- This article or section should include material from Anarki
For an overview of the Quake game franchise go to Quake series.
Quake III Arena (Q3A) is a multiplayer first person shooter game made by id Software in 1999. Players move throughout the map, or "arena", to kill, or "frag", enemy players and score points based on the game mode. If your player's life reaches zero, then your character will die. Soon after, your character will reappear, or "respawn", at specific places throughout the map, and you will lose all items that you had gathered previously. The game ends when a player or team reaches a specified score or when the time-limit has been reached.
Quake III Arena was one of the first FPS games which did not support software rendering. A hardware accelerated graphics controller is required to run the program.
Background music was composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly.
An expansion pack called Quake III: Team Arena was released in April 2000 by id Software. It focused on team gameplay and featured new weapons, items, player models, and game modes. Quake III Revolution was released for the PS2 in 2001.
Game play
Modes Q3A comes with several classic gameplay modes. They are: 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 deathmatch multiplayer experience by using computer controlled players, called "bots". The difficulty of the bots is selected by the player and ranges from very easy to very hard. (In Q3A, easy is known as "I Can Win" and very hard as "Nightmare") The progression through single-player includes increasingly more complex arenas and more difficult and numerous bots.
In the manual, 'How to Play' is reduced to the single instruction: "Frag Everything That Isn't You."
While the story of the game is thin at best (the greatest warriors of all time fight for the amusement of the Arena Masters in the Arena Eternal), continuity to priors in the Quake series and even Doom is maintained with the inclusion of player models related to those earlier games, a mixture of gothic/techno map architecture, and specific equipment; for example, the Quad Damage powerup and the powerful BFG.
Multiplayer Quake III Arena was specifically designed for multiplayer. This means that the game allows players, whose computers are connected by a network, to exist in the same arena and play together in real time. It uses a client-server architecture, that requires all players' clients to connect to a single server.
Weapons In Quake 3, the weapon systems are designed such that there is a good weapon for every situation. So, if one has all the weapons available in the game, one is prepared for any situation possible.
While you do not need to reload, there is a delay between shots that differs from weapon to weapon, and ammo is limited, so the conservation of ammo is important.
Gauntlet The gauntlet is like any other melee weapon in any first person shooter - for close quarters combat only. When you are left without ammo, this is your only option. The best way to use it is to either get in a crowded place, avoid fire and try to hit people from behind, or to wait around a corner and hit them as they pass by it.
Machine Gun The machine gun, or "pea-shooter" is the only weapon besides the gauntlet that you start out with. Because of the limited number of shots on spawning ( 100 ), and scarcity of machine gun ammo items in gameplay, the weapon is all but worthless in most combat situations. It can be used to hit opponents at range, but it runs out of ammo too quickly and does too little damage to be truly useful in this role. Close to medium range yields the best results, though for point-blank action, the gauntlet is far more effective. The only real "good" use for this gun is in one-on-one play, spamming at your opponent when they have little life left. If you can get your opponent down below 20 health, this weapon can kill reliably from quite a distance. While the weapon can also be effective when held steadily on an opponent, keeping a single target in your sites during the carnage of gameplay for more than second or two is all but impossible.
Shotgun The shotgun sprays 11 pellets that do 10 damage each. Much like the machine gun, it is extremely useful for inflicting small amounts of damage to opponents with low health. In addition to that, it can deal massive amounts of damage at close range. Because the shotgun's spray is quite large, it won't do any damage at all at long range, and very little at medium range. However, the spray dispersal means also that precise aiming is not necessary, and this, combined with the absence of splash damage makes it a very popular weapon for fighting in close.
Grenade Launcher Simply put, the grenade launcher lobs grenades at low power. At close range, they fire fairly straight, but at any real distance, it becomes necessary to arc the shot to hit. While the grenades have a short fuse, if they hit a person, they will explode immediately. They are commonly used to spam around corners so your opponent cannot hit you. It can be used for advanced movement techniques such as grenade jumping, or as an aide in plasma climbing. Spam with caution, though - bad bounces can easily blow up the user.
Rocket Launcher The rocket launcher is one of the most widely used weapons in the game. It is both the easiest and hardest gun in the game to use. It is the easiest because it can inflict major damage with little aim, as the rocket impacts have a wide blast radius. But this becomes a double-edge sword in close, and at point-blank range, the weapon becomes nearly impossible to use without killing its user. Additionally, it is nearly impossible to kill opponents at long range, due to the relatively slow speed at which the rockets travel. In one-on-one combat, skilled players use it to knock opponents into space or lava, causing them to lose a frag. Though this is mathematically the same as fragging an opponent, if one player is one frag away from victory, it may be better for the other player to reduce the leaders frag count than to increase theirs.
The rocket launcher is also widely used for rocket jumping. If one fires a rocket at the ground as one jumps, the height of the jump is increased dramatically.
Lightning Gun The lightning gun is much like the machine gun, except fires as a beam, deals more damage, and is limited in its range. In close, it can kill a healthy opponent in seconds with no risk to the user, and as a result is a great weapon in smaller maps with lots of corners or tight spaces. Unfortunately, the beam ends at a set range, which makes it very difficult for the user to judge whether or not they will be able to hit an opponent.
Railgun The railgun is the best gun in the game for long range combat. It is most easily compared to a sniper rifle in any other game. Unlike many sniper rifles, it does not need to be scoped to have a crosshair, and movement does not affect its accuracy. The railgun hits instantly and at a single, tiny point. Because of this, it can be very difficult to use at long range, as targets can be very small, and hard to hit. Even though it can be hard to use, it is still the best weapon for long range, by far.
Plasma Gun The plasma gun is very effective for spamming opponents at close to medium range. Be careful when using it at close range, as it has splash damage, you should be careful when using it. While it deals plenty of damage, its splash is very weak with low range. The plasma gun can be used to climb walls. See plasma climbing for more information.
BFG BFG stands for Big Fucking Gun, and is aptly named. The gun does far more damage than is necessary and fires far faster than necessary. It is much like a very high powered plasma gun. Due to its power, it is found on almost no multiplayer servers, and is often disabled when the maps include it. In the hands of a good player, it becomes a near-absolute trump card - especially in tandem with the quad damage.
Items
Weapons Weapons start off as items. They spawn at regular intervals at specified places on the map. When you pick them up off the ground, and you don't already possess that weapon, you will gain the weapon, and a set amount of ammo. If you have the weapon, but you don't have at least the starting amount of ammo, you will gain the difference. If you have the weapon, and you have more than the starting amount, you will only gain one extra round.
When you die, you drop your currently selected weapon in the form of an item. ( with the exception of the gauntlet and machine gun ) When you pick up a weapon off the ground, you get the starting ammo added to your current ammo.
Ammo Ammo boxes are located throughout the map. They are usually in easy to find places, but often times ammo crates will be hidden. Ammo crates give you a standard amount of ammo that simply gets added to your current amount.
Health When your health gets low, you can pick up health items. There are 4 kinds of health items. Yellow recovers 25 health, orange recovers 50 health, green recovers 5 health, but can go over 100, and blue recovers 100, and can go over 100. The maximum health you can get to is 200.
Powerups
Quad Damage Quad damage triples the amount of damage the weapon you have does. ( In the original quake, it quadrupled the damage, but that was changed in quake 3 ) Quad damage is very effective when using rapid-fire guns and guns with splash damage (such as the rocket launcher, plasma gun, BFG and machine gun), though it is not as useful for slow-firing guns like the rail gun.
Speed Speed doubles your firing/movement speed. When used with strafe jumping, you can move at an obscene rate.
Regeneration Regeneration regenerates your life for a period of time. It regens at a rate of 5hp every two seconds, and can go up to 200 health.
Flight Flight is an extremely rare powerup that shows up in a mere handful of maps. While it is effective, it allows you to fly around. You just hit forward and look around to fly. When it is found, it is usually for a purpose such as getting to a place in the map you can't without it.
Techniques As quake 3 is a skill based game, there are many, many techniques to master to become good at it. Some of those techniques are listed here.
Aiming Aiming in quake is simple - point and shoot. There are no dynamic sprays and movement does not affect your spray. With instant hit weapons such as the gauntlet, machine gun, shotgun, lightning gun, and rail gun, simply aim directly at your opponent, and fire. Weapons like the rocket launcher, grenade launcher, plasma gun, and BFG require a bit more practice to master, as they require you to lead your target.
Movement For the most part, movement is simple. You can run, walk, crouch, or jump. Running is always on by default, though running everywhere isn't smart. Walking is useful as you make no noise when you walk, allowing you to sneak up to an opponent. While crouching also deadens the noise you make when moving, it makes you move slower. The advantage of crouching is it puts you lower to the ground and therefore makes you a smaller target. This can be useful if you want to hide behind low structures or to peek at something without creating a big target.
Bunny Hopping Once you can move effectively in the game, you should learn more advanced techniques. The most basic of these advanced techniques is bunny hopping. Bunny hopping is repeatedly jumping. While not useful by itself, it becomes important when combined with strafing to create strafe jumping. Effective bunny hopping is jumping constantly - jumping once you touch the ground from your last jump.
Strafe Jumping Strafe Jumping is the most important technique to master after bunny hopping. Strafe jumping accelerates the user an incredible amount if used correctly. In theory, your speed can be increased indefinitely if the user was on an infinite field of play. While bunny hopping, strafe in either direction, hold forward, and move your crosshair in the opposite direction. While it can be effective to move it drastically, this is far more different than one might think. The best thing to do when learning to strafe jump is to move your cursor very gently left and right as you bunny hop, alternating strafe keys between jumps. That is, jump, strafe right, move the cursor left, jump, strafe left, move the cursor right, etc. You shouldn't be moving your crosshair more than a few inches in game. The best way to get a feel for how to do this is watch demos of professionals - they strafe jump constantly.
Rocket Jumping Simply put, rocket jumping is jumping, with a rocket.
What you do is jump immediately before firing a rocket at the ground. This can increase the height of your jump drastically. If done incorrectly, it can damage you and not help your jump at all. The closer the rocket is fired after the jump, the higher the jump. While the damage to yourself cannot be avoided, it can be reduced greatly by collecting armor prior to rocket jumping. This way, it's your armor that will take most of the damage instead of you.
Grenade Jumping The only real place that grenade jumping is useful is when used in conjunction with plasma climbing. While it can be used otherwise, in it's other functions, it easily becomes the most difficult technique to use. Simply fire a grenade, and be over it when it goes off. This can be used in conjunction with rocket jumping, but only in conjunction with massive damage to yourself, and a low success rate.
Plasma Climbing Plasma climbing is using the knockback from the shot from the plasma gun to climb up walls. To do it, just get right next to a wall, aim low on the wall (about an inch or two from the floor), jump, and fire continuously. This technique can be extremely effective when used with grenade jumping. Drop a grenade, aim at the floor, and right before the grenade goes off, jump, and start firing your plasma gun.
Rail Jumping Rail Jumping is a technique only available in the Corckscrew mod. It is done by jumping or standing and firing the rail gun underneath you. This will launch you high into the air due to the recoil. It is very effective to avoid enemy fire and just about everything else.
Mods Like its predecessors, Quake and Quake II, Quake III Arena can be heavily modified to support other gaming styles with mods. It can use (like Quake II) native shared libraries to store the game code but the preferred method is to program all modifications in pure ANSI-C and compile them with a special version of the free C compiler LCC into machine independent byte code, which will be interpreted by an in-game virtual machine. The virtual machine in Quake III Arena even uses "just-in-time" techniques like modern Java virtual machines.
The most popular mods for Quake are Rocket Arena 3 (RA3), and OSP Quake (OSP). RA3 is a tournament focused mod, allowing players to play on the same server in virtual arenas with as many players in each at a time as desired. You can set up arenas for 1v1 play, 2v2 play, etc. Unlike regular quake, when a player dies, he is dead until his entire team is eliminated. OSP is a mod meant for tournament play. It gives the player more interface options and modifications. You can effectively change everything in the interface so that it fits your 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 colors for names and rails, additional stats on the score window, and much more.
A listing of Q3A mods can be found at Quake III Arena mods.
Professional In competitive Quake III Arena, there are two distinct disciplines, often referred to as "rulesets". Vanilla Quake 3 (VQ3) features less movement abilities and other miscellaneous changes than Challenge Pro-Mode Arena (CPMA). The same applies to Quake I, where the 2 rulesets are Vanilla QuakeWorld and JawnMode. As with CPMA, JawnMode adds more able movement and other competition oriented changes.
Bots This is a list of bots that are available in the single-player game. - Anarki
- Angel
- Biker
- Bitterman
- Bones
- Cadavre
- Crash
- Doom
- Gorre
- Grunt
- Hossman
- Hunter
- Keel
- Klesk
- Lucy
- Daemia
- Major
- Mynx
- Orbb
- Patriot
- Phobos
- Ranger
- Razor
- Sarge
- Slash
- Sorlag
- Stripe
- Tank Jr
- Uriel
- Visor
- Wrack
- Xaero
Games using the Quake III Arena engine
External link - Quake III Arena official homepage (http://www.quake3arena.com/games/quake/quake3-arena/)
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