrolling, and rotating. These features can be readily seen within the game, with many bright and active surfaces in every map, and even on the character models.

The shader system goes beyond just visual appearance, also defining the contents of volumes (e.g. a water volume is defined as such by applying a water shader to its surfaces), light emission, and which sound to play when a volume is tread upon.

Quake 3 also introduced spline-based curved surfaces in addition to planar volumes, which are responsible for many of the smooth surfaces present within the game. They were likely added to remedy the sharp edges produced by solid volumes, since the original Quake 3 map compiler only supported flat shading on solid volumes.

The original version of Quake 3 provided support for models animated using vertex animation with attachment tags, allowing models to maintain separate torso and leg animations and hold weapons. With the release of Quake 3: Team Arena, support for skeletal models was also added. Quake 3 is one of the first games where the third-person model is able to look up and down as well as around (due to the head, torso and legs being separate).

The in-game videos all use a proprietary format called "RoQ," which originated in The 11th Hour. Graeme Devine, the designer of Quake 3, appears to have created the format for The 11th Hour, which also contains RoQ videos. Internally, RoQ uses vector quantization to encode video and DPCM to encode audio. While the format itself is proprietary, it was successfully reverse-engineered in 2001, and the actual RoQ decoder is present in the Quake 3 source code release. RoQ has seen little use outside of games based on the Quake 3 or Doom 3 engines, but is supported by several video players (such as MPlayer) and a handful of third-party encoders exist.

Other visual features include volumetric fog, mirrors, portals, decals, and wave-like vertex distortion.

Sound

Quake 3's sound system outputs to 2 channels using a looping output buffer, mixed from 96 tracks with stereo spatialization and Doppler effect. All of the sound mixing is done within the engine, which can create problems for licensees hoping to implement EAX or surround sound support. Several popular effects such as echos are also absent.

One of the major flaws of the sound system is that the mixer isn't given its own thread, so if the game stalls for too long (particularly while navigating the menus or connecting to a server), the small output buffer will begin to loop, a very noticeable artifact. This problem was also present in the Doom, Quake, and Quake 2 engines.

Networking

Quake 3's uses a "snapshot" system to relay information about game "frames" to the client over UDP.

The server allows all objects to interact for a brief period, and then attempts to send the state of all objects at that point in time (the current frame) to each client. The server attempts to omit as much information as possible about each frame, relaying only differences from the last frame the client confirmed as received.

Almost all data packets are compressed using Huffman coding using static pre-calculated frequency data, to reduce bandwidth even further.

Quake 3 also integrated a relatively elaborate cheat-protection system called "pure server." Any client connecting to a pure server automatically has pure mode enabled, and while pure mode is enabled, only files within data packs can be accessed. Clients are also disconnected if the their data packs fail one of several integrity checks. The cgame.qvm file, because of its high potential for cheat-related modification, is subject to additional integrity checks.

The system can be a hindrance to developers, who must manually deactivate pure server to test maps or mods that aren't yet in data packs.

Later versions supplemented pure server with PunkBuster support, although this functionality is absent from the source code release, presumably to ensure that users can't simply modify the engine to evade pure server.

Virtual Machine

Quake 3 also contains a virtual machine used for controlling object behavior on the server, effects and prediction on the client, and the user interface. This presented many advantages, as mod authors would not need to worry about crashing the entire game with bad code, clients could show much more advanced effects or game menus than what was possible with Quake 2, and the user interface for mods was entirely customizable.

VM files are developed in ANSI C, using LCC to compile them to a 32-bit RISC pseudo-assembly format. They are then converted by a tool called q3asm to QVM files, which are multi-segmented files consisting of static data, and instructions based on a reduced set of the input opcodes. Unless operations which require a specific endianness are used, a QVM file will run the same on any platform supported by Quake 3.

The VM also contained bytecode compilers for the x86 and PowerPC architectures, executing QVM instructions as native code instead of via an interpreter.

Gameplay

Modes

Q3A comes with several classic gameplay modes. They are:

• Free For All (Deathmatch)
• Team Deathmatch
• Tourney (1v1)
• Capture the Flag

Since its release, many more modes have been created (see mods).

Single player

Unlike its predecessors, Q3A does not have a plot-based single-player campaign. Instead, it simulates the multiplayer experience by using computer controlled players, called "bots". In the manual, 'How to Play' is reduced to the single instruction: "Frag Everything That Isn’t You."

While the story of the game is thin at best (the greatest warriors of all time fight for the amusement of the Arena Masters in the Arena Eternal), continuity with prior games in the Quake series and even Doom is maintained by the inclusion of player models related to those earlier games as well as some biographical information included on each contestant in the manual, a familiar mixture of gothic and technological map architecture, and specific equipment; for example, the Quad Damage power-up, the widely used rocket launcher, and the powerful BFG. The game may only be considered partially canon for all the other Quake and Doom games, as the game is based on another dimension, the Arena Eternal.

Multiplayer

Quake III Arena was specifically designed for multiplayer. This means that the game allows players, whose computers are connected by a network or to the internet, to play against each other in real time. It uses a client-server architecture, that requires all players' clients to connect to a single server. Q3A’s focus on multiplayer gameplay spawned a vivid community similar to Quakeworld, that is still active to this day.

Maps

In Quake 3 Arena, there are a series of maps that consist of different characters in the game. They build up from the lowest of difficulty (Crash, in Tier 0) to highest of difficulty (Xaero, in Tier 7) regardless of the choice of difficulty from the main menu.

The map naming syntax is the name of the game, the map type, and then its number. For example, Q3DM5 is Quake 3 Deathmatch Map 5, while Q3Tourney3 is Quake 3 Tournamant Map 3. While Deathmatch maps are designed for up to 16 players, Tournament maps are designed for 'duels' between 2 players, and in the singleplayer game could be considered 'boss battles'.

Tier 0: Intro

    Q3DM0 - Introduction

Tier 1: Training

    Q3DM1 - Arena Gate 
    Q3DM2 - House of Pain
    Q3DM3 - Arena of Death
    Q3Tourney1 - Powerstation 0218

Tier 2: Skilled

    Q3DM4 - The Place of Many Deaths
    Q3DM5 - The Forgotten Place
    Q3DM6 - The Camping Grounds
    Q3Tourney2 - The Proving Grounds

Tier 3: Combat

    Q3DM7 - Temple of Retribution
    Q3DM8 - Brimstone Abbey
    Q3DM9 - Hero's Keep
    Q3Tourney3 - Hell's Gate

Tier 4: Warrior

    Q3DM10 - The Nameless Place
    Q3DM11 - Deva Station
    Q3DM12 - The Dredwerkz
    Q3Tourney4 - Verticle Vengeance

Tier 5: Veteran

    Q3DM13 - Lost World
    Q3DM14 - Grim Dungeons
    Q3DM15 - Demon Keep
    Q3Tourney5 - Fatal Instinct

Tier 6: Master

    Q3DM16 - The Bouncy Map
    Q3DM17 - The Longest Yard
    Q3DM18 - Space Chamber
    Q3DM19 - Apocalypse Void

Tier 7: Final Tier, Elite

    Q3Tourney6 - The Very End of You

Items

Weapons

In Quake III, the weapons are designed such that there is no longer a completely "dominant" weapon. The right weapons balance was achieved by examining earlier games in the series, namely Quake and Quake II. For instance, the original Quake's Rocket Launcher was so effective such that it dominated entire deathmatches and Quake II's Rocket Launcher was toned down so much that it was passed over for other weapons; Quake III's Rocket Launcher is fun and effective to use but it isn't overpowered, allowing it to be countered in many situations.

Weapons start off as items. They spawn at regular intervals at specified places on the map, depending on the value for g_weaponrespawn (default=5). When you pick one up, you also have your ammo supply for the weapon set to a fixed number. However if you have more than the fixed number perhaps from already having picked up the weapon or enough ammo packs, only one more round is added. When you die, you drop all of your weapons with the exception of the machinegun and gauntlet.

The fixed number of ammo for each weapon pickup:

• Shotgun - 10 Shells
• Grenade Launcher - 10 Grenades
• Rocket Launcher - 10 Rockets
• Lightning Gun - 100 Lightning
• Railgun - 10 Slugs
• Plasma Gun - 50 Cells
• BFG10K - 20 Bfg Ammo

The weapon switch time is at 0.45s, but one cannot switch weapons while reloading.

Gauntlet

The gauntlet is one of the two weapons with which a player typically spawns. It is a mêlée weapon used for close combat only, and one hit inflicts 50 damage. When a gauntlet kill is achieved, the killer earns a gauntlet medal and the victim receives a "humiliation" penalty of one point. It is normally a last-resort weapon, but is also useful in narrow corridors and doorways. The Gauntlet has a firing delay of 0.4 seconds.

Machinegun

The machinegun is the other weapon that the player starts out with. It is a hitscan weapon that can rapidly inflict small amounts of damage (7 hp per bullet) and has a small degree of spread (approx. 2 degrees), making it useful for finishing off opponents with low health. The machinegun has a rate of ten shots per second.

Shotgun

The shotgun is primarily used for close range combat since its large spray diminishes with distance. The shotgun shoots 11 pellets that deal 10 damage each, so a concentrated spread can kill an unarmoured player. Like the machine gun, it is an instant impact weapon. The shotgun is found on almost every stock map. To mitigate its high damage it has a one second delay between shots.

Grenade Launcher

This weapon fires grenades that detonate either on contact with another player or 2.5 seconds after being launched. Grenades will not detonate as a result of contact by the one who launched it or be obstructed by him/her. In comparison to the rocket launcher, it releases projectiles faster although more ordnance is required to inflict similar damage due to the grenade’s inaccurate short-range arc and bounce unpredictability (making it hard to score a direct hit). It fires at a rate of 0.8 seconds.

Rocket Launcher

The rocket launcher is one of the most widely used weapons in the game because it is easy to use and can inflict a lot of damage with little aim as the rocket impacts cause a lot of splash damage. Because of its wide blast radius, players are encouraged to "shoot the ground" rather than aim for the opponent directly. This however becomes a double-edged sword at closer ranges; at point blank range the player could significantly harm or kill himself if he is careless. This weapon can also be used to rocketjump, taking advantage of the player’s own blast to reach even higher heights than regular jumping. A direct hit on an opponent deals 100 damage, but splash damage cannot be added to the victim. The rocket launcher is found on every map except q3dm0. The Rocket Launchers rate of fire is 0.8 seconds.

Lightning Gun

The lightning gun (short LG, also referred as Shaft) is much like the machinegun, except that it fires as a beam with limited range. It can kill a healthy opponent in less than two seconds because it shoots at 0.05 seconds per pulse. Similar to the Thunderbolt of the original Quake, differing in that it can be used underwater.

Railgun

The railgun is primarily used for long range combat or sniping. It is 100% accurate, inflicts 100 damage but has a low fire rate (1.5 seconds) and requires good aiming. Found on many large maps with wide open spaces.

Plasma Gun

The plasma gun is an effective weapon for close to medium range combat. It rapidly fires a stream of deadly pulses (ten per second) which inflict a significant amount of damage (20 hp per orb). The fast-traveling bursts however are not instant impact like the machine gun. The plasma also inflicts minor splash damage, which can actually be used to plasmaclimb. But, because the power of the splash damage is small, plasmaclimbing is slower than rocketjumping, cannot gain as much height, and requires more skill. More details about plasmaclimbing are under the Techniques section. Q3A's plasma gun is similar to the plasma gun/rifle found in Doom. Found on most maps.

BFG10K

BFG10K is considered the ultimate weapon. A rapid-fire weapon, firing out bursts of fast-moving plasma at a rate of about 5 shots per second, which inflict damage and splash damage comparable to that of the rocket launcher. In effect, Quake III's BFG is a rapid-fire Rocket Launcher with faster projectiles and other than the name it shares little in common with the other BFG weapons in previous id Software games.

Ammo

Ammo boxes are located throughout the map. One ammo box contains a certain amount of one type of ammo. They are usually in easy-to-find places, but oftentimes ammo boxes will be hidden. Ammo boxes give you a standard amount of ammo that simply gets added to your current supply. When you first enter an arena, you start off with a certain amount of ammo (typically 100 machinegun bullets) and every time you die, your ammo supply resets to that amount.

Ammo box amounts:

• Machinegun ammo box - 50 Bullets
• Shotgun - 10 Shells
• Grenade Launcher - 5 Grenades
• Rocket Launcher - 5 Rockets
• Lightning Gun - 60 Lightning
• Railgun - 10 Slugs
• Plasma Gun - 30 Cells
• BFG10K - 15 Bfg Ammo

Health

Like in most games, health is the essential life of the player. Once the health points drop to 0, the player dies. In Q3A, the player starts with 125 health points. There are two limits to the number of health points you can accumulate. The first limit is at 100, and the second, impassable limit is at 200. Only certain health items can be picked up to pass the 100 health limit. When the player's health is above 100, it drops by 1 each second. The number of health points is displayed in the bottom-center of the screen, normally in orange but changes to white when above 100.

Health comes in four types of items:

• Green Health - Adds 5 health points and can pass 100 health.
• Yellow Health - Adds 25 health points
• Orange (Gold) Health - Adds 50 health points
• Mega Health - Adds 100 health points and can pass 100 health. Mega Health is also considered as a power-up.

Armor

Unlike previous Quake games, all armor pickups contribute to a single type of armor. All armor pickups negate 2/3 of the damage that otherwise would have been taken. The only differences in the armor pickups are in the amount of protection points they offer.

Armor comes in three different items:

• Armor Shard - 5 armor points, to a maximum of 200.
• Yellow Armor - 50 armor points, to a maximum of 200. Often abbreviated as YA.
• Red Armor - 100 armor points, to a maximum of 200. Often abbreviated as RA.

Power-ups

Quad damage

Despite the name in Quake III the Quad damage power-up only triples the amount of damage done by the weapon you have (the name comes from previous titles in the series where it actually did have the effect of quadrupling damage). Quad damage is very effective when using rapid-fire guns (machine gun, plasma gun). Extreme caution must be taken with guns that have splash damage (such as the rocket launcher and BFG10K), since the splash damage is multiplied just as much as the direct impact. Quad damage in the hands of a good aiming player can make almost Insta-Gib type of shooting with the railgun, killing the target whose sum of health and armour does not pass 300. Quad damage lasts for 30 seconds.

Haste

Haste doubles your firing/movement speed for 30 seconds. When used with strafe jumping, you can move at an astounding speed. Haste will cause you to deplete your ammo faster if you are careless.

Regeneration

For 30 seconds, Regeneration replenishes your health up to 200 for a period of time. It adds health each second. The amount of health added depends on your current amount of health – 15 health is added when your current health is below 100 and 5 health is added when your current health is 100 or above.

Flight

Flight is an extremely rare 60 second power-up that shows up in only one stock Q3A map, Q3DM19. When active, it allows you to fly around at normal speed. Jump becomes ascend and crouch becomes descend.

Battle Suit

Wearing a Battle Suit nullifies any splash damage (damage done to self, e.g. rocket/grenade jumping), environmental hazards, and halves all other damage. Lasts 30 seconds.

Invisibility

This power-up makes the player and his/her weapon transparent and only visible as a slight distortion for 30 seconds. Note that in Capture The Flag mode, the flag is not affected by Invisibility.

• NOTE: When a player with an activated powerup dies, the powerup is dropped. If and when it is collected by another player, they can use it for its remaining time. For example, if Player 1 uses the Quad Damage for 10 seconds before being killed, Player 2 can pick it up and use its remaining 20 seconds.

• NOTE: It is possible for a player to steal a power-up from another player without killing him first. The player must be close enough to touch the other player at the exact moment the power-up activates.

Carried Items

These items must be activated in order to take effect. Only one can be carried at a time, and cannot be dropped. Carried items are uncommon in arenas and are typically found in places which catch little attention.

Medkit

The medkit, which appears as a syringe containing red fluid, instantly heals the user's health to 125 in the latest patches. In old patches, medkits only heal to 100 points.

Personal Teleporter

The personal teleporter teleports the user to a random spawn point on the map.

Techniques

Quake III Arena is a game which requires many different skills to play well. See Trickjumping for details. Some of the techniques which must be mastered are:

Aiming

Aiming in Quake is simple - point and shoot. There are no dynamic sprays and movement does not affect the spray of your weapons. With hitscan weapons such as the gauntlet, machine gun, shotgun, lightning gun and rail gun, simply aim directly at your opponent and fire. Weapons like the rocket launcher, grenade launcher, plasma gun, and BFG require a bit more practice to master, as they require you to lead your target or shoot on the nearby ground to inflict splash damage.

Movement

For the most part, movement is simple. You can run, walk, crouch or jump. Running is always on by default, though running everywhere isn’t smart. Walking is useful as you make no noise when you walk, allowing you to sneak up on an opponent, crouching also deadens the noise you make when moving in exchange for decreased speed. Another advantage of crouching is that it puts you lower to the ground and therefore makes you a smaller target, which can be useful if your enemy is using the railgun. Others may argue because the decreased speed makes you more prone to attacks. A slow target is also easier to lead.

Strafe-jumping

Strafe-jumping is one of the most important skills to master in Quake III. It accelerates the user to an incredible degree if used correctly. While moving forward, strafe in either direction, hold forward, jump and move your crosshair in the same direction. The best thing to do when learning to strafe jump is to move your cursor very gently left and right, alternating strafe keys between jumps. That is, hold forward strafe right, move the cursor right, jump, strafe left, move the cursor left, jump, etc. You shouldn’t be moving your crosshair more than a few inches. The best way to get a feel for how to do this is watch demos of professionals - they strafe jump constantly. In order to achieve maximum strafe-jumping capabilities a constant 120 fps must be maintained. This is done by the command 'com_maxfps 120'. It is important to note that Strafe-jumping and bunny-hopping are by no means the same, however; bunnyhopping is used more so by newer players, which because they are always jumping, makes them more difficult to hit, but does in no way accelerate them.

Rocket Jumping

Rocket jumping is jumping using the knock-back effect of a rocket to propel yourself further. What you do is jump exactly at the same time as you fire a rocket at the ground. This can increase the height of your jump drastically. If done incorrectly, it will damage you and not help your jump at all. For starters, it is easier to jump and then quickly fire the rocket. The effect is almost the same. The closer the rocket is fired after the jump, the higher the jump. While the damage to yourself cannot be avoided, it can be reduced greatly by collecting armor prior to rocket jumping. This way, it’s your armor that will take most of the damage instead of you. When doing a rocket jump on a jump-pad, you can make huge jumps, bringing you to high and otherwise unreachable places.

Grenade Jumping

Grenade jumping is one of the most difficult skills to master in Quake III, since it requires the exact timing and placement of the grenades. "Simply" fire a grenade, be over it and jump when it goes off. This can be used in conjunction with rocket jumping, but usually this results in massive damage to the player and has a low success rate. Grenade jumping can be simplified by shooting the grenade directly down at your feet. The grenade will bounce off the ground 3 times, and explode at the apex of its 3rd bounce. The grenade will be at about knee level. Time your jump to coincide with this moment.

Plasma Climbing

Plasma climbing is using the knock-back from the shot from the plasma gun to climb up walls. To do it, just get right next to a wall, aim low on the wall (about an inch or two from the floor), jump, and fire continuously whilst pushing forward toward the wall. This technique can be extremely effective when used with grenade jumping. Drop a grenade, aim at the floor, and right before the grenade goes off, jump, and start firing your plasma gun.

Timing and map control

Having control over the items of a map is equally important as aiming, movement and tactical skills are to winning a match. Since items reappear over specific periods of time it is possible to snatch items away from the opponent, just as they appear. By memorizing the time an item was last picked up you can keep important items like armor and megahealth away from the enemy and gain a significant hit point advantage. Advanced strategies, both in duel and team games, include comprehensive positional control which is used to both secure powerful armors and powerups for ones team (or self) while denying them from the opponent. This technique is most useful on one-to-one or team deathmatch. In FFA with many players, the time wasted collecting items would be better spent making frags.

Bunny-hopping

Bunny hopping allows the player to fully control their trajectory while in the air. It is utilised to make 90° or more turns, to gain speed, or to zigzag when hopping. Bhopping is available in CPMA, votable in OSP mods (it is typically turned on only in CPMA), in QuakeWorld (in Quake II it was possible to bunny-hop in an early Point Release, but only strafe-jumping appeared in later versions of the game), and in other skill First-person shooters (like Team Fortress Classic and the newly released free game Warsow), and is very hard to master. A primary difference between the execution of bhopping and strafe-jumping is that while strafe-jumping requires the forward and strafe keys to be used to obtain forward acceleration, bhopping requires only the strafe keys (which are perpendicular to the velocity) to be used for acceleration. Both techniques require forward and strafe keys to be used in gaining an initial velocity, utilizing an initial strafe-jump.

Mods

Like its predecessors, Quake and Quake II, Quake III Arena can be heavily modified to support other gaming styles.

The most popular mods among Quake III Arena scene are Rocket Arena 3 (RA3), Urban Terror, Orange Smoothie Productions (OSP) and Challenge ProMode Arena (CPMA).

• Rocket Arena 3 is a tournament focused mod, allowing players to play on the same server in 4 virtual arenas. The players rockets inflict no damage to himself, allowing intensive usage of the rocket jumping technique. Unlike regular Quake, when a player dies, he is dead until his entire team is eliminated.
• Orange Smoothie Productions is a mod meant for tournament play. It gives the player more interface options and modifications. One can effectively change everything in the interface so that it fits their whims. There are also added parts to the multiplayer that make it easier than standard Quake for tournament play. Such improvements include only allowing players to start a match after each had declared their readiness, additional stats such as weapon accuracies on the score window, voting for a map or to kick someone, timeout calls, and much more.
• Challenge ProMode Arena is an evolution of Orange Smoothie Productions, including all the features as OSP, but also incorpotating an optional new gamemode which includes physics allowing for air-control, rebalanced weapons, and features adapted from Quake and Quake II such as bunny hopping, double-jumping and fast weapon switching. CPMA has also incorporated improvements such as a highly customizable HUD, and improved netcode with improved lag compensation features.
• Urban Terror, a reality based total conversion but with fast paced physics. Wall jumping and ledge climbing are among its notable features. During the days of Urban Terror 1.27 the game sported a Flashlight known as Teh Unlose.
• DeFRaG, a mod in which players can train their trickjumping skills and compete against other people by completing all kinds of parcours with this trickjump skills.
• True Combat, a Counter-Strike clone, with the same concept.
• Reaction Quake 3, a remake of the popular Action Quake 2 mod for Quake II which includes movie-style realism and fast gameplay physics similar to Quake II. "All the fun of your favorite movie without the cost of a ticket!"

The other popular mods include:

• Freeze Tag is a mod in which one team must freeze (by fragging) every member of the enemy team. Once a player is fragged, he is sent into spectator mode, in which he must wait until either all of the members on a team are frozen, or until he is 'thawed'. A player is thawed by having a team member stand next to them for a variable amount of time (typically three seconds).
• Bid for Power is a Dragon Ball Z style martial arts combat game.
• Excessive Plus, all weapons mods excessive, turning each game into a crazy fragfest, including advanced new visual layouts, new gametypes and a new name code system. Although originally based on Mr. Pants' Excessive Overkill it now features a complex configuration syntax and a bigger standalone community.
• Loki's Revenge CTF is a team-based capture the flag all-weapons modification and tribute to the popular Quake II modification Loki's Minions CTF.
• CorkScrew, where the players start with a railgun and unlimited ammo. The main concept is to kill with one shot. It requires a lot of skill since the reload time is large and one has to be extremely accurate. The mod also includes an offhand grappling hook.
• Gmod, the players start the game with a specified amount of ammo and armor. Extra ammo, health, armor are not available on the map. All the ammo and health get restored when the player frags another person or when he is killed and respawns.
• Jailbreak is a 2-team game. On getting fragged, the player is sent to the opposite team’s jail. They can be freed only when someone from their team presses a button which is located in front of the jail. In some arenas, the players can also escape from the jail by climbing on top of one another and going into a duct. A team scores when all the players of the opposite team have been jailed.
• Weapons Factory Arena - Capture the flag mod based upon Team Fortress, although with some player class and gameplay modifications.
• InstaUnlagged, mod for internet play. It does not actually reduce lag, but removes the need to compensate for lag when aiming. Only railguns are used, due to the fact that weaponry with delayed fire increases the amount of data sent from computer to computer. Other tweaks are implemented such as faster running speed, and the weapons now have a small but powerful blast radius. While this radius is too small to do damage, it is possible to "rail jump" by firing at the ground or walls. InstaUnlagged is most commonly used in Capture the Flag.

A listing of Q3A mods can be found at Quake III Arena mods and at the Mod DB. See also Category:Quake 3 Arena mods.

Bots

Bots are multiplayer opponents controlled by an Artificial Intelligence. Quake III Arena featured an (for the time advanced) AI, with difficulty levels ranging from "I can win" to "Nightmare". Each bot has its own 'personality' (often humorous), expressed through a number of scripted lines delivered through text chat, and a very limited degree of interaction with them is possible. Although these bots are good for practicing and can be difficult for a beginner to defeat, they are not advanced enough to provide a challenge to an experienced player.

Competitive play

Quake III Arena’s multiplayer focused development lead to it developing a large community of competitive players and like its predecessors in the series it was used extensively in professional electronic sports tournaments.

In competitive Quake III Arena, there are two distinct disciplines, often referred to as "rulesets". The out-of-the-box Quake III Arena game is referred to as the Vanilla Quake 3 (VQ3) ruleset. It is referred to as 'vanilla' in contrast with the CPM ruleset of the CPMA mod.

Trivia

Before the official release of Quake III there was some controversy. During early March of 1999 ATI leaked the internal hardware vendor copy of the game. This consisted of a functional engine of the game and a 'level' with various interesting textures and working guns. The IHV contained all the weapons that would make it into the final game, however most were not fully modeled. The chainsaw and grappling hook were in the IHV but did not make it in the final release. It also included many of the sounds that would make it into the final version of the game.

After the IHV fiasco id Software eventually released a beta of Quake III starting with version 1.05. This beta included three levels that would all make it into the final game: dm7, dm17, and q3tourney2. They continued to update the beta up until 1.11 at which point they eventually released the official game.

In the beta it used to be that commands were not prefixed by a '/'. E.g. to set your max fps you would type 'com_maxfps 120' rather than '/com_maxfps 120'. If the command was entered correctly it would be set, otherwise if there was a typo or invalid command, it would display as chat text for everyone to see your error. The problem is that if a server admin was in the game and typing in the server password, if he messed up everyone could see the password and take control of the server. This was eventually fixed during the beta.

For a period of time in the final release of the game the gauntlet could be used to instantly kill someone by pulling up the chat dialog box and firing the gauntlet. If anyone touched you they died instantly. This was a popular method of killing someone as they exited the portal in q3tourney2- though considered very cheap by most. This was eventually fixed.

External links

Websites

• Official game homepage
• Official game community
• PlanetQuake3.net - Quake3 news & file archive
• Planetquake.com - Daily news about Quake
• Quake 3 Defrag Maps
• Quake3: Raytraced Raytracing engine showing Quake3
• Bosskey.net - Quake III Arena tips
• Quake III - Arena Manual
• Quake 3 Wiki
• Polish Quake 3 Instagib Community - Polskie Centrum Quake 3 Instagib 1.11-1.16n
• ioquake3 - "De-facto" open source quake3 distribution with support for many platforms.
• Quake 3 Mods and Tutorials - at the Mod DB

Game Archive and Review sites

• Quake III: Arena at MobyGames

Custom Maps

• MAP-Factory
• ..::LvL Reviews and public comments of user made maps. Launched in December 1999.
• Doom Wad Station Comprehensive archive of Quake3 maps
• Leakspot
• Map-Center (After a recent hacking incident, Map-Center is currently being rebuilt)
• Maposfera.org
• TikiDomain
• The Mean Arena

Resources

• QuakeSource.org
• FTP: Quake III Arena source code (zip)
• Quake 3 Console Guide

Third Party Quake III Tools & Applications

• ServerBrowse An out-of-game Quake III server browser and game launcher

• 1999 computer and video games
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