welcome: please sign in

Building Quake 3 in Raspbian

Documentation below pulled from the Raspbian Forum. Please update this page if errors in the build process are discovered.

  1. Make sure you're up-to-date:
        sudo apt-get update
        sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
        sudo rpi-update 192
    • Reboot.
  2. Install required packages:
        sudo apt-get install git gcc build-essential libsdl1.2-dev
  3. Download the Quake 3 source code:
        mkdir ~/src
        cd ~/src
        git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/quake3.git
        cd quake3
  4. Edit build.sh in quake3 directory:

        change line 8 to this:  ARM_LIBS=/opt/vc/lib
        change line 16 to this: INCLUDES="-I/opt/vc/include -I/opt/vc/include/interface/vcos/pthreads"
        comment out line 19:    #CROSS_COMPILE=bcm2708-
  5. Do a ./build.sh

  6. Wait for compilation to finish, takes about 1 hour on RasPi.

  7. Find copies of the following somewhere (other guides will show you) and place in build/release-linux-arm/baseq3:

    • pak0.pk3, pak1.pk3, pak2.pk3, pak3.pk3, pak4.pk3, pak5.pk3, pak6.pk3, pak7.pk3, pak8.pk3

  8. Update your permissions for directFB access:
        sudo usermod -a -G video [your_username]
    • Log out, log back in. This will allow you to run game as non-root. Works with other directFB/SDL based stuff, too.
  9. If you do not intend to keep Quake 3 source code, you may reorganize files as suggested by this thread on RasPi Forum.

  10. Run ioquake3.arm. Shoot things.

Highly non-scientific testing (i.e. having played a normal-Debian build a few days ago) suggests framerate is quite dramatically improved. Go Raspbian!

Troubleshooting