Quake III Arena


Quake III Arena is a 1999 multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by id Software. It is the third game in the Quake series; it differs from previous games by excluding a story-based single-player mode and highly focusing on multiplayer gameplay. The single-player mode is played against computer-controlled bots. It features music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly founder Bill Leeb.
Notable features of Quake III Arena include the minimalist design, lacking rarely used items and features, the extensive customizability of player settings such as field of view, texture detail and enemy model, and advanced movement features such as strafe-jumping and rocket-jumping.
The game was highly praised by reviewers who, for the most part, described the gameplay as fun and engaging. Many liked the crisp graphics and focus on multiplayer. Quake III Arena has also been used extensively in professional electronic sports tournaments such as QuakeCon, Cyberathlete Professional League, DreamHack, and the Electronic Sports World Cup.

Gameplay

Unlike its predecessors, Quake III Arena does not have a plot-based single-player campaign. Instead, it simulates the multiplayer experience with computer-controlled players known as bots. The game's story is brief: "the greatest warriors of all time fight for the amusement of a race called the Vadrigar in the Arena Eternal." The introduction video shows the abduction of such a warrior, Sarge, while making a last stand. Continuity with prior games in the Quake series and even Doom is maintained by the inclusion of player models and biographical information. A familiar mixture of gothic and technological map architecture as well as specific equipment is included, such as the Quad Damage power-up, the rocket launcher, and the BFG.
In Quake III Arena, the player progresses through tiers of maps, combating different bot characters that increase in difficulty, from Crash to Xaero. As the game progresses, the fights take place in more complex arenas and against tougher opponents. While deathmatch maps are designed for up to 16 players, tournament maps are designed for duels between 2 players and in the single-player game could be considered 'boss battles'.
The weapons are balanced by role, with each weapon having advantages in certain situations, such as the railgun at long-range and the lightning gun at close quarters. The BFG super-weapon is an exception to this; compared to other similarly named weapons in the Doom/Quake series, Quake III Arenas incarnation of this weapon is basically a fast-firing rocket launcher and it is found in hard-to-reach locations. Weapons appear as level items, spawning at regular intervals in set locations on the map. If a player dies, all of their weapons are lost and they receive the spawn weapons for the current map, usually the gauntlet and machine gun. Players also drop the weapon they were using when killed, which other players can then pick up.
Quake III Arena comes with several gameplay modes: Free for All, a classic deathmatch, where each player competes against the rest for the highest score, Team Deathmatch, where usually two teams of four compete for the highest team frag total, Tournament, a deathmatch between two players, usually ending after a set time, Capture the Flag, which is played on symmetrical maps where teams have to recover the enemy flag from the opponents' base while retaining their own, and Freeze Rails, which is a freeze tag team deathmatch played with only the rail gun and gauntlet as weapons.
Quake III Arena was specifically designed for multiplayer. The game allows players whose computers are connected by a network or to the internet, to play against each other in real time, and incorporates a handicap system. It employs a client–server model, requiring all players' clients to connect to a server. Quake III Arenas focus on multiplayer gameplay spawned a lively community, similar to QuakeWorld, that is active to this day.

Characters

Quake III Arena features several characters from previous entries in the Quake series including "Bitterman" from Quake II, the "Ranger" character from Quake as well as Doomguy from id Software's sister franchise Doom.

Development

During early March 1999, ATI leaked the internal hardware vendor copy of the game. This was a functional version of the engine with a textured level and working guns. The IHV contained most of the weapons that would make it into the final game although most were not fully modeled; a chainsaw and grappling hook were also in the IHV but did not make it into the final release. Many of the sounds that would make it into the final release were also included.
After the IHV leak, id Software released a beta of the game called Quake III Arena Test on April 24, 1999, initially only for Mac OS before expanding to Windows at a later date. The Q3Test started with version 1.05 and included three levels that would be included in the final release: dm7, dm17, and q3tourney2. Id Software continued to update Q3Test up until version 1.09.
id co-founder and former technical director John Carmack has stated that Quake III Arena is his favorite game he has worked on.
Quake III Arena was shipped to retailers on December 2, 1999; the official street date for the game was December 5, although id Software chief executive officer Todd Hollenshead expected the game to be available as early as December 3 from retailers like Babbage's and EB Games.

Game engine

The id Tech 3 engine is the name given to the engine that was developed for Quake III Arena. Unlike most other games released at the time, Quake III Arena requires an OpenGL-compliant graphics accelerator to run. The game does not include a software renderer.
The graphic technology of the game is based tightly around a "shader" system where the appearance of many surfaces can be defined in text files referred to as "shader scripts". Quake 3 also introduced spline-based curved surfaces in addition to planar volumes, which are responsible for many of the surfaces present within the game. Quake 3 also provided support for models animated using vertex animation with attachment tags, allowing models to maintain separate torso and leg animations and hold weapons. Quake 3 is one of the first games where the third-person model is able to look up and down and around as the head, torso and legs are separate. Other visual features include volumetric fog, mirrors, portals, decals, and wave-form vertex distortion.
For networking, id Tech 3 uses a "snapshot" system to relay information about game "frames" to the client over UDP. 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. id Tech 3 uses a virtual machine to control object behavior on the server, effects and prediction on the client and the user interface. This presents many advantages as mod authors do not need to worry about crashing the entire game with bad code, clients could show more advanced effects and game menus than was possible in Quake II and the user interface for mods was entirely customizable. Unless operations which require a specific endianness are used, a QVM file will run the same on any platform supported by Quake III Arena. The engine also contains bytecode compilers for the x86 and PowerPC architectures, executing QVM instructions via an interpreter.
Quake III Arena features an advanced AI with five difficulty levels which can accommodate both a beginner and an advanced player, though they usually do not pose a challenge to high-tier or competitive players. Each bot has its own, often humorous, 'personality', expressed as scripted lines that are triggered to simulate real player chat. If the player types certain phrases, the bots may respond: for example, typing "You bore me" might cause a bot to reply "You should have been here 3 hours ago!". Each bot has a number of alternative lines to reduce the repetition of bot chatter. The Gladiator bots from Quake II were ported to Quake III Arena and incorporated into the game by their creator - Jan Paul van Waveren, aka Mr. Elusive. Bot chat lines were written by R. A. Salvatore, Seven Swords and Steve Winter. Xaero, the hardest opponent in the game, was based on the Gladiator bot Zero. The bot Hunter appears on magazine covers in the later id game Doom 3.
On August 19, 2005, id Software released the complete source code for Quake III Arena under the GNU General Public License, as they have for most of their prior engines. As before, the engine, but not the content such as textures and models, was released, so that anyone who wishes to build the game from source will still need an original copy of the game to play it as intended.

Mods

Like its predecessors, Quake and Quake II, Quake III Arena can be heavily modified, allowing the engine to be used for many different games. Mods range from small gameplay adjustments like Rocket Arena 3 and Orange Smoothie Productions to total conversions such as Smokin' Guns, DeFRaG, and Loki's Revenge. The source code's release has allowed total conversion mods such as Tremulous, World of Padman, OpenArena, and Urban Terror to evolve into free standalone games. Other mods like Weapons Factory Arena have moved to more modern commercial engines. Challenge ProMode Arena became the primary competitive mod for Quake III Arena since the Cyberathlete Professional League announced CPMA as its basis for competition. CPMA includes alternative gameplays, including air-control, rebalanced weapons, instant weapon switching, and additional jumping techniques. Another mod that underwent several open beta versions and was very popular in 1999-2001 was Quake 3 Fortress. The initial version of this game was an indirect port of the Quakeworld Team Fortress mod with many clans and leagues competing in both games simultaneously. Q3F was eventually ported to another Quake 3 mod Enemy Territory Fortress which had limited success. The developers of Q3F eventually abandoned the mod but used it to create the standalone 2003 game , which uses the Quake 3 engine and is still popular with approximately 9,400 active players in 2018.

Expansion

An expansion pack titled Quake III: Team Arena was released on December 18, 2000 in North America, January 15, 2001 in Japan and January 26, in Europe. It was developed by id Software and published by Activision. The expansion focused on team-based gameplay through new game modes, as well as the addition of three new weapons, and new items and player models. Quake III: Team Arena was criticized, as its additions were long overdue and had already been implemented by fan modifications. Quake III: Gold was later released on September 26, 2001 in North America, March 29, 2002 in Japan and August 9 in Europe, including the original Quake III Arena and the Quake III: Team Arena expansion pack bundled together. Front Line Assembly made the soundtrack for the expansion, the counterpart to Sonic Mayhem's Quake III Arena: Noize.

Ports

Official

Quake III Arena was released for the Dreamcast in 2000 and featured 4 player online play versus Dreamcast and PC gamers. It is often considered one of the best PC to console ports of its time due to its smooth frame rate and online play. There are still communities that play this version online on the remaining dedicated servers running patch version 1.16n and the required map pack.
Quake III Revolution was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2001 featuring several elements adopted from Team Arena, along with a more mission-based single-player mode. It features split-screen multiplayer for up to 4 players, as well as the Id Software new animated logo called "The Laboratory", but lacks mouse support. As the game was an early PS2 title it lacked online play as Sony had not yet set up their network functionality yet. Gamerankings.com rated the release at 83%. The PlayStation 2 version was widely criticized for having long loading times.
Quake III Arena for the 360 was officially announced by id at QuakeCon 2007. The title, jointly developed by id and Pi Studios, was released on Xbox Live Arcade on December 15, 2010. The retail price of the game was set at 1200 Microsoft Points, or $15 USD. Quake Arena DS for the Nintendo DS was announced at QuakeCon on August 4, 2007. John Carmack said that touch screen controls would not be implemented as much as in Metroid Prime Hunters, for example, also stating that he would like all shooting in the game to be controlled with the D-pad instead of the Touch Screen. This version was silently cancelled. Quake Zero was announced at QuakeCon on August 3, 2007 and was an updated version of Quake 3 Arena, distributed by free download, run in a browser window and supported by built-in advertising content. Quake Zero was launched as Quake Live, released in 2010.

Reception

Sales

Quake IIIs sales surpassed 50,000 copies during its first three days of release, by which time 1 million copies had been printed. It debuted at #5 on PC Data's weekly computer game sales chart for the December 5–11 period. The game rose to fourth place in the weekly top 10 the following week. Domestically, it sold 222,840 copies and earned revenues of $10.1 million by early 2000.
In North America, Quake III sold 168,309 copies and earned $7.65 million from January through October 2000, according to PC Data. Its overall sales in the region, including its launch in 1999, totaled 319,970 units by November 2000. Its sales for 2000 alone ultimately reached 190,950 units and $8.4 million by the end of the year. The game later received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.

Critical reception

Reviews for the game were very positive, with many describing the game as fast and addictive Curved surfaces were a welcome addition to the series. Most reviewers felt the game was best when played with others online. GameSpot review by Jeff Gerstmann described the game as outstanding. He noted the fun level designs, great-looking textures, impressive special effects and weapons sounds. The GameSpot review criticised the narrator's voice and thought that some levels could become too crowded when playing multiplayer. An IGN review felt the game lacked originality but enjoyed the detailed wall textures and outer space jump levels. The high number of character skins and the artificial intelligence of opponent bots were praised but the weapons were said to be "bland and predictable". An Eurogamer review described the game as "polished" and "stunning" and thought that it "was extremely well balanced and plays very well". The reviewer was especially pleased with the customisable 3D engine and looked forward to new maps and mods.
Blake Fischer reviewed the PC version of the game for Next Generation, rating it five stars out of five, describing as "the best deathmatch yet. Period. End of story. If you want single-player or a storyline, buy Half-Life. It you want great DM and near-infinite expandability, Quake III is the best in the business".
Frank O'Connor reviewed the Dreamcast version of the game for Next Generation, rating it four stars out of five, and stating that "a brilliant, if flawed, conversion of arguably the best online game ever made – it's sure a hell of a lot more interesting use of the Dreamcast modem than Chu Chu Rocket".
Garrett Kenyon reviewed the PlayStation 2 version of the game for Next Generation, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "all in all, this is a fast and beautiful game – easily the best shooter available for PS2".
Quake III Arena won PC Gamer USs 1999 "Special Achievement in Graphics" award, and wrote that it "set a new high-water mark in 3D graphics this year". The game was a finalist for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' 1999 "Action Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to .
In January 2016, Red Bull labeled Q3DM17 one of the 10 greatest FPS multiplayer levels of all time.

Competitive play

Quake III Arena's multiplayer-focused development led to it developing a large community of competitive players and like its predecessors it was used extensively in professional electronic sports tournaments. In competitive Quake III Arena there are two distinct gameplays, often referred to as 'rulesets', the out-of-the-box Quake III Arena game, also known as vanilla Quake 3, and the CPM ruleset of the Challenge Pro Mode Arena mod. On July 26, 2006, Challenge Pro Mode Arena with VQ3 gameplay was chosen by Cyberathlete Professional League as the mod of choice for their tournament, making it the standard competitive mod for Quake III Arena. Previously, Orange Smoothie Productions was the most widely used tournament mod.
The following competitions have held Quake III events:
These competitions have now moved on to more recent games or have transitioned to its variant successor, Quake Live.