"Urban Terror" started out in 1998 as a planned map pack for "Quake III Arena", in which real world environments would be featured. It expanded from this idea to a full total conversion featuring realistic weapons and gameplay similar to "Action Quake 2". Development group "Silicon Ice Development" was formed in spring 2000 and was made of several international developers, many whom were familiar with modifying Quake III Engine games; hence progress was made quickly. When its first version, beta 1.0, was released at QuakeCon 2000, "Urban Terror" was the realism mod with the most features and graphics completed.