How to install Quake 3

Question

I downloaded Quake 3 from the Ubuntu Software Center, and it said I have to use game-data-packager with the original files to not play the demo version. I have the pak0.pk3 from the full game, but I don't know what to do, they didn't provide instructions on how to do it. Anyone know how?

Solution

I also installed Quake 3 from the Ubuntu Repository and managed to get the full game running successfully. You will need to install both the Quake 3 package as well as the application game-data-packager to create a non-distributable Quake 3 data package. First run the following command from a Terminal window:

sudo apt install quake3 game-data-packager innoextract

Now move the vital pak0.pk3 file to the location of your choice. After a bit of experimentation I created ~/.q3a/baseq3 and moved the file there. Another reasonable and perhaps more traditional location for this file would be /usr/share/games/quake3-data/baseq3/ but the location in $HOME worked well enough for me and I illustrate the required syntax here:

andrew@corinth:~$ mkdir -pv ~/.q3a/baseq3
mkdir: created directory '/home/andrew/.q3a/baseq3'
andrew@corinth:~$ cp -v pak0.pk3 ~/.q3a/baseq3
'pak0.pk3' -> '/home/andrew/.q3a/baseq3/pak0.pk3'
andrew@corinth:~$ 

Make sure the path to your file pak0.pk3 is correct or you will get an error message of 'File not found...'. Now tell the game-data-packager application to sort out the data files:

game-data-packager -i quake3 ~/.q3a/baseq3/pak0.pk3

After some considerable downloading and repackaging you can now start fragging!!! Obligatory screenshot below:

Works well on my system and hopefully on yours as well...

Comments

[Matthew]

Haven't been on this forum in a while, and honestly not interested in trying to get this game to work right now. I'll just mark your answer as correct, as it probably is. Thanks regardless!

[andrew.46]

@Matthew Well, thanks for coming back to the question anyway :) I have been playing ut2400 lately so I might use my own answer to play this game too...