Due to my love for Q3A and the recent talk of the game both at Giant Bomb and Tested, I have once again leased a game server in hopes of playing with members of the community. Yes, the game is 12 years old. Yes, there is the free to play Quake Live. But any Quake III purists out there will understand. Some of us don't like the subtle changes made to the game in Quake Live, and we also prefer to have an administered playing environment via a proper dedicated server. So, if any of you are fans of playing deathmatch the way was meant to be, here is the relevant info. 

Server IP-
8.6.74.227:27960 
 
Basic player stats via Gametracker 
http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/8.6.74.227:27960/top_players/

Steam Group-
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gbtcq3

Game patch, map pack, Rocket Arena installer, and broadband cfg file- 
http://quake3.snoman.net 
 
EDIT- Many folks, including myself, have performance issues with the Steam version of Quake 3 Arena. If you have these issues, (low framerate, stuttering or hitching, or a general feeling of delay in weapon firing), you can run your Steam acquired Q3A outside of Steam which eliminates the problem(s). A simple 2 minute installation of ioquake3 and a quick file copy/paste is all it takes. Here are the IOQUAKE3 FILES, or you can visit the files link above. Instructions are in the zip for Windows users and in the .dmg for Mac folks.

I'll definitely check this out, love me some Quake.

I looove Quake III, but I'm not buying it again when I could (and often do) play it for free. 

Well I bought it over the summer sale may as well install it and check the server out.

I'm down to play whenever, I just found my disc and reinstalled it.

I'm in... thanks!

Totally installing all this stuff right now. I was a UT guy back then, so this is my first foray into Quake. Are there any servers out there that are usually full that I can mess around in before Thursday?

@ajamafalous: I've been looking for some too, a lot of the time I don't have the map or I get something like "user interface is 3, expected 6".

Will smith will have his wiki!

@groin said:

Will smith will have his wiki!

Damn right he will.

@groin: Faker. :)

Some of those maps aren't that great (e.g., q3tourney1, q3dm4). I was never a big spacemap fan either.

Original post edited to address performance issues with Steam version of Quake 3 Arena.

@Snoman: Will it stay at 10 slots for the TNT? Q3DM12 with 16 people would be great (assuming there are enough players).

Ioquake3 doesnt work. It keeps kicking me out saying i have invalid pak files. any fix for this? i cant get the game to run well and at the right resolution and aspect ratio

nope. i cant get the aspect ratio to be correct. everything looks stretched. I found a widescreen gaming forum version of ioquake3 but it keeps kicking me. i also can not for the life of me find q3config.cfg to edit the aspect ratio. nothing is working and it looks just bad at 4:3 aspect stretched.

im trying to get this ready for TNT but no luck. i dont want it to be all stretched and shitty. quakelive works fine for the aspect ratio.

@Tahnit: Just use the console to change the settings which can be toggled using the tilde key (~). Type in the following commands to enable custom resolutions. This example assumes 1680 x 1050.

r_customwidth 1680

r_customheight 1050

r_mode -1

vid_restart

maybe its cause im running a 1920x1080 aspect ratio. just looks wierd. weapon model and hud looks strange. what time is the TNT tonight?

If you're adjusting for widescreen resolutions, you'll probably want to add a line to adjust your FOV for your display as well:

cg_fov X (Default: 90)

I find that 110-115 seems about right for 16:9 displays

@Tahnit: If you haven't got ioquake3 working;  1. Did you install it in it's own directory. It needs to be independent of your other Quake3 installation, and not installed in your original Quake3 folder. 
2. Make sure you copied the file "pak0.pk3" from your original Quake 3 (located in the "baseq3" folder) and pasted it into your ioquake3 "baseq3" folder.  
 
Here's a screenshot of the files that should be in your ioquake3/baseq3 folder. If any are missing, you can copy them over from your Steam Quake 3 "baseq3" folder. 

Question

Will this Server work with Open Arena?

i figured it out. because im running 16:9 the top and bottom are kinda cut off. thats why the weapon model looks wierd. Quakelive compensates for this and looks perfect. Q3A does not. Im good to go as ill ever be.

Rocket Arena- Friday, July 29 at 10P.M. eastern (7P.M. pacific). Link to installer is in 1st post.

For those of you using the ioquake3 version of the game, which I recommend everyone should do, we now have fast map downloading enabled on the game server via download redirecting. If you do not use ioquake3, fast map downloading is not supported  so you still need to manually download and copy the map pack into your baseq3 folder if you want to play when the server is running the Dreamcast maps (see original post for maps and ioquake3 links). 

This is fantastic. I will check it out after work.

Server is running the Dreamcast maps and the custom map Ballistophobia tonight (Tuesday, August 2). I put a page up with screenshots of these maps here. As a reminder, if you aren't using ioquake3 as your game client you will need to download the map pack with instructions. If you are using ioquake3, just connect to the game server and it will push the maps to your game folder from my map server.

All night Rocket Arena for Monday, Aug 8 . Time for some crazy rocket jump fragging.

Can you also make a freeze tag server?  :) that was the best.

I'm all for playing different mods, as long as there are a few people with interest in them. It's been years since I played freeze tag, but I'd love to do it. I'll see if I can get it running on the server this evening after real life duties are finished. I'm also considering OSP. I'll edit this post later once I have looked into it.

After much tinkering and testing with the Freeze Tag and OSP mods, we have decided to opt for CPMA, or Challenge Pro Mode Arena, as the full time setup on the server. With CPMA in place, the server can be switched to Freeze Tag(FTAG), Instagib DM(IFFA), Clan Arena(CA), and Deathmatch(FFA), through player voting. This allows us to run normal deathmatch as our default game, but when enough players are in the mood for a different game type, they can simply call a vote. To start a vote, open the console and type "/callvote mode FTAG". This example would start a freeze tag vote. Replace  "FTAG" in the command to vote for other modes-i.e. FFA, IFFA, CA. You will of course need CPMA installed in your Quake3 game. If you use ioquake3, you can simply connect to the server for auto-install. If you do not use ioquake3, you can download CPMA at http://promode.org under Current Releases. Grab CPMA 1.48 and the map collection directly below it. Extract CPMA 148 to your Quake 3 folder, and then put the maps in the cpma folder.

Can we get some people on the server now?