Quake 3 source code was released on August 20th by the fine folks at id Software. We thank them for that, and are continuing the mission of producing a Quake 3 that is without fault.
The Quake 3 engine is open source, this does not mean that Quake 3 Arena the game is free. You must purchase the game to use the data!
This project aims to build upon id Software's Quake 3 source code release. The source code was released on August 20, 2005 under the GPL. Since then, we have been cleaning up, fixing bugs, and adding features. Our eventual goal is to have created the Open-Source Quake 3 distribution upon which people base their games, ports, and mods. We also aim to keep compatibility with the id data in perpetuity, for both single player and multiplayer, plus mods (Urban Terror, Reaction Quake 3, etc) Our focus initially is to get the game working with our updates on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. Other platforms are a bonus. Sane new features are also welcome. Modern graphical upgrades (ie. bloom lighting) would have to be disabled by default.
As an Open-Source project we expect comments and criticism to go the either the maintainer zakk@timedoctor.org, or more preferably to the mailing list.
While a lot is left to be done, quite a few goals have been met already. Quake 3 now works natively on x86-64 and PowerPC architectures, plus the game builds and runs on FreeBSD. SDL is now used for input, OpenGL context management, and sound, making the game a lot easier to port to new platforms and architectures than it was before. Security holes and other problems have been repaired. A more in-depth database of new features and working status on different platforms is on the Status section.