quake3-mini

Small (< 5MB) but playable game for Quake III Arena engines, based on Open Arena.

Usage

1. Install a Quake III Arena -based engine, such as ioquake3

   Note that the engine must support Opus audio decoder (which is included in ioquake3, USE_CODEC_OPUS), otherwise sounds will not work. The vanilla Quake III Arena engine does not support Opus.

2. Download this project as a .zip file. On GitHub press "Code" -> "Download ZIP".

3. Rename the quake3-mini.zip file into quake3-mini.pk3.

4. Alongside the quake3.exe file, create a folder named quake3-mini, and put the quake3-mini.pk3 file inside of that, as such:

   Quake 3 Arena
   ├── baseq3
   ├── missionpack
   ├── quake3-mini
   │   └── quake3-mini.pk3
   └── quake3.exe
   

5. Launch the game using the command line

   quake3.exe +set fs_game quake3-mini +map wrackdm17 +addbot sarge +addbot sarge +addbot sarge

Note that the game will look differently depending on whether you have baseq3 (original Quake III Arena game data).

How it was made

First, unpack all .pk3s of Open Arena 0.8.8 mod into one directory. Then do the following:

• Remove all maps except one

• Remove all models except one

• Remove sounds except those that are actually used:

  the \s_list command will help. To get the result of running the command in text form, utilize \logfile 1.

• Compress the sounds with

  set -e
  
  while read f; do
    # Create dir recursively
    mkdir -p out/$f;
    rm --dir out/$f;
    # https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-codecs.html#toc-libopus-1
    ffmpeg -i "openarena-0.8.8/$f.wav" -c:a libopus -compression_level:a 10 -b:a 32k -cutoff:a 20000 "out/$f.opus"
  done <s_list.txt
  
  wait

• Install https://imagemagick.org, then from \imagelist command, get imagelist.txt, then

  set -e
  
  while read f; do
      # Create dir recursively
      mkdir -p out/$f;
      rm --dir out/$f;
  
      # Convert .tga files and re-compress .jpg files.
      # magick -quality 50 "openarena-0.8.8/$f" "out/${f%.(tga|jpg)}.jpg"
      magick "openarena-0.8.8/$f.tga" -resize 50% -quality 100 "out/$f.png" &
      magick "openarena-0.8.8/$f.jpg" -quality 50 "out/$f.jpg" &
  done <imagelist.txt
  
  wait

  Note that some .tga files utilize transparency, so .png must be used (because .jpg doesn't support transparency). Some engines' \imagelist also prints wherther RGB or RGBA (with transparency) is used.

  I personally hand-picked the ones that need transparency and converted those to .png, whereas others to .jpg.

  Also some things, like the cursor, don't seem to like to be .pngs either, so I kept them as .tgas. Though IIRC they can be resized, with magick.

  Also note that some big .tgas, such as gfx/2d/crosshaira.tga, will get ~95% smaller when zipped, so there is no need to convert them.

• Remove a bunch of other stuff

For some more info, see git commit history. The initial commit is the full Open Arena 0.8.8 mod.

TODO:

• Re-compress models, especially player models, which are currently responsible for ~800 KB of the final .pk3 file.
• Re-compress the map. With NetRadiant Build -> Single: bsp (w3map2 -meta "[MapFile]")
• Remove shaders.

Where this project is used

• https://github.com/WofWca/quake3.xdc where it is packed, together with the Emscripten build of ioquake3, in a zip file that should fit in an email. That makes it a fully playable Quake III Arena -based game that's under 6 MB.

  That project is also the original reason for making this project.