Quake III Arena

Quake III Arena (Q3A) is a multiplayer first-person shooter released on December 2, 1999. The game was developed by id Software and featured music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly.

Related Topics:
Multiplayer - First-person shooter - December 2 - 1999 - Developed - Id Software - Sonic Mayhem - Front Line Assembly

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As with most multiplayer first-person shooter players the aim of Q3A is to move throughout the arena fragging, enemy players and scoring points based on the objective of the game mode. When a player?s health points reach zero, the avatar of that player is fragged (they "die"), soon after the player can then respawn and continue playing with their health points full again but without any weapons or power-ups previously gathered. The game ends when a player or team reaches a specified score, or when the time limit has been reached. The single player mode of the game consists of the same thing against computer controlled bots.

Related Topics:
Fragging - Health point - Avatar - Respawn - Bots

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Due to Quake III sharing this multiplayer focus with Epic Games?s Unreal Tournament the games and their fans were soon considered rivals. The two games were both technically advanced at the time with strengths in slightly different fields, Unreal Tournament had superior bot A.I and more varied weapons and multiplayer modes, Quake III was lauded for its superior graphics rendering and gameplay which lent itself well to competititve play. Both games had many mods created for them and both id Software and Epic Games licensed their engines to other developers to use in their games.

Related Topics:
Epic Games - Unreal Tournament - A.I - Graphics rendering - Mods

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An expansion pack named Quake III: Team Arena was released in April 2000 by id Software. It focused on introducing team gameplay through new game modes and also included new weapons, items, and player models. However, Team Arena was criticized because its additions were long overdue and had been already been implemented by fan modifications. A few years later Quake 3: Arena Gold was released which composed of the original Quake III Arena and the Team Arena expansion pack bundled together as one game.

Related Topics:
Expansion pack - April - 2000

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On August 19, 2005, id Software released the complete source code for Quake III Arena under the GNU General Public License, as they have done for their earlier Wolf 3d engine, Doom engine, Quake engine and Quake II engine. This does not make the entire game GPL, however, as the textures and other data were not released.

Related Topics:
August 19 - 2005 - GNU General Public License - Wolf 3d engine - Doom engine - Quake engine - Quake II engine

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