The wrapper script used for Quake III Arena in Debian accepts these options:
-h, --help
Display a short help summary
-q, --quiet
Disable all console output
--demo Run the demo version, even if the full game is installed
--debugger=DEBUGGER
Prepend a debugger or other prefix (such as strace) to the engine command line
--print-backtrace
Use gdb(1) to get a backtrace if the engine crashes (the gdb package must be installed)
Additionally, if quake3 is run via a symbolic link whose name is quake3-team-arena, it will play the
expansion pack, QuakeIIITeamArena. This requires that additional data files are installed. Similarly,
a symbolic link named quake3-demo is equivalent to the --demo option.
Any console command can also be prefixed with + and used as a command-line option (press Shift+Esc to
access the in-game console), including:
+setoptionvalue
Set an option (see below for some options)
+connectserver[:port]
Connect to a server
Options that can be set with +set (note that this is not a full list!) include:
cg_drawFPS <bool>
cg_drawTeamOverlay <bool>
cg_fov <value>
cg_lagometer <bool>
cg_shadows <bool>
cg_thirdPerson <bool>
cg_thirdPersonAngle <value>
cg_thirdPersonRange <value>
cg_zoomfov <value>
cl_mouseAccel <bool>
com_blood <bool>
com_hunkMegs <value>
com_maxfps <value>
com_soundMegs <value>
com_zoneMegs <value>
fs_basepath <string>
fs_game <string>
r_allowExtensions <bool>
r_allowSoftwareGL <bool>
r_customheight <value>
(Requires +set r_mode -1)
r_customwidth <value>
(Requires +set r_mode -1)
r_dynamiclight <bool>
r_ext_compress_textures <bool>
r_ext_compressed_textures <bool>
r_fullscreen <bool>
r_ignoreGLErrors <bool>
r_mode <value>