Quake III Arena
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| Quake III Arena | |
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| Developer(s) | id Software |
| Publisher(s) | Activision |
| Release date(s) | 1999 |
| Genre | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Mature (M) |
| Platform(s) | PC (Windows / Linux), Mac, Dreamcast |
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 (known as a waypoint), 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.
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. Quake III Arena was also released for the Sega Dreamcast in 2001 and featured 6 player online play.
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Gameplay
Modes
Q3A comes with several classic gameplay modes. They are:
Since its release, many more modes have been created (see mods).
Single player
Quake3Screenshot.jpg
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 or to the internet, 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 III, 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.
- Gauntlet
- The gauntlet is a melee weapon used only for close quarters combat only. More or less it is a last option weapon when all ammo for other weapons is depleted.
- Machine gun
- The machine gun is the only weapon besides the gauntlet that the player starts out with.
- Shotgun
- The shotgun is primarily used for close range combat since its spray is rather large. The gun can shoot 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.
- Rocket launcher
- The rocket launcher is one of the most widely used weapons in the game because it is easy to use and can inflict a lot of damage with little aim, as the rocket impacts have a wide blast radius. But this becomes a double-edged sword at closer ranges; at point blank range, the weapon becomes nearly impossible to use without killing the player.
- Lightning gun
- The lightning gun is much like the machine gun, except that it fires as a beam, deals more damage and is limited in its range. In close combat, it can kill a healthy opponent in seconds with no risk to the user.
- Railgun
- The railgun is primarily used 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.
- Plasma gun
- The plasma gun is an effective weapon for close to medium range, although it does have some splash damage. The plasma gun can be used to climb walls.
- BFG10K
- The BFG stands for "Big Fucking Gun," although it is only ever referred to by its initials in the game's documentation. Out of all the weapons in the game, the BFG is the most powerful and is considered a near-absolute trump card during rounds.
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 oftentimes ammo crates will be hidden. Ammo crates give you a standard amount of ammo that simply gets added to your current supply.
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, however when you go over 100, your health starts ticking lower until 100 points, one point per second.
Armor
Armor decreases the amount of damage you take when you get hit. Armor comes in three flavors: Armor Shard, which gives you 5 armor points, Yellow Armor with 50 points and Red Armor with 100 points. Armor can go over 100 points, but as with health, it starts ticking back to 100.
Powerups
Quad damage
Quad damage triples the amount of damage done by the weapon you have. ( 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.
Haste
Haste 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. 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 on an opponent. While crouching also deadens the noise you make when moving, it makes you move more slowly. The advantage of crouching is that 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 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 to an incredible degree if used correctly. In theory, your speed can be increased indefinitely if the user were on an infinite field of play. While bunny hopping, strafe in either direction, hold forward, and move your crosshair in the same 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 right, jump, strafe left, move the cursor left, etc. You shouldn't be moving your crosshair more than a few inches. 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 its 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 with 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 Corkscrew mod, and therefore completely useless in competition. 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) is the default out-of-the-box ruleset for Quake 3. It is named 'vanilla' in contrast with the CPM ruleset of the CPMA mod which offers increased movement abilities and revamped weapon balance, in an attempt to make Quake 3 gameplay deeper and more exciting. 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
Anarki is a bot in the video game Quake III Arena.
Demographics
- Tier: 4
- Levels: q3tourney4
- Preferred weapon: rocket launcher
Background information
Description: Anarki can be best described as a smart-ass punk with a little too much sugar in his diet. Definitely one of the coolest looking bots, Anarki will tend to skate around on the middle level of q3tourney4. As for his preferred weapon, it's most definitely the rocket launcher. When this isn't available to him, he'll choose the railgun next. Catching him by surprise around corners, or from either the upper or lower levels, seems to be the best way to beat him.
Other bots
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
External links
- Quake III Arena official homepage (http://www.quake3arena.com/games/quake/quake3-arena/)
- PlanetQuake3.net - Quake3 news & file archive (http://www.planetquake3.net/)
- Planetquake.com - Daily news about Quake (http://www.planetquake.com/)
- Quake3: Raytraced (http://graphics.cs.uni-sb.de/~sidapohl/egoshooter/) Raytracing-Engine showing Quake3
- Epic (http://www.epicmod.com) An excessive mod clone that allows admins to change weapon firing rate, damage, projectile speed and more while still keeping the look and feel of the original excessive.
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