RBQUAKE-3 is all about experimentation and fun.
RBQUAKE-3 is based on XreaL and the goal of this port was to bring Q3A up to latest technology in 2009 making it closer to Doom 3 and Quake 4 while still remaining a Quake 3 port regarding the gameplay. Some results were:
- OpenGL 3.2 renderer with all deprecated and immediate mode API OpenGL calls removed
- Clever usage of vertex buffer objects (VBO) to speed up rendering of everything
- Avoids geometry processing each frame using the CPU (worst bottleneck with the Q3A engine)
- Optional GPU occlusion culling (improved Coherent Hierarchy Culling) useful for rendering large city scenes
- Doom 3 .MD5mesh/.MD5anim skeletal model and animation support
- Unreal Actor X .PSK/.PSA skeletal model and animation support
- True 64 bit HDR lighting with adaptive tone mapping
- Advanced projective and omni-directional soft shadow mapping methods like EVSM
- Real-time sun lights with parallel-split shadow maps
- Optional deferred shading
- Relief mapping that can be enabled by materials
- Optional uniform lighting and shadowing model like in Doom 3 including globe mapping
- Supports almost all Quake 3, Enemy Territory and Doom 3 material shader keywords
- TGA, PNG, JPG and DDS format support for textures
- Usage of frame buffer objects (FBO) to perform offscreen rendering effects
- Improved TrueType font support that does not require external tools
- A new XBSP format with support for per vertex HDR light data
- Deluxe light mapping support (stores dominant light direction per texel besides color)
It uses code from the ioquake3 project 
A short summary of the file layout:
| Directory | Description |
|---|---|
| RBQUAKE-3/base/ | XreaL media directory ( models, textures, sounds, maps, etc. ) |
| RBQUAKE-3/code/ | RBQUAKE-3 source code ( renderer, game code for multiple games, OS layer, etc. ) |
| RBQUAKE-3/code/tools/xmap | map compiler ( .map -> .bsp ) (based on q3map) |
| RBQUAKE-3/code/tools/xmap2 | map compiler ( .map -> .bsp ) (based on q3map2) |
| RBQUAKE-3/code/tools/xmaster | master server |
| RBQUAKE-3/blender/ | Blender plugins for ase, md3, and md5 models |
See docs/COPYING.txt for all the legal stuff.
This project's git repository can be cloned with the following instruction set:
git clone https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBQUAKE-3.git
TODO git lfs instructions
- Download and install the Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition.
- Generate the VS2017 projects using Premake 5 by doubleclicking a matching configuration .bat file in the premake/ folder.
- Use the VC2017 solution to compile what you need: RBQUAKE-3/premake/RBQUAKE-3.sln
- Make it compatible again with baseq3 and provide game dlls for it
- Restore XreaL assets in basex/ mod dir based on the XreaL_PreAlpha_20080704.7z before it went into a weird art direction so it can run without relying on Quake 3
- Restore old-school cool looking q3_ui menu from the PreAlpha
- Add several Quake3 mods under code/games/ like Modifia where the authors gave me the permission to release the entire stuff under GPL
- Sync with latest ioquake3
- New, widescreen menu support
- Better keyboard and gamepad UI navigation
- Replace ultra simple and stupid ACEBot with some modern deep AI thing
- Replace Quake 3 botlib with navigation meshes based on Recast (I saw this in Unvanquished)
- Slim texture loading routines based on stb_image
- Add texture compression based on Basis Universal GPU Texture and Texture Video Compression Codec
- Scrap complex and complicated deferred and multipass forward shading with a simpler forward+ solution
- Replace OpenGL with Vulkan
- Rip & Tear renderer backend with modern approaches by The-Forge
- Add Temporal Anti-Aliasing
- Replace collision detection with PhysX 4.1
- Upgrade xmap2 to use Spherical Gaussians and my new RBDOOM-3-BFG JSON based map format for map making in Blender 2.8
- Add glTF 2.0 support because it is the new JPG of 3D ;)
- Replace sound system with SoLoud
- Replace the entire core engine with a new engine written in Rust. (Unlikely but Rust is sexy)
- Probably not so many
Q: Why bother with Quake 3 in 2019 / 2020? A: It is fun, period. Quake 3 was one of my favorite games of all time. It is a classic like Pacman or Chess and never gets old.
Q: Can I use this engine to make a commercial game? A: You can but don't bother me to give you free support and you probably should use Unreal Engine 4. I am a full time game developer and don't have time for your stuff.
Q I'm seeing VM_Create on UI failed. Help!
A: This means the UI DLL didn't copy to the right deploy directory. It should be in the same directory as your exe, or in baseq3.
Q: How do I run the game in widescreen?
A: r_mode -1; r_customwidth 1920; r_customheight 1080
Q: I'm seeing Cannot find ui/hud.txt.
A: This means you're running normal Q3A with the Team Arena ui.dll. Swap it out for the proper one.
Q: How do I know what code you've changed?
A: Apart from the Git diffs, you can look for // RB in the source code.
Q: Can I use this engine to make a commercial game? A: You can but don't bother me to give you free support and you probably should use Unreal Engine 4.
On Windows, all user specific files such as autogenerated configuration, demos, videos, screenshots, and autodownloaded pk3s are now saved in a directory specific to the user who is running XreaL.
On NT-based systems such as Windows XP, this is usually a directory named: "C:\Documents and Settings%USERNAME%\Application Data\XreaL"
On Windows Vista, this would be: "C:\Users%USERNAME%\Application Data\XreaL"
Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME will use a directory like: "C:\Windows\Application Data\XreaL" in single-user mode, or: "C:\Windows\Profiles%USERNAME%\Application Data\XreaL" if multiple logins have been enabled.
You can revert to the old single-user behaviour by setting the fs_homepath cvar to the directory where XreaL is installed. For example: xreal.exe +set fs_homepath "c:\xreal" Note that this cvar MUST be set as a command line parameter.