Quake 3 Tweak Arena - Special Notes

� Since the release of the Voodoo 1.04.00 drivers, 3dfx have added a special 22BIT post filter to its driver, meaning that all games running in 16 BIT, will actually be running in 22BIT colour! This is without any slowdown that would commenly be associated with +16BIT colour! If you don't have the 1.04.00 driver (or higher), then download them from Here.

� If you own a Graphics card that CAN handle 32 BIT colour (GeForce256, Savage 2000, TNT2, G400 etc....) then it may be better setting the colour depth to 16 BIT colour for better performance. The FPS gain is not too bad (around 3-7 FPS) so experiment to find a setting you are comfortable with.

� Note on SMP: If you have two CPU's, Windows NT or 2000, and have a graphics card AND a driver which supports SMP, then you can benefit from a more sustained Framerate, which may also be noticeably higher. It is important that you ensure that your system fulfils the requirements above otherise it will not work and may hang your system. To my knowledge, the Voodoo range of cards (up to Voodoo 3) DO NOT support SMP, the nVidia Geforce 2 GTS DOES support SMP, and I presume MATROX G400 cards will support it too. Check with your cards web-site first. The command is r_smp 1.

� If you suffer heavy slowdown when firing a rocket or grenade (say when the smoke appears), then there is a way to disable the smoke trail. You must download the tweaked_cgame from Here. Remember to read the readme text, and enjoy an even smoother Quake 3 experience! I got a 6FPS increase with this mod! However, it will only work on unpure servers.

� You may have heard of the "optimization dll's" going around the internet. I have tried these dll's and they do indeed give a slight performance boost. I went from 53 FPS to 58.5 FPS. The new point release (otherwise known as 1.17) is recommended to make them work effectively. Place the dll's into your baseq3 directory (I find they do not work in just the root Quake3 directory). The dll's in question can be downloaded from the Downloads section - try them. The point release patch is available from Here.

� The tweaks that make the most difference are "cg_marks 0" and "r_dynamicLight 0". With these setting's turned off you can get around 7 - 12 FPS instantly. If you get a high framerate, then you could turn one of these on to get the the best comprimise.

� I have found that setting the sound quality to HIGH in the SETTINGS section of the SETUP results in much cleaner sound for not too many FPS ( 1-3 ) The difference is instantly noticable and is recommended.

� Certain maps demand more resources than others. On texture intensive, or CPU intensive maps, try turning down some settings and put them up again on simpler maps. This is especially effective when playing over the internet.

� Try this trick if you are a Voodoo owner. Type r_gldriver 3dfxogl into the console and then restart your display (vid_restart). I got a nice speed increase by doing this. Basicaly, the 3dfx openGL driver is used instead of the standard opengl32 dll. If you wish to revert back type r_gldriver opengl32 into the console. Thanks to Liquid for bringing this trick to my attention.

� If you are constantly finding yourself timing out after 10-20 minutes of gameplay when playing Quake 3 over the internet, then it may be due to a bug in Windows TCP/IP. Microsoft has released a patch for this, and you can find it Here. I myself suffered the same problem, and once I applied this fix, everything was fine!

� To disable the ID logo movie on startup, simply type this extension into your Q3 Shortcut on your desktop:

+nosplash

This will read something like:

"C:\Program Files\Quake III Arena\quake3.exe" +nosplash

Thanks to Antisnipe for this tip.