Quake III Arena
4 ports
Quake III Arena (Quake3e)
ec-/Quake3e
Quake3e: a Quake III Arena engine that aims to be fast, secure, and compatible with every existing mod for the game. It’s based on the last pre-SDL revision of ioquake3, the port that carries on the source code id Software released in 2005, with later ioquake3 fixes and many changes of its own. Its Vulkan renderer, based on Quake-III-Arena-Kenny-Edition’s, adds per-pixel dynamic lighting, MSAA and supersampling, HDR, bloom, reflections, and rendering at any resolution; the OpenGL renderer has the same effects. It also brings raw mouse input, a reworked QVM virtual machine (with a new x87 JIT compiler in the latest release), video capture through ffmpeg, and fast map downloads over HTTP or FTP, and for servers, better DoS protection, lower memory use, and up to 20,000 maps per folder. There are builds for Windows (x86, x86-64, and ARM64), Linux (x86, x86-64, and ARM64), and macOS (Intel and Apple silicon), plus a rolling build; the latest dated release, from October 14, also includes one for Windows 98.
You needAn installation of your own copy of Quake III Arena, into whose folder you copy the executables (the game is read from baseq3); it finds the Steam install on its own. Plus Windows (ARM64 and Windows 98 included), Linux, or macOS.
FTEQW
fte-team/fteqw
FTEQW: an advanced, portable Quake engine that grew from the Quake source code id Software released and plays several id Tech games, plus the games other developers have made with it. It supports Quake and its mission packs, QuakeWorld, Quake II and its mission packs, Quake III Arena and Team Arena, and Hexen II and its expansion; Half-Life and Half-Life 2 run through the Rad Therapy project. It finds games installed through Steam on its own, including the Quake and Quake II re-releases, as well as the classic Linux game folders. It renders with Direct3D 8, 9, or 11, OpenGL, or Vulkan, with a material system that accepts HLSL and GLSL shaders and video presets that make the games look like the originals or more modern, with real-time lighting. It has split-screen for Quake and most of its mods, Opus or Speex voice chat, a server browser covering every protocol it supports, a dedicated server, games with hundreds of players, IPv4 and IPv6, CD music replacement with Vorbis, MP3, WAV, or FLAC files, plugins (FFmpeg, Bullet or ODE physics), and its own QuakeC compiler, FTEQCC, which can run in-game, with a debugger. It runs on Windows, Linux, OpenBSD, and other systems, on x86, x86-64, ARM, and PPC64LE, and also on Android and the web. The builds for Windows (64- and 32-bit) and Linux (x86-64 and x86) are downloaded from its website; the GitHub repository is its official mirror, and its latest change is from June 4.
You needThe files from your own copy of one of the games (Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, or Hexen II, with their expansions if you have them), with the engine copied into the game’s folder; it also finds Steam installs on its own. For Quake II with the 64-bit build of the engine you also need 64-bit game logic, which the project recommends taking from Yamagi Quake II. Plus Windows, Linux, or another supported system.
Spearmint
clover-moe/spearmint
Spearmint: a heavily modified version of the Quake III Arena engine, based directly on ioquake3, the port that carries on the source code id Software released, with code from Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, OpenArena, and other projects as well. It was made for creating new games and mods without modifying the engine, so much of its functionality moved into the game code, but it can still play the Quake 3 data: it runs Quake III Arena, Quake III: Team Arena, and Turtle Arena, and progress has been made toward Return to Castle Wolfenstein (multiplayer) and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which don’t work yet. It isn’t compatible with Quake III Arena servers, mods (QVM or DLL files), or demos. For players it adds aspect-correct widescreen, high-resolution TrueType fonts, four-player split screen, improved bot AI, better gamepad support, an Instagib mode, and optional unlagged instant-hit weapons, plus touches such as smoothly sinking corpses and player shadows that follow the model’s animation. The Quake 3 game code lives in a separate repository, mint-arena. Its author stopped active development in October 2018 and only releases occasional fixes: the latest release is 1.0.3, from July 10, 2020, and the main branch, for 1.1, received commits as recently as May this year. Its contribution rules say LLM (“AI”) contributions aren’t wanted.
You needThe pak0.pk3 to pak8.pk3 files from your own copy of Quake III Arena, copied into Spearmint’s baseq3 folder (and Team Arena’s into missionpack to play it); it also works with the free data from the Quake 3 demo, the Team Arena demo, or OpenArena 0.8.8. Plus Windows XP or later (32- or 64-bit), macOS 10.5 or later (PowerPC or Intel), or x86 or x86-64 Linux with glibc 2.7 or later.
Quake III Arena (vkQuake3)
suijingfeng/vkQuake3
vkQuake3: ioquake3, the port that carries on the Quake III Arena source code id Software released in 2005, with an added Vulkan renderer. That renderer comes from Quake-III-Arena-Kenny-Edition, converted from C++ to C so it builds inside ioquake3, and sits alongside ioquake3’s two OpenGL renderers: you enable it from the console with cl_renderer vulkan, and vkinfo shows which graphics card and Vulkan version are in use. It emulates the original’s fixed-function OpenGL pipeline with shaders, draws shadows with the stencil buffer, and applies brightness before uploading textures to the GPU instead of changing the gamma of the whole desktop. It keeps what ioquake3 brings, such as OpenAL sound, voice chat, demo video capture, and HTTP downloads. Its only release is a preview for 64-bit Windows (0.0.1, March 23, 2019) that its author describes as a just-for-fun version that may have bugs; since 2024 it has received fixes from other contributors, such as no longer requiring certain optional Vulkan features, a validation error on Wayland, and C23 compatibility, the latest in June. The same author also has vkOpenArena, the OpenArena version.
You needThe .pk3 files from your own copy of Quake III Arena, which go in the baseq3 folder. Plus a graphics card with Vulkan (or OpenGL, for the other renderers) and Windows, Linux, or macOS (with MoltenVK); apart from the Windows preview, you have to build it.
Questions
What projects are there for Quake III Arena?
The catalog has 4 ports for Quake III Arena, all on this page with their status.
What do I need to play it?
Your own copy of Quake III Arena (Windows). Recompendium only links projects that don’t distribute the game, and each entry says which version or region you need.
Which one is the most popular?
Quake III Arena (Quake3e), with 1,557 stars on GitHub.