Ubuntuland & The Dream Planet

GtkRadiant Editor Manual: Working with Entities

2026-05-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

The entities in Quake III Arena are limited to those defined by the game code. The editor can draws entity information from the game code, or from special definition (.def) files. Version 192 of the editor comes with a .def file developed from an original supplied by EutecTic. Mods made to Quake III Arena can add to and/or subtract from the entities used by a game. If you plan to work on mods, you should create multiple project files (copy and rename your project file) with the changes required for the mod.

The Entity Window

You make game design decisions about entities and modify their features within the Entity Window. The definition file that you select on the Project Settings… window determines what entities will be shown in the Entity List and what, if any, property descriptions appear in the Key Descriptions and Check box Spawn Flags.

Entity List

The Entity List is the field on the Entity Window. It contains the "classnames" of all the entities defined by the definition file in alphabetical order.

You can use the scroll bar to scroll through the entities or, after clicking on the field, type in the first letter of the class you want to use (e.g.; type in "T" to select "target", or "A" for ammo, "W" for weapon).

Double-click on the classname to select it and enter it on the first line of the Active Properties field.

The Entities appendices of this document contain a complete listing of all the entities used in Quake III Arena.

Key Descriptions

The entries in the Key Description field are the "rules of use" for the hi-lighted classname in the Entity List field. You can use the scroll bar to scroll up and down through the lines, but the entries are not interactive. If you are using the .def file accompanying release version 192 of the editor (or Eutectic's original), all the key commands are described and their acceptable values (or value ranges) are listed. If you are using the descriptions in the .c game code file, they may be substantially less descriptive.

Check box Spawn Flags

Spawn flags are properties assigned to entities by use of check boxes. Check the box to set the feature for the selected entity. Many entities have only a single spawn flag property, while others have numerous ones. Note that the check boxes to the right are only relevant for Quake 2 single player games and will not work for Quake III Arena.

Active Properties

This field shows all the properties currently assigned to the selected (or newly-created) entity. Each property has two parts: key and value. Once created or assigned, they appear on the same line together. Only properties that are valid for an entity (that is, ones that appear in the Key Descriptions field) will function in game. Adding others may create error messages. You cannot directly affect the properties in this field.

Clicking on an active property hi-lights it and fills in the key and value fields below. You can edit both the key and the value in those fields, or use the Del Key/Pair button to delete it altogether.

Key & Value Fields

Keys (and their values) are assigned to entities by typing them into the fields. There is no spell check or auto-correction, so make sure that your typing is accurate. Start by typing in the name of the key. Then hit TAB or ENTER to change to the value field. This also clears the contents of the value field. Now type in the value for the key (the Key Descriptions list the acceptable value ranges for the keys). If you hit ENTER, the key and value appear in the Active Properties field. If you hit TAB, the cursor moves up to the key field. You can also click directly on a field to edit it. The cursor will appear after the last character in the field. Use arrow keys to position the cursor within the field.

Angle Buttons

The Angle Buttons (below the value field) are used to assign a facing direction (as is the case with player start spots or misc_models) or movement direction to entities (such as doors and buttons). Click on a button to create an Angle key with that button's value in the Active Properties field. Clicking on another key changes the angle value.

There are two clusters of angle buttons. The first cluster represents rotation around the Z-axis for entities like player start or spawn spots or misc_models. The entity will face in the selected direction. The buttons represent angle directions in 45 degree increments. There is a direct correspondance between the angle that the entity will face (or move) and the position of the button in the cluster. If you select the 90-degree button at the top center of the cluster, the entity will face "up" on the XY 2D Map. If you select the 180-degree button on the left side of the cluster, the entity will face left on the XY 2D Map.

For entities like doors or buttons, it represents the direction that entity will move when activated.

The second angle button cluster assigns an up (-1) or down (-2) direction to the entity. Note that an entity can only have one facing direction. It cannot face up and 45 degrees. It can only affect one or the other.

It is also possible to directly edit the angle value in the value field. This allows for a much more precise angle selection.

The Other Buttons

A third cluster of buttons sits to the right of the Angle buttons. Each has a unique function.

Reset
Clicking on this button will reset all properties from the entity to the default values.

Del Key/Pair
If you have selected an active property, clicking on this button will delete the property.

Sound…
This opens a Windows directory browser in the directory that contains the map sounds. Double clicking on a sound file name in the browser window creates an active property with the appropriate key and the value as the path/name for that sound.

Model…
This opens a Windows directory browser in the models/mapobjects directory. Double clicking on an .md3 file name in the browser window creates classname misc_model active property with the value as the path/name for that model.

Entity Handling Tools

These tools manipulate the in game entities. The map component handling tools that are described in the Working with Brushes section also work with entities.

Escape (ESC)

This is the all-purpose deselect key. Use it to back out of operations you don't want to complete or to stop working on an entity.

Connect Entities

(Menu: Misc > Connect Entities)
(Shortcut: CTRL+ K)

This targets one entity, typically an activating trigger, at another entity, usually a target of some kind. Some entities may be linked in multi-part chains, where each entity has some effect on the one(s) that follow it. To use, do the following:

Hi-light the acting entity (usually a trigger, or a button).
Hi-light the targeted entity (examples: target_position, target_relay, a door).
Select Connect Entities (or press CTRL + k).
A path is drawn between the two entities. The first entity selected always targets on the second.

Troubleshooting: If the connection is not made check the following:

Are both objects already entities? Sometimes it's easy to forget to make a trigger brush into a trigger.
Did you select ONLY two objects? If you accidentally click on something you don't intend to link, you have to start the linkage over.
Did you select the objects in the correct order?
Is the second object something that can be triggered remotely?

Ungroup Entity

(Menu: Selection > Ungroup Entity)
(Shortcut: none)

This unbinds an entity made of brushes, and/or patches, and md2 models back into separate map components. Once ungrouped, the entity is no longer an entity and loses any and all key value properties it may have had.

Design Note: If you intend to rebuild an entity after ungrouping it, write down its key properties and values first.

Moving Selected Entity

These keys move the Entity around the map in discrete map grid increments.

Move Selection Down

(Shortcut: Keypad MINUS)

Each press moves the selected map component down along the Z-axis by one grid position (at current grid setting). Not affected by current 2D-map view.

Move Selection Up

(Shortcut: Keypad PLUS)

Each press moves the selected map component up along the Z-axis by one grid position (at current grid setting). Not affected by current 2D-map view.

Nudging the Entity

These keys move the Entity around the map in discrete map grid increments. The movement is in terms of the selected window, not in terms of XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Down

(Shortcut: ALT + DOWN ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "down" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Up

(Shortcut: ALT + UP ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "up" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Left

(Shortcut: ALT + LEFT ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "left" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Right

(Shortcut: ALT + RIGHT ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "right" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Changing Facing

To change the direction that a misc_model or entity with a facing (such as a player start or spawn spot) faces, use Angle keys and values. You should "rotate" (change facing) entities with either the Angle buttons on the Entity Window or by entering an Angle key and giving it a rotation value between 1 and 360 (inclusive).

source

Edubuntu 26.04 is released and includes completely new administration tools.

2026-05-01T10:37:00.000-05:00

Edubuntu is a community flavour of Ubuntu designed for classroom use.

The project's latest version, 26.04, includes entirely new administrative tools.

The distribution's release announcement shares: "The Edubuntu Installer and Menu Administration tools have been completely rewritten from the ground up in Python, replacing the previous shell-based implementation. This brings significant improvements: Dual UI Backends: Automatically detects your desktop environment and launches the appropriate interface (GTK4 or Qt6). Cockpit Integration: Web-based remote administration module for configuring age-group settings across your network. Default and per-user setup control: Administrators can apply age-group defaults system-wide or override them for individual non-administrator users. Multilingual Support: Now available in 21 languages including Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Estonian, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian (including full installer slideshow localization). Enhanced Menu Administration: Ability to disable terminal keyboard shortcuts for non-admin users, providing better control in classroom environments. Application-menu controls: Menu Administration can hide Ptyxis by default for non-admin users and keeps per-user application lists aligned with the global application list. Improved account handling: Non-user/system accounts are filtered out so only real student and staff accounts appear in the administrative interface. Improved UI Polish: Refined GTK and Qt layouts, improved spacing, and launch fixes for better day-to-day usability."

Edubuntu 26.04 LTS — Release and New Features

Edubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon” has been officially released, bringing a refreshed experience for education-focused computing and introducing completely new administration tools.

1. Based on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

Edubuntu 26.04 is built on the latest Ubuntu base:

Linux kernel 7.0
Updated graphics stack (Mesa, Vulkan)
Wayland-first desktop environment
Improved hardware support and stability

Result:

modern, secure, and long-term supported system
compatibility with recent PCs and classroom hardware

2. Education-focused desktop environment

Edubuntu is designed specifically for schools and learning environments:

simplified GNOME-based interface
child-friendly design
preconfigured educational layout
accessibility features enabled by default

Goal:

easy onboarding for students and teachers
distraction-free learning environment

️ 3. Completely new administration tools ⭐

One of the biggest changes in 26.04:

redesigned system administration tools
easier classroom and user management
improved control for teachers and IT staff
simplified setup for multiple users and devices

What this means in practice:
✔ easier classroom deployment
✔ faster user management
✔ more efficient school IT administration

4. Educational software improvements

Edubuntu continues to include and improve:

learning apps for science, math, and coding
educational games and tools
offline-friendly resources for schools

5. Security and long-term support

full Ubuntu 26.04 LTS security stack
updates guaranteed until 2029
stable and predictable environment for schools

6. Usability improvements

smoother setup process
better hardware detection
improved accessibility tools for diverse learning needs

Summary

Edubuntu 26.04 LTS is:

✔ based on Ubuntu 26.04
✔ designed for education and schools
✔ includes completely new administration tools
✔ easier to manage in classroom environments
✔ supported long-term until 2029

Who is it for?

Ideal for:

schools and teachers
students of all levels
educational institutions
computer labs

Not intended for:

general desktop customization users (Kubuntu is better)
multimedia production (Ubuntu Studio is better)
ultra-light systems (Xubuntu is better)

Download: edubuntu-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (7,571MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).

Xubuntu has been updated to version 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon”.

2026-04-30T10:14:00.000-05:00

Xubuntu, an Ubuntu variant featuring the Xfce desktop and many popular GNOME and MATE applications, has been updated to version 26.04: "The Xubuntu team is happy to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 26.04. Xubuntu 26.04, code-named 'Resolute Raccoon', is a long-term support (LTS) release and will be supported for three years, until April 2029. It features the latest Xfce 4.20 and GNOME 49 updates. Xfce 4.20 updates feature stability improvements and enhanced Wayland support, for those adventurous enough to use it. GNOME 49 apps have received further polish and are well-suited for Xubuntu. MATE 1.28 apps are still included to round out Xubuntu's office suite.

Highlights: Xfce 4.20 components have received several stability improvements, including updates to Thunar, xfce4-panel, xfce4-session, Whisker Menu and the PulseAudio plugin; GIMP 3.2.2 - a significant update in the recently-stable GIMP 3.x series with new features and fixes; LibreOffice 26.2 - a full new release cycle with the latest features and compatibility improvements; Mousepad 0.7.0 - a notable feature release of Xubuntu's text editor; PipeWire 1.6.2 and GStreamer 1.28.2 - major updates to the audio and multimedia stack...." See the release announcement and the release notes for further information.

Download (SHA256, signature, pkglist): xubuntu-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (4,943MB, torrent), xubuntu-26.04-minimal-amd64.iso (3,076MB, torrent).

Here are the news and features of Xubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon” in English

Xubuntu 26.04 LTS — News & Features

Xubuntu 26.04 is an official Ubuntu LTS flavor based on Ubuntu 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon”, designed to be lightweight, fast, and stable.

1. Ubuntu 26.04 base system

Like all official flavors, it includes:

Linux kernel 7.0
Updated graphics stack (Mesa, Vulkan)
Wayland support (with X11 still available)
Improved hardware compatibility

Result:
✔ modern system base
✔ better support for new hardware
✔ improved stability

️ 2. Xfce 4.20 desktop environment

Xubuntu uses the lightweight Xfce desktop, now updated to:

Xfce 4.20
improved performance and visual refinements
faster Thunar file manager

In practice:

simple and lightweight interface
very low resource usage
ideal for older or low-spec PCs

⚡ 3. Performance improvements

Thanks to the new Ubuntu base:

faster boot times
lower RAM usage compared to heavier desktops
improved responsiveness

Result:
✔ excellent for older hardware
✔ very stable experience

4. Long-Term Support (LTS)

Supported until April 2029
Same enterprise-grade security updates as Ubuntu

Reliable for long-term use and stability-focused setups

5. Lightweight default applications

Xubuntu keeps a minimal software set:

Firefox (web browser)
Thunar (file manager)
Mousepad (text editor)
lightweight GTK utilities

Goal:

fast system with minimal bloat
efficient resource usage

6. Usability improvements

simpler installation process
better hardware detection
refined system integration

Summary

Xubuntu 26.04 LTS is:

✔ lightweight
✔ fast and responsive
✔ stable and reliable
✔ based on Xfce 4.20
✔ ideal for older or low-end PCs

Who is it for?

Recommended if you want:

a fast system on old hardware
low memory usage
a simple and stable desktop

Not ideal if you want:

advanced visual effects (Kubuntu is better)
creative workflows (Ubuntu Studio is better)
AI features or smart assistants (Ubuntu Kylin is better)

Quick comparison

Distro
Focus

Ubuntu
general use

Kubuntu
customization + modern desktop

Ubuntu Studio
creative work

Ubuntu Kylin
simplicity + AI

Xubuntu
⭐ lightweight performance

The Ubuntu Kylin project has announced the release of version 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon”

2026-04-29T09:48:00.000-05:00

The Ubuntu Kylin project has announced the release of version 26.04 of its community edition of Ubuntu which is configured for Chinese-speaking users.

An English version of the release announcement states: "On April 23, 2026, the Kylin Team officially released Ubuntu Kylin 26.04, which will be supported for 3 years. Based on the Linux 7.0 kernel, Ubuntu Kylin 26.04 brings major upgrades to core libraries, subsystems, and essential software, improving overall stability and compatibility. The desktop environment has also been upgraded to UKUI 4.20, delivering a smoother and more reliable user experience!

New features: Ubuntu Kylin 26.04 includes Linux kernel 7.0 with a series of enhancements: Rust language support is no longer marked as experimental; improved support for Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) processors; optimized support for Intel Xe3 integrated graphics and integrated NPU; cgroupfs now mounts with nsdelegate, memory_recursiveprot, and memory_hugetlb_accounting enabled; integrated the IgH EtherCAT Master module and Generic driver; the real-time Linux kernel is now available in the main archive for all users; Kernel Livepatch now supports the ARM64 architecture; ZFS has been updated to 2.4.1."

Additional details are provided in the release announcement (Chinese, English). Download: ubuntukylin-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (5,420MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).

Here are the news and features of Ubuntu Kylin 26.04 LTS in English

Ubuntu Kylin 26.04 LTS — News & Features

Ubuntu Kylin 26.04 is an official Ubuntu flavour aimed mainly at providing a more user-friendly desktop experience, with extra focus on simplicity, AI integration, and localized tools. It is based on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon”.

️ 1. Ubuntu 26.04 base system

Ubuntu Kylin inherits all core improvements from Ubuntu 26.04:

Linux kernel 7.0
Updated graphics stack (Mesa, Vulkan)
Wayland-first desktop environment
Better hardware support for modern PCs

Result:

smoother performance
better GPU support
improved compatibility with new hardware

2. UKUI Desktop Environment updates

Ubuntu Kylin uses its own desktop environment:

UKUI (Ubuntu Kylin User Interface) updated version
More modern and lightweight design
Improved animations and usability

What this means in practice:

simpler, more “Windows-like” experience
easier navigation for new users
more consistent interface design

3. AI-powered features (key focus)

One of the biggest highlights:

Built-in AI assistant tools
Smart search and system suggestions
AI-enhanced productivity features

Real-world impact:
✔ easier file search
✔ automated suggestions
✔ more guided user experience

4. Better ecosystem and cloud integration

Improved integration with online services
Better support for regional apps and services
Cloud syncing and account management improvements

Designed for:

home users
education environments
office workflows (especially in Asia)

⚡ 5. Performance improvements

Thanks to the Ubuntu 26.04 base:

Better CPU and GPU efficiency
More stable Wayland experience
Improved multitasking performance

Result:

smoother desktop experience
better performance on laptops and mid-range PCs

6. Security improvements

Full Ubuntu 26.04 LTS security stack
TPM-based disk encryption support
Long-term security updates

Support lifecycle:

5 years of standard LTS support (until 2029)

7. Updated applications

New versions of core system apps
Kylin-specific utilities improved
Productivity and media apps preinstalled

8. User experience improvements

simpler installation process
more guided first setup
cleaner and more accessible interface

Summary

Ubuntu Kylin 26.04 LTS is:

✔ based on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
✔ focused on simplicity and ease of use
✔ enhanced with AI features
✔ using the UKUI desktop environment
✔ optimized for everyday users and productivity

Who is it for?

Recommended if you want:

a simple and guided Linux experience
built-in AI assistance
a Windows-like, easy-to-use interface

Not ideal if you want:

heavy customization (Kubuntu is better)
professional creative workflows (Ubuntu Studio is better)
minimal or ultra-light systems (Lubuntu is better)

The Ubuntu Unity project has published a new release, Ubuntu Unity 26.04

2026-04-28T10:42:00.635-05:00

The Ubuntu Unity project has published a new release, Ubuntu Unity 26.04.

Unlike other members of the Ubuntu community editions, which made 26.04 a long-term support release, Ubuntu Unity is treating this version as a regular release. "Ubuntu Unity 26.04 'Resolute Raccoon' is out. Even though it is not LTS officially we will support it like it is LTS release. Ubuntu Unity 26.04 continues to use Unity 7.7, which has undergone maintenance. Our primary focus for this release has been to fix issues and bugs, so we can keep unity 7 going, while we work on an successor. This includes long standing bugs and moving away from unmaintained packages towards supported alternatives."

The release announcement goes on to highlight some known issues: "There are a few known issues which we were not able to fix in time for release date. Sometimes cursor after login does not appear but highlights things as you moved it around the screen. Workaround 1 - press CTRL+ALT+F1 to switch to virtual console, log-in and type sudo systemctl restart lightdm. Workaround 2 - Press CTRL+ALT+T, type sudo systemctl restart lightdm. Shutdown/logout menu not working after cancelling - switch to virtual console and type sudo poweroff to shut down the system. Sometimes cursor stops responding (moves around but does not click anything)...."

Download: ubuntu-unity-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (3,995MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).

Key Highlights of Ubuntu Unity 26.04

Release Date: April 23, 2026
Codename: Resolute Raccoon
Support: Not officially LTS, but maintained like one (intended support until at least 2027).
Desktop Environment: Unity 7.7 (maintained, bug fixes applied).
Kernel: Linux 7.0 for improved hardware support.
Major Software Versions:
- Firefox 149 (updates immediately to 150)
- LibreOffice 26.2.2
- Python 3.14.4
- GCC 15.2
- OpenJDK 25
- Mesa 26.0
- systemd 259.5

Improvements & Fixes

Fixed window decoration issues in GTK3/4 and Libadwaita apps.
Fixed Synaptic not launching.
Fixed tap-to-click on touchpads.
Fixed Snap apps unpinning from the launcher.
Migrated to vala-appmenu-panel for better global menu support.
Moved from unity-gtk3-module → appmenu-gtk3-module.
Removed broken Remote Smart Search support.
Removed unmaintained packages (e.g., cheese, vino, unity-gtk2-appmenu).
Introduced new wallpapers and migrated packages away from deprecated libraries.

⚠️ Known Issues

Cursor sometimes does not appear after login (workarounds involve restarting LightDM).
Shutdown/logout menu may fail after canceling.
Cursor may stop responding due to Compiz issues (requires restarting Compiz).
Wallpaper may overlay the Calamares installer during OEM installation.
Light-locker crashes on login, though login still works.

Download Options

ISO Image Size: ~3.9 GB (AMD64 desktop image).
Available via direct download, torrent, and zsync.

⚖️ Why It Matters

Ubuntu Unity 26.04 is a niche flavor for those who prefer the classic Unity desktop over GNOME or KDE. While Canonical’s official Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (GNOME 50, Wayland-only) is the mainstream release, Ubuntu Unity caters to users who value continuity, traditional layout, and Unity’s workflow.

The Kubuntu team have announced the release of Kubuntu 26.04

2026-04-28T09:14:00.001-05:00

The Kubuntu team have announced the release of Kubuntu 26.04 which features the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop and version 7.0 of the Linux kernel.

The release announcement shares the details: "The Kubuntu team is thrilled to announce the release of Kubuntu 26.04 LTS, code-named 'Resolute Raccoon'. Building on the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS base released today by Canonical, Kubuntu 26.04 introduces Plasma 6.6 as the flagship desktop environment, alongside Qt 6.10.2, KDE Frameworks 6.24.0, and the latest KDE Gear 25.12.3 application suite.

We've also upgraded to Linux kernel 7.0 for enhanced hardware support and performance. Whether you’re a developer, creator, or everyday user, this release emphasises Wayland maturity, modern security, and seamless integration with the open source world. Kubuntu 26.04 LTS will receive security updates and critical fixes through April 2029, making it an excellent choice for home users, schools, businesses, and anyone who values a dependable, beautiful desktop."

The announcement mentions users who are upgrading from previous versions should backup and clean their ~/.config directory to avoid breaking changes to Plasma's configuration. Download: kubuntu-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (4,834MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).

Here’s a clear summary in English of the new release:

Kubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon” — News & Features

Kubuntu 26.04 LTS is the latest long-term support release of Kubuntu, based on Ubuntu 26.04, and it brings a major refresh to the KDE desktop experience.

️ 1. KDE Plasma 6.6 (major desktop upgrade)

Kubuntu now ships with:

KDE Plasma 6.6
Qt 6.10
KDE Frameworks 6
Updated KDE Gear apps (25.12 series)

What this means:

smoother and faster desktop experience
improved high-resolution (HiDPI) support
more modern visual design and performance improvements

⚡ 2. Wayland becomes the default session

Wayland is now the default display server
X11 is no longer the standard option (still available in some cases, but not primary)

Real impact:

better security (isolation between apps)
smoother animations and scaling
improved multi-monitor handling

⚠️ Some legacy apps may still work better under X11 alternatives.

3. Ubuntu 26.04 base system improvements

Kubuntu inherits all core Ubuntu upgrades:

Linux kernel 7.0
updated graphics stack (Mesa, Vulkan improvements)
better hardware support for newer CPUs and GPUs

Result:

better performance on modern PCs
improved driver support
smoother gaming and GPU workloads

4. Gaming and graphics improvements

Better Vulkan performance
updated Mesa drivers
improved Wayland gaming support

Real-world effect:

more stable FPS
better support for high refresh rate monitors
improved Proton/Steam compatibility

5. Security improvements

stronger system-level security
improved application permission handling
modern encryption features (including TPM support)

More suitable for professional and enterprise use.

6. Updated KDE applications

Core apps like:

Dolphin (file manager)
Konsole (terminal)
Discover (software center)

are faster and more polished.

7. Better integration and usability

smoother system settings experience
improved installation flow
more consistent KDE ecosystem experience

8. Long-term support (LTS)

Supported until April 2029

Designed for stability and long-term use.

⚠️ Important changes to know

❌ X11 is no longer the default
❌ Requires relatively modern hardware for best experience
❌ Some older KDE/X11-dependent applications may need adjustments

Summary

Kubuntu 26.04 is:

✔ much more modern
✔ faster and smoother
✔ Wayland-first desktop
✔ better for new hardware
✔ stable LTS release (5 years support)

⚠️ but less friendly to very old software and legacy workflows

Should you upgrade?

Yes if you want:

modern KDE Plasma experience
better performance and graphics
long-term stable system

Wait if you rely on:

older X11 applications
legacy KDE workflows or plugins

The Ubuntu Studio team have announced a new version 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon”

2026-04-27T08:50:00.000-05:00

The Ubuntu Studio team have announced a new version of their media-focused flavour of the Ubuntu family.

The new version, 26.04, offers three years of support and continues the evolution path of the previous two long-term support releases: You can trace a clear through-line across recent LTS cycles: 20.04 LTS was the last Xfce-based LTS and set up the desktop transition, 22.04 LTS stabilized the Plasma era, and 24.04 LTS introduced the new Subiquity/Flutter installer generation and PipeWire 1.0 maturity.

Ubuntu Studio 26.04 LTS builds on that foundation with practical workflow improvements instead of a single marquee feature: three selectable desktop layouts, fully rewritten Installer and Audio Configuration tools (Python with GTK4 and Qt6 frontends), and broader translation coverage. It also brings forward ideas that were future-looking in earlier cycles, especially minimal-install flexibility and easier post-install workflow selection, while adding production-focused updates like FFADO support, easier PipeWire tuning, and new default additions such as Loopino and Plasma PipeWire Settings. As with prior Ubuntu Studio LTS releases, this cycle carries a three-year support window, through April 2029."

A list of changes can be found in the release announcement. Download: ubuntustudio-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (6,810MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).

Here’s a clear breakdown of what’s new and notable, including Ubuntu Studio–specific context.

Ubuntu Studio 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon” — key highlights

️ KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop (major upgrade)

Ubuntu Studio sticks with KDE, and 26.04 brings:

KDE Plasma 6.6 (same base as Kubuntu)
Better Wayland support and smoother graphics
Updated Qt 6 stack and modern UI consistency

This is a big jump in responsiveness and HiDPI support, especially useful for creative workstations.

Updated creative software stack

Although exact app lists vary slightly per ISO, Ubuntu Studio 26.04 benefits from:

Newer audio production tools (Ardour, Carla, PipeWire improvements)
Updated video editing & VFX apps (Kdenlive, Blender, OBS)
Improved graphics workflows (Krita, GIMP updates)

These ride on newer libraries and toolchains included in 26.04 (LLVM 21, Mesa 26, etc.)

Expect better performance, GPU acceleration, and plugin compatibility.

⚡ Performance & kernel upgrades

Based on Linux kernel ~7.0 series
Improved hardware support (audio interfaces, GPUs, newer CPUs)
Mesa 26 → better OpenGL/Vulkan performance (useful for rendering/video)

This matters a lot for:

low-latency audio work
real-time video processing
3D rendering workloads

Stronger security & system features

Ubuntu Studio inherits major platform improvements:

TPM-backed full-disk encryption
New Security Center & app permission controls
Early adoption of post-quantum cryptography

These changes bring pro-grade workstation security without breaking usability.

️ Wayland era (with caveats for creators)

Ubuntu base is now Wayland-first (or Wayland-only on GNOME)
KDE Plasma’s Wayland session is now mature enough for daily use

For Ubuntu Studio users:

Better multi-monitor + scaling
Smoother animations
But some niche creative tools may still prefer X11

New system apps & UX changes

Across Ubuntu 26.04:

New App Center & Software management improvements
New default apps replacing older GNOME utilities (e.g., media viewer, monitor tools)

Result: cleaner, more modern base system for production setups.

AI / HPC readiness

Canonical is pushing:

Native support for AI and high-performance computing toolkits
Optimizations from desktop to cloud workflows

This is relevant for:

AI-assisted editing
rendering farms
machine-learning pipelines

LTS stability & support

5 years standard support (to 2031)
Up to 10–15 years with Ubuntu Pro
Designed for long-term production environments

Bottom line

Ubuntu Studio 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon” isn’t just a routine update—it’s a platform modernization release:

Big desktop jump (Plasma 6)
Stronger performance (kernel + Mesa)
More secure and future-ready
Better suited for professional creative workflows

If you’re coming from 22.04 or 24.04, this is a meaningful upgrade, especially for newer hardware and Wayland readiness.

The Ubuntu Cinnamon project has announced the launch of Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.04

2026-04-26T17:07:00.000-05:00

The Ubuntu Cinnamon project has announced the launch of Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.04 which ships with version 6.4.13 of the Cinnamon desktop and will receive three years of security updates.

The release announcement shares the highlights: "I am proud to announce our latest release: Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.04 Resolute Raccoon! Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.04 comes with Cinnamon 6.4.13 and will be supported until 2029, as it is a LTS (long-term service) release. This means it will continue getting updates and bug fixes for longer than a non-LTS release.

The previous LTS release, 24.04 Noble Numbat, will be supported for about another year to give time for users to upgrade. Soon, upgrades will be enabled. If you are on the 25.10 release (Questing Quokka), you are encouraged to upgrade, as support will be ending in July. Users of the 24.04 series are also encouraged to upgrade." Additional information on what is new in version 26.04 can be found in the project's release notes.

Download: ubuntucinnamon-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (5,397MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).

Here’s a clear overview of the release, features, and news about Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.04 LTS

Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.04 LTS – release & overview

Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.04 LTS (codename Resolute Raccoon) is part of the official Ubuntu 26.04 family, released in April 2026.

It’s an official Ubuntu flavor that uses the Cinnamon desktop, offering a more traditional interface similar to Windows, while keeping Ubuntu’s stability.

Key features

⚙️ 1. Updated base system

Built on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
Linux kernel 7.x generation (new hardware support)
Updated core apps and libraries

More modern, better hardware compatibility, and improved performance.

️ 2. Cinnamon desktop improvements

Latest Cinnamon 6.x series (continuation of recent updates)
Better customization options
Improved window management and panel behavior

Keeps the classic desktop feel, but smoother and more refined.

⚡ 3. Performance & responsiveness

Faster startup and login
Improved RAM handling
Smoother animations and UI responsiveness

A good balance between lightweight and full-featured desktop.

4. Visual refinements

Updated themes (Yaru-Cinnamon integration)
Improved icons and UI consistency
Better overall polish

More modern look without losing familiarity.

5. Security & LTS stability

5 years of support (until ~2031)
Security improvements inherited from Ubuntu 26.04
Better permission handling and system security features

6. Updated software stack

Newer versions of:
- Firefox
- LibreOffice
- system utilities
Improved out-of-the-box experience

Everything is up to date from day one.

What’s new compared to previous versions

More mature Cinnamon desktop (6.x evolution)
Better integration with Ubuntu base
Improved performance and stability
Continued focus on ease of use and familiarity

It’s an evolution, not a radical redesign.

⚖️ Position in the Ubuntu family

Ubuntu Cinnamon sits between:

Ubuntu (GNOME) → more modern but heavier
Lubuntu/Xubuntu → lighter but less polished

Cinnamon offers a classic desktop + modern Linux base

Conclusion

Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.04 LTS is:

✔️ Stable and long-term supported
✔️ Familiar (great for Windows users)
✔️ More polished and responsive
✔️ A balanced desktop (not too heavy, not too minimal)

Ideal if you want a traditional desktop experience on a modern Ubuntu base.

The Ubuntu Budgie project has published version 26.04

2026-04-25T15:28:00.000-05:00

The Ubuntu Budgie project has published version 26.04 of its Ubuntu community flavour. Ubuntu Budgie 26.04 offers three years of support and makes the leap to a Wayland-only version of the Budgie desktop environment. "Ubuntu Budgie 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) is a Long Term Support release, supported for three years by the Ubuntu Budgie team. This release ships with Budgie Desktop 10.10.2 and marks a full transition to Wayland. Ubuntu Budgie 26.04 is Wayland‑only and uses labwc as the default compositor. No Xorg session is provided.

Note - we will be shipping a wayfire supported session through our backports PPA - more info on that in due course. These release notes highlight the key user‑visible changes since Ubuntu Budgie 24.04 LTS, and document important behaviour changes introduced as part of the Wayland transition. What's New in 26.04 Wayland‑Only Desktop: Ubuntu Budgie 26.04 is a Wayland‑only release using Budgie Desktop 10.10.2. What this means for users: Screen sharing, screenshots, and related integration use modern Wayland portals; display configuration follows wlroots tooling; some X11‑era workflows behave differently or are no longer available; for managing displays, wdisplays is the recommended configuration tool."

Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement. Download: ubuntu-budgie-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (3,930MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).

Ubuntu Budgie 26.04 LTS – Overview

Ubuntu Budgie 26.04 LTS is the latest long-term support release of the official Ubuntu flavor that uses the Budgie desktop environment.

It is based on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and focuses on a balance between modern design, simplicity, and stability.

1. Updated base system

Built on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
Modern Linux kernel (7.x series)
Updated Budgie Desktop (10.10+ branch)
Ongoing transition toward Wayland support

Result: a more modern and future-ready system.

2. Budgie desktop improvements

Continued development of Budgie 10.10+
Better performance and responsiveness
Improved integration of system components
Gradual move away from X11 toward Wayland

The desktop is becoming more modern while keeping its simplicity.

⚡ 3. Performance and responsiveness

Smoother animations
Better memory usage optimization
Faster desktop responsiveness

Still lightweight compared to many mainstream desktops, but more feature-rich than ultra-light environments.

4. Visual refinements

Updated panel and applets
Improved theme consistency
More polished user experience

No radical redesign, but a more refined and modern look.

5. Long-Term Support (LTS)

Supported for 5 years
Regular security updates
Focus on system stability and reliability

6. Development direction

Continued evolution of Budgie Desktop 10.10+
Gradual transition to Wayland
Ongoing improvements to applets and customization tools

This release is part of Budgie’s modernization phase.

Summary

Ubuntu Budgie 26.04 LTS is:

✔️ modern and stable
✔️ based on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
✔️ smoother and more responsive
✔️ transitioning to Wayland
✔️ balanced between lightness and aesthetics
❗ not a radical redesign, but a refinement release

Conclusion

️ Great for users who want a clean, elegant desktop
⚡ heavier than Lubuntu, but more visually polished
ideal for stable long-term daily use

GtkRadiant Editor Manual: Working with textures

2026-04-25T15:25:00.000-05:00

There are three skill and knowledge components to working with textures as they regard Quake III Arena. They are Texture creation, Texture Manipulation, and Texture Application. Only the third, Texture Application, is absolutely necessary for making maps. You need not master all three.

Texture Creation: Making new Assets

This is covered earlier in the manual.

Texture Manipulation: Shader Overview

Technically, each texture already has a default shader that passes it through the pipeline to appear much as it does in the graphic program that made it. A shader is a short script, separate from the texture file, that the game engine uses to make further adjustments to the texture's appearance or function. The shader is to Q3A what the surface properties flags were to Q2, only ever so much more powerful. If you plan on creating your own textures, you should get to know and understand how shaders work. The Q3A Shader Manual contains the information you need.

Shaders and Multi-Pass Texture Effects

(Drawn from an original essay by Small Pile of Gibs)

Shaders give the mapper control over special graphics effects that require multiple redrawing passes before they are finally displayed on the game screen. Every shader that changes the visual component of a texture uses these "Multitexture" effects. Multitexture is ON by default in Quake III Arena. It is turned off with the cvar, "set r_ext_multitexture 0 (entered in the console or bound to a key) - see the Debugging section in this document for more details.

To understand how multitexture works, you need to understand how the Quake III Arena graphic engine renders a scene. All the faces you see in Quake III Arena are made up of triangles - you can see this by using the cvar command "r_showtris 1." Initially, each triangle adds one to the "tris" number in r_speeds (the numbers that are used to estimate whether a scene is too complex). With every frame that Q3A "paints", it draws triangles onto the scene in layers, starting at the back of the scene and drawing every triangle visible until it reaches the front. It takes time to draw each triangle. If a triangle is painted with a texture that is "see through" in some way (either transluscent, transparent, or containing cut-outs), any triangles seen through that triangle must be redrawn one additional time for each stage in the the shader. If a single transparent triangle takes up the whole screen, for example, a glass window - The whole area of the screen has to be redrawn. Each triangle of glass takes an entire screen worth of "overdraw" and each extra stage on the glass adds another screenful, which is why glass can be such a big framerate hit.

The simplest form of multitexture is a Lightmap. In most cases, the Q3A engine first draws the lightmap (precalculated light and shadow information). Then, on top of that, it adds in the information from the texture art specified for that triangle using a special effect (blendfunc filter) - which blends the lightmap with the texture to make areas of the texture look light or dark. Using the cvar command "r_vertexlight 1" (Vertex Lighting instead of Lightmaps) stops Q3 from drawing the lightmap triangles (which is why many gamers use vertex lighting to gain additional playing speed).

Every extra stage in a shader is an extra triangle drawn over and blended with the first triangle in a special way. Like the lightmap example above, each additional stage requires an extra triangle to be drawn for each frame. On certain 3D accelerator cards (like the TNT - TwiN Texture), the multitexture effect cancels out the real cost of the first pass of blending. The blending for the first additional stage is done before the triangle is drawn. However, if the shader takes 3 stages (like all the shiny metal effects) it costs an extra triangle for every triangle it is used on. Every extra triangle used adds a triangle to the r_speeds triangle count. Because there are cards that don't automatically handle this first blending pass, the map maker needs to occasionally check his r_speeds with the multitexture turned off.

Texture Application: Texture Handling Tools

These tools manipulate textures within the editor. They do not create textures or shader scripts.

View Textures

(Shortcut: T)

This is only used in the four-view and floating windows modes (as set in Preferences). It brings up the Texture selection window (also accessible from a folder tab). If the Entity window is open, you may need to click on a map view window first for the "T" command shortcut to work.

Hide Unused

(Menu: Textures > Hide Unused)
(Shortcut: U)

This option affects the content of the Textures window. It filters the contents so that only those textures currently in use in the map are displayed in the window.

Show All

(Menu: Textures > Show All)
(Shortcut: CTRL + A)

This command affects the content of the Textures window. It "un"-filters the contents so that all the texture directories previously loaded during the mapping session are re-displayed.

Surface Inspector

(Menu: Textures > Surface Inspector)

This brings up a pop-up dialogue box. This is one of the more complicated interfaces used during map development and may take some getting used to.

Texture
This is the path/name (beginning in Textures directory) for the texture. You can copy from this field or paste into it. If you know the pathname of a texture, you can enter it here. It will load without having to first load the entire directory that contains it.

The next five commands work on both patches and brushes. However, the results of applying a Horizontal Shift to a brush and to a patch may be substantially different. When working with patches, the numbers in the fields do not change … although the texture on the map component may be changing.

Design Note: When a curve patch butts flush up against a piece of solid geometry, as if it were an extension of that geometry, it may be difficult to align the textures exactly. In fact is often extremely difficult to align a texture on a patch with the texture on an adjacent geometry brush. It works best when the dimensions of the patch are an exact multiple of the dimensions of the texture being used. Otherwise, you may want to consider designing your architecture in such a way that it is logical for a new texture to begin at that point. Use your judgement.

Horizontal Shift
This allows you to change the Horizontal texture offset (position of texture on a surface). You can type an offset value into field or use the scroll buttons on the right to shift the texture. If "Surface Inspector Increments Match Grid" is set in Preferences, the scroll increments will move a number of pixels equal to the grid size.

Vertical Shift This allows you to change the Vertical texture offset (position of texture on a surface). You can type an offset value into field or use the scroll buttons on the right to shift the texture. If "Surface Inspector Increments Match Grid" is set in Preferences, the scroll increments will move a number of pixels equal to the grid size.

Horizontal Stretch This allows you to change the dimensions of textures as they are mapped into the world. You can type a size value into field or use the scroll buttons on the right to enlarge or reduce the texture. The default value is 0.5. This gives a presentation in the game world of two pixels for each game unit. A Horizontal Stretch value of 1.0 would double the amount of area covered by a single repeat of the texture. Of course, doing that also reduces the apparent resolution of the texture by half (can you say blurry?)! Making the stretch value a negative number horizontally flops the texture's normals (i.e.; flops the texture left to right).

Design note: Textures are "projected" onto brush surfaces. This means that if a surface is angled, the texture stretches to fit the space upon which it is projected. To make the texture look "unstretched" you need to change the dimension so that it looks correct when stretched. Example: If you want to map a texture on a 45-degree angle, it should be scaled to 0.35 along the direction perpendicular to the axis of the angle.

Vertical Stretch This is the same as for the Horizontal Stretch, but along the vertical axis. Making the stretch value a negative number vertically flops the texture's normals (i.e.; flops the texture up and down).

Rotate This rotates the texture around the center point of the brush (or patch). If the texture is not centered on the map component, the rotation will not necessarily look correct. The increment of rotation is set by the value given for the Rotation Inc field on the Preferences window. The default value is 45 (degrees), roughly 1/8 rotation around the axis.

Texturing

This next grouping of commands in the lower left corner of the window provides two separate sets of buttons. The top set deal with texturing geometry brushes. The lower set is for texturing curve patches.

Axial (Brush)

Fit (Brush)
The texture is stretched to fit the dimensions of the brush. The width and height fields to the right are the number of repetitions to be used in the S and T dimensions (S corresponds to X on the actual texture and T corresponds to Y on the actual texture). The default value for the height and width fields is 1. You can type a size value into field or use the scroll buttons on the right to enlarge or reduce the texture. Only integer values can be entered (meaning that you can't enlarge a texture 1.5 times).

CAP (Patch)
This function is most often applied to patches used to fill in the gaps between curves and solid geometry. It can also be applied to flat patches so that the texture doesn't appear to follow the arc of the patch. You may need to use the SHIFT + CTRL + N command to normalize the texture on the patch.

Set… (Patch)
This command functions almost like the "Fit" command above for brushes. The texture will be fit across the patch based on the X and Y values given. However, there is a notable difference. The X and Y fields will accept non-integer values (e.g. 6.4 x 3.8). It may take some experimentation to determine which dimension of your patch is considered to be "X" and which is thought to be "Y". If a value of 1x1 is given, the texture will be "fit" to the patch.

Natural (Patch)
The engine does its best to map the texture onto the patch in a "natural" appearing manner. This means that the texture will curve and flow with the curves and bends in the patch. Unless you are texturing a cap, this should be your first choice when applying a texture.

Fit
The texture's coordinates are mapped to fit the patch (with no repeats).

Find / Replace

(Menu: Textures > Find / Replace)
(Shortcut: none)

This feature allows the user to replace a texture within a single brush, a set of selected brushes or globally throughout the entire map. Selecting the command from the menu opens up a dialogue window. The top line is for the texture path and name of the texture to be replaced. The second line is for the texture to be used for replacement. Several checkboxes allow fine control over what, exactly, is to be changed. This command does not respond to UNDO. If you accidentally mistype a texture name in the replace line, you will need to enter it again (as mistyped) on the find line and then enter the correct texture on the replace line.

Texture replacement is global (throughout the map) unless the selected checkboxes state otherwise.

Replace within selected brushes only.

Force replacement (ignore current texture name). All textures in the map will be replaced. Best if used with Replace within selected brushes only. Be very careful with this one.

Live Updates from Texture/Camera windows. Using Live Update the user can find and replace textures with a fully point and click interface.

Texture Replacement using Live Updates
Click on the Find box, then click on any texture in either the Camera window or the Texture window. The texture path/name for that texture appears in the box. Next click on the Replace box and click on the replacement texture. That texture's path/name appear in the Replace box. Select "OK" and the replacement will occur.

Step-by-step for replacing a texture on a brush face (if live update is not used).

In the Camera window, select a face which uses the texture to be replaced.
Open Surface Inspector. If the name of the texture is not hi-lighted, then hi-light it.
Press CTRL+C to copy the texture name.
Open the Find/Replace window.
Paste (CTRL+V) the name into the find window.
Hit ESC to deselect the texture in the CAM winow.
Open the Textures Window. Find the texture you want to replace with and select it.
Open Surface Inspector again.
Copy the texture name there.
Open Find/Replace again and paste the new texture into the Replace box.
Select OK. Replacement occurs and the dialogue window closes.

Texture Lock

(Menu: Brush > Texture Lock)
(Shortcut: Shift+T)

When this option is checked, textures stay locked in position on the brush as brushes are moved around the map. If unchecked, the texture appears to shift across the brush, because they are fixed to the world, not the individual brush.

Directory List…

(Menu: Textures > Directory List…)
(Shortcut: none)

Opens a dialogue box listing all texture directories currently recognized by the editor. Hi-light a directory title then click on the "Load" button. The textures in the selected directory will be loaded into the Textures window.

Shaders

(Menu: Textures > Flush & Reload Shaders)
(Shortcut: none)

This command loads or reloads all the .shader scripts recognized by your shaderlist.txt file. When you change and save a shader script, execute this command, then reload the affected texture directory to see any changes.

(Menu: Textures > Show Shaders)
(Shortcut: none)

When checked, this command surrounds all shader-manipulated textures in the Texture window with a thin white border.

Texture Directories

(Menu: Textures)

This is not a command. The entries at the bottom of the Textures Menu are the names of the available texture directories. Clicking on one loads the contents of the directory into the Texture window.

Texture Shift Key Shortcuts

A brush, brush surface, or curve patch must already be selected before using these shortcuts. This feature closely copies the function of the Texture Shift fields and scroll bars on Surface Inspector pop-up window. If Snap to T is selected in preferences, then the texture shifts in pixel increments equal to the current grid setting. Shifting textures on curve patches may produce unexpected results.

Texture Shift Down
(SHIFT + DOWN ARROW)

Texture Shift Up
(SHIFT + UP ARROW)

Texture Shift Left
(SHIFT + LEFT ARROW)

Texture Shift Right
(SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW)

Texture Rotate Key Shortcuts

A brush, brush surface, or curve patch must already be selected before using these shortcuts. This feature closely copies the function of the Texture Rotate field and scroll bar on Surface Inspector pop-up window. The texture rotates in degree increments set in Preferences. Rotating textures on curve patches may produce unexpected results.

Texture Rotate Clockwise
(SHIFT + PAGEDOWN)

Texture Rotate Counter-Clockwise
(SHIFT + PAGEUP)

Texture Scaling Shortcuts

A brush, brush surface, or curve patch must already be selected before using these shortcuts. This feature changes the scale of the texture (the amount of area that a single instance of the texture covers). The texture scale seems inconsistent, except that opposite directions appear to cancel each other out. The amount of increase delivered by the first use appears to be about a ratio of 1:15.

Texture Scale Down
(CTRL + DOWN ARROW)

Texture Scale Up
(CTRL + UP ARROW)

Texture Scale Left
(CTRL + LEFT ARROW)

Texture Scale Right
(CTRL + RIGHT ARROW)

Using Interactive Textures

Interactive textures are the shader-manipulated textures that have an effect on game play, not just the appearance of the map. There are two classes of Interactive Textures: Special Content Textures and Texture Entities. For more detail and instructions regarding shader manipulation of textures, refer to the Q3A Shader Manual.

Special Content Textures Special content textures are textures where the "surface" parameters of the texture actually change the physical nature of the geometry brush and in so doing, affects the play of the game.

Water
Water is a content parameter that allows a player to "swim" inside a geometry brush, causes a pulsing visual distortion of the underwater geometry, and prompts the game engine to draw bubbles as projectiles pass through it. A player can only remain under water for a short time (without a battlesuit) and then begins to drown.

Water usage rules:

A water texture is defined by the presence of surfaceparm water in the shader that creates it.
Because water is typically a "transparent" surface, the shader passes used to create surface effects on water are added to the shader passes of textures seen through the water surface. This can significantly increase the number of redraw passes necessary to draw the game world and may negatively affect performance.
If you place water brushes side by side, the touching sides must be marked with the common/nodraw texture.
Both the top and the bottom surfaces of a water brush must be water texture.
Water brushes cannot be stacked so they touch another water brush vertically, only set side by side.
If you want to be able to exit water easily, keep the distance from the top of the water brush to the adjacent "shore" or pool edge at no more than 16 game units. Somewhat less is actually better.
If fog is to be used as a part of a water volume, the water surface should not deform.

Fog Fog content is used to block or diminish player vision and provide "atmosphere" for a level. Like water, fog can affect game performance, especially if one can see additional shader effects within it. The following information is taken from the Q3A Shader Manual regarding fog creation and usage.

fogparms <red value> <green value> <blue value> <distance to Opaque>
This surface parameter (or "surfaceparm") defines the contents of the fog.
Note: you must also specify "surfaceparm fog" to cause q3map to identify the surfaces inside the volume. Fogparms only describes how to render the fog on the surfaces.

<red value> <green value> <blue value> These are normalized values (number range from 0 to 1). A good computer art program should give you the RGB values for a color. To obtain the values that define fog color for Quake III Arena, divide the desired color's Red, Green and Blue values by 255 to obtain three normalized numbers within the 0.0 to 1.0 range.

<distance to opaque> This is the distance, in game units, until the fog becomes totally opaque, as measured from the point of view of the observer. By making the height of the fog brush shorter than the distance to opaque, the apparent density of the fog can be reduced (because it never reaches the depth at which full opacity occurs).

Fog usage rules:

If a room (or rooms) is to be filled completely with a fog volume, it can only be entered through one surface (and still have the fog function correctly).
The fog volume can only have one surface visible (from outside the fog).
Fog must be made of one brush. It cannot be made of adjacent brushes.
Fog brushes must be axial. This means that only square or rectangular brushes may contain fog, and those must have their edges drawn along the axes of the map grid (all 90 degree angles).
If a water texture contains a fog parameter, it must be treated as if it were a fog texture when in use.
Additional shader passes may be placed on a fog brush, as with other brushes.
If a light-emitting fog brush is placed beneath normal brush geometry, the light may cause light artifacting on the solid brush surface. Use with care.
Brush models (trains, doors, rotating objects, etc.) within, or partially within fog volumes will have drawing priority problems against the fog. It is best not to place these entities in fog volumes.
There are unconfirmed reports of moving entities being made with fog shaders.

Lava
Lava content, for most practical purposes, is a variation of water content. The damage that it does to players in contact with it is defined by game code and cannot be directly affected by the map designer.

Slime
Slime content, for most practical purposes, is a variation of water content. The damage that it does to players in contact with it is defined by game code and cannot be directly affected by the map designer.

Texture Entities

There are a number of shader-manipulated textures that are used in an entity-like fashion. The shader files that manipulate the textures are what give them their game properties. These are the ones that id used and their relevant properties.

Areaportal
Color: Opaque Red Orange
Location: (textures/common/areaportal)
The bsp tool uses areaportals to create hard, visual breaks between areas in the map. Until triggered, the areaportal blocks geometry behind it from being drawn or seen. The area portal brush should be a thin (2 to 4 units thick) brush. It should touch all the brushes that form the hull of the opening being portalled. It must be placed inside a door. The opening of the door triggers the portal function. The closing of the door returns it to its former state. The areaportal texture must completely seal off a volume from another volume (although this can be in conjunction with other areaportals). If a door is being used to block off an area from view, consider placing an areaportal brush inside the door. Example in Quake III Arena: All the doors out of the central courtyard in Q3DM12, The Dredwerkz, are areaportalled.

Caulk
Location: (common/caulk)
Color: Opaque Pink
Game Function: Caulk, the miracle texture. It blocks vis. It seals the world off from the void. It doesn't draw (so it doesn't add to triangle counts). It keeps curves from competing with textures behind them. It looks like hell if you see it in your world. From the View menu (View > Show > Caulk), you can toggle on and off the display of caulk brush sides.

Design Tips: When you build a brush entity (a.k.a. b_model), mark all the brush sides that you will never see with caulk. Otherwise, the game draws every one of them. Even if you're only making a one-piece door, mark all the non-viewed sides with caulk. The same holds true for detail brushes. If you can't (or won't ever) see a brush face on a brush that's been marked as detail, paint it with caulk. Next, whenever you build a curve, try to build the brush geometry immediately behind it out of caulk. Finally, look around your map for brush faces that you suspect are being drawn, but are never seen: door pockets, bars, underneath bridges or very low railings and so on. It may sound like work, but attention to detail like this buys you both the appearance of greater geometric detail in the map AND faster game running speed.

More Design Tips: Finally, and this should be used with great care, a caulk brush can be used to create an invisible support for entities. If you place a very thin caulk brush floating above a surface that would otherwise not support an entity (example: a grate made of clip brush), the brush will not draw in the world, but will support the entity. The reason for this is that SUSPENDED entities are not "seen" by bots unless they can be reached by a jump pad.

Clip
Location: (textures/common/clip)
Color: Transparent Red
Game Function: If you look at a professionally made map, quite often you'll see that nearly every bit of wall surface is covered in a transparent red texture called "common/clip." Clip is a nondrawing texture that blocks player movement. Clip does not block weapon fire. Entities, such as ammo or weapons, are not supported by clip brushes. If placed or dropped on a clip brush, they will pass through them.

Design Tips: Place clip brushes to smooth the passage of players through the world. This could mean creating a slope that allows the player to slip past a piece of architectural trim, or filling a window to keep players from getting into it. It can be used to create an artificial ceiling that prevents players from flying or jumping too high.

Cluster Portal
Location: (textures/common/clip)
Color: Translucent lavender
Game Function: Works like an area portal, but for the bot navigation file only. Cluster portal is used by the bspc utility to subdivide the map into smaller areas for calculating bot navigation. Appendix C: Bot Navigation Files contains the specific details for using cluster portal texture entities.

Cushion
Location: (textures/common/clusterportal)
Color: Translucent pale aqua
Game Function: A player falling on this does not take damage. They also don't make a "landing" sound, so use with caution.

Do Not Enter
Location: (textures/common/donotenter)
Color: Transparent Pale Orange
Game Function: It is a tool used to solve bot navigation problems. Use it like a clip brush, but sparingly. When you observe bots doing stupid things in your map, try to block off the area with this texture. The Bot Navigation Files appendix contains the specific details for using the Do Not Enter texture entity.

Hint
Location: (textures/common/clusterportal)
Color: Transparent Yellow Green
Game Function: Helps determine the vis portals. It is used as a suggestion to the compiler during the vis phase, when the world is subdivided. Generally speaking, they are used to correct vis problems, whose chief symptom is the "hall of mirrors" effect seen during game play. These can often be corrected by careful placement of a hint brush. If you fill the volume where the error is seen or the volume adjacent to it, the problem may be corrected in the next compile. This is really more art than science.

Invisible
Location: (textures/common/noimpact)
Color:
Game Function: This was used to create a surface that would be marked by weapon fire, but would not be drawn in the world. This was created specifically to resolve a problem where func_static brushes were being used to replace floor textures that marked the location of weapons in Q3DM8. Because the rocket launcher was located in different places between the team and the deathmatch games, the designer wanted to make floor markers that would not only change between game types, but would be marked like adjacent floor pieces.

Nodrawnonsolid
Location: (textures/common/trigger)
Color: Opaque light yellow
Game Function: This is the same as nodraw.

Noimpact
Location: (textures/common/noimpact)
Color: black
Game Function: Used to create a surface which does not block weapon fire.
Weapon fire will pass through this. This usually used as a shader key on other textures.

Origin
Location: (textures/common/origin)
Color: Opaque Orange
Game Function: Used to create origin point in moving b_models, such as trains, plats, and rotating objects. This texture, applied to a square or rectangular brush, is used to create the point of origin for moving b_models, such as trains, plats, and rotating objects. It is used by func_trains as the point that passes through path entities and the source for sound attachment

Skip
Location: (textures/common/skip)
Color: Transparent yellow
Game Function: Do not use in Q3A. This texture was used in Quake 2 maps to discard sides of hint brushes. It is nonfunctional in Q3A.

Slick
Location: (textures/common/trigger)
Color: Translucent Pale Blue
Game Function: Not stick coating for map surfaces. Reduces friction. Use like a very thin clip brush over surfaces you want to be low friction.

Trigger
Location: (textures/common/trigger)
Color: Transparent Dark Yellow
Game Function: Used to make trigger brushes.

Weapon Clip
Location: (textures/common/weap_clip)
Color: Transparent Red
Game Function: This version of the clip brush only stops weapon projectiles from passing through it. No marks are left on the surface.
Design Tip: Use to create clip surfaces for map object models.

The Lubuntu project has announced the launch of Lubuntu 26.04.

2026-04-24T14:23:00.000-05:00

The new long-term support release will receive security updates for three years. Lubuntu 26.04 ships with LXQt 2.3 and migrates some of its low-level program to Rust. "What's new since 24.04 LTS? LXQt 2.3 is now shipped by default. More information on its release can be found here: 2.3.0. 2048-qt is somewhat broken in Ubuntu 26.04 and therefore was removed from Lubuntu. See the Resolute Beta release notes for details. Many of the GNU coreutils were replaced by Rust equivalents in Ubuntu 25.10.

The traditional sudo system was similarly replaced with a Rust rewrite. Ubuntu 26.04 is the first LTS release to ship with Rust-based coreutils and sudo. See the 25.10 release notes for details. Lubuntu 26.04 is the first LTS release of Lubuntu to ship with a primarily Qt 6-based environment. Qt 6 applications should now be themed nicely, instead of looking somewhat drab like they once did. Recent versions of LXQt also come with a much improved application menu, Fancy Menu, which we have switched to. We also use Kvantum as our theming engine instead of Breeze."

Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.

Download: lubuntu-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (3,736MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).

Here are the news and key features of Lubuntu 26.04 LTS

Lubuntu 26.04 LTS – Overview

Lubuntu 26.04 LTS is the latest long-term support release of the official lightweight Ubuntu-based distribution. It focuses on speed, simplicity, and low resource usage, while staying modern and stable.

⚡ 1. Updated and modern base

Based on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
Uses LXQt 2.3 desktop environment
Updated Qt 6 libraries
Better hardware compatibility, especially newer devices

Result: a lightweight system that feels more modern under the hood.

2. Performance improvements

Faster boot times
Lower RAM usage compared to heavier desktops
Smoother performance on older and low-end PCs

Lubuntu remains one of the fastest Ubuntu flavors.

3. Improved user interface

Refined and more modern application menu
Updated themes and icons
Better visual consistency across the system

No radical redesign, but a cleaner and more polished look.

4. Stability and LTS support

Long-Term Support until 2029
Regular security updates
Designed for long-term reliability

Ideal for users who want a stable system without frequent upgrades.

5. System changes and cleanup

Removal or replacement of outdated software
General system improvements and maintenance updates
Better overall stability

6. Low system requirements

Recommended: 1–2 GB RAM minimum
Works on older processors
Perfect for reviving old computers

Summary

Lubuntu 26.04 LTS is:

✔️ Lightweight and fast
✔️ More modern (LXQt 2.3 + Qt 6)
✔️ Stable and secure (LTS until 2029)
✔️ Ideal for old or low-spec PCs
❗ Minimal and efficient, not feature-heavy

Conclusion

️ Old PC → Lubuntu is one of the best choices
⚡ Speed + low resource use → excellent option
Long-term stability → guaranteed with LTS

Canonical has released Ubuntu 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon” which is a long-term support release

2026-04-23T13:06:49.640-05:00

Canonical has released Ubuntu 26.04 which is a long-term support release. This mean the distribution will receive five years of free support and an optional additional five years of paid support.

Many of the key changes in the 26.04 release involve the GNOME desktop, with one significant change being to the system monitor: "The Resources app now replaces the System Monitor app and the Power Statistics app in the GNOME environment. Resources enable you to monitor the utilization of your system resources, including the CPU, memory, GPU, network and storage and power usage. Compared to System Monitor, it comes with the following enhancements: It groups processes into apps. It tracks GPU usage, including video encoder and decoder usage. It tracks Neural Processing Unit (NPU) usage. It tracks hardware statistics like CPU, GPU and memory clock frequency. It features a modern and accessible interface based on GTK 4 and libadwaita.

The app is written in the Rust programming language. Added a GNOME Shell search provider for snap applications: The GNOME Shell global search gained the ability to search for the available snap applications that match the search criteria. This feature can be disabled in the Search panel of the Settings app."

Additional information is provided in the company's release notes. Download (SHA256, signature, pkglist): ubuntu-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso (6,216MB, torrent), ubuntu-26.04-live-server-amd64.iso (2,783MB, torrent).

Download.

Official flavors

Find the release notes for the official flavors at the following links:

GtkRadiant Editor Manual: Working with curve patches

2026-04-18T15:22:00.000-05:00

Curve Menu Commands

The next set of commands comes from the Curve Menu. Some are duplicated on the Patch Tool Bar.

Cylinder

(Menu: Curve > Cylinder)

This creates the simplest cylinder. Cylinders are always drawn with their open ends facing up and down. It does not matter which map view is open when the cylinder is created.

More Cylinders:

(Menu: Curve > More Cylinders)

Dense Cylinder

Very Dense Cylinder
This is a cylinder with two extra sets of rows. This allows a bend into a full donut (torus).

Square Cylinder
This is a cylinder whose columns have been adjusted so that a square, with flat sides, is formed.

End Cap

(Menu: Curve > Endcap)

This is a half cylinder.

Bevel

(Menu: Curve > Bevel)

This is a quarter cylinder

More End caps, Bevels:

(Menu: Curve > More End caps, Bevels)

Square Endcap
This is an endcap without the backside removed.

Square Bevel
This is a bevel with squared off back faces

Cone

(Menu: Curve > Cone)

A cone is a cylinder with control points drawn together and welded at one end to form a point.

Design Note: A curve patch sphere can be constructed from a cone. Start with a cubic brush. Convert into a cone. Go into edit vertexes mode and grab the control point at the peak of the cone. Pull it downward to half the height of the cone. Clone the resulting piece and flip it upside down.

Simple Patch Mesh…

(Menu: Curve > Simple Patch Mesh…)

The patch mesh is the basic building block use to create all curves. All the curve primitives are deformations of this item. For this to work, you must first create a brush of the dimension desired for the patch. Selecting this opens a Patch dialogue window. This lets you select the vertical (rows) and horizontal (columns) complexity of the patch. The more complexity means being able to perform more deformations on the patch. It also means adding a greater number of triangles that must be rendered.

Insert

(Menu: Curve > Insert)

Adding control points increases the complexity of a mesh. This action does not increase the physical size of a mesh. Additions are usually done before manipulating the patch mesh.

Insert (2) Columns

Add (2) Columns

Insert (2) Rows

Add (2) Rows

Delete

(Menu: Curve > Delete)

Deleting control points reduces the complexity of a patch mesh. Be warned that the features created by the removed points are also removed. It does not make the mesh a less complex version of the former design. Deletions also change the dimensions of the mesh, removing the area created by the deleted control points. A mesh cannot be reduced smaller than a 3 column by 3 row complexity.

First (2) Columns

Last (2) Columns

First (2) Rows

Last (2) Rows

Matrix

(Menu: Curve > Matrix)

This has nothing to do with Neo and Trinity. It's the patch mesh taken as a whole.

Invert

(Menu: Curve > Matrix > Invert)
(Shortcut: CTRL + I)

This command inverts the normals of the patch mesh. The normals control the direction of facing for the texture skin and the clipping surfaces.

Re-disperse

(Menu: Curve > Matrix > Re-disperse)

This is used on a selected patch. When rows or columns are inserted or added to a patch, the dimensions of the patch are not changed. The distances between the new additions and the old points are not the same. This command averages out the distance between the points. It does not change the size of the patch. WARNING! Only apply this BEFORE adjusting the patch. Otherwise, you may lose your work on it. With some patches, selecting this command will destroy the patch itself.

Cols

(Menu: Curve > Matrix > Re-disperse > Cols)
(Shortcut: SHIFT + CTRL + E)

The distance between columns is averaged and evened out.

Rows

(Menu: Curve > Matrix > Re-disperse > Rows)
(Shortcut: CTRL + E)

The distance between rows is averaged and evened out.

Transpose

(Menu: Curve > Transpose)
(Shortcut: SHIFT + CTRL + M)

(Function undetermined)

Cap

(Menu: Curve > Cap)

This command adds "cap" patches to the ends of the patch. The original brush and the caps are linked together as a func_group entity. A Patch Tool Bar button duplicates this command. The type of cap depends on the selected patch:

Cylinder
The ends of the cylinder are sealed with circular patches.

Square Cylinder
The ends of the cylinder are sealed with square patches.

Cone
Both ends are capped (open and point). You will want to discard the cap on the point end.

Bevel
If you select to cap a bevel, a dialogue window pops up. A normal bevel cap covers the space between the curve and the center.

Inverted Bevel
An inverted bevel covers the space between the curve and the outer corner.

Endcap
If you select to cap an endcap, the same dialogue window pops up.

Patch Mesh
The bevel/endcap window will pop up. Results will vary depending on the manipulations done to the mesh.

Square Bevel
Capped in the same manner as a cylinder

Square End Cap
Capped in the same manner as a cylinder

Cycle Cap Texture

(Shortcut: CTRL + SHIFT + N)

Press this repeatedly until the texture on the cap patch looks correct.

Redisperse Patch Points

This is used on a selected patch. When rows or columns are inserted or added to a patch, the dimensions of the whole patch are not automatically adjusted. The distances between the new additions and the old points are not the same. This command averages out the distance between the points.

WARNING: Only apply this BEFORE making adjustments to the patch, otherwise you may lose your work on it. With some patches, the patch itself will be destroyed.

CAP (put caps on the current patch)

This is used on a selected patch.

Design Notes:

Endcaps:

Messed Up Texturing:

Weld Equal Patch Points (welds equal patch points during moves)
(Patch Control Bar only) This feature, when selected (button pressed in) causes control points to weld together if they are moved to the same coordinates. Undo will undo the move and the weld.

Drill Down (selects drill down rows and columns)
When this is toggled on (depressed), clicking on a control point in a 2D Map view selects all the control points in the row or column beneath it.

Moving Patches

Moving Selected Curve Patch

These keys move the curve patch around the map in discrete map grid increments.

Move Selection Down

(Shortcut: Keypad MINUS)

Each press moves the selected map component down along the Z-axis by one grid position (at current grid setting). Not affected by current 2D-map view.

Move Selection Up

(Shortcut: Keypad PLUS)

Each press moves the selected map component up along the Z-axis by one grid position (at current grid setting). Not affected by current 2D-map view.

Nudging the Curve Patch

These keys move the curve patch around the map in discrete map grid increments. The movement is in terms of the selected window, not in terms of XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Down

(Shortcut: ALT + DOWN ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "down" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Up

(Shortcut: ALT + UP ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "up" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Left

(Shortcut: ALT + LEFT ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "left" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Right

(Shortcut: ALT + RIGHT ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "right" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Snap Selection To Grid

(Shortcut: CTRL + G)

If you are using the map grid to keep curve patches in alignment, this is a great tool. Rotated curve patches and curve patches that have had their vertices tweaked can have vertices that no longer lie on map grid intersections. This snaps the vertices to align with the grid. Be warned that snapping to large grids may be hazardous to the health of your curve patch (Snap and it's gone! But that's what UNDO is for).

GtkRadiant Editor Manual: Working with Brushes

2026-04-11T14:01:00.000-05:00

GtkRadiant is an open-source, cross-platform video game map and level editor originally developed by id Software and Loki Software.

Based on the GTK+ engine, it was originally developed as the Q3Radiant tool for the game Quake III Arena, but has evolved to be engine-independent and compatible with a variety of titles, including games based on id Tech technology.

The geometry brushes are the basic building block of the Quake III Arena engine. These are the tools to make them work for you.

Geometry Brush Handling Tools

Create New Brush

(Click mouse button 1)
(Tool: Any)

While mouse1 clicking over the main map window (or any open map window) drag the mouse pointer across the grid. A brush will be created that has the height of the current map grid size. If you have the "snap to grid" function set in your preferences, the brush will start and stop on gridlines. The texture will be either the default texture (if none has been selected) or the most recently used texture. For all these functions, you will first need to select a brush in either the Map or Camera windows.

Resize Brush

(mouse1)
(Tool: QE)

This will change the shape of the brush by moving its component faces.
In the Camera or Orthograpic Windows. Click outside the selected brush on the side you want to pull. With the mouse 1 button depressed pull in a direction away or towards the brush. The brush will change size in that direction.

Move Objects

(Click mouse button 1)
(Tool: QE)

This will move the brush around in the world, without changing its shape.
In the Camera or Orthograpic Windows. Select the brush. Click on the selected brush. With the mouse 1 button depressed move the brush around the map to the position you desire.

Mirror Objects

(Menu: Modify > Flip)
(Tool: Any)

There are three separate actions here. They mirror objects along either X, Y, or Z-axes. A menu command and toolbar button controls each. The six flip and rotate toolbar commands are the second grouping (from the left) on the toolbar. The rotate command for the same axis is always next to the flip command.

Flip X

Flip Y

Flip Z

Rotate Objects

(Menu: Modify > Rotate)
(Tool: Any)

There are three separate actions here. They rotate a brush in 90 degree increments around a brush's X, Y, or Z axes. Both a menu command and toolbar button controls each action. The six flip and rotate toolbar commands are the second grouping (from the left) on the toolbar. The flip command for the same axis is always next to the rotate command for the same axis.

Rotate X

(Menu: Modify > Rotate > Rotate X)

Rotates brush around the x-axis.
Rotate Y

(Menu: Modify > Rotate > Rotate Y)

Rotates brush around the y-axis.
Rotate Z

(Menu: Modify > Rotate > Rotate Y)

Rotates brush around the Z-axis.

Arbitrary Rotation

(Menu: Modify > Arbitrary Rotation)

The Rotate commands accessed from the toolbar all rotate selected objects 90 degrees; no more, no less. Arbitrary Rotation allows the user to set angles individually for the X, Y, and/or Z-axes. Enter a number value for each axis you want to rotate. Value can be positive or negative. After the values are entered, select OK. This rotates the object and closes the pop-up window.

Arbitrary Scale

(Menu: Modify > Arbitrary Scale)

With Scale you can enlarge or reduce a brush, patch, or group of brushes and patches. You choose the axes to scale (X, Y, or Z) and the factor of the scale. The scaling factor can be different for each axis. Selecting this option brings up a tool window. The size of the brush or group of brushes is multiplied by the numbers in the boxes adjacent to the X, Y, or Z axes. Leave the value as 1 and no change occurs. If the value is a decimal less than one, the size of that axis shrinks. If the value is greater than 1, it grows. Hit OK to activate the scaling function with you chosen values. Undo functions with this effect.

Move Tool

(Shortcut: W)

Press the "W" key to enter the 'Move' tool. The move axes are shown. Left Mouse clicking on a part of the axes (in the orthographic or camera windows) and dragging will move the selection. Movement can be constrained to the X, Y or Z axes by dragging the red, green or blue arrows.

Rotate Tool

(Shortcut: R)

Press the "R" key to enter the 'Rotate' tool. The rotation sphere is shown. The centre of the sphere is the center of the selection and the axis around which it will rotate. Left Mouse clicking on a part of the sphere (in the orthographic or camera windows) and dragging will rotate the selection. Rotation can be constrained to the X, Y or Z axes by dragging the red, green or blue circles.

CSG Operations

CSG stands for "Constructive Solid Geometry". The two functions here, CSG Subtract and Make Hollow, calculate the removing of sections from that geometry and breaking solid brushes (not curve patches) into smaller pieces. Although they are convenient to use for some operations, they often do things that the user may not care for. These "side effects" can include breaking brushes into inconvenient parts, cutting up adjacent brushes, and creating hard to find and remove micro brushes.

Subtract

(Menu: Selection > CSG > Subtract)

When you select this, the selected brush or brushes subtract its volume from all the geometry that contacts it. The cutting brush is not removed.

Design Note: Region off together the brushes that will be cut and the brushes which will be used for cutting. This keeps other brushes in the map from being affected by the action. It's also a good idea to save just before doing the action, so the user can "back up" to an earlier version.

Hollow

(Menu: Selection > CSG > Hollow)

When the user selects this, the sides of the highlighted brush are turned into separate brushes. The thickness of these brushes is equal to the grid size.

Design Note: This works best with rectangular brushes. The edges of the created brushes overlap each other.

Merge

(Menu: Selection > CSG > Merge)

When the user selects this, the highlighted brushes are turned into a single, convex brush. If the result of the merge would not create a convex brush, an error message is shown.

Examples: Example "A" shows two brushes can be merged together. Example "B" shows two brushes that cannot merge.

Clipper

(Tool: Clipper)
(Shortcut: X)

If you think of this tool as being near the same as the miter box that a carpenter uses to cut wood or moldings, then you are not far from the truth.

Placing Clip Points
Clip points are placed in the map views by two methods:

(Mouse button 1 after Clipper has been toggled on)
(CTRL + Mouse button 2 at any time)

The figure below shows a square brush that has been "clipped" from the lower left (point 1) to the upper right (point 2). The editor creates a line between the first point and the second point. The piece to be kept when the brush is cut is always created in a clockwise direction from the line (assuming that the first point is the center of the "clock")

In a two-point clip (shown here), the cut occurs perpendicular (at a 90 degree angle) from the plane of the map view. Adding a third point, and adjusting its position in a different map view can change the angle of the cutting plane. This will take practice to master.

Toggle Clipper

(Menu: Selection > Clipper > Toggle Clipper)
(X)

This toggles the Clipper function on and off. After completing a cut, the tool remains active and must be toggled off before another brush is selected.
Clip Selection

(Menu: Selection > Clipper > Clip Selection)
(SHIFT)

If the "clip selection" action is completed the portion of the brush outside the clipper plane will be discarded and the rest will remain. A new face is added to the brush, which is given the currently active texture.
Split Selection

(Menu: Selection > Clipper > Split Selection)
(SHIFT + CTRL)

If the "split selection" action is completed the brush will be split into two brushes.
Flip Clip Orientation

(Menu: Selection > Clipper > Flip Clip Orientation)

This permanently changes which side is kept and which is discarded, by flipping the clipper plane.

Make Detail

(Menu: Brush > Make Detail)
(Shortcut: CTRL + M)

In Quake 2, this is a per-face flag. In Quake III Arena, it is used on the brush itself. Detail makes a brush non-structural. This means that it cannot be used to seal the hull of the map world. Don't use it for wall, floors, or ceilings. If it is used as a hull, the map will "leak" when compiled. But it can be used on things that jut out away from the walls (as long as there is a structural brush behind it).

Detail has two beneficial effects:

1. Detail brushes are less likely to cause additional cuts to occur in non-detail brushes that they touch ... thus reducing triangle counts. This can help reduce frame rate.

2. When the compiler does Vis, it breaks the world up into many small volumes. Any break in the surface of the box that forms a room creates additional volumes that must be. Detail brushes don't create these breaks. Therefore, using them speeds up compiling.

Make Structural

(Menu: Brush > Make Structural)
(Shortcut: none)

Structural is the Default State for brushes. Textures that are not manipulated by shader scripts to be transparent or non-solid) do not change this. Essentially, this is a change-it-back command for Make Detail. It removes the detail flag from the brush. This surface WILL block Vis when the map is compiled (so long as there isn't shader content that says otherwise).

Func_Group

(Entity Window > Func_Group > Enter)

Technically, this is a b_model (brush model) entity. However, it's a great way to manage and handle related groups of map components for ease of selection. To use, select the brushes and patches you want to group and then open the Entity window (press "N"). Click on the entity list sub-window and type in "F" to move to the top of the "funcs". Double-click on Func_Group and all the brushes and patches selected are bound together into a group. Select one and you select them all.

Find Brush

(Menu: Misc > Find Brush)

Find brush allows you to locate a brush in the map by its identifying number. As the map is built, the editor assigns identification numbers to each map component. For brushes (and patches) these include an Entity number and a brush number. For any brush that is not part of a brush model (b_model), the entity number is zero (0). Each b_model will have it's own number.

When the compiler outputs error messages in the console and junk.text file, an identification number will call out brushes with problems. Be prepared for them. Even when you do things right, you will get error messages.

Selecting Find brush pops up a dialogue window with two fields. The first field is the entity number. For most brushes, this will be zero. The second number is the brush's individual number. Selecting "OK," jumps the 2D map window(s) to the selected component and hi-lights it.

Brush Menu Commands

The Brush menu lets the mapmaker convert a selected brush into a brush of a different shape. Most of the commands change the number of sides that the brush possesses. It will also change the brush to a single color. There are individual commands for three through nine sides. The brush will be given the number of sides indicated by the command (Plus top and bottom). The "top" facing is always relative to the view in which it is created. The sides are always at right angles to the view facing.

Poly-Sided Brushes

3 sided
(Shortcut: CTRL + 3)

4 sided
(Shortcut: CTRL + 4)

5 sided
(Shortcut: CTRL + 5)

6 sided
(Shortcut: CTRL + 6)

7 sided
(Shortcut: CTRL + 7)

8 sided
(Shortcut: CTRL + 8)

9 sided
(Shortcut: CTRL + 9)

Primitives

(Menu: Brush)

Primitives are pre-defined shapes other than squares.

Prism…

(Menu: Brush > Prism…)

This command opens a dialogue window. You can enter a number of sides in the field from 3 to 64. Select OK to execute the command.

Cone…

(Menu: Brush > Cone…)

This opens a pop-up dialogue window that lets you enter an arbitrary number of sides. The height of the cone is equal to the Z height of the brush. The cone is always made with its axis along the Z-axis. At first, the radius of the base of the cone appears to be unrelated, or at least unevenly related to the XY dimensions of the brush from which it is transformed. However, if you make a four sided brush, the point to point "diameter" of the resulting pyramid is equal to the longest XY dimension of the brush. Starting the same size brush as you used for the four-side cone, an eight-sided cone fits neatly within the volume of the four-sided cone, four of its sides congruent with the side planes of the four-sided cone. Do the same for a 16 sided cone, and the same again for both a 32 sided cone. However, the number of sides seems to max out at 56.

Sphere…

(Menu: Brush > Sphere…)

This opens a pop-up dialogue window that lets you enter an arbitrary number of sides. The maximum number of sides, which the editor seems willing to handle is 32.The diameter of the sphere, is roughly equal to the length of the longest XY side of the brush from which it is transformed. Attempts to create spheres with more faces than 32 may result in the brush disappearing and becoming infinitely tall. Use Undo to back up from this or hit backspace to discard the brush.

Moving Selected Brushes

Moving the Brush

These keys move the brush around the map in discrete map grid increments.

Move Selection Down

(Shortcut: Keypad MINUS)

Each press moves the selected map component down along the Z-axis by one grid position (at current grid setting). Not affected by current 2D-map view.

Move Selection Up

(Shortcut: Keypad PLUS)

Each press moves the selected map component up along the Z-axis by one grid position (at current grid setting). Not affected by current 2D-map view.

Nudging the Brush

These keys move the brush around the map in discrete map grid increments. The movement is in terms of the selected window, not in terms of XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Down

(Shortcut: ALT + DOWN ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "down" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Up

(Shortcut: ALT + UP ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "up" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Left

(Shortcut: ALT + LEFT ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "left" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Nudge Right

(Shortcut: ALT + RIGHT ARROW)

Each press moves the selected map component "right" the map view by one grid position (at the current grid setting). The movement is relative to the selected map view, not XYZ coordinates.

Snap Selection To Grid

(Shortcut: CTRL + G)

If you are using the map grid to keep brushes in alignment, this is a great tool. Rotated brushes and brushes that have had their vertices tweaked can have vertices that no longer lie on map grid intersections. This snaps the vertices to align with the grid. Be warned that snapping to large grids may be hazardous to the health of your brush (Snap and it's gone! But that's what UNDO is for).

Efficient Brush Building Techniques

Developed from a Quake 3 World online posting by Astrocreep

Compiling a map is a necessary evil. It takes time, it ties up your processor, and in the early phases of map construction, comes up with construction errors as often as not. Nothing you can do about that … except the time thing. It is possible, through more careful construction (or perhaps reconstruction) to significantly reduce both map and bot compile times, and reduce map and .bsp file sizes (the latter being important for downloads). The following is based on reports written by Astrocreep that documents his extensive work to streamline the compile on one of the id sample maps.

Brush Construction

It cannot be overstressed. If you want shorter compile times and small file sizes, efficient brush construction is "critical" in building your map. There is one rule that stands above all:

DO NOT OVERLAP BRUSHES AT ANYTIME.

No matter what you have to do to build your map, do not overlap brushes. Overlapping means that all or parts of two or more brushes share the same physical space. If brushes overlap, you can expect to add time to your compiling, and add size to your .map, .bsp and, .aas file sizes.

Efficient map construction means that all brushes butt up against each other, but never intersect.

Brush Counts

The sample map to be reworked on had 1,100 brushes in it. Without changing the layout or appearance of the map, Astrocreep was able to remove 110, or 10% of the total brush count.

Learn how to do more with a single brush than with multiple brushes. Evaluate your map after you complete initial construction phases on all or part of it. Pick a part of the map, look at the layout and ask yourself if you could do that with fewer brushes. In all likelihood, nine times out of 10, the answer will be yes.

If you make a structure out of three brushes (or whatever) and have the same floor height and ceiling height (in some cases heights can be different), look at it in the "top view". Can you draw a line from each vertex and not cross out side of those three brushes? If you can, then that grouping of three can become one brush instead of three.

Example: here's how the engine might look at this.

Using 3 square brushes, you have 18 faces (with a texture mapped on each side) to be calculated. This doesn't take into consideration the number of in-game triangle faces that those brushes may generate. Even if two-thirds of those faces are not being drawn, they are still being calculated by both the compile process and the bot navigation compile process.

As compared to:

Using one brush (filling the same area), you have only 6 faces to be calculated. Here, you are compiling only a third of the total geometry. It should go faster.

Efficient map construction means using fewer brushes to build the world.

Caulking

It is possible to even further reduce the number of brush faces being calculated by applying a special non-drawing, but "solid" texture called "caulk" (common/caulk) to surfaces that cannot be seen in the game. When seen in the editor, this texture is a bright garish pink. In the game, it does not draw at all. Apply caulk to any brush face that either doesn't form the "shell" of the world or can't be seen by a player during play. Doing this may not improve your map's frame rate, but since your are telling the compiler that as many as five of the six faces on a square brush don't have to be calculated, it should have some significant effects on compile times. As long as you do not have any brushes that "share" the same space, caulking brushes should help reduce compile times. However, if you use caulk on a brush that "shares" the space of another, your compile time and all file sizes will actually increase.

Astrocreep compiled the test level nearly 200 times, many of those times were when he moved just a single brush, just to see what would change. Caulking seems to help the -light phase of compiling the most.

Efficient map construction means caulking all unseen brush faces.

Miscellaneous Tips

Lights: You can further improve compile times by careful use of lights. Entity lights, especially LOTS of entity lights can reduce compile time. If you need to reduce compiling time even more look to this.

Clip brushes: Clip brushes that have more than two sides not touching another brush appear to increase compile times.

Hint brushes: Use these only if you need to resolve a vis problem. Using them can significantly add to compile times.

GtkRadiant Editor Manual: Selecting and deselecting

2026-04-04T11:12:00.000-05:00

The most basic interaction with the editor is selecting and deselecting objects and components. Everything else builds off from these commands.
The shape of objects can be changed by selecting and editing their component parts. The editor has three component-selection modes: Face (F); Edge (E); Vertex (V). These can be toggled on and off by using their shortcut key or toolbar button. Use ESC to exit a component-selection mode.

Selecting Objects and Components

Select single object or component

(SHIFT + LMB while mouse pointer is over desired unselected object/component)

In the Camera or Orthographic Windows, this toggles selection of the object/component that is “closest” to the viewer and the mouse pointer.
Use SHIFT+ALT to replace the current selection instead of toggling

Select multiple objects or components

(Hold SHIFT + LMB and drag a box over desired unselected objects/components)

In the Camera or Orthographic Windows, this toggles selection of all objects/components that touch the box.
Use SHIFT+ALT to replace the current selection instead of toggling

Cycle through stacked objects or components

(SHIFT+ALT+mouse1 while pointer is over map view)

Beginning with the component closest to the viewer, the user can cycle through vertically stacked components that are directly beneath the mouse pointer.

Deselect all selected objects/components

(Menu: Selection > Deselect)
(Shortcut: ESC)

All selected objects/components are deselected.

Copying, Pasting, Cloning and Deleting Objects

Copy

(Menu: Edit)
(CTRL+C)
This function copies all hi-lighted objects onto the clipboard. Contents of the clipboard may be pasted into the current open map file or into another open map file.

Paste

(Menu: Edit)
(CTRL+V)
The map information previously copied into the clipboard is pasted at the same XYZ coordinates as the original.

Duplicate

(Menu: Edit)
(Shortcut: SPACE)
Selected map components are immediately duplicated. The clone remains selected.

Delete

(Menu: Edit)
(Shortcut: BACKSPACE)
All selected map components are removed from the map.

Undo

(Menu: Edit)
(Shortcut: none)
Undo will undo any command that made a change to the map.

The number of levels of Undo can be set in Preferences. The default is 64, the maximum is 1024.

Working with Regions

Regions are an important tool to learn and use early on. Whether you isolate off a single brush, or half a map, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without this tool in other editing programs. The selections on the Region Menu allow the mapper to isolate, and work on, a subset of the map. There are innumerable benefits to working in a “regioned” area of the map. However, the following are the most important:

It allows you to work with a few objects at a time, without the distraction of the rest of the map.
When you want to perform CSG operations, regioning lets you isolate the pieces from the rest of the map, reducing risk of making unwanted cuts or splits.
Map regions can be compiled without having to compile the rest of the map. This can be an incredible timesaver. Instead of spending hours to compile an entire map just to check for leaks in new construction, or check the appearance of a room, or test a lighting effect, minutes can be spent processing just the room itself.

There are several ways to select a region, by a group selection, by XY map window dimensions (or the corresponding view in YZ and XZ), or by a few selected objects.

The commands for selecting regioned areas are found under the View > Region Menu heading.

View > Region Menu

Off

(Menu: Region > Off)

This returns you back to the full map. Brushes that were selected while in the regioned mode remain selected until ESC is pressed to unselect them.

Set XY

(Menu: Region > Set XY)

Any map components that are inside, or that are touched by the bounds of the XY Map window are converted into a region. The size or shape of the window does not matter. Nor does the degree of Zoom matter. This is an excellent way to select are larger subset of your map, such as a complex room or group of rooms. Any brushes selected before regioning the map remain selected.

Set Brush

(Menu: Region > Set Brush)

This functions in a similar manner to the group selection command, Select Touching. Any map components contained within the XYZ bounds of the brush, or touching the XYZ bounds of the brush will be regioned off. The selecting brush itself is discarded.

Set Selected Brushes

(Menu: Region > Set Selected Brushes)

If you need to work with just a few brushes, this is the option to choose. Hi-light the brushes to be worked upon then select this option. Only those brushes are moved to the region. The selected brushes are unselected when the region is created.

Compiling Notes: Sometimes, when compiling a regioned area, md3 map object models near the edge of the region can cause a “false leak” situation to occur. This can usually be corrected by adjusting the region size to include more of the map near the md3 map object model.

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GtkRadiant Editor Manual: Map Building Basics

2026-03-28T11:09:00.000-05:00

Once you have the editor installed and the preferences set, open the map and let’s get started.

Moving Around

There are a number of ways to move your point of view around in the map and camera windows. Some are easy to master. Others are a bit trickier. Find one that works for you and master it.

Moving in All Directions
All movement directions are given relative to directions in the XY map. When other map views are shown, movement is still calculated in terms of the XY view. Key press movement occurs in discrete increments.

Forward (in facing direction)
(Up Arrow Key) or (Keypad 8)

Turn left
(Left Arrow Key) or (Keypad 4)

Turn right
(Right Arrow Key) or (Keypad 6)

Backward
(Down Arrow Key) or (Keypad 2)

Move up
(D)

Move down
(C)

Look up
(A)

Look down
(Z)

Level View
(END)

Flying … through the Map
Rightclick in your camera window to start freelook mode. The mouse can be used to look around, up arrow is forward, down arrow is backwards, left and right are strafing. You can control the sensitivity of the camera controls in Edit > Preferences > Settings > Camera. Also you can enable inversed mouse mode here. Rightclick again to exit freelook mode.

Forward (in facing direction)
(Up Arrow Key)

Move left
(Right Arrow Key)

Move right
(Left Arrow Key)

Backward
(Down Arrow Key)

Zoom with a View
The zoom keys increase or decrease the visual scale of the map, letting you move in close to work with small details or move away to see the entire map at once. If Quad view is used (XY, YZ, and XZ views simultaneously), all three windows may zoomed at different scales.

Zoom in (DELETE)

Zoom out (INSERT)
You can also zoom in and out using the mousewheel.

Jump to Location
(CTRL + Middle Mouse Button)
Click on a 2D map and your point of view immediately moves to that location. In the 2D map windows, neither the facing, nor the “height” of the point of view changes.

Moving the Maps Around
A right-mouse-button click and drag on a 2D Map window will cause the map to be dragged, allowing you to easily reposition what is being viewed.

Basic Construction Tutorial

This is a simple, step-by-step guide to making your first room. Before attempting it, you may want to familiarize yourself with some of the Brush selecting and handling tools. A Quake III Arena aficionado who goes by the handle “The Dog!” posted this simple tutorial on a Quake III Arena on-line message board. It appears here with his permission. It will walk you through creating a new map file, making your first “brush,” adding a start spot and a light and then compiling the map.
Note: this tutorial has been modified to make it appropriate for GtkRadiant

The Dog!’s Ten Quick-n-Dirty steps to a SIMPLE room:

Create new map:
1. Click file, new map
Create a small hollow room (make a box and hollow it out):
1. Make a box. In the XY Top window, click/hold your left mouse button at coordinates 256,-256 (upper left) - then drag your mouse to the -256,256 (lower right) [you should see a red square appear in grid].
2. Make the box taller. Change to the 'XZ Side' view (Ctrl+Tab) and the 'QE' tool (Q). Click/hold your left mouse button above the upper edge of the box and drag that bar up to about 256. [you have just raised the height of the box]
3. Make it hollow. On your Toolbar below the Menu bar, locate the 'Make Hollow' Button (should be a red box with a dotted box inside of it )located under the M in Misc). Press that button. This breaks the box up into six pieces: four walls, a ceiling and a floor. [you should now see a hollow room in the texture view window]
Press Escape to deselect the box (you are finished with room/box for now).
Add a player starting point:
1. Bring up the Easy Entity Menu. With your pointer over the room in the XY Top window, right mouse click INSIDE the newly created room box to open up the easy entity menu.
2. Place a Start Spot. Select info, then select info_player_deathmatch. [you should see a small pink box appear - this is where you will start in this map anytime its loaded]
3. Is it in there? Make sure that your new starting point is 'really inside' the room that you have created.
  1. Click the xyz button on your toolbar so that you can toggle through each 'view' of that coordinate (XY top, XZ front, or YZ side).
  2. Watch the red box (info_player_deathmatch) as you toggle through each view to make sure the red box is inside room
  3. If there is a view it is not located inside - simply stop and drag it inside the box. (You can learn how to put it in optimal places later), until it is totally inside the room.
Press Escape to deselect the info_player_deathmatch item.
The box now turns into a solid pink, box outline.
Now add some textures:
1. Load up Textures. Open the texture menu and select the 'gothic_wall' texture directory.
2. Open Texture window. Press “T” to open the texture window. It should be full of wall textures.
3. That wall will do just fine. Select the brushes (Shift+LMB) you want to apply the texture to.
4. Pick a Texture, any Texture. in the 'texture view' window, left mouse click on any wall texture. A red border will now surround this texture. And presto, the walls are given that texture too.
Save your map.
The editor doesn’t like to work with “unnamed” map files. From the menu, select File > Save. Name the map “test1”. Always use lower case for your map names.
Add a light.
1. Bring up the Easy Entity Menu Again. With your pointer over the room in the XY Top window, right-mouse-click INSIDE the newly created room box to open up the easy entity menu.
2. Place a Light. Select info, and then select light. [You should see a small red box appear (smaller than the player start).]
3. Move it into place. Do the same procedure you did for the player start spot, making sure that this light is inside the room.
4. Deselect the light. Press ESC to deselect. It will become a pale-blue box.
Compile it.
In the BSP menu, select “Q3Map2: (test) BSP -meta, -vis -fast, -light -fast -super 2 -filter”. Wait patiently for the program to finish three phases of compile: bsp, vis, light.
Start ‘er up.
Start your Quake III Arena game. When the menu appears, hit the tilda key (~). On most American keyboards, this is in the upper left corner of the keyboard, below ESC.
1. Set your game to run the map. In the console, type "/sv_pure 0"
2. Enter the Devmap. In the console, type “\devmap test1” and then ENTER.
3. Play it for all it’s worth. The map should start and you will be standing in the center of your first room.

Now go make something more complicated on your own!

GtkRadiant Editor Manual: Entities and Assets

2026-03-21T11:07:00.000-05:00

What are Entities?

Quake III Arena divides map components into two classes: World Geometry and Entities. World Geometry represents the brushes (the Q3A term for the blocks of geometry used to build the physical game world) and patches (anything built with calculated curves). Entities are a broad category that not only includes simplistic editor representations of game play objects like weapons and ammo, but also includes diverse things like player start spots, and lights. Typically, they are displayed as brightly colored cubes (for those entities not constructed of brushes). The following are the general category of entity types. The actual entities and the rules and tips for their use are listed in Appendix B.

Brush entities. The “brush” is the basic building block of Quake engine games (including Quake, Quake 2, Quake III Arena, and a host of games using the engine licenses). In its most basic form, it’s a block, a solid rectangular volume defined by the coordinates of its corner vertices. A single brush or a linked grouping of brushes can be turned into a brush entity. Brush entities include the movers (see below), triggers, and func_statics.

Movers. Most moving objects or "Movers" are built from brushes. These include doors, lifts or “plats”, rotating objects, buttons, pendulums and trains (objects following pre-defined paths), and bobbers (platforms that are constantly in motion, up and down or side to side).

Triggers. Triggers are brush entities that cause an event to occur when a player’s bounding box moves inside the volume of the trigger. Triggers can be targeted on many other entities, including most movers and targets. Some triggers also have more specialized functions. There are triggers that cause injury, activate other entities, and push or teleport the players.

Targets. Targets are the entities that are activated to cause events to happen in Q3A, or to redirect activations, insert time delays, mark locations for team play, or act as destination points for teleportation or pushing.

Lights. These are point lights, disembodied (read as no visible source) sources of illumination. They ca n be targeted at info_nulls to create spotlights. They can be turned into colored lights. Usually, they are used to create unfocused fill light in a large area or placed near glowing surface textures to create an effect.

Info. This category includes non-team player spawn spots, targets for lights, and camera locators for intermission shots.

Items. With the exception of ammo and weapons, these are things in the map that the players grab to use during play. Included are armor, power ups like the quad, and one-use items like the personal teleporter.

Ammo. Locations for ammo boxes. Each weapon type in Q3A has its own unique ammo entity.

Weapons. Each of the weapons that can be picked up has an entity that can be placed.

Miscellaneous. This is another catchall category. It includes things like the misc_model which links into the models directory when placed, func_timers which are automated repeating triggers, shooters which fire one of three different weapon fire types, camera and portal surfaces, and path corners.

What are Assets?

Assets are the textures, sounds, and models that are used to flesh out the appearance and ambience of a game map. The editor is designed to use the assets stored in the pak0.pk3 file in your quake3 directory. Using GtkRadiant, the mapmaker can work with the assets in the Quake III Arena pak0.pk3 file or create new ones.

What are Textures?
The art appearing on the walls of maps are generally referred to as “textures.” Textures are created and stored as true color targa (.tga) or jpeg (.jpg) graphic files. The textures do not use a pre-defined color palette (as was the case with both Quake and Quake 2). Shader scripts can further combine textures and/or modify them in numerous ways. This document will briefly touch on shaders. For an in-depth treatment of shaders, refer to the accompanying Shader Manual.

What are Sounds?
Quake III Arena world sounds are played by target_speaker entities in the maps. They are stored as 22 khz, 16-bit, mono format .wav files.

What are Models?
The statues and lights in Q3A are models, just like the player characters. They are placed with the misc_model entity.

Creating New Assets

If you are familiar with the required tools, creating new assets for use in Quake III Arena is not particularly difficult. As a rule, you should create new directories for each map with names different from the names used by id. If you are making a map that will be called “H4x0r_D00M”, every directory containing new assets for that map should be titled H4x0r_D00M. This is to try and avoid asset directories overwriting each other as the editor and the game load in assets.

Creating Textures
Any combination of graphic programs and plug-ins that can output a 24 bit MS windows compatible Targa (.tga) or JPEG (.jpg) graphic file. If you plan to make textures that will have an alpha channel component (see glossary for definition), you must have a program that can create 32-bit art with that fourth channel.

Adobe PhotoShop has the ability to easily create alpha channels. Paint Shop Pro from JASC (v5.0+) can also make an alpha channel by creating a mask and naming it “alpha”.

Generally speaking, regardless of the program used, we found it best to do most of the art manipulation of the alpha channel in a separate layer or file and then paste it into the alpha channel before saving.

Setting up Files
The editor and the game program look for assets to be located along the paths set up in your project file. Start by creating a directory for you new textures by creating file folders to make a directory path as follows: quake3\baseq3\textures\[mymapname]

Running GtkRadiant for the first time will generate a text document called “shaderlist.txt” in the following path:

Quake3\baseq3\scripts\shaderlist.txt

GtkRadiant will use the contents of this script to grab your new textures for inclusion in the game. The contents of shaderlist.txt document will initially contain a listing of all the shader documents that were used by id Software to create Quake III Arena.

Since you will obviously want to create your own shaders, you need to put them in separate folders and create a new shader script for them.

If you plan to work on several maps at once and want to distinguish between textures used in each map, simply add additional map names here. For map and mod makers, we STRONGLY recommend that any new shader scripts created use the name of the map or mod in the shader file name. We know we can’t avoid every incident of files overwriting each other, but we certainly can advise you how to try.

Now, create another text file within the scripts directory and call it:

[mymapname].shader

This file will contain the shader scripts you write to modify a particular texture.

Rules
Follow these rules when creating textures for the Quake III Arena engine:

Save your textures into your new [map name] directories.
Don’t use the same names that id used for textures. It will cause problems.
For best quality, save textures without an alpha channel as 24 bit TARGA files. Using JPEG files can save memory space, but at the risk of losing detail and depth in the texture. JPEG files cannot be used for textures requiring an alpha channel.
Textures containing an alpha channel must be saved as 32 bit TARGA files.
If a new texture requires no further manipulation, it does not need a shader script.
Size textures in powers of 2. Example: 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64 pixels and so on.
Textures don’t need to be square. A 32x256-pixel texture is perfectly acceptable.

Guidelines
The following are some things the id designers learned about textures.

Create textures in “suites” built around one or two large textures with a number of much smaller supporting detail or accent textures.
Very large textures are possible, but some video cards compress textures larger than 256x256 pixels.
Textures are grouped alphabetically by name in the texture display window, so you may want to give suites of textures similar names.
Use the shader function qe3_editorimage to conserve memory when making multiple versions of a single texture (as in the case of a glowing texture with several light values).
Unless you are creating special effects or textures designed to draw the player’s eye to a specific spot, muted, middle value colors work best with the game engine.
Extremely busy (a lot of fussy detail) textures can break up or form visually unpleasant patterns when seen at distances.

Creating Sounds
Tools needed: Any sound editing program that can create and save out sound files as 22 khz, 16-bit, mono format .wav files.

Set up: The editor and the game program look for assets to be located along the paths set up in your project file. Start by creating a directory for you new textures by creating file folders to make a directory path as follows: quake3\baseq3\sounds\world\[map name]

Place your completed .wav files in the [map name] folder. You can access (and play) this file from within the editor (see instructions for Target_Speaker).

Creating Models
Map models need to be converted from their native file format into Quake III Arena’s native md3 file format. The modeling program, Milkshape 3D supports the file format needed to create map models for Quake III Arena (a link for this program is in the On-line Resources appendix). The compiling process merges the models into the bsp file. If you want other mappers to be able to use your models, you will need to include the md3 and supporting texture files within your pk3.

Making the .pk3 File

When you go to distribute your creation to the gaming world, you need to put your newly created map, textures, bot area files, and shader documents into an archive format called a “pk3” file. You do not need to include the shaderlist.txt file, since only the GtkRadiant editor uses that. Start by creating folders/directories in your root drive (C: for most of us). The game assumes that these folders are placed in the baseq3 directory, so you need to write your path names accordingly. You will need to keep the paths to the various assets the same as they are for the rest of the assets in the game. So your paths should be something like this:

Move or copy all your new game assets in their folders.

We used an archiving program call Winzip to make the pk3 file. Get Winzip from WinZip.com

NOTE: Do not include or redistribute any game assets that are not your own (at least without permission). This specifically refers to id-copyrighted material that came with the original game or subsequent id released patches.

Make a zip archive called “map-mymapname.zip”

If you plan on distributing other resources separately, we strongly recommend the following naming conventions:

md3-xxx.pk3
User Model with original associated skin files and sound files

bot-xxx.pk3
User bot files. May contain additional model or skin and texture files

skin-xxx.pk3
User skin with associated skin and texture files

map-xxx.pk3
User created map(s) and supporting files (arena, texture, sound, music)

tex-xxx.pk3
User texture and shader files

snd-xxx.pk3
Sounds only

mus-xxx.pk3
Music only

pfb-xxx.pk3
Map prefabs

(special thanks to Rogue13 of http://www.polycount.com for this naming convention)

When you go to add a resource to the archive, click on options to “Recurse Folders” and “Save Extra Folder Info”

Zip all the required assets into a zip archive file (Quake III Arena DOES support compressed pk3 files).

Rename the zip archive to mymapname.pk3

Put it where the Quake III Arena community can find it.

My .pk3 File is Huge! No One is downloading it!
Large pak files are daunting as downloads. And as specified by the Quake III Arena End User License Agreement, that is the only way those new game assets may be distributed. Be kind and remember that not everyone has access to DSL, ADSL, ISDN, Satellite, Cable Modem or other high speed internet connections. Before packing up your resources, you may want to look into some dieting tricks to make it smaller.

First, resave all your new non-alpha channel textures in JPG format. That will give you some significant art size savings.
Streamline your map’s art package. Id designers had to go on a rip ‘n strip rampage through their levels to cut down on unique texture usage. Do you really need all that additional art? Can you substitute more of the original Q3A art, or get more duty out of some of your new work?
Recompile your area files with the optomize switch. That will reduce their size. That's why it's in there as a command. This is also one of the biggest savings that you can make.
Turn up the level of compression when archiving into the pk3 file.
Compress again when zipping up the files.
Take a SERIOUS look at any new sound resources you've created. Sounds, especially long sounds can be HUGE! Can short sounds be cleverly used to replace longer sounds in your map? The id designers did a bunch of that for Q3A. Very short sounds, played off sync against each other were made to sound like longer, more expensive sound files.

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GtkRadiant Editor Manual: Installation & Set Up

2026-03-14T11:04:00.000-05:00

Open the installer package and follow the instructions. You may install GtkRadiant anywhere you choose.
Run GtkRadiant from the shortcut provided and choose a game to edit from the game-selection dialog.

Setting up Paths

Set the path to the engine in Edit > Preferences > Settings > Paths.

Improving Performance

If you find that the editor is sluggish on your system, try some or all of the following tweaks:

Upgrade to the latest drivers for your opengl graphics hardware.
Enable far-clip-plane in Edit > Preferences > Settings > Camera. This reduces the number of game components in view, by shortening the distance that the editor can "see." Use Ctrl+']' to set the distance to 13 (a good number in this case).
If you have a very old system, reduce the Texture Render Mode in Edit > Preferences > Display > Textures. Select an option earlier on the list than your current setting. We recommend not going below Nearest MipMap first. This reduces the amount of blending and filtering in the textures as they are seen in the Camera window, but still lets you see what the textures look like in a relatively undistorted manner. The Nearest setting will further improve performance, but textures may be distorted when seen in perspective.
In Edit > Preferences > Settings > Orthographic, disable “Update views on camera move.” This will stop the 2D-map window(s) from being redrawn when the camera position changes.
Reduce the Texture Quality in Edit > Preferences > Display > Textures.
Increase the Patch Subdivide Threshold in Edit > Preferences > Display > Patches.
Further performance can be gained by filtering curves with View > Filter > Patches.

Setting up Preferences

To set up your editing preferences, open the Edit menu and select Preferences. Use preferences to set a variety of options and editor behavior based on your personal preferences.

Globals

Log The Console To radiant.log - This will cause GtkRadiant to create a log file of all output from the GtkRadiant console. This can cause the editor to slow down, and is normally used for debugging purposes.

Game Settings / Select The Game
Choose a game configuration to use from the list. GtkRadiant must be restarted before the configuration will take effect.
GtkRadiant now stores preferences on a per game basis. Any settings for a given game are stored for that game mode only.

Interface

Start on Primary Monitor - Work-around for opengl problems with certain multi-monitor opengl implementations.
Disable System Menu on popup windows - Work-around for window-manager problems on multi-monitor systems.
Native File-Chooser - Use the standard windows file-chooser instead of the GTK+ file-chooser.
Default Text-Editor - Use the program associated with *.txt file-type when editing text-files, instead of the built-in text-editor.
Layout
- Layout - Choose from four layout styles.
  - Split Window View - This is the QeRadiant default view. The Camera, XY Map, Z-axis Scale, Texture, and Console windows are constantly displayed. While the arrangement of the windows cannot be changed, their size is adjustable by pulling the window border splitters. The Entity and Group windows share a common pop-up window. This arrangement is one that may work particularly well for mappers using smaller monitors and slower computers.
  - Floating Window View - This is the view used by id designers. The position, arrangement, and size of the windows are all adjustable. The windows initially come up on top of one another (a known bug), but once positioned, this view offers the greatest flexibility. The Camera, XY Map, Z-axis Scale, and a shared Entity/Texture/Console/Group window are all displayed simultaneously. Changing the size of one window does not automatically affect the others (it can lay atop the others). Additional map layout views can be cycled from menu commands or bound keys. This view only works well if you have a 20+-inch monitor.
    Make it Big! In floating windows mode (ONLY), you can double-click on any window’s Title Bar to enlarge the contents of the window to fill the screen. Double clicking on it again reduces it back to normal size.
  - Quad View - The display window is split into four equal-sized windows: Camera, XY Map, YZ Map, and XZ Map. This is similar to other editors and offers four-way viewing. You see the map components in three views simultaneously. The size of the windows (relative to each other) can be adjusted, by pulling the splitters. The combined Entity/Texture/Console/Group window is brought into view as a single, floating window that lays over the others. The Z-axis window is not used in this view. This is a popular editing configuration, but it has significant performance issues. The editor is drawing all the 2D map components three times (plus maintaining a camera view). Some mappers have notice significant performance slow-downs when working with curves. Using the Quad view is only recommended for mappers with more powerful computers.
  - Reverse Split Window View - Essentially the same as the Split Window view, except that the layout is flipped left to right.
- Detachable Menus - allow the menus to be detached and moved around.
- Patch Toolbar - Show additional patch-specific toolbar buttons.
- Patch Toolbar - Show plugin-specific toolbar.
Mouse
- Mouse Type: 2 Button / 3 Button - Use 2 button mode or 3 button mode. Each mode is different in some ways. The hot keys and key combinations are generally different for each mode.
- Right Button Activates Context Menu - If checked, this will create a menu where ever you click in the 2D View with a list of the entities you can select and place.

Display

Textures

Texture Quality - This will increase or decrease the texture quality displayed in the texture window and 3D View.
Texture Gamma - Lower gamma values will brighten the textures. It is recommended to use the OS display settings to adjust gamma for your graphics card instead.
Texture Render Mode - Changes the filtering quality when rendering textured polygons in the OpenGL views.
Hardware Texture Compression - Choose the texture-compression system to use, reduces texture memory usage.

Patches

Patch Subdivide Threshold - Set the minimum curvature value at which to stop subdividing a patch for rendering. If set to low it can slow down the editor. If set very high it will look blocky. Essentially it works like the Quake3 r_subdivisions option.

Entities

Show Light Radii - Enables rendering of light-radii around light entities.

Settings

Undo

Undo Queue Size - Set how many undos you can do. This does require memory so do not set it too high if you do not have alot of memory.

Paths

Engine Path - Set the path to the engine for the game being edited.

Surface Inspector

Surface Inspector Increments Match Grid - Automatically fill in the Surface Inspector's shift 'step' values from the current grid setting.

Camera

Movement Speed - This will increase or decrease the movement of forward, back, and strafing speed in the 3d view.
Rotation Speed - This will increase or decrease the turning speed in the 3D View.
Invert Mouse Vertical Axis - This will reverse the mouse controls in freelook mode.
Discrete Movement - If checked, this causes the view in the 3d view to move one step at a time. If unchecked the movement is smoother.
Enable Far-Clip Plane - sets the far-clip plane to be close to the camera. Improves rendering speed by reducing the amount of objects to be drawn.
Render Mode - Choose the camera rendering mode from Textured, Flatshade or Wireframe.

Orthographic

Solid Selection Boxes - This will make anything selected draw with solid lines rather then the old style of dashed boxes. This can speed up rendering on Nvidia TNT cards.
Display Size Info - If this is checked on, it will display the size information of any object selected.
Chase Mouse During Drags - Turning this on causes the view to chase the mouse if you drag something off the edge.
Update Views On Camera Move - When interacting with the camera (which you will do a lot), turning this off will NOT update the camera icon location in the Map windows automatically. This can help with speed but prevents you from seeing exactly where the camera icon is positioned.

Clipper

Clipper Tool Uses Caulk - When using the clipper tool, the faces that are created from the clip will add a caulk texture to the brush.

GtkRadiant Editor Manual: Introduction & Minimum System Requirements

2026-03-07T10:00:00.000-06:00

Preface

The authors would like to thank the many supporters of Quake Engine editing who made this work possible. Several sections in the manual are based on material written by dedicated fans. Others were "corrected" by fans who found undiscovered bugs in both the editor and game code. Where possible, we have noted the contributors in the sections they helped produce.

Paul Jaquays
Robert A. Duffy

GtkRadiant note: This version of the manual has been adapted for GtkRadiant from the original Q3Radiant manual.

Introduction

Part of the fun of games like Quake III Arena is the ability to add to your own ideas to a favorite game and then have others play and enjoy them. While the technical skills needed to create a 3D graphic engine is beyond many game fans, the skills and equipment necessary to make modifications to the game are not. It has become the custom of many game developers to share their development tools with the public. This allows fans make their own game content. The GtkRadiant editor is based on the software used by the designers at id to create the arenas in Quake III Arena. In fact, it's an improvement on that editor, since it contains features that have been added since the game was completed. If you are familiar with GtkRadiant's major ancestor, the QERadiant editor for Quake 2, then a good share of what's in this manual will be old hat to you. Whether you are a veteran mapmaker or new to the art of making game arenas, we think you will find some indispensible information in this manual.

Now comes the caveat.

This manual will tell you how to use the tools, but not necessarily, how to make what you have in mind. Many fine on-line tutorial and resource sites will be listed at the end of the document.

Minimum System Requirements

The designers at id used Q3Radiant on some heavy-duty computing equipment to make their game maps. Despite the fact that Quake III Arena runs under several different operating systems, not every computer that can run Quake III Arena will be able to run the GtkRadiant editor.
GtkRadiant runs on MS Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP, MacOSX and Linux. The editor requires an Open GL 1.1 compliant 3D graphics acceleration card (it is expected that all cards capable of running Quake III Arena will be able to handle editor functions … although some may handle it better). A 3-button mouse gives the best performance.

Minimum System

The minimum system requirements generally require that preferences such as texture quality and screen resolution be set to absolute minimums. The editor will run on the systems described, but speed of operation and visual quality will probably be less than satisfactory. It should also be noted that you would be limited to working on relatively small maps with limited texture and model usage.

Processor:
P233mmx

RAM:
64 meg

Video Card:
4 Meg, software Open GL-compliant

Screen Resolution:
1024 x 768

Pointing Device:
Two-button mouse*

Recommended System

The more powerful the machine, the better and usually faster the development experience. This will become especially true when you get to the point of compiling your maps (turning them from editor code into game code). It should come as no surprise that, more powerful machines will crunch the numbers faster when compiling a map.

Processor:
P2450 (or better)

RAM:
128 meg**

Video Card:
Open GL accelerated video card

Screen Resolution:
1280 x 1024

Pointing Device:
Two-button mouse*

* This will work, but not well. A three-button mouse, even on a minimal system is highly preferred.
** id designers often found it convenient to work with several maps open at once. The recommended 128 Meg of RAM may not be enough to accommodate this.

What Doesn't Work (well) - and How to fix it

The key to a satisfactory editing experience is whether your video card supports the demands of the editor. The original id editor was designed for a workstation card called the Realizm, which ran on Intergraph workstations in a WinNT environment. Robert Duffy expanded this to include the Win9x operating systems and a number of other video cards. But not all video cards support the editor equally well.

The G200 and G400 require updated drivers from Matrox
The 3dfx Voodoo 3000 chipset requires a driver upgrade in order for the map grids to show.
If the map grids don't appear when using some ATI chip sets, try turning the settings on you desktop up to 32 bit (true color).
Nvidia TNT and GeFORCE have slowdown issues when the user selects curve patches. While this is a driver issue, it can be addressed by checking the "Solid selection boxes" feature under preferences.

Open Arena Gamer’s Manual: Configure GTK Radiant under Linux.

2026-02-28T09:57:00.000-06:00

Ubuntu

This guide works also on Ubuntu,Kubuntu and Xubuntu. Because they are based on Debian. Also other Debian based distros works.

Subversion

To download projects from Subversion/svn, you will need to have your distribution's subversion package(s) installed. This varies from distro to distro. The following command should do the job in Debian (logged in as root):

aptitude install subversion

GtkRadiant

N/A-----------

environment:

- gcc >= version 3.1 (preferably)

- scons >= 0.96 (radiant is built with scons rather than make)

- python >= 2.3.0, (scons requires python, some build steps use python)

- svn >= 1.1 (some build steps use svn)

dependencies:

- gtk+ >= 2.4.0 (requires glib, atk, pango, iconv, etc)

- gtkglext >= 1.0.0 (requires opengl)

- libxml2 >= 2.0.0

- zlib >= 1.2.0 (for archivezip module)

- libpng >= 1.2.0 (for imagepng module)

- libmhash = 0.9.0 (for q3map2)

The following command should install the dependencies, if I missed one, please let me know, or add it. You'll need root privileges.

aptitude install build-essential scons python libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-common libgtk2.0-bin libgtk2.0-dev libgtkglext1 libgtkglext1-dev libxml2 libxml2-dev libpango1.0-0 libpango1.0-common libpango1.0-dev libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev libpng12-0 libpng12-dev libmhash2 libmhash-dev

To check GtkRadiant out of ID's svn repository, issue the following commands from whichever directory you'd like to install it (preferably your user's home directory), it will create it's own GtkRadiant directory. It's probably better to use a normal user rather than root for this.

svn checkout https://zerowing.idsoftware.com/svn/radiant/GtkRadiant/branches/1.5/ ./GtkRadiant
svn checkout https://zerowing.idsoftware.com/svn/radiant.gamepacks/Q3Pack/trunk/ ./GtkRadiant/games/Q3Pack
svn checkout https://zerowing.idsoftware.com/svn/radiant.gamepacks/Q3Rad_Manual/trunk/ ./GtkRadiant/install/Q3Rad_Manual

build:

If you have a single-core machine, execute the following command in the directory containing SConscript:

scons SETUP=0

If you have an SMP or multiprocessing machine, you can use the -j parameter to split the compile in to multiple jobs. The recommended setting is to use the number of processors or cores, plus one. For example, on my dual-core machines I use:

scons -j3 SETUP=0

install:

Return to the directory you were in before building and execute the following command:

python ./GtkRadiant/install.py

note - this script should be run after each time you update from svn

Open Arena

The following command will install the OpenArena packages (logged in as root):

aptitude install openarena openarena-data openarena-server

The dedicated server package is optional, but I included it anyway because it's pretty small.

Configuration

The Debian packages for OpenArena complicate things slightly because they keep the game libraries and binaries in different locations. Fortunately, we can use a strategically placed symlink to fool GtkRadiant in to thinking they are all together. Enter this as root.

ln -s /usr/share/games/openarena/baseoa /usr/games/baseoa

When GtkRadiant prompts us later, we will point it to /usr/games as the game directory.

Next, we need to get the mapping definitions for OpenArena in to our GTKRadiant installation(as normal user):

svn checkout http://openarena.ws/svn/tools/radiant1_5/ ./GtkRadiant/install

Try starting GtkRadiant as a normal user:

./GtkRadiant/install/radiant.x86

If you are prompted to enter the location of OpenArena, enter: /usr/games/

If upon attempting to start GtkRadiant, you get errors regarding shaders not being found, try the following (as root):

mkdir /usr/games/baseoa/scripts
cp ./GtkRadiant/install/oa.game/baseoa/default_shaderlist.txt /usr/games/baseoa/scripts/shaderlist.txt

If you get "map not found" errors when attempting to load your map, enter "set sv_pure 0" in the Open Arena console.

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Open Arena Gamer’s Manual: OpenArena Mapping Manual (WIP)

2026-02-21T09:53:00.000-06:00

This is a work in progress where all the info scattered around the web is collected, resumed and stored in a convenient place. Only the completed pages wil be shown. For the rest of the pages, check the Mapping manual page.

Pre-mapping stage: What makes a good map, the limits of the IdTech3 engine, map planning, the editor's grid, beta testing.
Lighting: Theory about lighting, how it works into OA (the LIGHT stage), how it's added to the maps, the "light" entity.
- Advanced lighting: Practical examples of lighting and where to better place it.
Weapon and item placement: How and where to place weapons, ammopacks and items.
Triggers and movers: Explanation of what the func_*, misc_*, path_*, shooter_*, target_* and trigger_* entities do.
- Creating dynamic features: Examples of what can be done with these entities, from teleporters to platforms to hazards.
Mapmodels: What are mapmodels, the misc_model entity, the .ase format, how to create .ase mapmodels, other supported formats.
Optimization and troubleshooting: How to optimize a map for better performance.
- Hint brushes: The VIS stage, the hint brushes, and how and where to use them.
- Bot play: How BSPC works, the info_camp and item_botroam entities, clusterportals, how to optimize a map for good botplay.
Appendix A: Glossary of terms: What some mapping terms mean.
Appendix C: Modelling a map: How to create a map from models.
Appendix E2: Model sets: OpenArena's default model sets in both 0.8.8 and SVN versions.

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Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS (Noble Numbat) was officially released

2026-02-14T13:37:38.722-06:00

Florent 'Skia' Jacquet has announced an update to Ubuntu's 24.04 LTS branch. The new version, 24.04.4, continues the latest long-term support branch of the distribution while updating hardware support and applying security patches

Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS (Noble Numbat) was officially released on February 12, 2026.

As a "point release," it doesn't fundamentally change the operating system but acts as a major refresh. It bundles all security patches and bug fixes released since the original launch in April 2024 into a single update, making it the new standard for fresh installations.

Key Changes & Features

The most significant part of this update is the Hardware Enablement (HWE) stack, which pulls newer technology from the interim Ubuntu 25.10 release:

Linux Kernel 6.17: Provides improved support for newer CPUs, Wi-Fi 7 stability, and power management for Intel and AMD chips.
Mesa 25.2.x Graphics Drivers: A big jump for gamers, offering better performance for Vulkan and OpenGL, plus improved support for RDNA 4 and NVIDIA (via the NVK driver).
Wayland Protocols 1.45: Updates to the display server protocols, adding support for features like transparency blur and better pointer control in games.
Updated Apps: Includes the latest stable versions of core software like LibreOffice 25.8, Firefox, and Snapd 2.73.

How to Get the Update

User Type
Action Required

Existing 24.04 Users
No need to reinstall. Just run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade. The HWE stack usually arrives automatically via standard updates.

Ubuntu 22.04 Users
You should now see an "Upgrade available" notification in the Update Manager to move directly to 24.04.4.

New Installations
Download the 24.04.4 ISO from the official Ubuntu website. This will save you from downloading gigabytes of updates after installing.

Support Lifecycle

Ubuntu 24.04 is a Long-Term Support (LTS) release. This means it will receive standard security updates until April 2029, and up to 12 years of support if you are using Ubuntu Pro.

Open Arena Gamer’s Manual: Starting a Game Server.

2026-02-14T09:47:00.000-06:00

Here just a couple of examples on few systems:

Execute the OpenArena dedicated server binary, called openarena_dedin Fedora. If you have a "headless" system which you SSH to, you might want to use a command like:

nohup openarena_ded [Q3-similar options] > openarena.log &

The nohup command will fork the rest of the command off and it will persist after you logout. The output will be dumped to "openarena.log" wherever you execute the command. Note you can also use the '<' to issue commands from a file. The ampersand will put it to the background.

Some server scripts to use with 'exec' command would be useful here.

To start a gameserver on a mac type:

cd /Applications/OpenArena.app/Contents/MacOS/

nohup ./ioquake3.ub +set dedicated 2 +exec server.cfg +map aggressor

OpenArena at LAN-Party

For an easy setup one player (preferably the one with the fastest computer) should run the server:

Multiplayer
"Create"
choose a game type and a map
open slots for other players
start the game by pressing the "fight"-button

Now the other players should start "Multiplayer" and find the new server under "local".

Making the game less violent

Type this in the console (pull it down with Shift+Esc or ` ):

/com_blood 0

/cg_gibs 0

In-game help

If you wish, you can install an optional ingame manual. The main help is this wiki site, but you may find useful also a simple help available directly inside the game, after you install it.

You can download if from here (mirror - v 018, 29-oct-2010, based upon OA 0.8.1). The downloaded file should be named autoexec.cfg and placed in your /openarena/baseoa/ folder (under your installation folder, or under your configuration folder, where q3config.cfg is stored too).
Note: if you are already using an autoexec.cfg file to execute your custom settings (not simply an earlier version of the guide, that could be simply overwritten instead), you have two options: 1) copy-paste the content of the guide inside it, merging the guide and your custom settings in one file... or 2) name the guide differently (like guide.cfg) and place an additional line (exec guide.cfg) at the end of your current autoexec.cfg file, to automatically load the new file, too.

You can then use the manual in-game by opening the command console (shift+escape), and typing in the following command: /help and then press enter. A list of commands to use for the manual will appear. If you are unsure how to use this, use the following command: /helpguide and then press enter again (you should after every command).

If you are having any trouble using this (it's not that easy to use for people new to consoles) feel free to ask help on the forum!

If you want to propose your suggestions or report errors in that in-game manual, you can use the thread on the forum about it.

Hints

Here you can find some things you may check before entering the arena the first times:

When you play the game for the first times, you may have to set ("bind") some keys for specific commands. It is advisable to go to Setup --> Controls menu and there, in the "Look" section, set your favourite mouse speed (e.g. you may find useful to set it a bit faster than the default). In the "Misc" section, set the "Use item" key (usually "ENTER", but you may want one next to the A-S-D-W keys usually used for movement). In the "Misc" section, set the key for the "gesture" (your character will perform some sort of "Urrah!" movement: useless but nice) and, more important, one for the "chat-team" feature (this one is useful during team-based gametypes: only your team-mates will see the text you will write after pressing this button, very useful to talk about tactics). Remember that you can use the GUI to bind up to two keys to a single function. It is advisable to quickly check everything in the "Controls" menu, to learn/set useful commands, like how to jump and to use "zoom".
Choosing your favorite "autoswitch weapons" mode from Setup --> Controls --> Shoot menu is probably a good idea. Console command is \cg_autoswitch <number>. With autoswitch set to 1, each time you pick up a weapon (even if you already have it), it will select it. Since there is a time needed to change weapon, doing it in the wrong moment (during a gunfight) may be a problem for you: you may prefer to switch weapons when you really want to do it (by default, you can do it using your mouse wheel). OpenArena 0.8.8 added some new autoswitch modes, but they will still work as "always autoswitch" while using old mods. Default value is now 2 -autoswitch if "new"- (it used to be 1, "always"), and often players like 0 (no autoswitch). Read Autoswitch weapons for more info.
Go to Setup --> Game Options and enable "Unlag hitscan". This way, the game will compensate your "lag" for hitscan weapons (those, like machinegun and railgun, that immediately hit the target when you press the button, without "flying" in the air). For those weapons, you will not have to anticipate the enemy's movements according to your ping: if you are correctly targeting him when you shoot, you will hit him, even if in reality you are watching the position where he was 0,3 seconds ago and he's there no more. This is useful for online gaming. Enabling or disabling this option trhough the GUI will change the value of at least two variables: cg_delag and g_delaghitscan (1=enabled): the first one is the client-side variable, the second one is the server-side variable.
You can go to Setup --> Game Options and enable "Automatic downloading". This way, if the server you are connecting to has its option enabled, it will send to you possible additional files that you don't have but you need to play on it. It will automatically download new maps or mods, if needed. For the place where autodownloaded data is stored, read here.
You can go to Setup --> System --> Graphics and adjust these options according to your system's "power" (e.g. you may want to select a higher resolution). If "flares" and "bloom" distract you from the game (especially flares), you can disable them. You can change Brightness from Setup --> System --> Display. You can check your frame-rate enabling \cg_drawFPS 1 from command console. Setting the texture detail to the maximum is advisable to get the best looking of the game. See also here and here. When you change something in "Setup -> System -> Graphics" menu, remember to confirm changes by clicking "accept" button in lower right corner.
There are some options that can enable useful on-screen info, like your current speed (and remember that you can gain extra speed using the "strafe jump" technique, continuously jumping again while landing from the previous jump) while holding forward key plus a strafe (lateral movement) key - usually, "a" or "d" keys - and moving the mouse), or your team-mates health and position (this one is "draw team overlay" in "game options" menu). Check the Manual/Graphic options page.
You can set your own nickname from the Setup --> Player settings menu. If you wish you can also use OpenArena Name Changer, a nice external tool, to do that. About "player settings" menu: it can be used to select your "model" (your character); setting "handicap" different from "none" would make you weaker.
It is advisable to set the correct "data rate" from Setup --> System --> Networking menu (it helps you to get the best experience in multiplayer mode). Nowadays, most users have fast connections and thus have to select "LAN/Cable/xDSL", but if you have an old 56k or ISDN modem, select the corresponding value.
Two very useful buttons, when you are in the game: "ESC" key opens the in-game menu, and "TAB" key shows score table (TAB has to be held). For the button to open the command console, instead, please read its own page.
When you see that someone starts a voting procedure (e.g. to change map), you can usually vote "yes" by pressing F1 key and "no" by pressing F2 key. It is possible to ask for a vote using the "/callvote" command or from the ESC menu.
You can install OpenAL in your system to get a more realistic 3D audio environment. It is not included with the game. Installing OpenAL is not necessary in order to play (you can live happy without it), but it is needed if you want to use the built-in Voice chat feature (and more, using it avoids a problem of sound disappearing when launching a mod, however other workarounds can be used).

Open Arena Gamer’s Manual: Installing.

2026-02-07T09:44:00.000-06:00

System Requirements

Minimum
- Pentium II 233MHz / AMD K6-2 300MHz or equally powerful processor
- 64MB of system memory
- OpenGL supported video card with 16MB of video memory. (Voodoo Banshee, TNT and up)
- 300MB of hard drive space

In theory, the game can run on any Pentium-class processor with a Voodoo2, but don't expect much performance over 20fps and expect loading time to be over a minute.

You must have accelerated drivers for your video card installed for best results. This may require using the not-entirely-open-source NVIDIA drivers for NVIDIA cards. This also means that some video cards may not work even if they meet the above-stated minimum requirements.

IMPORTANT: Various Linux repositories contain OpenArena packages. Such repositories are run by third-party, so their OA installs may have some small differences from the official packages. Sometimes, these differences may cause some problems. To avoid such problems, you may prefer to manually download an official OpenArena package from http://www.openarena.ws or https://lei-lei.neocities.org/openarena/, as explained below. It is the recommended way. If you wish to try with Linux repositories packages anyway, you can read the distro-related sections below.

Installation (ZIP)

Make sure you have the prerequisite libraries. They may include:

SDL
openal
curl
libvorbis

Get the official package of the game from one of the download mirrors, then extract all the contents of the zip.

The following versions are available:

*.i386 are for 32-bit PC processors. (386, 486, 586 and 686)
*.x86_64 are for 64-bit PC processors, such as AMD Athlon64 processors.

For a typical desktop or laptop PC, the following will work:

/usr/local/openarena/openarena-0.8.1/openarena.i386

The archives' contents itself are the game. They simply need to be extracted and run.

You can create a launcher on your desktop for convenience.

Ubuntu

Be aware that these packages may be outdated, regarding Ubuntu's release calendar and OA's release calendar.

Open the Software Center, go to the Games category, go to the Arcade subcategory and choose OpenArena.

Alternatively...

Open a console and write sudo apt-get install openarena.

In both, after installing...

Select the OpenArena entry, from the Applications menu, under Games.

If you have problems with it running, see the FAQ/Troubleshooting page.

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OpenArena Gamer's Manual: Skirmish

2026-01-31T16:18:00.000-06:00

"Skirmish" mode is similar to the creation of a multiplayer server (not "dedicated"), but is intended to be played locally.

Skirmish is what allows you to easily create custom matches: from the main menu, select "Single player", then the "Skirmish" button in the lower part of the screen. Select the gametype you wish, then the map you wish, and click "Next". Customize the bot list and the options like the fraglimit and the timelimit (when the match will end), then click "Fight" to begin the match.

Skirmish is meant to launch matches in any gametype, except for the single player deathmatch (g_gametype 2). You can use it to start your custom "Free For All" (aka Deathmatch), "Capture the Flag", "Elimination" matches, etc.

Unlike the multiplayer mode, usually the Skirmish match creation interface will automatically propose you some bots to be added to the match. You can anyway change them, add more or remove some of them, even after the match start.

You are not limited in the maps already unlocked in single player deathmatch mode: in skirmish mode you can play in any map you wish, even third-party maps that you will add to the game later (notice: some maps may not be correctly shown in the menu cause of missing scripts: in that case you may need to use the command console to launch them).

Medals obtained while playing in Skirmish mode are not stored.