This is mainly another thing I want to research myself before anyone else takes their time looking at it, so here is where I'm at with it right now. I'll probably clean this issue up and delete paragraphs like this one that are just me thinking aloud about the problem.
When you add ioquake3 to Steam (on Windows 11, x64) as a "non-steam game" via the plus button at the bottom right, ioquake3 can't find the renderer DLLs despite them being right next to the ioquake3 binary.
The log file indicates that things might be a little wonky:
ioq3 1.36_g4b605f6 win_mingw64-x86_64 Jan 14 2026
SSE instruction set enabled
----- FS_Startup -----
We are looking in the current search path:
C:\Users\zjs\AppData\Roaming\Quake3\baseq3
C:\baseq3
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3\pak8.pk3 (9 files)
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3\pak7.pk3 (4 files)
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3\pak6.pk3 (64 files)
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3\pak5.pk3 (7 files)
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3\pak4.pk3 (272 files)
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3\pak3.pk3 (4 files)
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3\pak2.pk3 (148 files)
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3\pak1.pk3 (26 files)
c:/program files (x86)/steam\SteamApps\common\Quake 3 Arena\baseq3\pak0.pk3 (3539 files)
C:\Program Files\ModifiableWindowsApps\Quake 3\EN\baseq3
----------------------
4073 files in pk3 files
execing default.cfg
execing q3config.cfg
com_zoneMegs will be changed upon restarting.
couldn't exec autoexec.cfg
Hunk_Clear: reset the hunk ok
----- Client Initialization -----
----- Initializing Renderer ----
Trying to load "renderer_opengl2.dll" from "C:"...
Loading "renderer_opengl2.dll" failed
failed:
"Failed loading C:\renderer_opengl2.dll: The specified module could not be found."
Failed to load renderer
This is mainly another thing I want to research myself before anyone else takes their time looking at it, so here is where I'm at with it right now. I'll probably clean this issue up and delete paragraphs like this one that are just me thinking aloud about the problem.
When you add ioquake3 to Steam (on Windows 11, x64) as a "non-steam game" via the plus button at the bottom right, ioquake3 can't find the renderer DLLs despite them being right next to the ioquake3 binary.
The log file indicates that things might be a little wonky: