Quake III Arena

Wiki Quake III on GOG (includes Team Arena)

Quake III Arena is a classic arena shooter with a focus on multiplayer. For this guide, we'll be using ioquake3 for these reasons:

Why should I use ioquake3 instead of id software’s 1.32c?

id software stopped fixing bugs, security issues, and adding features to Quake III: Arena more than twenty years ago. We’ve added many features and fixed too many bugs to count.

Installation - ioquake3

• Windows Guide
• MacOS Guide

• Linux Guide

• Download the ioquake3 zip file and extract it. Keep in mind where your directory is.

  • On MacOS, create a folder in Finder in the Applications directory called ioquake3. Inside, create a folder called baseq3, and a folder called missionpack. From the zip file you downloaded, place ioquake3.app in the Applications/ioquake3 folder.
• Copy pak0.pk3 from your Quake III installation into /ioquake/baseq3 directory.
  • On Windows, the directory will be where you extracted ioquake.
  • On Mac, you'll put it in the basequake3 folder you created in step 1.
  • On Linux, the directory will be where you extracted ioquake.

Team Arena

Quake III: Team Arena was an expansion to Quake III Arena. If you buy the game off GOG, it includes Team Arena in a missionpack folder inside your install's directory.

The main new content included are Capture the Flag, 20 new maps, three new weapons, and two new powerups.

You need to copy the pak0.pk3 file (yes, it has the same name as the base Quake III file) from inside the missionpack folder into the missionpack folder inside your ioquake3 directory. For MacOS installs, this was created above.

Patching

ioquake3 includes a number of patches to enhance/fix the game. Download the ZIP from their patch data page.

Inside there will be baseq3 and missionpack folders. Extract their contents to the respective folders.

Customizing Configurations

Launch ioquake3 at least once, and then exit. There are two configurations that can be modified for things like your player name and modern resolutions.

• On Windows: Open Explorer, and type %APPDATA%\Quake3\ into the bar and press enter
• On MacOS: /Users/YOURNAME/Library/Application Support/Quake3/
• On Linux: ~/.q3a/

In the folders, you should see q3base and missionpack. Inside both, there will be q3config.cfg. This file is your player configuration for both the base game (in q3base) and Team Arena (in missionpack).

At minimum, change the following values; below, I'm using dummy values (## and NAME):

Value	Explanation	Example
seta r_mode "##"	Set this to -1.	seta r_mode "-1"
seta r_customwidth "##"	et this to your display's width.	seta r_customwidth "1920"
seta r_customheight "##"	Set this to your display's height.	seta r_customheight "1080"
seta name "NAME"	Set this to your player name.	seta name "Matt"

Save the file. As a reminder, you need to do this with both q3config.cfg files.