Quake III Arena

Quake III Arena
Developer(s)	id Software
Publisher(s)	Activision
Designer(s)	Graeme Devine
Series	Quake series
Engine	Quake III engine
Platform(s)	Dreamcast, IRIX, Macintosh, PC (Linux/Windows), PlayStation 2, source ports to additional platforms
Release	NA December 3 1999 (Windows), December 7 1999 (Linux)
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 problem, creates open content and bundles it with the engine as a standalone Quake 3 clone.

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. 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, along with a more mission-based single-player mode. It was not as successful as its Dreamcast counterpart, and lacked online play.

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

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, Quake, and Quake II engines. Interestingly this was not resolved in Half-Life 2 either.

Networking

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.

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 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 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.

Gameplay

Modes

Q3A comes with several classic gameplay modes. They are:

• Free for All (deathmatch or FFA)
• Team Deathmatch (TDM)
• Tournament (1v1)
• Capture the Flag (CTF)

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 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. 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.

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

File:Quake3Screenshot.jpg

Klesk (in foreground) versus Phobos (in background) on q3tourney3 map.

In Quake 3 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'.

Quake III Arena official single player maps

Tier	Map filename	Map name	Opponent(s)
Tier 0: Introduction	Q3DM0	Introduction	Crash
Tier 1: Trainee	Q3DM1	Arena Gate	Ranger
	Q3DM2	House of Pain	Phobos
	Q3DM3	Arena of Death	Mynx, Orbb
	Q3Tourney1	Powerstation 0218	Sarge
Tier 2: Skilled	Q3DM4	The Place of Many Deaths	Orbb, Bitterman, Grunt
	Q3DM5	The Forgotten Place	Hossman, Daemia
	Q3DM6	The Camping Grounds	Daemia, Orbb, Bitterman, Hossman, Grunt
	Q3Tourney2	The Proving Grounds	Hunter
Tier 3: Combat	Q3DM7	Temple of Retribution	Daemia, Wrack, Grunt, Slash
	Q3DM8	Brimstone Abbey	Gorre, Bitterman, Angel, Slash
	Q3DM9	Hero's Keep	Angel, Gorre, Wrack, Slash
	Q3Tourney3	Hell's Gate	Klesk
Tier 4: Warrior	Q3DM10	The Nameless Place	Wrack, Tank Jr., Angel
	Q3DM11	Deva Station	Tank Jr., Patriot, Biker, Lucy
	Q3DM12	The Dredwerkz	Wrack, Gorre, Wrack, Slash, Biker, Lucy
	Q3Tourney4	Verticle Vengeance	Anarki
Tier 5: Veteran	Q3DM13	Lost World	Stripe, Razor, Visor
	Q3DM14	Grim Dungeons	Stripe, Visor, Razor, Keel
	Q3DM15	Demon Keep	Stripe, Razor, Keel
	Q3Tourney5	Fatal Instinct	Uriel
Tier 6: Master	Q3DM16	The Bouncy Map	Cadavre, Bones, Doom
	Q3DM17	The Longest Yard	Major, Sorlag, Doom
	Q3DM18	Space Chamber	Major, Sorlag, Cadavre, Bones, Keel
	Q3DM19	Apocalypse Void	Sorlag, Cadavre, Doom
Tier 7: Final Tier, Elite	Q3Tourney6	The Very End of You	Xaero

Items

Weapons

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.

Gauntlet

The gauntlet is a mêlée weapon which combines a whirling saw blade with an electrical charge. It is 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 both the killer and the victim receive a "humiliation" message. It is normally a last-resort weapon, but is also useful in narrow corridors and doorways.

Machine Gun

The machine gun 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). 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 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, wall, or ceiling, 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 rocket jumping, 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 launcher's rate of fire is 0.8 seconds.

Lightning Gun

The lightning gun (also referred as shaft) is much like the machine gun, except that it fires as a beam with limited range and it directly impacts to a destination. 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.

File:Quake3 Blood.jpg

After a direct impact of a railgun.

Rail Gun

The railgun is primarily used for long range combat or sniping. It is 100% accurate, inflicts 100 damage but has a low fire rate (default 1.5 seconds).

File:Quake3 Zoom.jpg

Sniping with a railgun, long range

Plasma Gun

The plasma gun is an effective weapon for close to medium range combat. It rapidly fires a stream of deadly pulses (10 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 "plasma climb". But, because the power of the splash damage is small, plasma climbing is slower than rocket jumping, cannot gain as much height, and requires more skill. (more details about plasma climbing are under the Techniques section). Q3A's plasma gun is similar to the plasma gun/rifle found in Doom.

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 100 hp per cell. 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.

Note: Above values are default for vanilla Quake III Arena version 1.32.

Ammunition

Ammunition boxes are located throughout the map. One ammunition box contains a certain amount of one type of ammunition. Ammunition boxes give players a standard amount of ammunition that simply gets added to their current supply. When a player first enters an arena, they start off with a certain amount of ammunition (typically 100 machinegun bullets) and every time they die, their ammunition supply resets to that amount.

Health

Like in most games, health is essentially the 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 that can be accumulated. 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 until it reaches 100..

Armor

Unlike previous Quake games, all armor pickups contribute to a single type of armor. All armors 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. As with health, armor values above 100 count down by 1 each second until it reaches 100..

Power-ups

Power-ups are additional items which can be found on arenas. It remain in effect for a period of time and then, expire. When a player is affected by a powerup, they are surrounded by a graphical effect which indicates the type of powerup in use.

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. 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.

Quad Damage

Despite the name in Quake III the Quad damage power-up only triples the amount of damage done by the weapon a player has; 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. Extreme caution must be taken with guns that have splash damage, since it is multiplied just as much as the direct impact. Quad damage lasts for 30 seconds.

Haste

Haste doubles the user's rate of fire and increases their movement speed by one third for 30 seconds. Further speed can be attained by Strafe jumping.

Regeneration

Regeneration gradually increases the user's health up to a maximum of 200. It adds health each second. The amount of health added each second depends on the user's current amount of health – 15 health is added when their current health is below 100 and 5 health is added when their current health is 100 or above. Regeneration lasts for 30 seconds.

Flight

Flight is a 60 second power-up that appears in only one stock Q3A map, Q3DM19, and only in multiplayer mode. When active, it allows the user 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, i.e. rocket-, grenade-, BFG-jumping and plasma climbing), environmental damage, and halves all other damage.

Invisibility

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

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 by 100 points, to a maximum of 125 in version 1.32 (100 in previous versions).

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. Game physics allow players to make some trick jumps. Some of the techniques are:

Main techniques

Aiming

Aiming in Quake 3 without a mod, requires you to focus on aiming somewhat ahead of other players, depending on the size of one's ping. Some mods for the game use delag code, which allows for hitscan weapons to calculate the exact location of an enemy when you fired your weapon. This means that if your target is in your crosshair when you fire, you will hit it, without having to lead your aim ahead, at all. Hit scan weapons for Quake 3 include the railgun, shotgun, machinegun, and gauntlet. All other weapons are considered projectiles and can not be made uneffected by lag.

Movement

For the most part, movement is simple: you can run, walk, crouch, strafe or jump. Running is always on by default. 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 avoiding rocket/plasma gun fire, yet has adverse effects against a player using a railgun as slow targets are much easier to target. Strafing is a form of movement in which a character moves from side to side, which is often used to dodge enemy fire, both hitscan and projectile.

Jumping

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. A primary difference between the execution of bunny hopping and strafe-jumping is that while strafe-jumping requires the forward and strafe keys to be used to obtain forward acceleration, bunnyhopping 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.

Strafe jumping

Strafe-jumping accelerates the user to a large degree if used correctly. It is important to note that strafe-jumping and bunny hopping are by no means the same, however; bunnyhopping is used more so by new players, due to its simplicity and also makes them more difficult to hit, but does in no way accelerate a player. Strafe jumping can be accomplished by jumping continuously while looking left and right after each jump and holding the appropriate movement key. (I.E. take a jump, look left, hold left key, take another jump, look right, hold right key.) Although strafe jumping is a technique that is difficult to master, it is very effective and is often used in intermediate/higher levels of competition.

Teleport jumping

Teleport jumping is a type of jump in which one jumps before entering a teleport in order to exit the teleport at higher altitudes.

Weapon jumping

Weapon jumping is a technique which combines a standard jump as well as the knockback effect of a splash damage weapon.

Rocket jumping

Rocket jumping is a technique in which the player fires a rocket below him and jumps in synchronization with the knockback effect of the rocket. The rocket jumping technique can be used to achieve great heights and high momentum, especially if used against a wall while strafe jumping. Although rocket jumping results in a considerable amount of damage to the player, the damage can be reduced by acquiring red or yellow armor.

Grenade jumping

Grenade jumping requires both precision timing and placement of a grenade projectile. A player can perform a grenade jump by firing a grenade directly down at their feet. The grenade will bounce off the ground three times, and explode at the apex of its third bounce. This technique can be used in conjunction with rocket jumping, but usually results in massive damage to the player.

BFG jumping

BFG is a form of weapon jumping that uses the knockback of a BFG cell. The high amount of knockback and rate of fire allows a player to jump very high, in exchange for a considerable amount of health. While in Vanilla Quake 3 this technique is very rare, in the DeFRaG mod it is required to complete some maps.

Plasma hop

A plasma hop is a jump that utilises the minimal amount of knockback of the plasma gun in coordination with a well-timed jump, allowing a player to jump higher and even traverse small gaps.

Plasma climbing

Plasma climbing is a technique that uses the knockback from the plasma gun to climb up walls both horizontally and vertically. It is also possible to affect the direction in which one travels along a wall by making minor adjustments to the angle at which one aims against the wall. This technique can be extremely effective when used with grenade jumping.

Comparison with Unreal Tournament

Quake III Arena was the direct competitor to Epic Games's Unreal Tournament, which borrowed its concept from Quake III but was released 10 days earlier. Both games were multiplayer focused sequels to successful single player 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 has superior bot AI and more varied weapons and multiplayer modes. In addition to the standard Deathmatch, Tournament, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag, UT has pioneered several new game modes, namely Assault and Domination. Quake III Arena was lauded for its streamlined gameplay which served to more successfully recapture the "classic" deathmatch experience pioneered by the original Quake.

Game engine

One area of comparison was the movement physics of the games. Q3A has 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. The movement of the player models and bot models in UT made it appear that they are "sliding" in their movement.

Quake III Arena requires OpenGL-compliant graphics accelerator, while Unreal Tournament has a software renderer, allowing it to be played on older machines without hardware graphics acceleration. The Quake III engine is more frequently licensed out to other developers.

Weapons

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

In Unreal Tournament, the rocket launcher's projectiles travel slower and there is a 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 repeatedly 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's 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 should 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 start non-mêlée weapon is the machine gun, it is only moderately effective at best. Unreal Tournament'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 ricochet off walls.

The railgun in Quake III 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. The railgun´s projectile leaves a visible trail in the air to prevent camping. Unreal Tournament's sniper rifle, which is more "realistic", does not penetrate through multiple targets and will only kill instantly (un-/armored players) through a head shot, but it is a semi-automatic and has a higher rate of fire.

Modding

Another area where the two games diverged heavily was modding. Unreal Tournament, being based on an 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 packaged all code in files where values could be changed and compiled thus making it possible to override any aspect of the game.

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. While it depends on the settings in the current virtual arena, the player's weapons can be set inflict no damage to himself, allowing extensive usage of the rocket jumping technique. Unlike regular Quake, when a player dies, he is dead until his entire team is eliminated.
• Threewave CTF is a modification focused mainly on skill and equality, as each combatant is provided with the same amount of armor, health, and weapons/ammunition. Threewave is available in several modes, with Capture the Flag Strike (CTFS), a mixture of Capture the Flag and Counter-Strike in which each player is granted only one life to capture/defend their own team's flag, being the most common.
• 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.
• TrueCombat, seems like a CounterStrike clone to some, but is in fact the first realism mod which utilises Ironsights instead of standard crosshairs. Techniques such as freeclimbing (climbing fences, short walls, etc.), leaning, and other techniques are available in game. TrueCombat is available in CTF, Mission, DM, and TDM, and is still active as of 2006.
• 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.
• 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 ammunition. 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 ammunition and armor. Extra ammunition, health, armor are not available on the map. All the ammunition 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.
• WesternQuake3, an extensive mod that simulates combat in the "Old West". Elements include a variety of period weapons (throwing knives, revolvers, shotguns, rifles and a gatling gun) that one can purchase, new skins, maps, and game modes (including "rob the bank"). [1]
• Instagib, All players carry only a single weapon - Railgun, which has unlimited ammunition and fires lethal shots at incredibly high velocity, but with a slow rate of fire. Because each player always has the same weapon and there is no ammunition or other pickups to collect, gameplay lays a heavy emphasis on reflexes, hand-eye coordination and positioning, as opposed to resource management and control. Because a single shot can instantly kill an enemy from any range, gameplay tends to be very fast-paced.

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 artificial intelligence. 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.

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.

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 Challenge ProMode Arena mod.

On July 26th, 2006, Challenge ProMode 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.

Trivia

Before the official release of Quake III there was some controversy. During early March of 1999 ATI leaked the internal hardware vendor (IHV) copy of the game. This consisted of 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 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. This caused a problem if a server admin 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. 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.

The Gladiator bots from Quake II were ported to Quake III and incorporated into the game by it's creator. The bot chat lines were written by R. A. Salvatore. The gladiator bot Zero was renamed Xaero and made the hardest opponent of the Q3 game.

Quake 3 competitions and leagues

File:Eswc quake3 final.png

cooller vs. ZeRo4 at Electronic Sports World Cup final.

Some of these leagues no longer support Quake 3.

• Cyberathlete Amateur League
• Cyberathlete Professional League
• Electronic Sports World Cup
• Quakecon
• World Cyber Games

See also

• fatal1ty, a gamer who also played Quake 3.
• OpenArena - free clone with Quake 3 engine

External links

Websites

• Official game homepage
• Quake III World, official game community
• PlanetQuake3.net - news and file archive
• PlanetQuake.com - daily news
• Quake 3 mods at the Mod DB
• Quake III: Arena at MobyGames
• Challenge ProMode Arena
• Quake 3 Wiki
• QuakeServers.net - Quake 3 server listings

Resources

• Quake III Arena 1.32b source code (ZIP)
• QuakeSource.org
• Commander Keens' Quake3 Arena Console