Tip for Quake 3 Arena

Consider all sorts of technical wisdom and console commands:

pak0.pk3 turned out to be an ordinary zip (probably I’m not the only one

curious?), which I calmly unpacked with all the directories, after which

removed the original pk3. As expected, Q3 was fine with this,

but I did not get the expected acceleration of loading the level. But found inside

cfg file, I managed to check some settings from it, I give the results

below. I note that these are far from all settings, but only those from which it was possible

achieve beneficial results.

cg_railtrailtime (0…N)

Sets the “hovering” time in the air of the spiral tail from the railgun shot.

By setting the value around 8000, you can shoot, hit the road somewhere,

come back, and the tail will still hang 🙂 But I think that advanced players are here

but they will insert 0 here. The reasons, I hope, are clear?

cg_lagometer (0/1)

Turns the lagometer readings on or off (read q3readme for what it is).

I think that we simply do not need a lagometer due to the absolute hopelessness of the situation

– what is there to measure, if it’s already clear what kind of connection we have … If you turn it off, on it

place will be a frag counter.

crosshairhealth (0/1)

It seems like it should show health next to the scope, but for some reason, not a damn thing

out…

crosshairsize (0/1)

Sets the size of the crosshair. A value of 128 or 256 allows you to get vision a la

terminator 🙂

cg_drawammowarning (0/1)

Whether to draw in the hottest moment of the battle with beautiful letters in the middle of the screen “Yes

you, my friend, are running out of cartridges “… Thank you, otherwise I didn’t know.

cg_drawfps (0/1)

Actually, this FPS is measured.

cg_drawstatus (0/1)

Whether to draw ammo, health and armor statistics at the bottom of the screen. If a

turn it off, it becomes beautiful, but to find out how much of what you have is completely

impossible.

cg_gibs (0/1)

Obviously, a typical parental lock. Although it was not possible to check – no one …

zoomfov (1..360?)

Sets the viewing angle for the zoom mode. In principle, in this way the zoom mode can be

turn it into anti-zoom.

cg_gun (0/1)

Draw or not your gun.

cg_autoswitch (0/1)

Whether to make any picked up weapon active.

cg_shadows (0/1)

Whether or not to draw player shadows.

r_railsegmentlength (0…N)

Sets the length of the railgun tail.

r_railcorewidth (0…N)

Specifies the width (actually the diameter) of the railing spiral. Can you make it

such that after each shot a tunnel will form in the air, in

which can enter the steam locomotive. This and the previous parameter are serious players,

probably set to 0.

r_dynamiclight (0/1)

Enables or disables dynamic lighting from incoming missiles, etc. if

disable, FPS will be higher, but the world is uglier. Also, lost

the possibility of lighting dark corners with “duty” rockets.

r_fastsky (0/1)

Turns the sky on or off! Affects FPS – I hope it’s clear how.

r_cross (0/1)

Turns the sun on or off! which looks like a very bright light exactly in

the zenith of the sky, breaking through the clouds. If the sky is not included, then there will be no

sun.

r_flares (0/1)

Enables or disables halos around lights. Affects FPS.

r_subdivisions (0?…999)

Affects the degree of curvature of surfaces. The smaller, the smoother the bend.

The default value is 4 for curves that rival girlish ones.

shapes, and 999 for coarse, chopped. By changing this value, one can achieve

good compromise. True, in my experiments, the FPS practically did not change, so

it is not known with what the compromise. But if you become with your face buried in a round wall

near the plasma gun on q3test1, with a value of 999 (set by Q3 himself), then

you can see some glitches (if they are not there, you can walk along the wall,

poking your nose). Smaller values ​​allow you to avoid glitches when externally

the same effect.

r_vertexlight (0/1)

Cancel “realistic” lighting (1). Levels become flat, evenly

colored, without depth, like in Doom. But you can still play, and FPS

gives a sharp jump up.

r_simplemipmaps (0/1)

Forgot or did not see what it does, but it should somehow affect

texturing.

r_overbrightbits (0/1)

The parameter that I have been hoping to find for a long time. I don’t know how in 32-bit color, because

i740 did not give it, but in 16-bit textures when looking at close, all sorts

translucent things, the sky and the main screen saver are covered with a small raster

(dithering). If you turn off r_overbrightbits, then instantly everything becomes

prettier (in my opinion). The raster disappears, the colors become pure and even,

the sky generally rules, and most importantly – the levels become a little darker and somehow

just a little greenish brownish, ominously reminiscent of Q1!!! The one

the “colorful cockiness,” as the Goblin called it, is muted. plus a little

FPS grows. True, the raster still remains on the clouds of smoke from RL …

r_picmip (0/1)

Usually we see textures at some distance sharply, and a little further they

are starting to crumble. The border of smearing at a certain angle of view and

good lighting can be seen clearly enough on the floor, at a distance of about

1.5 virtual meters away from you. Turn this setting on or off (here

just sorry, I don’t remember what exactly) leads to the fact that the textures

smeared everywhere, even on the snout of the player in the status bar. That is

there is no longer a border. Why – I do not know.

viewsize (0?..100)

Specifies the size (in percent) of the working area of ​​the screen. Downsizing from 100 to

50 percent resulted in… that’s right, a 2x increase in FPS. 80 percent for

many can be a reasonable compromise.

r_shownormals (0/1)

Cool little thing, absolutely useless for non-developers. Draws white

normals sticking out of each plane. It turns out that there are SO MANY of these planes!

It is especially funny to look at the player’s snout in the status line – the real “Resurrected

iz Ada” 🙂

r_clear (0/1)

Running through the levels, you can see that in the Q3 space bursting at the seams, often

gaps appear between the planes. r_clear specifies what to draw in these

crevices: flickering fragments of planes (like in Doom’s level without the correct

BSP) or a gray void, as in Q1, however, here it is pink.