Entry
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Having revamped my config in the advent of the new challenge quake 3 exe, I thought I'd share my discoveries on what actually controls the quake 3 visuals as well as what now is irrelevant.
Note, this guide only works for the latest challenge quake3 exe. Get it here (current v = 1.46, if I know you, you probably do not have it).
how the settings below lookHere are the essentials
//monitor related cvars r_displayrefresh 0 r_swapInterval 0 //vsynch off r_fullscreen 1 r_mode -1 r_Width 1280 r_Height 960 //these 6 control contrasts and brightness r_ignorehwgamma 1 //use desktop gamma r_mapoverbrightbits 2 r_overBrightBits 4 r_intensity 1.7 //this needs a vid_restart on load as well r_gamma 1.0 r_fullbright 0 //worth noting. can dramatically change colors at 1. //rendering methods and lights r_vertexLight 0 //animated light effects on walls on when 0 r_dynamiclight 0 r_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR r_picmip 1 r_lodbias 0 //gun & model picmip r_fastsky 0 //turns off sky at 1 //filtering r_ext_max_anisotropy 16 //Anisotrophic filtering r_ext_multisample 16 //Anti-aliasing
Notes:
1. Displayrefresh can be set manually, but if it exceeds the maximum value for your monitor the game will revert to windowed.
2. Mode dictates what display resolution you run, leave at -1 and you are in custom mode and specify height and width instead.
3. Roughly speaking, the brightbits commands control contrasts, and gamma + intensity controls brightness.
4. IgnoreHWgamma 1 gives you your desktop gamma again. I recently converted this from 0 as then every time I alt-tabbed out (something you can do naturally and quickly with challenge q3 without having q3minimizer installed) the quake 3 gamma carried over burning out all my colors in windows. Now, this actually works.
5. Texturemode is now set at the best (trilinear filtering) but I personally like to play with this setting on GL_NEAREST (pixellated)
6. Picmip = texture blurring. 0 = off, 1 looks best imo. 3 good for competitive playing.
7. Dynamiclight can give you special lights on quad carriers reflecting off walls, useful in team games, but it is off here. Read the client.txt under cpma/docs for more info.
8. Antialiasing and anisotrophic filtering can be set pretty much as high (though up to 16 max I think) as your gfx card can take, and q3 is old, so 16 is usually good. I run the above settings with 333 fps without a drop.
Conclusion
That is really all you need to make quake 3 look good. To experiment, all most people really change is the brightbits/intensity/vertex lights/picmip settings. The right combination of these will define your unique quake look.
Put these in your nick.cfg in baseq3 (or whatever it is called) and start cnq3.exe with +exec nick.cfg as a parameter. A good idea would be to put vid_restart on the very last line in your config, I found this helped with getting r_intensity to load correctly (but it will take an extra second to load quake).
Migrating Configs?
If you are migrating configs, I would chuck out all other r_ commands from your file try with your settings for the above first. If you do want some other settings, here are some more obscure r_ commands that are in my config for the next 5 minutes only. They are all set at current cpma defaults (and thus also unnecessary) and with the rate of development on the cnq3.exe some of these are likely to change or be removed in newer versions. Regardless, here are some of these commands with a short explanation (based on the sparse information I could find on each) for each command.
r_subdivisions 4 //higher values subdivides curvy walls into sets of linear segments r_finish 0 //sync every frame r_ignoreGLErrors 1 //supresses errors r_flares 0 //apparently certain dynamic lights have flares, never found these, left at default value r_roundImagesDown 0 //how textures are resized 0,1,2. 0 best. r_smp 0 //dual processor thing for win2k or NT, fucks up opacity on w7 r_customaspect 1 //for wide, this determines whether or not to stretch a 4:3 generated frame or to actually get the right one (i think) r_stencilbits 0 //supposed to control shadows r_stereo 0 //stereoscopic visuals off r_detailtextures 1 //best quality textures //these 3 are often set to 32,24 or 16, but 0 gives optimum afaie r_colorbits 0 r_depthbits 0 r_texturebits 0
Finally, the following cmnds should just be removed from your config altogether. All but that the specified one below are actually dead settings. They will show up in your console as invalid command (unless you set them as your own variables with 'set' in front).
r_ext_texture_env_add r_ext_compiled_vertex_array r_ext_multitexture r_ext_gamma_control r_ext_compress_textures r_rail* //other cmds for rail styles in docs now r_lastValidRenderer r_dlightBacks r_glDriver r_ignoreFastPath r_drawSun r_facePlaneCull r_primitives r_lodCurveError //actually just cheat protected r_allowExtensions r_simpleMipMaps r_offsetFactor r_offsetUnits r_logfile r_showcluster
Also, if anyone sees any mistakes (grammatical or something relating to the cvars) please let me know.
NB: If you copied my quake 3 this christmas then make sure you delete zz-rman-flu1d03.pk3 from baseq3. This is what makes the guns look shit. Don't know how that got in there.
Now done: Part two of this visual guide - competitive visuals, is now done.
