Compiling Quake III arena on Linux is not quite difficult as i thought, but only a bundled README is not enough. After googling for a while i found the source files contain win32-style linebreak, so they need to be changed to unix-style ones. Moreover, default parameter in Makefile are optimized for pentium, so i need to edit it manually for my athlon cpu. The last thing is this Makefile is for gcc-2.95, some parameters are deprecated in gcc-3.3 (my default compiler) so i replaced them with 3.3 equivalent.
A brief compiling steps for my Ubuntu box (Hoary):
(adopt from here)
- Download the source from ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/quake3-1.32b-source.zip
- Unzip using:
unzip -qa quake3-1.32b-source.zip
(to convert file silently)
- chmod all perl script (*.pl) and shell script (*.sh) to be executable
- chmod code/unix/cons and code/unix/pcons-2.3.1 to be executable
- Edit code/unix/cons file, change first line from
#!/usr/bin/env perl
into:
#!/usr/bin/perl
- Edit unix/Makefile, line 149, change it to suit machine’s architecture
- Edit Construct file, line 22, change from ‘debug’ to ‘release’
- Execute: unix/cons release
- Take a break, have some coffee
- Go to code/install, there’s linuxquake3 binary file waiting to be executed
Then i get an error message said cannot find default.cfg - What the hell !
Another 10 minutes googling, i found that, in order to run Q3A i need game data file (the so-called pak0.pak file) which can be obtained from Q3A CD which i don’t have.
Do I have to go to buy a box of Q3A ? Fortunately, Bram Cohen has invented BitTorrent. Q3A can be easily found on several trackers.
There’re still more problems.
The file i downloaded is in 7-zip format which i cannot open it with my Hoary and the p7zip package is only available for Breezy
i have to download the binary manually - Damn!,i was spoiled by Apt-get/Synaptics easiness.
After unzip it, there are quake3.mdf and quake3.mds file. What the hell are these file ?
More googling told me it’s an image file created by Alcohol 120%,
<rant>I HATE IT! why didnt’t they make it ordinary ISO file !</rant>
mdf2iso is also not available for my Hoary and its website doesn’t provide any binary packages. I grabbed the source - compile - then use it on the damn mdf file.
Finally, i got an ISO file. It seems ok and can be mounted as loopback without problem.
Then, get it burned on CD with GnomeBaker.
Let’s come back to focus on Q3A. There’s a file named pak0.pak3 on Q3A cd, copy it to code/install/baseq3 directory.
Run linuxquake3 binary and then VOILA ! Q3A started ! With 3D acceleration ! With SFX !
Enough for today…
Hacking the engine must be an energy-consumed task, should be done in another day -_-’
