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Quake 2 Source Code Released Under The GPL
Masem (and many others) writes: "The source code for Quake 2 is now available until the GPL license. The .plan file for John Carmack has the details." The Id Software site is of course slammed with demand for the code. Hopefully other mirrors will be available.
Please... PLEASE, do not consider Carmack's code as "good".
It's fast as hell, yes, but good coding it is not. All of the Quakes have been what can only be described as "hacks". Most experienced programmers can quickly see that it is does not follow a good design.
I mean, just take a look at the code you use to do mods. Ugh, coding mods for any of the Quakes sucks ass.
I am a Quake fan at heart, just becuase the engine is so damn fast but look at Unreal for a (mostly) proper (although slow, framerate-wise) mod development environment and design.
Quake is the dragster of 3D engines. Nothing can beat it in a straight line... Just don't try to turn.
I'm not bashing Mr Carmack here, but I've gotta say I agree with you. Also this isn't a great suprize, but mainly the nature of commercial gamming code. If you compare the quakeII source code to the original Elite source code you'll see that in general you shouldn't expect "good" code when you look into a game.
I've just built quake2 from sources and it did take a lot of tweeking. If I had a job at ID I have to admit that one of the first things I would do to the quake II code base would be to start using automake and autoconf so we don't have to "tweak" things to get them working.
But now that it's open source I can add automake and autoconf any.
Happy Xmas and have fun writting a quake2 based games.... ;-)
M0571y H@rml355.