Quake 3 Arena universal patch for NVIDIA GeForce S3TC.

Everybody knows about problems with quality in Quake 3 Arena, when using S3TC compression with NVIDIA videocards, such as GeForce SDR/DDR and GeForce 2 GTS/MX. For example, this defects well seen on skies textures.

For some reason, NVIDIA drivers or chips unpacking S3TC textures without alpha-channel not so good (big thanks to Max Morozov, who first found this). After one day of experiments with S3TC in OpenGL, I found a possibility to modify executables (Q3, Soldier Of Fortune and maybe another games too) to force using S3TC with alpha-channel, instead of other formats.

This is my universal Quake 3 Arena patch.
Slightly slow, but universal, tested with Q3A 1.11-1.17.

Download latest version.

Download small version (without descriptions).

This patch forces Q3 to use S3TC format with the alpha-channel only. Quality is noticeably perfected, but perfomance slightly reduces.
Results of Celeron 450/96Mb/GeForce SDR 140/200, High Quality, demo1:
Without compression - 75 FPS
Before patch - 78,5 FPS
After patch - 78,0 FPS

Quake 3 screenshots

Quality after patching is better! But some problems have remained, however, this is artefacts of texture compression.

You use this patch at your own risk. The author will not be liable for any data loss, damages, loss of profits or any other kind of loss while using or misusing this patch.

If you have problems with patching - e-mail me, I'll try to help.

Alexei Berillo a.k.a. SomeBody Else

23.10.2000