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| 26th | Top electromagnetic projectile devices in fiction |
| 5th | Top Dreamcast network games |
| 96th | Top crossovers in fiction |
| Quake III Arena | |
|---|---|
 North American boxart |
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| Developer(s) | id Software Raster Productions (DC) Bullfrog Productions (PS2) |
| Publisher(s) | Activision (Windows, Mac, Steam) Loki Software (Linux) Sega (DC) Electronic Arts (PS2) Valve Corporation (Steam) |
| Designer(s) | Graeme Devine |
| Composer(s) | Sonic Mayhem, Front Line Assembly |
| Series | Quake series |
| Engine | id Tech 3 |
| Version | 1.32c (2006-05-08) |
| Platform(s) | Linux, Microsoft Windows, IRIX, Mac OS, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox Live Arcade |
| Release date(s) | Windows NA December 2, 1999 Linux NA December 7, 1999 DC 2000 Steam 2007 |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ELSPA: 15+ ESRB: M OFLC: MA15+ |
| Media | CD-ROM, Steam |
| System requirements | 3D graphics accelerator with full OpenGL support, Pentium II 233 MHz or AMD 350 MHz K6-2 processor or Athlon processor, 64 MB RAM, 8 MB video card, 500 MB of free hard drive space, 100% DirectX 3.0 or higher compatible sound card, CD-ROM drive (600 kB/s sustained transfer rate) |
Quake III Arena (also known as Quake 3; abbreviated as Q3A or Q3), is a multiplayer first-person shooter computer and video game 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 in the series and differs from previous games by excluding a traditional single-player element and focusing on multi-player action. The single-player is instead played against computer controlled bots in a similar style to Unreal Tournament.
Notable features of Quake 3 include the minimalist design, lacking rarely used items and features, the extensive customizability of player settings such as field of view, texture detail and enemy model, and advanced movement features such as strafe and rocket-jumping.
Quake 3 is available on a number of platforms and contains mature content. The game was highly praised by reviewers who, for the most part, described the gameplay as fun and engaging. Many liked the crisp graphics and focus on multiplayer. The game engine has been heavily modified.
Quake 3 has also been used extensively in professional electronic sports tournaments such as Quakecon, Cyberathlete Professional League and the Electronic Sports World Cup.
Contents |
Q3A comes with several gameplay modes:
Unlike its predecessors, Q3A does not have a plot-based single-player campaign. Instead, it simulates the multiplayer experience with computer controlled players known as bots.[1]
The game's story is brief - 'the greatest warriors of all time fight for the amusement of a race called the Vadrigar in the Arena Eternal.' The introduction video shows the abduction of such a warrior, Sarge, while making a last stand. 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 biographical information included on characters in the manual,[2] a familiar mixture of gothic and technological map architecture and specific equipment; for example, the Quad Damage power-up, the infamous rocket launcher and the BFG super-weapon.
In Quake III Arena the player progresses through tiers of maps, combating different bot characters that increase in difficulty, from Crash (at Tier 0) to Xaero (at Tier 7).[1] As well as tougher opponents the fights take place in more complex arenas as the game progresses.[3] While deathmatch maps are designed for up to 16 players, tournament maps are designed for duels between 2 players and in the single-player game could be considered as 'boss battles'.
The weapons are balanced by role, with each weapon having advantages in certain situations such as at long-range or fired around a corner; the BFG is an exception to this as a super-weapon. Weapons appear as level items, spawning at regular intervals in set locations on the map. If a player dies all their weapons are lost and they receive the spawn weapons for the current map, usually the gauntlet and machine gun. Players also drop the weapon they were using when killed, which other players can then pick up.
Quake III Arena was specifically designed for multiplayer, 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 server. Q3A's focus on multiplayer gameplay spawned a lively community, similar to Quakeworld, that is active to this day.
During early March 1999, ATI leaked the internal hardware vendor (IHV) copy of the game.[4] This was a functional version of the engine with a textured level and working guns. The IHV contained all the weapons that would make it into the final game although most were not fully modelled; a chainsaw and grappling hook were also in the IHV but did not make it into the final release. Many of the sounds that would make it into the final release were also included.
After the IHV fiasco id Software released a beta of Quake III called Q3Test on April 24, 1999. Q3Test started with version 1.05 and included three levels that would be included in the final release: dm7, dm17, and q3tourney2. Id software continued to update Q3Test up until version 1.11.[5]
During the game's testing it was found that the lightning gun was too dominating. Its strength was reduced to the point that some players have found it useless.[6] Weapon balance was achieved by examining earlier games in the series, Quake and Quake II as well as extensive play testing with well-known players such as Thresh. In the first Quake the rocket launcher was so effective that it dominated entire deathmatches[citation needed] while the rocket launcher in Quake II so weak that it was sometimes ignored.[citation needed] The rocket launcher in Quake III is effective but not overpowering, allowing it to be countered in many situations.[citation needed]
Unlike most other games released at the time—including its primary competitor, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 requires an OpenGL-compliant graphics accelerator to run. The game does not include a software renderer. The graphical technology of the game is based tightly around a "shader" system where the appearance of many surfaces can be defined in text files referred to as "shader scripts." Shaders are described and rendered as several layers, each layer contains a texture, a "blend mode" which determines how to superimpose it over the previous layer and texture orientation modes such as environment mapping, scrolling, and rotation. These features can readily be seen within the game with many bright and active surfaces in each map and even on character models. The shader system goes beyond visual appearance, defining the contents of volumes (e.g. a water volume is defined by applying a water shader to its surfaces), light emission and which sound to play when a volume is trodden upon.[7] In order to assist calculation of these shaders, Quake 3 implements a specific fast inverse square root function, which attracted a significant amount of attention in the game development community for its clever use of integer operations.[8][9]
Quake 3 also introduced spline-based curved surfaces in addition to planar volumes, which are responsible for many of the surfaces present within the game.[10]
The original version of Quake 3 provided support for models animated using vertex animation with attachment tags (known as the .md3 format), allowing models to maintain separate torso and leg animations and hold weapons. Quake 3 is one of the first games where the third-person model is able to look up and down and around as the head, torso and legs are separate.[citation needed]
In-game videos all use a proprietary format called "RoQ", which was originally created by Graeme Devine, the designer of Quake 3, for the game The 11th Hour. 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,[11] and the actual RoQ decoder is present in the Quake 3 source code release. RoQ has seen little use outside 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-form vertex distortion.
Quake 3's sound system outputs to two 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.[citation needed] Several popular effects such as echoes are also absent.
A major flaw of the sound system is that the mixer isn't given its own thread,[12] 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 3, Quake, and Quake II engines.[citation needed]
Quake 3 uses a "snapshot" system to relay information about game "frames" to the client over UDP. The server updates object interaction at a fixed rate independent of the rate clients update the server with their actions and then attempts to send the state of all objects at that moment (the current server 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 (Delta encoding). All data packets are compressed by Huffman coding with static pre-calculated frequency data to reduce bandwidth use even further.[13]
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 disconnected if their data packs fail one of several integrity checks. The cgame.qvm file, with its high potential for cheat-related modification, is subject to additional integrity checks.[citation needed] Developers must manually deactivate pure server to test maps or mods that are not in data packs using the .pk3 file format. Later versions supplemented pure server with PunkBuster support, though all the hooks to it are absent from the source code release because PunkBuster is closed source software and including support for it in the source code release would have caused any redistributors/reusers of the code to violate the GPL.[14]
Quake 3 uses a virtual machine to control object behavior on the server, effects and prediction on the client and the user interface. This presents many advantages as mod authors do not need to worry about crashing the entire game with bad code, clients could show more advanced effects and game menus than was possible in Quake II and the user interface for mods was entirely customizable.
Virtual machine files are developed in ANSI C, using LCC to compile them to a 32-bit RISC pseudo-assembly format. A tool called q3asm then converts them 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 virtual machine also contained bytecode compilers for the x86 and PowerPC architectures, executing QVM instructions via an interpreter.
Quake III Arena features an advanced AI with five difficulty levels which can accommodate both a beginner and an advanced player, though they usually do not pose a challenge to high-tier or competitive players.
Each bot has its own, often humorous, 'personality', expressed as scripted lines that are triggered to simulate real player chat. If the player were to type certain phrases the bots may respond, typing "You bore me" might cause one of the bots to reply "You should have been here 3 hours ago!". Each bot has a number of alternative lines to reduce the repetition of bot chatter.
The Gladiator bots from Quake II were ported to Quake III and incorporated into the game by its creator - Mr. Elusive.[15] Bot chat lines were written by R. A. Salvatore, Seven Swords and Steve Winter.[16] Xaero, the hardest opponent in the game, was based on the Gladiator bot Zero.[citation needed] The bot Hunter appears on magazine covers in the later id game Doom 3.
On August 19, 2005, id Software released the complete source code for Quake III Arena under the GNU General Public License,[17] as they have for most of their prior engines. As before, the engine, but not the content such as textures and models, were released, so that anyone who wishes to build the game from source will still need an original copy of the game to play it as intended.
A project called OpenArena creates open content and bundles it with the engine as a standalone Quake 3 release. Open Arena uses the ioquake3 engine,[18] which is focused on bug fixes, sound and graphical improvements.[19]
An expansion pack titled Quake III: Team Arena was released in December 2000 by id Software. It focused on team gameplay through new game modes and new weapons, items, and player models. Team Arena was criticized, as its additions were long overdue and had already been implemented by fan modifications. A few years later Quake III: Gold was released, including the original Quake III Arena and the Team Arena expansion pack bundled together. Front Line Assembly made the soundtrack for the expansion; the counterpart to Sonic Mayhem's Quake 3 Arena: Noize.
Quake III Arena was released for the Dreamcast (ported by Raster Productions and released by Sega) in 2000 and featured 4 player online play versus Dreamcast and PC gamers. It is often considered one of the best PC to console ports of its time due to its smooth frame rate and online play.[20] There are still communities that play this version online on the remaining dedicated servers running patch version 1.16n and the required map pack.[21]
Quake III Revolution was released for the PlayStation 2 (ported by Bullfrog Productions and released by Electronic Arts)[22] in 2001, featuring several elements adopted from Team Arena, along with a more mission-based single-player mode. It features split-screen multiplayer for up to 4 players, but lacks online play and mouse support. Gamerankings.com rated the release at 83%.[23]
The PlayStation 2 version was widely criticized for having long loading times (which typically averaged over a minute).
A port of Quake III was released for the original Xbox console; however, it was built using an unlicensed version of Microsoft's Xbox Development Kit, and as such there is no legal way to download and play it. In addition, it requires a modded Xbox to run.
Quake III: Team Arena was revealed in a ESRB listing for the Xbox 360. The title is being developed by Pi Studios.[24]
Quake III Arena for the 360 was officially announced by id at QuakeCon 2007.[25] The title will be released on Xbox Live Arcade and will be jointly developed by id and Pi Studios.
Quake Zero was announced at QuakeCon on August 3, 2007 and will be an updated version of Quake 3 Arena, distributed by free download, run in a browser window and supported by built-in advertising content.[26] On February 20, 2008 id announced that Quake Zero would be launched as Quake Live.[27]
Quake Live is now in open beta and can be played at the Quake Live website.
Quake Arena DS was announced at QuakeCon on August 4, 2007. John Carmack announced the game and said that touch screen controls would not be implemented as much as in Metroid Prime Hunters, for example. He stated that he would like all shooting in the game to be controlled with the D-pad instead of the Touch Screen.[28]
An iPhone/iPod touch version was released on Saurik's Cydia by the xSellize application source. The application can only be played on jailbroken devices and is extremely similar to the original except for the fact that it integrates the iPhone's accelerometer and touch controls to make the gameplay possible. Carmack also said that all Quake Trilogy (including Arena) will be ported on the iPhone.
| Quake III Arena | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Aggregator | Score |
| GameRankings | 84.13% [29] |
| Metacritic | 93 [30] |
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| Eurogamer | 9/10 [6] |
| Game Revolution | A- [3] |
| GameSpot | 9.2 [1] |
| IGN | 9.3 [31] |
| Game Chronicles | 9.6 [32] |
| Gaming Age | A- [33] |
Reviews for the game were consistently very positive with many describing the game as fast and addictive. Curved surfaces were a welcome addition to the series. Most reviewers felt the game was best when played with others online. A Gamespot review by Jeff Gerstmann described the game as outstanding. He noted the fun level designs, great-looking textures, impressive special effects and weapons sounds.[1] The Gamespot review critised the narrator's voice and thought that some levels could become too crowded when playing multiplayer. An IGN review felt the game lacked originality but enjoyed the detailed wall textures and outer space jump levels.[31] The high number of character skins and the artificial intelligence of opponent bots were praised but the weapons were said to be "bland and predictable". A Eurogamer review described the game as "polished" and "stunning" and thought that it "was extremely well balanced and plays very well".[6] The reviewer was especially pleased with the customisable 3D engine and looked forward to new maps and mods.
Like its predecessors, Quake and Quake II, Quake III Arena can be heavily modified, allowing the engine to be used for many different games. Mods range from small gameplay adjustments like Rocket Arena 3 and Orange Smoothie Productions to total conversions such as Smokin' Guns and DeFRaG. The source code's release has allowed total conversion mods such as Tremulous, World of Padman, OpenArena and Urban Terror to evolve into standalone free games. Other mods like Weapons Factory Arena have moved to more modern commercial engines. Challenge ProMode Arena became the primary competitive mod for Quake III since the Cyberathlete Professional League announced CPMA as its basis for competition. CPMA includes alternative gameplays, including air-control, rebalanced weapons, instant weapon switching and additional jumping techniques.
Quake III Arena's multiplayer-focused development led to it developing a large community of competitive players and like its predecessors it was used extensively in professional electronic sports tournaments.
In competitive Quake III Arena there are two distinct gameplays, often referred to as 'rulesets', the out-of-the-box Quake III Arena game, also known as vanilla Quake 3 (VQ3), and the CPM ruleset of the Challenge Pro Mode Arena mod.
On July 26, 2006, Challenge Pro Mode Arena with VQ3 gameplay was chosen by Cyberathlete Professional League as the mod of choice for their tournament, making it the standard competitive mod for Quake III Arena. Previously, Orange Smoothie Productions was the most widely used tournament mod.[34]
The following competitions have held Quake 3 events:
Many of these competitions have now moved on to more recent games.
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Quake III Arena | Table of Contents |
Walkthrough
| Quake III Arena | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | id Software |
| Publisher(s) |
 
|
| Designer(s) | Graeme Devine |
| Engine | Id Tech 3 |
| Latest version | 1.32c |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Sci-fi First person shooter |
| System(s) | Windows, Linux, IRIX, Mac OS, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox Live Arcade |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) |
ESRB:
 MatureUSK:
 Ages 18+VET:
 Everyone 15+ |
| System requirements (help) |
     |
| Expansion pack(s) | Quake III: Team Arena |
| Preceded by | Quake II |
| Followed by | Quake 4 Quake Live |
| Series | Quake |
Quake III Arena or Quake 3, abbreviated as Q3A or Q3, is a multiplayer first-person shooter computer and video game 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 in the series and differs from previous games in the series by excluding a traditional single-player element and focusing on multi-player action. The single-player is instead played against computer controlled bots in a similar style to Unreal Tournament.
Notable features of Quake 3 include the minimalist design, lacking rarely used items and features, the extensive customizability of player settings such as field of view, texture detail and enemy model, and advanced movement features such as strafe-jumping that give more speed with greater skill in contrast to the digital, all or nothing design of many computer games.
An expansion pack titled Quake III: Team Arena was released in December 2000 by id Software. It focused on team gameplay through new game modes and new weapons, items, and player models. Team Arena was, however, criticized as its additions were long overdue and had already been implemented by fan modifications. A few years later Quake III: Gold was released, including the original Quake III Arena and the Team Arena expansion packs bundled together.
On August 19, 2005, id Software released the complete source code for Quake III Arena under the GNU General Public License, as they have for most of their prior engines. This does not make the entire game GPL, the textures and other data were not released. A project called OpenArena addresses this issue, creating open content and bundling it with the engine as a standalone Quake 3 release. Open Arena uses the ioquake3 engine, which is focused on bug fixes, sound and graphical improvements.
| Quake III Arena | |
 |
|
| Developer(s) | id Software |
| Publisher(s) | Activision, SEGA |
| Designer(s) | Graeme Devine |
| Engine | id Tech 3 |
| Release date | Windows: December 3 1999 (NA) Linux: December 7 1999 (NA) Dreamcast: 2000 (NA) Xbox Live Arcade: 2007 (NA) |
| Genre | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Age rating(s) | ELSPA: 15+ ESRB: M OFLC: MA15+ USK: 18: 18 |
| Platform(s) | Dreamcast, IRIX, Macintosh, PC (Linux/Windows), PlayStation 2, source ports to additional platforms, Xbox Live Arcade |
| Media | CD |
| System requirements | 3D graphics accelerator with full OpenGL support, Pentium II 233 MHz or AMD 350 MHz K6-2 processor or Athlon processor, 64 MB RAM, 8 MB video card, 500 MB of free hard drive space, 100% DirectX 3.0 or higher compatible sound card, CD-ROM drive (600 kB/s sustained transfer rate) |
| Credits | Soundtrack | Codes | Walkthrough | |
Quake III Arena or Quake 3, abbreviated as Q3A or Q3, is a multiplayer first-person shooter computer and video game 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 Quake series and differs from the previous games in the Quake series 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 (killing) 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; soon after the player can then respawn and continue playing with health points restored, 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 are 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 already been implemented by fan modifications. A few years later Quake III: 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 most of their earlier engines. This does not make the entire game GPL, however, as the textures and other data were not released. A project called OpenArena addresses this issue, creating open content and bundling it with the engine as a standalone Quake 3 clone.
Contents |
During early March of 1999 ATI leaked the internal hardware vendor (IHV) copy of the game. This was a functional engine of the game and a level with various 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 release.
After the IHV fiasco id Software released a beta of Quake III called Q3Test on April 24, 1999. Q3Test started with version 1.05. It included three levels that would be included in the final release: dm7, dm17, and q3tourney2. They continued to update Q3Test up until 1.11.
Initially in Q3Test commands were not prefixed by a '/'. If a command was entered incorrectly as a typo or invalid command, it would display as chat text for everyone to see the error. This caused a problem if a server administrator was in a game and typing in the server password. If he messed up everyone could see the password and take control of the server. Adding a '/' before typing a command ensured the commands stayed private.
For a period of time in the final release of the game the gauntlet could be used to instantly kill someone by firing the gauntlet and pulling up the chat dialog box. If anyone touched you they died instantly.
Quake III Arena was released for the Sega Dreamcast (ported by Raster Productions and released by Sega) in 2000 and featured 4 player online play versus Dreamcast and PC gamers. It is often considered one of the best PC to console ports of its time due to 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.
Quake III Revolution was released for the Sony PlayStation 2 (ported by Gremlin Interactive and released by Electronic Arts) in 2001 and featured several elements adopted from Team Arena, along with a more mission-based single-player mode. It was not as successful as its Dreamcast counterpart, as it lacked online play and it slowed down frequently during intense combat. Although many FPS games on the PS2 supported the mouse, Quake 3 was not one of them.
Quake III: Team Arena was recently revealed in a ESRB listing for the Xbox 360. The title is being developed by Pi Studios.[1]
Quake 3 Arena for the 360 was officially announced by Id at QuakeCon 2007. The title will be released on Xbox Live Arcade and it will be developed by Id and Pi Studios.
Quake Zero was announced at QuakeCon on August 3, 2007. The game will be an updated version of Quake 3 Arena that is launched from inside web browsers and will be available at no cost, supported by advertising.[2]
Quake Arena DS was announced at QuakeCon on August 4, 2007. John Carmack announced the game and said that touch screen controls would not be implemented as much as in Metroid Prime Hunters, for example. He stated that he would like for all shooting in the game to be controlled with the D-pad instead of the Touch Screen.
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 behavior of a surface is defined by a text file called a "shader script". 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 trod upon.[3]
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.[4]
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,[5] 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.
The sound system of Quake 3 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 3, Quake, and Quake II engines.
Quake 3 uses a "snapshot" system to relay information about game "frames" to the client over UDP. The server updates object interaction at a fixed rate independent of the rate clients update the server with their actions, 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.[6]
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 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 all the hooks to it are absent from the source code release, because PunkBuster is closed source software and including support for it in the source code release would be a violation of the GPL.[7]
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 II, 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.
Q3A comes with several classic gameplay modes. They are:
Unlike its predecessors, Q3A does not have a plot-based single-player campaign. Instead, it simulates the multiplayer experience by using computer controlled players known as bots (see Bots below).
The story of the game is very thin; the greatest warriors of all time fight for the amusement of a race called the Vadrigar in the Arena Eternal.[8] 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 character 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.
In Quake III Arena, there are a series of maps that consist of combat against 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 Tournament Map 3". While deathmatch maps are designed for about 16 players, tournament maps are designed for 'duels' between 2 players, and in the singleplayer game could be considered as 'boss battles'.
In Quake III, the weapons are designed such that there is no longer a completely "dominant" weapon. The weapons balance was achieved by examining earlier games in the series; Quake and Quake II. For instance, the rocket launcher in Quake is so effective such that it dominated entire deathmatches and the rocket launcher in Quake II was toned down so much that it was passed over for other weapons. The rocket launcher in Quake III is effective to use but it isn't overpowered, allowing it to be countered in many situations.
Weapons start off as items. These spawn at regular intervals at specified places on the map, depending on the value for g_weaponrespawn. When the player picks up a weapon, their ammunition supply for the weapon is set to a fixed number. However, if the player has more than the fixed number, perhaps from already having picked up the weapon or enough ammunition packs, only one additional round is added. When a player dies, all weapons are removed from their inventory except for the gauntlet and machine gun. The player also leaves behind the weapon that they were using upon death, allowing other players to pick it up.
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.
Like its predecessors, Quake and Quake II, Quake III Arena can be heavily modified, allowing the engine to be used for many different games. Fan made mods range from small gameplay adjustments like Rocket Arena 3 and Orange Smoothie Productions to totally different games like Smokin' Guns and DeFRaG. The source code's release has allowed total conversion mods that replace all of Quake's artwork to evolve into standalone free games. Tremulous, World of Padman and Urban Terror all have standalone versions. Meanwhile other mods like Weapons Factory Arena have moved to more modern commercial engines.
Quake III Arena featured an (for the time) advanced AI, with several difficulty levels. Each bot has its own 'personality' (often humorous), expressed through a number of scripted chat lines delivered based on several factors to simulate random player "chatting". The factors include each bot's percent chance of chatting at all, responses when fragging a player or bot with a certain weapon type or getting fragged with a certain weapon type, accidentally killing themselves or other bots or players accidentally killing themselves, striking, but not fragging a player or bot and or getting struck, commending or scorning an opponent when fragged by that opponent, making a kind or scorning comment after fragging an opponent, random responses based on key words that a player or bot may enter into chat, and random phrases and lines that may be entered into chat based on the bot's percent to chat as well as several other chat types. If the player types certain phrases, the bots may respond. For example, typing "You bore me" may get them to say something, like one of the bots which says "You should have been here 3 hours ago!"
Each bot's chat category has several lines that may be entered by the bot reducing the chance that any bot would repeat the same line over a long period of time thus making the "bot chat" seem more realistic, although the repeat lines still occur. These bots are good practice and can be difficult for a beginner to moderate and even somewhat experienced player, though most of the bots that come with the game are not advanced enough even on "Nightmare" skill level to provide a difficult challenge to a very experienced player.
The Gladiator bots from Quake II were ported to Quake III and incorporated into the game by its creator - Mr. Elusive.[9] The bot chat lines were written by R. A. Salvatore, Seven Swords and Steve Winter.[10] The gladiator bot Zero was renamed Xaero and made the hardest opponent of the Q3 game.
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 Challenge Pro Mode Arena mod.
On July 26 2006, Challenge Pro Mode Arena with VQ3 gameplay was chosen by Cyberathlete Professional League as the mod of choice for their tournament, thus making it the unofficial competitive mod for Quake III Arena. Previously, Orange Smoothie Productions was the most widely used mod for tournaments.[11]
Note: Some of these events no longer support Quake 3.
The soundtrack features music by Front Line Assembly and Sonic Mayhem:
File:Quake III Arena music sample.ogg
 Quake SeriesGames: |
|---|
| Quake | Quake World | Quake II | Quake III Arena | Quake 4 | Quake Wars |
| Equipment: |
| Items and powerups | Weapons |
| Misc |
| Quake Engine | Quake II Engine |Quake III Engine | QuakeC |
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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Quake III Arena. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Wikia Gaming, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (unported) license. The content might also be available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. |
  | Book of Hook: The Quake3 Networking Model - Quake3Networking - bookofhook - Trac |
| | ESRB leaks 'Quake III: Team Arena' for Xbox 360 (XBLA?) - ESRB leaks 'Quake III: Team Arena' for Xbox 360 (XBLA?) |
| | http://members.cox.net/randar/review.html - Randar's Bot Page: The Bot Reviews |
| | Quake III Arena Credits - Quake III Arena Release Information for PC - GameFAQs |
| | Loki's Revenge CTF - Loki's Revenge CTF for Quake III Arena |
| | GDC08: Quake Zero becomes Quake Live - GDC08: Quake Zero becomes Quake Live |
| | CorkScrew - Home of The CorkScrew Mod |
| | Planetquake - Planet Quake - News, Screenshots, Previews, Reviews, Guides |
| | ..::LvL - ..::LvL - Quake 3 (Q3A) Custom Maps |
| | ''Challenge ProMode Arena'' - Challenge Pro Mode |
| | Bosskey.net - Quake III Arena tips - bosskey.net | Quake III Arena |
| | Planetquake.com - Daily news about Quake - Planet Quake - News, Screenshots, Previews, Reviews, Guides |
| | ''Quake III'' shareware download - id Software game demos |
| | Reaction Quake 3 - Reaction - the official website |
| | Doom Wad Station - /idgames archive @ Doom Wad Station |
| | MAP-Factory - Map Factory - the game map database |
| | Commander Keens' ''Quake3 Arena'' Console - Commander Keens' Quake3 Arena Console Page |
| | Quake 3 Console Guide - Quake 3 console commands at FreakyGaming |
| | UpsetChaps Quake3 Guide - UpsetChaps Quake3 & Team Arena Guide |
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