Linux Quake III Arena is using a graphical installer (based on Loki software's Setup Graphic Installer ). However, since it's a Point Release, you need a retail CD-ROM of Quake III Arena to perform a complete installation (and optionally your Quake III: Team Arena CD-ROM). This process is documented in the INSTALL file (this file is also in the setups, it's default location is /usr/local/games/quake3/INSTALL .. you can run the PR setup and read it to finish the installation afterwards).
What do I do with a .x86.run file?Those are setup files, meant to be executed. They come with graphical installation UI or console installation, depending on what's available on your system. You may need to chmod +x file.x86.run to make them executable.
Installation on BSDThe linux binaries will run fine on the BSD family (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD) with the linux binary compatibility software. However if you are getting the error message ELF binary type "0" not known while installing or trying to run the binaries, that means you need to run brandelf on the files.
If it's a setup problem, proceed with the following steps:
./linuxq3apoint-1.31.x86.run --keep brandelf -t Linux setup.tmp/setup.data/bin/FreeBSD/x86/setup cd setup.tmp sh ./setup.sh
The --keep option will extract the files and leave them somewhere below your current directory. Depending on the game (Q3 or RTCW) and the setup version, your mileage may vary (setup.tmp or another directory).
The game binaries might need to be brandelf'ed too, with a command such as
brandelf -t Linux /usr/local/games/quake3/quake3.x86CLIENT_UNKNOWN_TO_AUTH
Graeme Devine recently updated his .plan with very complete information about CLIENT_UNKNOWN_TO_AUTH errors.
I get ./setup.sh {: ==: binary operator expected when running the setup?This is a known issue to 1.29h setups and prior. It happens on systems with
bash version < 2.*. There are several solutions:
- Upgrade bash to
something more recent and run the setup again - Run the setup with the --keep
option. It will fail but it will leave a setup-full directory. You can
then copy the files manually from that dir. - Once you used the --keep option
above, you can edit setup.sh and replace occurences of == by =. Then run
setup.sh and the installer will execute.
The first thing to do is to check on the forums and various FAQs (this one, but there are others. See the links). The Quake3World forums have a great search function.
Before reporting the problem to me make sure it's an issue with the game, and not an issue with your OS/OpenGL/sound configuration. Common OS issues are listed in this FAQ. You should make sure you have OpenGL configured correctly (by checking if gears is running for instance, and how well it runs). And see if non-Id linux games are running fine too.
When you are going to report a bug, first make sure you are using the latest version of the game. Include the game version in your report.
Include general information about your OS:
If it's a problem with the client, send the output of glxinfo.
If you have an nvidia board, send the output of cat /proc/nv/card0
Send output of the run:
run the game with +set developer 1 option,
and send the output. You can do something like quake3 +set developer 1
&>q3run.log.
If it's a crash, you can send a backtrace of the game running through gdb.
You can also send a log of the game running with strace:
cd /usr/local/games/quake3 strace -o ~/strace.log ./quake3.x86
NOTE: please avoid sending me the strace of /usr/local/games/quake3/quake3, which is a shell script wrapper and probably no interest to your problem.
The sound doesn't work / sound crashesThe first thing to check is that it is actually a sound related. Run the game with +set s_initsound 0 and see what happens. All problems reported so far about sound turned out to be OS/drivers. Listed below:
On some Mandrake distributions:
Check if you are running the enlightenment
sound daemon (esd). With ps aux | grep esd for instance. It is a
multiplexer for /dev/dsp, and might block use of /dev/dsp by Quake III Arena.
You can disable esd with esdctl stop (as root).
Mandrake 8's default sound drivers seem broken, installing the Alsa drivers or the http://www.opensound.com/ drivers fixes the problem.
Some beta Alsa drivers have been reported to crash with Q3. Non-beta ones are fine.
VIA chipset and AC97 driver:
This combination is known to have various
issues. They have been fixed in recent drivers (thanks to Arne Schmitz for the
heads up):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gkernel has got the up to date version of the AC97 kernel driver. The current version can be found here: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gkernel/via82cxxx-1.1.15.tar.gz It has working mmap sound, so Q3 shouldn't be a problem any more.(thanks to Arne Schmitz for the heads up) Where can I report bugs and discuss about linux Quake III Arena?
Reports bugs to bugs@idsoftware.com. If you are pretty sure this is a linux-only issue, you can shorten the loop by emailing ttimo@idsoftware.com directly.
You will find the discussion forums for linux Quake III Arena on Quake3World forums. There is for sure a lot of other places to talk about linux Quake III Arena, but this is the one we read regularly to track bugs and common issues.
The *.so files are not in the setups? (cgamei386.so qagamei386.so uii386.so)If you still have baseq3/*.so and missionpack/*.so files, then those come from the earlier 1.27g beta installation and you should REMOVE them. They were provided in 1.27g to go around a bug in the VM code, which made win32 VMs incompatible with linux. This problem has been fixed and the two files are no longer required.
If you are upgrading from 1.27g, it is likely that your q3config.cfg
files are set to use the native libraries (*.so files) instead of the bytecode.
Run quake3 with the following options to set things right:
quake3 +set
vm_game 2 +set vm_cgame 2 +set vm_ui 2
Try running quake3 with the following options:
quake3 +set vm_game 2
+set vm_cgame 2 +set vm_ui 2
You should also read the above answer.
It seems the 3DNow! copy routines have issues with the southbridge chip in the KT133A, this results in performances degrading while playing for a while. Re-compile your kernel without 3DNow! instructions to avoid the problem, and wait for newer kernels with better support for 3DNow! / KT133A.
How do I set up the gama correction?Starting with 1.29h, you can set the gamma correction with the brightness slider in the graphical menu (under setup). On some older systems which don't have the appropriate XFree86 extensions, you might have to set r_gamma manually from the console, and issue a vid_restart command.
Servers don't show up in the ingame browserThe reason for this has not been clearly identified yet, seems to be related to upgrade from older versions. Deleting ~/.q3a/baseq3/q3config.cfg fixes the problem (you will have to reconfigure your bindings)
Detected an attempt to write across stack boundaryIf Quake III Arena exits with the error "Detected an attempt to write across stack boundary", this probably means that you are running libsafe on this system. Quake III Arena is compiled with some options that confuse libsafe, you should disable it before running. See this page for more details.
SMP acceleration doesn't workSMP acceleration is disabled in the linux version. No need to try +set r_smp 1, it won't work. It is on the todo list.
libMesaVoodooGL.soThe GL driver for Voodoo cards (libMesaVoodoGL.so) used to be distributed in older Q3 setups. This is no longer the case. If you have this .so in your Quake III Arena directory (/usr/local/games/quake3), you should remove it. Any recent/decent linux distribution should support your Voodoo card out of the box, otherwise it is recommended that you setup XFree 4.* and the correct DRI infrastructure for it.
Links