About
Quake III Arena is a 1999 multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by id Software, the third Quake game, notable for dropping a story-based single-player campaign in favor of bot matches, with music by Sonic Mayhem and Bill Leeb. Lilium Arena Classic is an open-source engine reimplementation compatible with Quake 3 versions from Demo Test 1.09 through 1.16n, supporting the original network protocol (.dm3 demos, protocol 43) and QVM mod API, built on the ioquake3/ioEF codebase. It targets Linux and macOS and adds an optional 'Flexible Display' widescreen mode with several presentation styles, while defaulting to an authentic 4:3 letterboxed look. The original Quake 3 game/cgame/ui code is not included, since it remains under a non-free license.
How it differs from the original
It adds several optional widescreen display modes and window-resizing conveniences not present in the original engine, though QVM float-rounding is currently only correct on x86/x86_64, so it isn't ready for ARM or PowerPC systems.
Getting started
It's compiled from source with GNU Make and a C compiler (SDL 2 is required on Linux); playing still requires separately owning the original, non-free Quake 3 data files, which are not included.
Known limitations
- compatibility: QVM float rounding is only correct on x86/x86_64 architectures, not ready for ARM or PowerPC.
Additional notes
- Related project
- Lilium Arena Classic is derived from the same author's earlier Lilium Arena project.
- Contributing note
- The project explicitly states it does not want AI-generated ('LLM') code contributions.