Quake III Arena (also known as Quake 3 ; abbreviated as Q3A or Q3 ), is a multiplayer first-person shooter computer and video game released on December 2, 1999. The game was developed by id Software and featured music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly. Quake III Arena is the third in the series and differs from previous games in the series by excluding a traditional single-player element and focusing on multi-player action. The single-player is instead played against computer controlled bots in a similar style to Unreal Tournament .
Notable features of Quake 3 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 that give more speed with greater skill in contrast to the digital, all or nothing design of many computer games.
Gameplay
Modes
Q3A comes with several gameplay modes:
- Free for All (FFA) – Classic deathmatch, where each player competes against the rest for the highest score.
- Team Deathmatch (TDM) – Team deathmatch, usually two teams of four compete for the highest team frag total.
- Tournament (1v1) – A deathmatch between two players, usually ending after a set time.
- Capture the Flag (CTF) – Team-based, played on symmetrical maps where teams have to recover the enemy flag from the opponents' base while retaining their own.
Single player
Unlike its predecessors, Q3A does not have a plot-based single-player campaign. Instead, it simulates the multiplayer experience with computer controlled players known as bots (see Bots below).
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 related to those earlier games as well as biographical information included on characters in the manual, a familiar mixture of gothic and technological map architecture and specific equipment; for example, the Quad Damage power-up, the infamous rocket launcher and the BFG super-weapon.
In Quake III Arena the player progresses through tiers of maps, combating different bot characters that increase in difficulty, from Crash (at Tier 0) to Xaero (at Tier 7). 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 as 'boss battles'.
The weapons are balanced by role, with each weapon having advantages in certain situations such as at long-range or fired around a corner; the BFG is an exception to this as a super-weapon. Weapon balance was achieved by examining earlier games in the series, Quake and Quake II as well as extensive play testing with well-known players such as Thresh. In the first Quake the rocket launcher was so effective that it dominated entire deathmatches while the rocket launcher in Quake II so weak that it was sometimes ignored. The rocket launcher in Quake III is effective but not overpowering, allowing it to be countered in many situations.
Weapons appear as level items, spawning at regular intervals in set locations on the map. If a player dies all 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.
Multiplayer
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. It uses a client-server architecture that requires all players' clients to connect to a server. Q3A's focus on multiplayer gameplay spawned a lively community, similar to Quakeworld , that is active to this day.
Development
During early March 1999, ATI leaked the internal hardware vendor (IHV) copy of the game. This was a functional version of the engine with a textured level and working guns. The IHV contained all the weapons that would make it into the final game although most were not fully modelled; 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 fiasco id Software released a beta of Quake III called Q3Test on April 24, 1999. 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 1.11.
Technology
Graphics
Unlike most other games released at the time—including its primary competitor, Unreal Tournament—, Quake 3 requires an OpenGL-compliant graphics accelerator to run. The game does not include a software renderer. The graphical 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." Shaders are described and rendered as several layers, each layer contains a texture, a "blend mode" which determines how to superimpose it over the previous layer and texture orientation modes such as environment mapping, scrolling, and rotation. These features can readily be seen within the game with many bright and active surfaces in each map and even on character models. The shader system goes beyond visual appearance, defining the contents of volumes (e.g. a water volume is defined by applying a water shader to its surfaces), light emission and which sound to play when a volume is trodden upon. In order to assist calculation of these shaders, Quake III implements a specific fast inverse square root function, which attracted a significant amount of attention in the game development community for its clever use of integer operations.
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.
The original version of Quake 3 provided support for models animated using vertex animation with attachment tags (known as the .md3 format), 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.
In-game videos all use a proprietary format called "RoQ", which was originally created by Graeme Devine, the designer of Quake 3 , for the game The 11th Hour . 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 actual RoQ decoder is present in the Quake 3 source code release. RoQ has seen little use outside games based on the Quake 3 or Doom 3 engines, but is supported by several video players (such as MPlayer) and a handful of third-party encoders exist.
Other visual features include volumetric fog, mirrors, portals, decals, and wave-form vertex distortion.
Sound
Quake 3' s sound system outputs to two channels using a looping output buffer, mixed from 96 tracks with stereo spatialization and Doppler effect. All of the sound mixing is done within the engine, which can create problems for licensees hoping to implement EAX or surround sound support. Several popular effects such as echoes are also absent.
A major flaw of the sound system is that the mixer isn't given its own thread, so if the game stalls for too long (particularly while navigating the menus or connecting to a server), the small output buffer will begin to loop, a very noticeable artifact. This problem was also present in the Doom 3 , Quake , and Quake II engines.
Networking
Quake 3 uses a "snapshot" system to relay information about game "frames" to the client over UDP. The server updates object interaction at a fixed rate independent of the rate clients update the server with their actions and then attempts to send the state of all objects at that moment (the current server frame) to each client. 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 (Delta encoding). All data packets are compressed by Huffman coding with static pre-calculated frequency data to reduce bandwidth use even further.
Quake 3 also integrated a relatively elaborate cheat-protection system called "pure server." Any client connecting to a pure server automatically has pure mode enabled, and while pure mode is enabled only files within data packs can be accessed. Clients are disconnected if their data packs fail one of several integrity checks. The cgame.qvm file, with its high potential for cheat-related modification, is subject to a
PlayStation 3 Console: PS3 Slim (Cheapest Price)
PS3 Guitar Hero III £39.99, £69.99. PS3 Accessories. DualShock 3 PS3 controller ... PlayStation 3 Slim Console - PS3 Slim Bundle + FREE Game + FREE HDMI + FREE Blu-ray
God Of War III Demo - Console Monster Forum
As a valued PlayStation®Network user, you’ve been rewarded with a voucher code to download an exclusive God of War® III demo. ... Console Monster Affiliates:
Grand Theft Auto III PlayStation 2 - Yahoo! Shopping
Rockstar Games once again invites players to "explore their inner criminal" with this release of Grand Theft Auto III for the PlayStation 2 console.
God of War III for PlayStation 3 - GameFAQs
For God of War III on the PlayStation 3, GameFAQs has game information and a community message board for game discussion.
Blizzard in Diablo III console talks News | PC | Eurogamer
A console version of Diablo III may be close to becoming reality, after Blizzard claimed it was " ... Never say never, after all the first Diablo came out for PlayStation. I'd love to ...
Diablo III Console Version Still A Possibility | Endsights: Shedding ...
Platforms. DS; PC; PlayStation 3; PSP; Wii; Xbox 360; Reviews ... 7248 0 http://www.endsights.com/news/7248/diablo-iii-console ... of Blizzard says they haven’t ruled out Diablo III for ...
Mighty Ape: Buy PlayStation 3 Slim 120GB Console (PlayStation 3)
The NEW PlayStation 3 Slim Console is 32% smaller, 36% lighter and consumes 34% less power than ... God of War III PlayStation 3
Breath of Fire III Release Information for PlayStation - GameFAQs
For Breath of Fire III on the PlayStation, the GameFAQs information page shows all known release data and credits.
Game & Game Console Accessories | compare prices and deals ...
Platform: Console - Supported Console: Sony Playstation III
Breath of Fire III for PlayStation 1 Product Reviews and Price ...
Epinions.com - Compare prices on Breath of Fire III for PlayStation 1 - PlayStation 1 Games. Compare prices from across the web and read product reviews on Breath of Fire III for ...