Quake III Arena FAQ

Revision History

Version 0.41 - Jan.19.2000

- Added known issues with A3d
- Updated Nvidia driver information

Version 0.4 Jan.7.2000

- Added new features list and fixed bug list.

Version 0.3 Dec.30.1999

- Added "Why does the game sometimes crash if we callvote to another level while playing CTF?"

Version 0.2 - Dec.29.1999

- Added "I'm dropped back to the menu when the server changes levels"
- Added "I'm getting stuck at Awaiting Snapshot..."
- Added "I'm getting stuck at Awaiting Gamestate..."

Version 0.1 - Dec.29.1999

- Initial Release

System Requirements:

*3-D Hardware Accelerator with full OpenGl support
*Pentium 233Mhz MMX processor with 8 MB Video Card
or Pentium II 266Mhz processor with 4 MB Video Card
or AMD 350Mhz K6-2 processor with 4 MB Video Card
*64 MB RAM
*25 MB hard disk space (for minimum install)
*Quad-speed CD-ROM drive

Video Cards:

Quake 3 Arena has been tested on many but not all of the major cards incorporating the chipsets listed below. We strongly recommend running Glsetup (located in the Quake3\Extras\ on your Quake3 CD). Glsetup is a program written specifically to analyze your hardware and install working OpenGl drivers for that hardware. The version of Glsetup that is included on the Quake 3 Arena CD is 1.0.0.110, however, it is constantly being updated with newer drivers from your hardware manufacturers so be sure to check www.glsetup.com often for updates. Currently, Glsetup supports the following cards:

3Dfx Voodoo, Voodoo2, Rush, Banshee, and Voodoo3
3Dlabs Permedia 2 and Permedia 3
ATI Rage 128 and Rage Pro
Intel i740
Matrox G200 and G400
NVidia Riva 128/128ZX and Riva TNT/TNT2/GeForce256
Rendition Verite 2200
S3 Savage3D and Savage4

All known issues with any of these drivers are compiled in a list and located here:

http://www.glsetup.com/ihvs/index.htm

At the present time, Glsetup does not include drivers from hardware manufacturers that are still in a BETA or TEST form. If you are experiencing problems with any of the drivers installed by Glsetup you may want to try the corresponding link for your hardware below. This is a compiled list of hardware and drivers that we know work with the game. Some of these drivers may be the same ones located in Glsetup, however some will be a bit newer and could possibly remedy any problems that you might have. As mentioned above, we recommend running Glsetup before downloading any other drivers.

Nvidia Riva 128 and 128ZX

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.nvidia.com/Products.nsf/htmlmedia/software_drivers.html

Download and install the Detonator 3.68 drivers.

This is an older generation card and may have some minor visual quality issues as a result. These particular drivers are incompatible with Windows 95. Windows must be in 16bpp desktop color mode for 3D hardware acceleration to work on these chipsets. Please use the display control panel to switch your color depth to 16bpp if you want 3D acceleration. If you experience problems with launching the display control panel, you may have parts of a older version of the drivers still installed. Try uninstalling GLSetup and the older version of the drivers, then reinstalling GLSetup.

Nvidia Riva TNT, TNT2, TNT2Ultra

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.nvidia.com/Products.nsf/htmlmedia/software_drivers.html

Download and install the Detonator 3.68 drivers.

We know that the drivers included in Glsetup, in most instances, will work very well with these cards. In
addition, make sure that your system is getting plenty of ventilation. There have been numerous reports
from users that have remedied their lockup problems by simply moving their PC to better accommodate
airflow. You might also want to purchase an internal fan for your system and make sure that the fan(s) that
you have a working properly. There are some issues with all three of these cards on Windows 95 systems.
The TNT on a Windows95 crashes intermittently and other times can run incredibly slowly in 16bpp mode.
Changing the display depth to 32bpp sometimes fixes the performance problem.. If you experiencing any of
these problems, you might try the link to Nvidia’s drivers listed above. One last issue that we have been
getting reports on involves the TNT2 and TNT2Ultra on Intel LX chipset motherboards. It appears that
there is a compatibility issue with the two resulting in frequent lockups. There are no known workaround
for this problem.

Nvidia GeForce 256

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.nvidia.com/Products.nsf/htmlmedia/software_drivers.html

Download and install the Detonator 3.68 drivers.

There have been reported instances of the GeForce drivers on Windows 95 failing to render any 3d. This is a known issue and if you are running Windows 95, we recommend sticking with GLSetup as it will install older, but working, drivers for your card.

Ati Rage 128 and 128pro

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.atitech.com/ca_us/spdrivers/index.html

The Rage 128 drivers do not run (or even boot) on the original version of Windows95. They do run on Win95 OSR2 and Win98.

Ati Rage Pro

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.atitech.com/ca_us/spdrivers/index.html

This is an older generation card and may have some minor visual quality issues as a result. The Rage Pro OpenGL sometimes fails to load in high resolution mode if your card doesn't have a lot of memory. If you get a failure to load Quake3, try setting your desktop in a lower resolution mode.

S3 Savage 4

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.diamondmm.com/pg000042.htm

Follow this link and choose the video card that corresponds with the one you own. There are some known issues with these drivers and the Quake 3 Tools.

Intel i740

Glsetup has the latest drivers for this card. You can download Glsetup free at

www.glsetup.com

3dfx Voodoo 3

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.3dfxgamers.com/view.asp?PAGE=V3Drivers

There are several different areas to choose from on this page. Follow the link that corresponds to your video card and operating system. There are some known issues with these drivers that 3dfx is looking into. There are also some compatibility issues with these drivers and the Quake 3 Tools.

3dfx Voodoo 2

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.3dfxgamers.com/view.asp?PAGE=V2drivers

We recommend downloading and installing the reference drivers located on this page. Follow the link that corresponds to your operating system. You do not need to bother with the Mini Gl located on that page. There are some known issues with these drivers that 3dfx is looking into.

3dfx Voodoo Graphics

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.3dfxgamers.com/view.asp?PAGE=VGDrivers

We recommend downloading and installing the reference drivers located on this page. Follow the link that corresponds to your operating system. You do not need to bother with the Mini Gl located on that page. There are some known issues with these drivers that 3dfx is looking into.

3dfx Banshee

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.3dfxgamers.com/view.asp?PAGE=VBdrivers

We recommend downloading and installing the reference drivers located on this page. Follow the link that corresponds to your operating system. You do not need to bother with the Mini Gl located on that page. There are some known issues with these drivers that 3dfx is looking into. There are some known compatibility issues with these drivers and the Quake 3 Tools.

Matrox Millennium G400

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/drivers/files/w9x_541.htm

There are some known issues with these drivers and the Quake 3 Tools.

Matrox Millennium G200

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/drivers/files/w9x_541.htm

There are some known issues with these drivers and the Quake 3 Tools.

Rendition Verite 2200

The latest compatible drivers can be found here:

http://www.rendition.com/usersupport.html

We have seen some display flickering problems with these drivers. If you are experiencing problems with these drivers, we recommend completely removing all video drivers, rebooting, and reinstalling them.

3Dlabs Permedia 2 and Permedia 3

The latest drivers can be found here:

http://www.3dlabs.com/drivers/index.html

The Permedia 2 will only run in vertex lighting mode, so many graphical
effects are missing.

Trouble Shooting:

If you are having any problems, read this first!

If you are using a config file from an older version of Quake3, we highly recommend that you remove it and make a new one with the current game. Older config files can have settings in them that may cause adverse affects within the release version of Quake3.

I have A3d sound enabled and and when I change screen resolutions within the game Quake 3 crashes

This is a known issue that we are looking into. If you are experiencing this problem we recomend that you avoid changing the screen resolution while A3d is enabled. You can disable and enable A3d in the Setup->System->Sound menu.

I am experiencing technical problems with some of the Tier 4 maps

The Tier 4 maps are the largest maps and therefore require that largest amount of RAM (memory). If the game is crashing or not loading any of these maps, there are some solutions you should try. First, we recommend turning light maps off and running in vertex lighting mode. You can do this by entering "Setup" à "System" à "Graphics" and setting "Lighting" to "Vertex". Second, you should turn the sound quality to "Low" within the "Setup" à "System" à "Sound" menu.

I have a TNT, TNT2, or TNT2Ultra and I am experiencing frequent lockups within the game

There could be a number of different things causing this. Make sure that you have run Glsetup (located on the Quake3 CD in \Quake3\Extras\). We know that the drivers included in Glsetup, in most instances, will work very well with these cards. In addition, make sure that your system is getting plenty of ventilation. We have gotten numerous reports from users that have remedied their lockup problems by simply moving their PC to better accommodate airflow. You might also want to purchase an internal fan for your system and make sure that the fan(s) that you have a working properly. We have been seeing some issues with all three of these cards on Windows 95 systems. The TNT on a Windows95 crashes intermittently and other times can run incredibly slowly in 16bpp mode. Changing the display depth to 32bpp sometimes fixes the performance problem. We have seen instances where the GeForce drivers on Win95 may sometimes fail to render any 3d. If you experiencing any of these problems, you might try the link to Nvidia’s drivers listed above. One last issue that we have been getting reports on involves the TNT2 and TNT2Ultra on Intel LX chipset motherboards. It appears that there is a compatibility issue with the two resulting in frequent lockups. There is no known workaround for this problem.

During a game, and on the victory screen, my name is cut off on the list of players

This is a known issue that we are planning to address.

Is there any way to disable the "MouseLook" feature?

This is a known issue that we are planning to address.

When I choose "Multiplayer" from the main menu there are no servers listed

First and foremost make sure that you are connected to the Internet or a LAN (local area network). If you are, check the filters located at the top of the screen. If you are wanting to play a LAN game, make sure that you have "Local" selected under "Servers:". If you want to play an Internet game make sure that you have "Internet" or "Mplayer" selected. You should also make sure the "Show Full" and "Show Empty" filters to ON. This will add all of the full and empty servers to your list.

When browsing through the Player Models menu I get an error saying "Low Memory"

By default, Quake3 will only allocate a certain amount of your RAM (memory) for loading player models. This statement just lets you know that you have reached the capacity of that allocated space. However, if you have more than 64MB of RAM in your system, you can change the default amount space allocated thereby increasing the potential to load more player models. To do this, bring down the console using the ~ key (located in the top left-hand corner of your keyboard) and type:

\com_hunkmegs X

Then press Enter. X is a variable for a value that you will enter. For instance, if you have 128MB of RAM installed on your system you might want to replace X with a value no higher than 96. Always leave at least 32MB of RAM out of the total amount you have for other operations. If you have 64MB of RAM in your system, leave the setting at its default. The change to com_hunkmegs will not take effect until you restart Quake3.

When playing a multiplayer game, sometimes there is a short pause, then I see my character dying

This is actually a system that we have implemented to load the character models of players that have entered the game. When playing on the Internet, frequently people will join into the game after you have. The small pause is Quake3’s way of loading all of the models of those players into your game. It may seem like this process is killing you, however the game waits until you are killed, and at that instant loads the other models. This is usually an extremely fast process as quite often you will still see your death animation after the models are loaded (just and indication that you have missed very little while loading the models). You can manually force the game to load all of the new playermodels at any time by simply pressing the TAB key. Be warned, this will cause the same slight pause, so it is unwise to use this procedure in the middle of combat. If you do not want this process to happen at all, you can set the "Force Player Models" option to "On". You can find this option in the "Setupà Game Options" menu. This will show all other players in the same model you are playing. This is a memory saving option and will increase the speed of the game on slower systems.

When I try to run Quake 3, I get the error "could not initialize OpenGl subsystem"

You need to make sure that you have an OpenGl compliant video card, and the latest drivers installed for your particular card. Make sure to run GLSetup (located on the Quake3 CD in \Quake3\Extras\) to get the latest drivers for your card installed.

I am getting an error stating "No response from master server" or "Awaiting Authorization"

There could be several reasons that you are getting this message. This can usually be remedied by resetting the "Defaults" in the "Setup" menu, and then reentering your CD-Key.

I am getting the "CD-Key is in use" message

There have been some reports from people have problems with their CD-keys. If you are getting ANY denial message from the Authentication Server, be sure and check to make sure you entered your CD Key correctly. There have been several reports of problems that were solved when the CD-key was reentered correctly. In addition, you MUST enter your CD key in lower case letters. We do not recommend that you enter the key within the console. The message, "CD Key is in use" is a generic denial message, and does not mean that someone has stolen you’re your CD-Key. For your own safety, never send anyone you CD-Key. Nobody at ID will ever ask you for your CD-Key information without you having contacted us first. Once again, keep your key safe. There are some programs that are circulating around that claim to be CD-Key generators. These do not work. Most of these programs are infected with viruses that will send your key to anonymous email accounts, thereby making your key invalid. We have also been seeing some issues with GameSpy compatibility. If you are having CD-Key problems and are using GameSpy, discontinue use with GameSpy and use the in-game server browser within Quake 3.

How do I enable Multiprocessing Support (SMP)?

Quake 3 Arena does have support for multiprocessors (SMP). In order to get the benefits from SMP, you must be running Windows NT 4.0 and have a compatible video card and driver combination. Right now, The Detonator drivers for the TNT and GeForce generation of cards are the only ones that are working properly. To enable the support, bring down the console with the ~ key and type the command

\r_smp 1 Follow this command with

\vid_restart

I am having problems with my mouse and the mouse-wheel

Make absolutely sure that you have the latest drivers for your mouse installed. There are several known issues that are cleared up by simply installing the latest drivers.

For the IntelliMouse on a Win9x operating system we recommend these:

http://www.microsoft.com/products/hardware/mouse/driver/drivers_pc.htm

For the Intellimouse on a MAC we recommend these:

http://www.microsoft.com/products/hardware/mouse/driver/drivers_mac.htm

For all Logitech mice, we recommend these:

http://www.logitech.com/us/support/mousefiles.html

How do I get the two side buttons on the IntelliMouse Explorer to work in Quake3?

If you have a Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer and want to get the two new buttons on the side to work in Quake 3, try the following. First, make sure that you have installed the latest IntelliPoint drivers from Microsoft (version 3.0). Once the drivers are installed, open the control panel, choose mouse, and click the buttons tab. Do not change the settings of the first three mouse buttons. Instead, set the side buttons to an action key. For instance, set the large side button to the F2 key. To use the large side button in Quake 3 simply decide the action that you would like the key to perform and use the keyboard equivalent of that key in the control menu. It is very important that you use the keyboard equivalent within the menu and not the actual mouse button

How do I improve the Frames-Per-Second on lower end machines?

First off, we always recommend that you run the game at the 640*480 resolution. Playing the game at a resolution of 640*480 or lower will always speed things up quite a bit. Turning down the graphics settings in the game can also significantly increase the speed of the game. To adjust the graphics options enter the main menu and choose Setupà Systemà Graphics. We recommend using one of the predefined graphics settings at the top of the menu. Setting the "Graphics Settings" tab to "Fastest" will be the fastest configuration you can get and will give you the best performance of the game. Setting the "Graphics Settings" tab to "High Quality" will make the game better looking, but also slow it down quite a bit. You should also try changing some of the settings within the "Setupà Game Options" menu. Setting the following options will help speed things up.

"Marks on Walls" off
"Ejecting Brass" off
"Dynamic Lights" off
"Identify Target" off
"High Quality Sky" off
"Force Player Models" on

When I try to play a team game with bots, they will not follow my directions

This is remedied by removing any characters that are not a letter or a number from your "player name". For example if your name is "~cooldude~", change it to "cooldude" and you should be able to control your bots. We are fixing this in an upcoming release.

I'm dropped back to the menu when the server changes levels.
This is usually due to having new content like new maps or model in your baseq3 directory. This is a known problem and will be fixed in the first update. The current solution is to remove any new content from your baseq3 directory.
I'm getting stuck at Awaiting Snapshot...
A number of problems can cause this to occur. Make sure you're not running with an old q3config.cfg file from the demo. Play from a full install of the game and not from the CD. Finally, lower your texture quality and turn on force model, or set geometric detail to low.
I'm getting stuck at Awaiting Gamestate...
A number of problems can cause this to occur. This is not related to problems with Awaiting Snapshot. We will address this in later releases.
Why does the game sometimes crash if we callvote to another level while playing CTF?

In version 1.11 of Quake3 the game will crash if players try to run a CTF game on maps not designed for CTF. Do not perform a callvote requesting a map change to a non-CTF map without changing the game type first. Before changing maps always make sure you have the correct gametype set.

g_gametype 0 Free For All
g_gametype 1 - Tournament
g_gametype 2 Single Player
g_gametype 3 Team Deathmatch
g_gametype 4 Capture the Flag

This crash will be fixed in the first point release of the game.

Fixed Bugs and Added Features 1-7-2000

- Store CD Key in a seperate file
- Shrink Icons on scoreboard and do away with staggered heads
- Voting can change gametype if current map does not suppoprt current game type
- Server list shows ip address
- possible team uneven measures? (as in L-Fire CTF) Prevent team join, prevent capture, prevent flag pickup
- Add team overlay location colors
- Server Browser: Could we remember settings for "Show Full" and "Show Empty" ? They are reinitialized every time. I like to see *ALL* servers and it's redundant to have to click those two buttons every time
- New scoreboard. Minor positional adjustments to default score board when clients hits more than seven, the scoreboard goes into compressed mode and interleaves the players head models/icons.
- Fixed health color display bug on team overlay
- Changing gamma causes a crash
- Spectators can now go through doors. A spectator only teleport is created on each side of the door that teleports a spectator to the other side (spectators on q3tourney4 will love this)
- fixed drop shadows also showing up on ground with gap
- bots should NOT use the personal teleporter when carrying a flag (except
- fixed bot_minplayers, kept loading bots during intermission because
- changing ctf strategy randomly if the game is 'stuck' for too long
- Bots have both agressive and passive ctf strategies
- fixed recalculating item area even if item didn't move
- added flag status icons to the hud, displayed as:, flag icon -- at base, empty colored square -- flag taken, grey colored square -- flag dropped
- fixed resetting rush base away time when flag returns
- fixed bots defending dropped flags
- fixed team leaders not giving 'orders' to themselves
- fixed removing double quoting in chat, tchat and print messages before
- Keybind INI files are broken
- Fixed Gamestate/Snapshot issue for modem users
- don't play denied sound if team mate picks up the powerup
- g_teamAutoJoin (default off), sets it so players automatically join a team on connect
- g_teamForceBalance (default off), forces it so that the spread between the number of players on a team is no more than two. Player will be disallowed to join a team with two or more players than the other.
- added callvote nextmap, and display available callvote commands if usage is incorrect
- adjusted maximum width of team overlay down
- added g_needpass serverinfo so remote browsers can determine if a password is needed
- Team scoreboard needs to overlay a colored team background on the scoreboard to clearly show team divisions
- added the ability to set g_password to "none" which means no password. This makes /rcon g_password none work
- fixed width problem for names on the team overlay
- team scores displayed on scoreboard in spectator mode
- team scores are now correctly updated and displayed when joining game in progress
- dead player displays crossout for weapon instead of missing texture on team overlay
- Fixed scores so that only the flag carrier gets five points for capturing. Team members do not get a bonus--the entire team gets a capture point. This was the originally indended scoring for Q3.
- Fixed it so that you get the aggressive enemy bonus for fragging a player who hurt your flag carrier (it had an 8 millisecond timeout, oops)
- Add g_doWarmup to allow warmup countdown timer on all game modes. This helps out in clan matches, since they can do a restart and get a fair countdown (as opposed to a random map_restart that is abruptive). This also gives people with slow load times a fair chance
- add g_doWarmup to callvote so people can vote in the warmup option
- Player is ALWAYS shown on the scoreboard, dropped at the bottom if player wasn't shown in the top scores
- drop ctf flags when player activates personal telporter (you can't take it with you!)
- don't draw crosshair in spectator mode (names are still drawn however). Crosshair is drawn when following a player.
- empty servers should show by default on the server display list
- adding game cvar tracking so that cvar changes made in mid game are told to all clients. The following cvars are tracked: dmflags, fraglimit, timelimit, capturelimit, g_friendlyFire, g_warmup, g_doWarmup, g_speed, g_gravity, g_knockback, g_quadfactor, g_w
- added the ability to select the position of the teamoverlay. Updated the game options menu to make the new positions available. I find I like it much more in the lower left [doesn't interfer with chat text.] Available positions are: cg_drawTeamOverlay 0
- added 'teamoverlay' to userinfo. This allows the server to determine if the client has the team overlay display on and only send the team information if needed (turning it off saves some bandwidth)
- made positions on team overlay static--takes the top eight players by score and puts them in client order (so they won't switch positions on the team overlay)
- made location strings left justified in team overlay
- Added IP banning. Similar to Quake2 method. Two new commands addip _mask_ and removeip _mask_. The ban list is saved in a cvar called g_banIPs. g_filterBan controls ban direction (default value of non-zero means everyone is allowed to connect, except thos
- teleport spectators to other side of door trigger brush when the door is Not open
- Display 2D player, flag, ammo and armor icons if draw3dIcons is off in status bar and on scoreboard (so all 3D icons are replaced by 2D version if cg_draw3Dicons is off)
- fixed bug where bots stand still not reacting to anything, not even incoming enemies
- added new individual CTF AI
- fixed team AI when base flag is gone
- fixed bots ignoring your commands if your name contains certain non alphabet characters (like . / ~).
- added ctf task preference for human players
- don't start kill, hitnokill, or hitnodeath chats when there are nearby enemies
- Add new cg_drawIcons cvar, turns off all icons (2D or 3D depending on setting of draw3dIcons
- don't start chatting when using a powerup
- Denied no longer sounds on same team pickups
- dropped items can fall out of the map or stick into walls. dropped items should use player clipping
- If a callvote passes with "map _mapname_", the game will keep the value of nextmap the same. This allows a player call vote a map change without upsetting the map rotation
- Screenshots broken in Q3, restarting exe causes game to overwrite 001 etc
- delay deferred model load until after death, and after client presses fire to respawn
- "No team_CTF_redflag in map" is no longer fatal
- Weapon Switch Issues: I'm still getting double clicks when I run out of ammo on the lightning gun or plasma. I'll have the fire button down, it runs out of ammo, it clicks, I let go of the fire button, press down, it clicks again
- Fixed up flag on flag carrier player model, made it stop rotating while being carried
- CTF Flag destroyed by nodrop areas
- s_khz 44 broken
- Right justified the team overlay
- default shader fix
- com_hunkMegs now works properly, com_hunkMegs has a minimum value of 56 for standard gameplay and 1 for a dedicated server connecting to a pure server works properly, no more kickouts