Quake III Arena

Quake III Arena or Quake 3 (also recognized by the abbreviations Q3:A, Q3A or Q3) is a first-person shooter video game released on December 2, 1999. The game was developed by id Software, with music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly. Quake III Arena is the third title in the series and differs from previous games in the Quake series in excluding the common elements of so-called single player games, focusing on its place in the multiplayer action. The solo experience in Quake III Arena is an arena match against PC controlled opponents, in a similar style to its competitor, Unreal Tournament.

As in many multiplayer games of the genre, the objective in Quake III Arena is to move across the entire battlefield eliminating (forging, from English frag) to enemy players and scoring points based on game type objectives. When a player's hit points reach zero, the player's avatar is removed (forged); the player then respawns at another point on the map and continues playing with their health points restored, but without the weapons and items they previously collected. The game ends when a player or team reaches a specified score, or when time runs out. The single player mode of the game consists of this objective against computer controlled opponents (bots). The default game modes in Quake III Arena are deathmatch (deathmatch), team deathmatch, i>capture the flag, and tournament, in which players test their skills against each other in one-on-one battles, and a round of elimination.

An official expansion, called Quake III: Team Arena, (Q3TA) was released in December 2000. It focused on emphasizing team play through new game modes. game, as well as including new weapons, maps, items, and player models. Even so, Team Arena was criticized because its innovations were behind the times, and had already been implemented through modifications made by fans of the game. A few years later, Quake III: Gold was released, containing Q3A and Q3TA as if they were a single game.

On August 19, 2005 id Software released the complete source code for these two games under the GNU General Public License (GPL), just as they did for their engines and previous works. This does not make the game fully GNU, however, since the textures and other data were not released with the code. A project called OpenArena solves this problem, creating "open" and shipping it with the graphics engine as a stand-alone clone of Quake III.

Development

In early March 1999, ATI released an internal-use-only copy of the game to hardware vendors. (IHV) This contained a fully functional game engine and a level with various textures and weapons working. This IHV copy brought all the weapons that would eventually appear in the game, however many of them were not yet complete in terms of their models. A chainsaw and grappling hook (the weapon included in Quake II CTF) were in that IHV demo, but ultimately did not appear in the final release version of the game. This also included several of the sounds that would later appear in the game.

Following the IHV fiasco, id Software released a beta of Quake III called Q3Test on April 24, 1999. Q3Test started with version 1.05. This included three levels that would later be included in the final release: dm7, dm17, and q3tourney2. They continued to update Q3Test up to version 1.11.

Initially in Q3Test console commands did not need to be prefixed with '/'. If a command was entered as a wrong typo or command, it would be displayed as a text message for everyone to see the error. This caused a serious problem for server administrators, as if you entered the password to access your server's administration options and misspelled the command, you could expose your server's password and let others control the server at will. taste. Add a '/' Before entering a command, it ensured that it remained private.

For a time in the game's final release, the Gauntlet (the game's melee weapon) could be used to instantly kill any player by activating it and simultaneously bringing up the text box. If the player got close, they died instantly.

Other versions

Dreamcast

Q3A had its version for the Sega Dreamcast console in the year 2000. This version brought support for 4-player online play against PC and Dreamcast players. Its port to the console is also considered the best of a PC game to a console of its time, thanks to its fluid number of frames per second and its online play. Before Activision could release an "official" for the console game, a "hacked" of all the maps in the game for Dreamcast appeared by surprise. This pack included maps designed specifically for console split-screen action, which were never planned to be released on PC. Once the "official" saw the light, getting that other pack became more difficult. PC players needed an older version of the game (1.16n) to play with their Dreamcast peers, but the maps ended up working fine in the final version 1.32.

PlayStation 2

Quake III Revolution was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2001 and contained several elements borrowed from Quake III: Team Arena, as well as one more single player campaign. focused on missions. It was not as successful as its Dreamcast counterpart, lacking online play. Even so, it had a four-player split-screen mode and was one of the first games to take advantage of the full potential of the console.

Xbox

Q3A also has an unofficial version for the Xbox console, based on the release of the source code, which added to the console SDK leak made it possible to make a free port, although it nevertheless requires original Quake 3 files that cannot be distributed, and must be owned by the end user, not to mention the fact that executables built with the leaked Xbox SDK are illegal. The game is a faithful port of the PC version, allowing online play with Quake 3's servers (as well as LAN online play with PC versions) and without using Xbox Live's. It is compatible with existing Quake 3 mods with the possibility of slowdowns with some too complex or heavy on the available resources.

Xbox 360

Quake III: Team Arena was recently revealed on an ESRB listing for the Xbox 360 console. The title is being developed by Pi Studios.

PSP

Also based on the released code a port was made for Playstation portable which runs at 15-20 fps, still impossible to connect to LAN, and big maps don't run but is somehow playable.

Technology

Graphics

Unlike other video games that appeared at the time, Quake III required an OpenGL-compatible graphics accelerator card and did not include a software graphics renderer. The game's graphics technology is firmly based around a system of "shaders" where the appearances of many surfaces can be defined in one of several text files referred to as "shader scripts". Shaders are described and rendered as several layers, each containing a texture, a blend mode that determines which should overlap the last, and texture orientation modes such as environment mapping, verticalization, (scrolling) and rotation. These features can be easily seen within the game, with many shiny, active surfaces on each map, and even more so in the character models. The shader system goes far beyond simple appearance, also defining the contents of the volumes, (for example, a volume of water is defined as such by applying a water shader to its surfaces), light output, and what sound to play. when entering a volume.

Quake III, also introduced spline-based curved surfaces in conjunction with planar volumes, both of which are responsible for the vast majority of smooth surfaces in the game.

The original version of Quake III brought support for models animated using vertex animation with tags attached, allowing models to maintain separate torso and leg animations, as well as hold weapons. With the release of Quake 3: Team Arena, support for skeleton models was added. Quake 3 is one of the first games where the third-person model can see up, down, and around. (Due to the separation of the head, torso and legs).

In-game videos use a proprietary format called "RoQ", originating from the game The 11th Hour. Graeme Devine, designer of Quake 3, appears as the creator of the format in 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 current RoQ decoder is present in the released source code of Quake III. RoQ has very little use outside of games based on the graphics engines Quake III or Doom 3, but it is supported by many of the current players (such as MPlayer) and there are also several decoders made by third parties.

Other visual features include volumetric fog, mirrors, portals, debris, and waveform vertex distortion.

Sound

The Quake III sound system outputs two channels using an output loop buffer, mixed from 96 tracks with stereo spatialization and Doppler effects. All sound mixing is done within the engine, which can create problems for licenses hoping to implement EAX or surround sound support. Certain popular effects such as echoes are also conspicuous by their absence.

One of the biggest problems with the sound system is that the mixer doesn't have its own thread, so if the game stops for a long time (particularly when navigating menus or connecting to a server), the small output buffer It starts to repeat itself, a very noticeable problem. This problem is also present in the Doom, Quake, and Quake II engines.

Networking

Quake III uses a "snapshots" to collect information about game screens and upload them to a UDP client. The server updates the interaction of the objects at a fixed frequency and independent of the frequencies of the clients that update the server with their actions. It then tries to send the state of all objects at that point in time (the current screen) to each client. The server tries to omit as much information as possible about each screen, sending only differences from the last screen confirmed as received by the client. In addition, almost all data packets are compressed using Huffman coding, using static and pre-calculated frequency data, to reduce bandwidth even in the future.

Quake III, also integrated a relatively elaborate cheat protection system, called the "pure server" or pure server. Any client connecting to a pure server automatically activates pure mode, and when pure mode is active, only files within data packets can be accessed. Clients are also disconnected if their data packets fail during one of several integrity checks. The cgame.qvm file, due to its high potential for malicious modification, is subject to additional integrity checks. The system can be a hindrance for developers, who must manually disable the raw server to test maps or mods that are not yet in the data packs. Later versions replaced the pure server with support for the PunkBuster anticheat, although all links between the game and this software are absent from the released source code, due to the closed-source nature of PunkBuster and its inclusion in the code is a violation of the GNU License.

Virtual Machine

Quake III also contains a virtual machine used to control the behavior of objects, effects and prediction of the client, all these on the server, and the user interface. This had many advantages, as mod authors didn't need to worry about ruining the game with bad code, and clients could display more advanced effects or better game menus than were possible with the Quake II engine. , in addition to the high customization that the user interface for modifications gained.

The MV files were programmed in ANSI C, using LCC to compile them to the 32-bit RISC pseudo-assembly format. They are then converted by a tool called q3asm to QVM files, which are multi-segmented files made up of static data and instructions based on a reduced set of input opcodes. Unless there are operations that require a specific endianness, a QVM file can run on any platform supported by Quake 3.

In addition, the MV contains bytecode compilers for x86 and PowerPC architectures, executing QVM instructions as native code instead of through an interpreter.

The Game

Game modes

Quake III Arena brings several game types. They are:

• Free for All (FFA) – Deadly combat. In this way all players fight each other. Win those who most deaths (frags) are recorded at the end of the game, or who reaches the limit of established fragrances.
• Team Deathmatch (TDM) - Deadly combat by teams. Like FFA, here it is about fighting, but not all against all, but divided into two teams. The team that most fragrants write down, or the one that reaches the frag limit, wins the game.
• Tournament (1v1) - Duel Tournament one against one. They play two players, while the rest awaits their turn. The winner of the duel participates in the next, the loser becomes a spectator.
• Capture the Flag (CTF) - Capture the flag. In this mode there are two teams, each with its base, and within each base there is a flag. The aim of this modality is to get as many possible flag caps within the stipulated time, or to reach the flag limit first. To make a catch, you have to infiltrate the enemy base, take your flag, return to the base, and touch your own flag. To make a catch, the flag itself must be at the base; if it is not, it must be recovered.

Single-player

Unlike its predecessors, Q3A does not have a mission-based campaign. Instead there are a series of fights that simulate the multiplayer experience using computer controlled opponents, better known as bots. (See below).

The story of the game is very simple; the greatest warriors of all time fight for the amusement of a race called Vadrigar in the Eternal Arena. Continuity with previous games in the series and even Doom is reflected in the inclusion of characters related to those particular games (as well as some information included in each character in the manual), a familiar map architecture (mix of gothic architecture with technology), and specific items; for example, the item Quad Damage and the Rocket Launcher, belonging to the first and second installments, and the powerful BFG10K, which debuted in Quake 2. Perhaps the game should be considered partially canon of all Quake game series. and Doom, since the game is based in another dimension: the Eternal Arena.

In the game, there are a series of maps that consist of combat with different game characters. These range from the easiest difficulty (Crash, at Tier 0) to the hardest (Xaero, at Tier 7) regardless of the difficulty level chosen from the main menu. The syntax for map names is made up of the name of the game, the type of map, and then its number. For example, Q3DM5 is "Quake 3 DM Map Number 5", while Q3TOURNEY3 is "Quake 3 Tournament Map Number 3". While the common DM maps are designed for 16 players, the Tournament maps are designed for 'dueling'. between 2 players, and in single player game they can be considered as 'boss' battles.

Also, the weapons are designed in such a way that there is no "dominant" weapon. The balance of weapons was achieved by revisiting previous versions of the games in the series; Quake and Quake II. For example, the Rocket Launcher in Quake is so effective that it dominated the entire DM combat scene, and its similar Quake II is underpowered to such an extent that other weapons became strong against it. The Quake III version is effective on usage, but doesn't have much power, allowing it to be countered in many situations.

Weapons start out as items. They spawn at regular intervals at specific locations on the map, depending on the value for the g_weaponrespawn variable. When the player picks up the weapon, the ammo pool for the weapon is subject to a fixed number. However, if the player has more ammo than this number indicates, and regardless of whether the player has taken another weapon or more ammo for this one, only one additional round is added. When a player dies, all of his weapons, except for the Gauntlet and the Machine Gun, are removed from his inventory. The player also drops the weapon he was using until his death, allowing other players to take it and double their amount of ammo on that weapon.

There are curious things in the design of some Quake III Arena maps, for example in the map called: "Q3DM14" there is a figure hanging on the wall that resembles Jesus Christ wearing the crown of thorns and has a black appearance; on the map "Q3DM15" there is the severed head of one of the Q3A programmers and he closely resembles the programmer John Carmack.

Multiplayer

Quake III Arena was designed specifically for multiplayer play. This means that the game allows players, whose computers are connected to a network or the Internet, to play games against each other, in real time. It uses a client-server architecture structure that requires clients from all player computers to connect to a single server. Q3A's multiplayer focus made possible the emergence of a community similar to Quakeworld, which is still active to this day.

Missions and Maps

Modifications

Like its predecessors, Quake and Quake II, Quake III Arena can be modified to support other game types. The most popular modifications (mods) are:

• Rocket Arena 3. A mod focused on the Tournament mode, allowing players to play on the same server in 4 different arenas. While it depends on the Arena's own configuration, players' weapons can be configured so that they don't hurt those who use them, premiting the constant use of Rocket-Jump's technique or jumping with Rocket Launcher. Unlike Quake normal, when a player dies, he stays as a spectator until his whole team dies.
• DeFRaG. A modification that allows players to train their jumping skills (trickjumping) and compete against others by completing all kinds of tests using these skills.
• Weapons Factory Arena. A CTF-based modification just as Team Fortress, which also uses player classes and modifications to the type of game.
• Orange Smoothie Productions. It provides many implementations and allows you to customize and manage the game.
• Excessive Plus. Special for online games, where E+ organizes its own tournaments worldwide, between sounds to the characters, agility to move with the help of the weapons.
• Urban Terror. Enter the type of tactical game, p.e. team game in more realistic environments.
• Challenge Pro Mode Arena (formerly known as Promode) * A modification for the types of game that includes physics and options that allow air control, rebalance of weapons, faster change of weapons and leap implementations.

Bots

Quake III Arena contains an advanced artificial intelligence system, (for the time) with 5 different levels of difficulty. Each bot has its own 'personality', (sometimes humorous) expressed through a number of chat lines based on various factors to randomly simulate player speech. Factors include each bot's percentage chance to speak, responses when a player or bot is killed with a certain weapon or is killed idem, when they kill themselves or see other bots or players killing themselves, hitting but not killing, to a player or bot and/or getting stuck, praising or disparaging an opponent when they are killed by them, making some kind of mocking comment after killing an opponent, random responses based on words the player or bot types in chat, and random phrases and lines that have been entered into the chat based on the percentage of the bot to chat just like other types of chat.

Each bot-chat category has a few lines that must be typed by the bot, reducing the chance of any bot repeating the same line for a long period of time for the "bot chat" look more realistic, although sometimes line repetition is unavoidable. These bots serve as good practice and can be difficult for a novice to handle and even more so for an experienced player, although many of the bots that come with the game are not that advanced even on the 'Nightmare' difficulty level. 3. 4; ("Nightmare") to present a tough challenge to a very experienced player.

The Gladiator Bot from Quake II was carried over to Quake III and incorporated into the game by its creator. The chat lines were written by R. A. Salvatore, Seven Swords and Steve Winter. The Gladiator Bot Zero was renamed Xaero and is the toughest opponent in the game.

Competitive play

The multiplayer-focused development of Quake III Arena' developed a large community of competitive players, and like its predecessor in the series it was used extensively in eSports tournaments..

In competitive Quake III Arena, there are two distinct disciplines, sometimes referred to as "rule sets" or "Rulesets". The game Quake III Arena as it comes in the box is referred to as the Vanilla Quake 3 ruleset. It is referred to as 'vanilla' in contrast to the CPM ruleset from the Challenge Pro Mode Arena mod.

On July 26, 2006, Challenge Pro Mode Arena with Ruleset VQ3 was selected by the CPL as the game for their tournament, as well as becoming the unofficial competitive mod for Quake III Arena. Previously, OSP was the most used mod for tournaments.

Competitions and leagues

• CAL
• VPL
• ESWC
• Quakecon
• WCG
• ClanBase

Some of these events later stopped including Quake 3.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack contains music by Front Line Assembly and Sonic Mayhem:

• Intro (1:51) by Front Line Assembly
• Deathmatch (3:17) by Front Line Assembly
• Hell's Gate (2:21) by Front Line Assembly
• Tier (2:14) by Front Line Assembly
• Lost Souls (2:00) by Front Line Assembly
• Old Castle (2:09) by Front Line Assembly
• Quad Damage (3:05) by Sonic Mayhem
• Sacrifice (2:22) by Sonic Mayhem
• Fraggot (3:36) by Sonic Mayhem
• Rocket Jump (3:16) by Sonic Mayhem
• Xaero (3:30) by Sonic Mayhem
• Battle Lost (0:51) by Front Line Assembly
• Battle Won/Credits (1:36) by Front Line Assembly