One engine for Quake III Arena, Quake Live, RTCW, Enemy Territory, Elite Force, Jedi Knight, Alice, F.A.K.K.2, and Medal of Honor

Plays: Quake III Arena, Quake Live, Return to Castle Wolfenstein (SP/MP), Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (SP/Holomatch), Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (SP/MP), Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (SP/MP), American McGee's Alice, Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2, and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault · Base version: 0.1.0 · Current build: 0.1.0

Important

Start with a clean game folder. We recommend running fnTech3 without other asset packages, or custom game code (QVMs), in the game's base folder, such as Quake III Arena's baseq3. They can replace files fnTech3 relies on and clash with its features. For example, the baseq3a package brings its own QVMs for Quake III Arena, which may interfere with fnTech3's widescreen correction. To keep using packages like these, turn the corrections off: r_fovCorrection 0 for the view, cl_hudAspect 0 for the HUD and cl_menuAspect 0 for menus. The Widescreen Guide explains each setting.

1. Introduction

fnTech3 is a free, modern engine for the classic games of the Quake III era. You keep your own copy of the game; fnTech3 takes the place of the program that runs it, with sharper graphics, 3D sound, widescreen support and many small comforts -- and each game still plays the way it always did, online and off. One download -- one program, one dedicated server and three renderers -- aims to run ten games:

• Quake III Arena, from its 1999 test versions to 1.32 and ioquake3, including playing online with the original 1.29 to 1.32 releases and watching demos back to 1.11;
• Quake Live;
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein, single player and multiplayer;
• Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory;
• Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, single player and Holomatch;
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, single player and multiplayer;
• Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, single player and multiplayer;
• American McGee's Alice and Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2, which run Ritual Entertainment's engine rather than a Quake III one;
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, whose engine 2015 built from Ritual's and Quake III's.

Games and status

Game	Name to start it	Status
Quake III Arena	quake3 (q3)	Playable in the normal download, on Windows and Linux. Plays online with 1.32, ioquake3 and the original 1.29 to 1.31 releases, and plays demos back to 1.11 (versions). RTX liquid reflections and refraction tested on q3dm12 (guide).
Quake Live	quakelive (ql)	Playable in the normal download. The client needs Windows, where Quake Live's own game code runs.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein	rtcw-sp, rtcw-mp	Experimental; available in every build.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory	wolfet (et)	Experimental: available in every build.
Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force	stvef-sp, stvef-mp	Experimental; available in every build; single player on Windows only.
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy	jka-sp, jka-mp	Experimental and early: available in every build. A multiplayer server runs, the client joins original servers, and local hosting reaches its player menu and restarts with sound enabled; the campaign, full graphics and complete play are still to come.
Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast	jk2-sp, jk2-mp	Experimental and early: available in every build. A multiplayer server runs with tested bot saber combat, and the main menu draws; client gameplay is still incomplete.
American McGee's Alice	alice	Experimental, Windows: available in every build.
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2	fakk2	Experimental, Windows: available in every build.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault	mohaa	Experimental, Windows: available in every build. RTX traces terrain and static map scenery (details).
Quake III Arena IHV Test	q3-ihv	Experimental, Windows: available in every build. A server that takes original IHV Test players, and a client that plays the test's demo and joins original IHV servers.
Quake III Arena Q3Test 1.02 to 1.08	q3test	Experimental, Windows: available in every build.

No game is finished yet. The Games Guide says plainly what works in each one, and the compatibility ledger records every test behind it. A successful build, or a feature inherited from FnQL, does not count as a game working.

fnTech3 contains no game files. Use your own installed copy of the game; its files stay where they are. Release downloads leave out the optional Steam add-on and Valve's Steam files, so Steam features need a separately supplied add-on, and say they are unavailable rather than pretending to work.

fnTech3 grew from two engines: FnQuake3's modernised Quake III and FnQL's Quake Live work, both descended from Quake3e, ioquake3 and id Software's source release.

2. Features

What fnTech3 adds to the games it plays. Each guide says which games a feature works in, and every feature is still being checked game by game against the compatibility ledger. Quake Live's own menus, Steam and Workshop features belong to Quake Live alone.

• Unified game compatibility -- one engine for many games. It starts one game at a time and follows that game's own rules -- its game code, online play, demos and saved games -- so every game plays like itself. Games with separate single-player and multiplayer modes switch by restarting.
• A launcher that finds your games -- it looks in Steam, GOG, Heroic, Lutris, disc installs and the usual game folders, lists every installation with its icon, store and folder, and starts the one you click, in the mode and with the mod you choose.
• Fast, modern hardware rendering -- three renderers in every game, GLx, Vulkan and RTX, built to make the most of today's graphics cards. RTX ray traces each map with light from its own lamps, sky and sun.
• Modern visual upgrades -- optional HDR, smoother edges, sharper textures, glow, smooth lights with real shadows, lights for each map's own lamps, motion blur, lens flares, softer smoke, livelier water, an underwater view and atmospheric fog.
• Improved player visibility -- an optional glow and outline on other players in Quake III Arena and Quake Live, in team or enemy colours of your choice, and a cartoon cel-shaded look for every game.
• Better modern hardware and OS support -- high resolutions and refresh rates, borderless windows, instant Alt+Enter, controllers you can plug in at any time, and each game's own icon, remade in high resolution.
• Low-latency, configurable controls -- raw mouse input, Quake Live's exact mouse sensitivity and acceleration, the classic mouse styles, gamepads, and typing in any language; each game's menus see the keys its original showed them.
• Modern spatial audio -- 3D sound with headphone surround, surround speakers, room echo, sounds muffled by walls, and sound zones for the maps of Quake III Arena, Quake Live, RTCW, Enemy Territory, Alice, F.A.K.K.2 and Medal of Honor, with each game's own sound ranges -- and the original sound mixer still there if you want it.
• Major quality-of-life improvements -- a console that scales, scrolls smoothly, suggests commands and copies and pastes; widescreen view and HUD for every game made for 4:3 screens; silence when you switch away; and less work for your computer in the background.
• In-game entity editor -- move, add, copy, delete and change a map's objects in the game, with undo, and save them as a maps/<map>.ent file that the server loads in place of the map's own, in every game.
• Better screenshots, video and streaming tools -- PNG, JPEG, TGA and BMP screenshots, copying to the clipboard, your own file names, camera notes, map previews, watermarks, cube maps, any resolution, and video recording through FFmpeg.
• Faster content handling -- quicker starts and map changes with big collections of mods and maps, higher limits, fast downloads and, in Quake Live, the Workshop items a server needs, fetched for you.
• Greater stability and security -- many fixes from Quake3e and FnQuake3, careful checking of every game file, demo and network message, less memory, better protection online, and graceful fallbacks when an optional feature is missing.

3. Getting Started

Download a release from the Releases page -- the windows-msvc-x86 zip for Windows, or the linux-x86 archive -- and unpack it into a folder of its own, or build it yourself with the Build Guide. Every build includes all sixteen profiles. Experimental games retain their documented limitations and native-module platform requirements. The Getting Started guide walks through everything, and every release includes the player guides as web pages in its manual folder.

Keep everything from the download together: fntech3-pkg.fnz, fnql-web.pak, the fnql_<renderer>_x86 renderers and the libraries stay beside fntech3.exe and fntech3.ded.exe. Upgrade the program and fntech3-pkg.fnz together.

Starting a game

The simplest way is the launcher: run fntech3-launcher.exe. It finds your games in Steam, GOG and the usual game folders, lists each with its icon, where it came from and its folder, and starts the one you click; the Launcher Guide explains it.

Without the launcher: if exactly one supported game is installed through Steam, just run fntech3.exe. Otherwise name the game and its folder -- and, to keep its settings apart from the original game's, a home folder of its own. These examples start in a window:

.\fntech3.exe +set com_gameProfile quake3 +set fs_basepath "<Quake III Arena folder>" +set fs_homepath "<Q3 home>" +set r_fullscreen 0
.\fntech3.exe +set com_gameProfile quakelive +set fs_basepath "<Quake Live folder>" +set fs_homepath "<QL home>" +set r_fullscreen 0

Start experimental games from the same download:

.\fntech3.exe +set com_gameProfile rtcw-sp +set fs_basepath "<Return to Castle Wolfenstein folder>" +set fs_homepath "<RTCW SP home>" +set r_fullscreen 0
.\fntech3.exe +set com_gameProfile alice +set fs_basepath "<Alice folder>" +set fs_homepath "<Alice home>" +set r_fullscreen 0

Games with single-player and multiplayer modes -- Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Elite Force, Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast -- always need the mode named. gameList in the console lists every game and whether this build can start it. The Games Guide covers finding games, home folders and each game in detail.

Dedicated servers

The dedicated server is fntech3.ded. Name the game and give it a home folder, for example on Linux:

./fntech3.ded +set com_gameProfile quakelive +set fs_basepath "<Quake Live folder>" +set fs_homepath "<QL server home>" +set dedicated 2 +map campgrounds

Platforms

The shared client is built and tested for Windows x86, because the game code of Quake Live and of every experimental game with a client exists only as 32-bit Windows libraries. The Linux i686 build is the dedicated-server target; Quake Live's Linux server runs its own qagamei386.so, while the Linux client cannot load Quake Live's Windows-only client and menus. Other platforms and architectures are unsupported, and the legacy-named x64 RTX diagnostic build does not count towards the shared client.

4. Documentation

The documentation index lists everything. The main entries:

Player guides

• Getting Started for installing, starting your first game, the console and settings files.
• Launcher Guide for the window that finds your games and starts them.
• Games Guide for every game, what you need, playing online and what works today.
• Graphics Guide for window and fullscreen, smoother edges, HDR, lighting, shadows, water, fog and glow.
• Widescreen Guide for field of view, the HUD, menus and movies on wide screens.
• Player Highlights Guide for making other players stand out.
• Sound Guide for headphones, surround, 3D sound, devices and fixing sound problems.
• Console Guide for commands, suggestions, copy and paste, and the console's look.
• Screenshot Guide for formats, file names, watermarks, map previews and cube maps.
• GLx Renderer Guide for the default renderer and fixing picture problems.
• RTX Renderer Guide for ray tracing: what you need, turning it on and tuning it.
• Entity Editor Guide for editing a map's entities in the game and the .ent overrides the server loads.

Release packages include these guides as web pages in their manual folder, built from the same files by scripts/player_manual.py.

Technical and build docs

• Build Guide for compiling fnTech3 and enabling each game's runtime requirements.
• Architecture overview for how profiles, adapters and the shared subsystems fit together.
• Compatibility ledger for the unified goal, all sixteen profiles, observed evidence, open gates and release sign-off.
• Engine package for fntech3-pkg.fnz and its per-game sidecars.
• Changelog for fnTech3's reviewed release history, starting at 0.1.0, and releasing for preparing a version.
• Project mission and contributor rules for the shared-engine invariants and non-regression requirements.
• RTX Renderer Contract for the renderer's module boundary, conservative defaults, build gates and runtime validation.
• FnQL baseline documents for the Quake Live profile's engine contracts -- WebUI, Steam provider, input and more -- and the inherited renderer and audio design notes.
• FnQL baseline release history for historical downloads and changelogs; these are not fnTech3 releases.

5. Credits

fnTech3 combines FnQuake3 and FnQL, with the id Software, ioquake3 and Quake3e engine lineage. QLSRP, OpenJK, OpenAlice, iortcw, Lilium Voyager and other projects supply behavioral and format evidence for independently written implementation work; each use is recorded in the credits.

See CREDITS.md for pinned source lineage, acknowledgements and trademark notices, and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for incorporated external implementation data and its license.