Slashdot Mirror
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.
id Software, as always, is being responsible and generous to its fans. Instead of keeping its source code under wraps until the game is released to the public domain by copyright law some time in the year NEVER, id Software has decided to release the source code for a game that it is no longer using so that the fans may tinker with it and learn from it.
If any of the people from id Software are reading this (which there is a chance of): Thank you. You rock.
I admit, I'm not a good programmer. I am a code monkey who is working to be a good programmer. One of the ways you become one is looking at good code. I have peaked at both Doom and Quake to just see what goes on in the head of one of the best programmers in the world. In doing so I have picked a few pointers without even realizing it until I did it. So thanks Mr. Carmack, you have given me a Christmas present, the gift of better programming.
Go to my box at linuxhost.ccand you can download the quake2.zip file containing the source.
I got it before the slashdot story hit...
You can find the code in the quakeforge cvs:
:pserver:anonymous@cvs.quakeforge.net:/cvsroot/qua ke login (just hit enter)
:pserver:anonymous@cvs.quakeforge.net:/cvsroot/qua ke co quake2
cvs -d
cvs -d
ID software are totally correct about the cheating aspects of releasing the code.
... try a lan party instead of the internet next time).
There will always be people who try to cheat, and some who succeed. Releasing the source makes it significantly easier to make a cheating client.
However,
i) The benefits of having the source to an extremely successful games outweighs the disadvantages of increased cheating (unless you're a victim of the cheating
ii) By seeing what the cheats come up with, perhaps the next generation of client-server games will have better cheat avoidance in the server and/or the protocol - we can learn from past mistakes or oversights.
Mmmmmmm
While everyone's busy downloading the Quake II source code, maybe I can mange to download kernel 2.4.17!
Ever since the Quake1 source release two years ago, a lot of intresting (and a lot of unintresting mind you) ports of the Quake engine have shown up. www.quakesrc.org reports on these new engines, as well as hosting some projects and a large set of tutorials. If anyone is intrested in coding off a quake-based engine, this is a good place to start. No Quake2 content yet, but give it a few days... www.open-quake.com is also a good site reporting on news in the Quake engine scene. End plug :)
Not if a build of your project sold 20 gazillion copies, you wouldn't. ;-)
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
To be fair, if you drop the warning level back down to 3 (the VC default) you get
... I think this is crap, it makes warning level 4 useless. MS - fix your SDK!)
quake2.exe - 0 error(s), 8 warning(s)
lots of level 4 warnings occur in Microsoft's own headers (yes
Mmmmmmm
First off, Carmack seems to release the source code after two other complete games come out. Q1 Source came out after Q3A hit the shelves, now Q2 after Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
.plan update, that when you release the full code, people *will* find the ways they can use to cheat. They can modify the source for themselves, recompile the engine, and have it work for them. Therefore, the rampant cheats would cause multiplayer to go to pot upon release.
But don't forget, that if they released the source code when the game was being created, not only couldn't they make money on the license, but also other companies would be able to compete on the same level without paying a price for it.
Carmack gets paid for his programming skills, but you're arguing that he should get paid to program *everyone's* game, including his competitor, from one company. All the other companies could release their own Quake 3 Arena clones and make money, without even bothering to do anything with the programming.
And don't forget, that when Q3A sold for $40+, id didn't get all $40. It goes from id, to Activision, to the distributor, sometimes to the wholesaler or direct to the big name store, and then possibly to a smaller store. By then, after the expenses of doing the packaging and the duplication, you're talking only a couple dollars profit per game direct to id... Split that among their, what, twelve workers now in the proper ratios, and that's not that much. Less than a dollar each, probably.
Even multiplied by a few million, that's not that much money to pay those huge salaries. How do they make it up? Licensing.
With licensing, there is *no* middleman. It's a contract between id and the company licensing the engine. In the end, it's probably a larger chunk of change than a first month's release returns.
And secondly, you have to remember, as with Carmack's
No, what Carmack does is *more* than enough, and these are the factors not only he, but id and other people who can understand the business, realize, and have to protect not only themselves, but their consumers, from these problems.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Dude, if you lived next door to me and were playing Quake with the sound up, blasting through a subwoofer at 3AM, it wouldn't just be the game scaring the hell out of you...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
THIS is how a company makes money producing Free Software. Don't, at least not at the beginning. I'm sure RMS would have my head for this, but it's the truth.
;-)
Consumer-oriented retail software and GPL code are simply incompatble as a business model. If Id released the source for RtCW today, they wouldn't make a penny on their retail sales. Somone would get the source code, edit one line, stick it on an FTP server, and make it available to the world free (as in beer), and most people would get it from there. There would be no legal reason to stop them, and every financial reason for them to do so. That goes for any consumer-targeted application, game, utility, or whatever. You just can't make money with consumers that way. (Consumers aren't interested in "selling support". If they need you to support it, then it was a bad program to start with in their minds.)
Now here comes Id. They develop excellent code, and sell it and license it commercially like any other company. Then, once they've made their money back with a nice comfortable profit and moved on to bigger and better things, they open source the code. They're not doing anything more with it, so why should they prevent others from enjoying it? It's the original idea behind copyright in the first place! Author(s) get limited monopoly for a limited time so that they can make a living producing content, then it goes to the public domain. (OK, that would be more BSD license than GPL, that's a minor issue.)
For the FSF and its supporters, economics aren't the issue, it's all principle and philosophy and idealism. That's all well and good, I agree with their ideals for the most part. But idealism must be tempered by reality to produce pragmatism sometimes. The Id model is the best way I've seen to make money in the consumer space while still supporting Free Software / Open Source (take your pick).
Unless someone else has a better suggestion on how to make money in the consumer space with FS/OS code (remember, after the cash register the consumer doesn't want to ever have to talk to you), we should all bug companies to follow Id's excellent example. If they balk at the "lost revenue", just show them Carmak's twin Lamborginis.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Here's a patch to get the source to compile under linux -- Carmack forgot to use cl_newfx.c!
m ak efile.diff
http://members.optushome.com.au/davidsymonds/q2
I thought it looked almost exactly like typical CS code, actually not too different from my style.... until I saw line 577 in ref_gl/gl_light.c:
:-)
:-)
"store:"
WTF? Search "store"....
Line 488:
"goto store;"
And the style Nazi in me went: NNNOOOOOOOO!
This must be a remnant of something, an "else" would have sufficed.
sig fault
If you really wanted to be a good person, you could return the favor to Carmack by going out and buying a(nother) copy of Quake2. Its only right to return the favor.
3d realms and epic megagames are weenies
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Dear Lord, how will I be able to startup ComanderKeenForge.net without the source code to Comander Keen!?!?!?!?! It's just not fair to leave us hangin' like this!!! :)
Thanks for the kind comments, it helps me brace a bit for some of the really vile hate mail that is already starting to come in from the people worried about cheating.
Bill Heineman is preparing the mac source code for Q2 for a release.
We will see about getting the 3.21 changes we missed into an updated release.
I am also happy to say that another old game's code will be released under the GPL soon. We can always hope that it becomes a trend...
John Carmack