So even the quake3 is slowly dying that does not mean it is not developed anymore. Not talking about our current e+ mod but quake3 in general. 

I would like to share with you some tips how to get most of your quake3, maybe fix some errors you don't even know you have. 

 

First of all we will start with the executable itself. "V" server requires v1.32 or later (protocol 68) to join but there are lot of versions to try. If you own a modern PC "vulcan" renderer is the way to go. 

You can check latest build from here https://github.com/ec-/Quake3e/releases/tag/latest which are updated almost daily and download Quake3.exe

After unpacking you will see 3 files. Classic q3e, q3e.ded and q3e-vulcan. The last mentioned is the one we are interested in. I am not going to go through the release notes you can check them by yourself but this one is the best for modern PCs.

For an example this solved my issues with geometry of far walls. The arc openings were not round but more like minecraft style when i was far away and only when i reached certain distance they became round.  This is even more visible if you are running high resolution textures packs. 

 

Second thing you want to check is if your mouse is not running through unnecessary usb hubs. It is always better to plug it directly to your motherboard's back IO plate, preferably USB3 port. On modern PCs USB2 ports are often behind build-in USB 2.0 hub which can add delays (1-2ms but its till delay right?)

 

If you install your windows and not do any tweaks its always good to set your power plan to high performance if you are going to do some gaming. This will force all your CPU cores to operate at maximum frequency even when there is no load. In default balanced power plan your cores are underclocked based on the load and since quake3 is not that demanding your cores can go up and down and all this can add some unwanted delay. If you are sick going to control panel to change the power plan back and forth a useful utility exists called PowerPlanSwitcher where you can easily change it from your taskbar. Other option is to set automatic powerplan switch to your q3 executable. You can google how to do that but for some reason it did not work for me. After running q3 the CPU cores were still underclocking like in the balanced mode. Don't forget to switch it back to balanced if you are doing some ordinary PC stuff to safe electric bill and excess heat generating.

 

It is always ok to close unwanted programs or even reboot the PC before you start a game. If your PC is running a whole day it can grab some garbage and fill out some caches which can contribute to slowness or performance instability. In some cases you can even go overkill and set the priority to high for the quake3-vulcan process. You can make it by going to task manager > details > right click on quake3-vulcan > set priority > high. (game must be running obviously) 

 

Now few ingame settings. I always prefer go higher fps without g-sync/freesync. If your PC can handle it you should go with com_maxfps 250 or 125, with r_swapinterval 0, rate 25000,  snaps 40 and cl_maxpackets 125. 

in_mouse should be always 1 for the raw input, in_lagged should be 0 for before frame processing but you may experiment with this if you like and set it to 1. 

If your audio is muddy you may try setting higher sample rate with s_khz 44

*V* server is running delag so make sure your g_delagweapons is set to 15. You can test if the delag is working for you by shooting a wall with machinegun. The sound of the weapon firing and the sound of bulled bouncing of the wall should be played together and in most cases the bounce sound is not even played. All the other q3 settings should be pretty much ok with the default values. 

 

I hope i helped you a little bit and if not feel free to go to your previous settings. It is always smart to have key files stored somewhere on another disk/pc/cloud. 

 

Cheers.