Need help! Quake 3 stops on start up

[-= BUZZ LIGHTYEAR =-]

I cant play the game, it automatically stops on startup. This goes for Quake Live and Quake 3 team arena. Does anyone know how to fix this?

[Phoenix]

It's probably caused by a bad default video mode in Q3. Q3 was designed with a default resolution of 640x480 pixels, and that's not always supported anymore on newer systems. You can manually set the video mode as follows:

Go to [YOUR STEAM DIRECTORY]\steamapps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3

Find config.cfg

find these lines:

seta r_mode "3"
seta r_customwidth "1600"
seta r_customheight "1024"
seta cg_fov "90"

Change it to this:

seta r_mode "-1"
seta r_customwidth "1600"
seta r_customheight "900"
seta cg_fov "115"

If any of those lines do not exist, create them in the file. This will set Q3 to a widescreen resolution that should be compatible with all modern monitors, and correct the field of view to match. See if Quake 3 will run. If it does, you can change r_customwidth and r_customheight to whatever your screen's native resolution is. Remember that Q3 is an older game so don't go too insanely high. If that doesn't work, we'll need more info to figure out your problem.

One note is that the in-game videos don't render with widescreen resolutions, so if you want to see the cinematic videos you'll have to pick a 4:3 resolution, or use a source port like IOQuake3.

[Juzt_Lernin]

Go to your steam games list, right click on Quake 3, then uncheck enable steam overlay. Should be all it takes.

[JJ Frankie JJ]

Just ran into the same issue...except those numbers didn't work. The standard 1080p resolution worked for me.

// generated by quake, do not modifyseta r_mode "-1"
seta r_customwidth "1920"
seta r_customheight "1080"

[luismbo]

Alternatively, install ioquake3: https://ioquake3.org/get-it/

[-= BUZZ LIGHTYEAR =-]

awesome thanks guys