Quake 3 for OSX Lion

[MacNuber]

Hello,
I don't know if this has been covered in any detail in another thread, but I couldn't find anything that got into the level of detail that I would need. I am contemplating buying an iMac 27" to replace one of my Win 7 desktop PCs. I will generally run PC games on my remaining Win 7 PC, but the one game that I definitely want to be able to run on the iMac is Quake 3 Arena, and some of the mods for it (3Wave, CPMA). Is it possible to run Q3A in Lion? If so, can anyone who is familiar with that process tell me, in detail, how to install it and make it run on Lion? I am fine with buying Q3A for Mac on ebay if need be, but I don't want to do that if there's no chance that it will run.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[rossip]

Hello,
I don't know if this has been covered in any detail in another thread, but I couldn't find anything that got into the level of detail that I would need. I am contemplating buying an iMac 27" to replace one of my Win 7 desktop PCs. I will generally run PC games on my remaining Win 7 PC, but the one game that I definitely want to be able to run on the iMac is Quake 3 Arena, and some of the mods for it (3Wave, CPMA). Is it possible to run Q3A in Lion? If so, can anyone who is familiar with that process tell me, in detail, how to install it and make it run on Lion? I am fine with buying Q3A for Mac on ebay if need be, but I don't want to do that if there's no chance that it will run.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

My immediate recommendation would be QuakeLive. It’s completely compatible with Lion, and has a big community of players, and is free, but it’s a walled garden and does not support mods. Option number two would be to dual boot windows with bootcamp. That requires buying a copy of windows (win 7 home premium oem for $99 is the best deal) and partitioning your hard drive. I don’t know of anyway to play the original Quake 3 natively in OS X Lion though.

http://www.quakelive.com/

 

[karsten]

you wouldnt even need bootcamp for quake 3 you could most likely just run it in parallels, it's pretty old

 

[Cenobite]

Check out ioquake3. It works with Lion (at least for me).
ioquake3 is based on the open source code of Quake 3 and claims to be compatible with mods and non-punkbuster servers for the retail version.

 

[krimsen]

I'm also playing ioquake with my retail Q3 game data on Lion. Also, Urban Terror (http://www.urbanterror.info/home/) is based on ioquake, which also runs great even with the integrated gpus.

 

[rossip]

Check out ioquake3. It works with Lion (at least for me).
ioquake3 is based on the open source code of Quake 3 and claims to be compatible with mods and non-punkbuster servers for the retail version.

OK this would now be the best option, I'll have to check this out.

 

[MacNuber]

Thanks for the responses. I have looked into Parallels, and they claim compatibility with Q3. It looks like I'd have to buy a Windows license to do it, but that's not the end of the world. However, it may be worth trying ioQuake before I go that route (although I couldn't find anything that suggested that ioQuake works with the 3Wave and CPMA mods specifically).

I may do a bit more research before I buy. If anyone has had direct experience with Q3 and Lion, particularly 3Wave and/or CPMA, please let me know what you did to make the game work.

There is a Q3A for Mac, so if that can work with Lion, it would probably be the best performing option.

Thanks again.

 

[rossip]

Thanks for the responses. I have looked into Parallels, and they claim compatibility with Q3. It looks like I'd have to buy a Windows license to do it, but that's not the end of the world. However, it may be worth trying ioQuake before I go that route (although I couldn't find anything that suggested that ioQuake works with the 3Wave and CPMA mods specifically).

I may do a bit more research before I buy. If anyone has had direct experience with Q3 and Lion, particularly 3Wave and/or CPMA, please let me know what you did to make the game work.

There is a Q3A for Mac, so if that can work with Lion, it would probably be the best performing option.

Thanks again.

If you have a windows machine now, I'd try ioquake3 on it. If your mods work there, then they should work on the mac version. Are you still using the original engine to play quake 3 and its mods on your pc? If so, you might find ioquake3 is actually better at running them in windows. That's sort of the point of those source ports, they run the games better on modern machines then the original engines do.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

I can't see why it wouldn't work in Lion, it's a Universal application after all. The installer won't work though because it's not, but it's a game that you can just copy from one computer to another.

 

[MacNuber]

I can't see why it wouldn't work in Lion, it's a Universal application after all. The installer won't work though because it's not, but it's a game that you can just copy from one computer to another.

Thanks. Are you referring to Q3 itself - i.e. just copy over may Q3 directory from my Win 7 PC? I'd be pretty surprised if that worked... Then again, with the exception of having a MacBook as a supplement to my desktop PCs the past 2 years, I've been in the PC world forever, so I'm usually pretty surprised when any software works.