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Rise of the Triad Source Code Released
Woody writes "3DRealms gave us an early Christmas present this year: they've released the complete Rise of the Triad source code in memory of William Scarboro, one of the game programmers who died earlier this year. The source is being released under the GPL, so everyone should be happy. If you ever played ROTT, you might remember that under all of the silliness and gore there was an incredible deathmatch and capture-the-flag element. Discussions are currently starting in the 3DRealms forums. Thanks, 3DRealms!"
Seeing your opponent turn to a charred skeleton then to ash was quite amusing as well.
I'll have to dig that out again...
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Ludicrous gibs!
every so often when you kill someone there would be 3x the gibs.. I wish more games had this!
On christmas day, the game gets xmas music and an xmas theme...
there are other easter eggs too.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
"3DRealms gave us an early Christmas present this year: they've released the complete Rise of the Triad source code in memory of William Scarboro, one of the game programmers who died earlier this year."
Somehow, I have a feeling William Scarboro would be happier with a $1 donation for the source code to his family than a free giveaway of one of his greatest works.
And you thought it would never happen...
Today we're doing something I bet most everyone out there thought we'd never do. No, it's not Duke Nukem Forever, but something some folks on the net have been asking us to do for ages. Today we're releasing the source code to Rise of the Triad! The source is being released under the GPL license, and we still retain copyright on the game (plus we still sell Rise of the Triad), but folks have been asking for something like this for a long time, and here it is.
We are dedicating the release of the Rise of the Triad Source code to our late friend and Rise of the Triad programmer William Scarboro, who died tragically back in early August of 2002. I'm sure if he were still with us, William would be happy to see this out there, and see what folks might do with the code.
In the archive are some thoughts about Rise of the Triad by Tom Hall (the game's producer), and Scott Miller (Apogee/3DR CEO/Founder). You can check out the readme here before downloading the entire archive. In addition to this file, we have several other ROTT related downlods available - check out our ROTT page for the full list.
The folks reading this who aren't programmers probably won't have any interest in this, but those who are programmers might want to check it out. You can download the file (which is roughly 4Mb zipped) here:
ftp://ftp.3drealms.com/source/rottsource.zip
Enjoy! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. See ya next year!
Cover your eyes and click this link!
"So a man dies, and the secrets of his work get released to the world.
How does this benefit him again?"
Out of curiosity, do you understand the idea behind grave stones?
Cheat code Description
DIPSTICK Enable/disable cheat code
REEN Re-enter level
GOOBERS Restart current level
GOTO Start anouther level
GOARCH Leave current level
GOGATES Go to DOS
MAESTRO Change the game jukebox
TOOSAD God Mode
WOOF Dog mode?
BADTRIP Acid mode
BOING Less Gravity
FLYBOY Flying mode
PANIC Everything normat
SPEED Autorun on/off
\DIE Suicide
\OOF Hurt yourself
DIMOFF Turn Light dimming off
DIMON Turn Light dimming on
GOTA386 Turn ceiling and floor textures off
GOTA486 Turn ceiling and floor textures on
SHINEOFF Lights off
SHINEON Lifhts on
LONDON Fog enabled
NODNOL Fog no more
BURNME Asbestos suit
SIXTOYS Gives you health bullet-proof armor
SHOOTME Bullet-proof vest
HUNTPAC Bullet-proof armor,keys, heatseeker and a split missle
SLACKER All the keys
LUNGDUNG A gas mask
BOOZE A drunk missle
JOHNWOO Douoble handguns
FIREBOMB A fire bomb
HOTTIMES Heat Seeking missle
PLUGME A machine gun
SPLIT Split missles
SEEYA Full God Mode
KESOFDEATH Energy Spere
BONES A flame wall
HOMERUN The Excalibat
CUJO Full dog mode
Being called a dork on Slashdot must be like being called the retard in special ed.
Credits for Rise of the Triad:
Programming
Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dose, Nolan Martin, William Scarboro
Graphics / 3D Programming
Stephen A. Hornback, Chuck Jones, Tim Neveu, Susan Singer, James Storey
Level / Scenario Design
Tom Hall, Joseph Selinske, Joe Siegler, Marianna Vayntrub
Music
Lee Jackson, Robert Prince
Documentation
Robert M. Atkins
Executive Producer
George Broussard, Scott Miller
Director
Tom Hall
Playtesting
Mike Bartelt, Steven Blackburn, Neil Bonner, Glenn Brensinger, Douglas Brewer, David Butler, Daniel Creeron, Scott Darling, Jason Ewasiuk, Craig Hamilton, Ken Heckbert, Terry Herrin, Greg Hively, John Howard, Douglas Howell, Dennis Kurek, Hank Leukart, Jim Lietzan, Ken Mayer, Wayne Millard, Penny Plant, Brian Prinner, Jeff Rausch, Kelly Rogers, Neil Rubenking, Todd Rubin, Steven Salter, Chris White
Special Thanks To
John Carmack, Gregor Punchatz, Ken Silverman, Pau Suet Ying
The release of the source code is dedicated to William Scarboro's memory, but it's not like the man singly-developed the game, and some group of people have pulled the source out of his frozen hands and given them for free, leaving his widow and children starving in a corner.
Rise of the Triad is over 8 years old, in an excellent game (still) but was the effort of many people, from a company that still sells it but wanted to let other people check out how it was done. Carmack does the same thing, god bless him.
So sit down.
Uh, the game was owned by 3DRealms, not William Scarboro. Beyond that, they still own the game and sell it, they're just GPLing the source. You have a problem with that?
Remember that fast food place you worked at when you were a kid? They tore it down. Should they have destroyed your "life's work"?
Somehow, I have a feeling William Scarboro would be happier with a $1 donation...
Nice of you to second-guess the people who knew him! I won't venture to speak for Mr. Scarboro, since I didn't know him, but all I know is that as a programmer myself, I've already made arrangements for my family -- it's called insurance. I would be FAR more happy to see one of my old projects released to the public by the company that owns the code.
"Do you think it's really a good idea to release such a violent game for free? Totally unregulated? At least if you're selling a game, you can check IDs and make sure the buyer is over 18..."
Society hasn't exactly gone to hell over the release of games like DOOM.
"I'm a little worried about what kind of psychological damage something like this could do to a little kid that stumbles upon this. We don't need another Columbine."
Ah, you're a well behaved media controlled zombie. DOOM wasn't the reason that happened. If anything, DOOM gave those kids an outlet to vent their frustrations. I suggest you read their journals, they had some serious mental stability issues. DOOM didn't cause them to respond that way. They were attracted to DOOM because they had some rather morbid ideas about the futility of life on earth. It's kind of like saying baseball caps cause baldness. Nobody ever assumes that baseball caps are worn BEACUSE of baldness.
Five and seven? I would SO own them.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
"With the source code, I wonder how easy to make a Linux port of this game."
It'd be trivial to port, but it'd be a horrible experience to play. Linux's ideas about how interfaces work don't translate well in the game world. Imagine typing 'strlft' to strafe left!
should be distributed *unregulated* is indeed disturbing. Particularly in America. Congress should act immediately by passing laws forbiding the publication of certain works, particularly those which might incite violence.
I mean, really, what would Adams and Jefferson think of such unregulated published works?
KFG
I noticed some people are speculating on the sourcecode and I want to inform you that the GPL'd ROTT is far from being buildable.
It was built specifically and only tested upon Watcom C Compiler 10, with x86 assembler modules developed in Borland Turbo Assembler.
As I stated in www.linuxgames.com's forum, this GPL'd ROTT is verry dependant on those two commercial compilers and the x86 platform; don't waste your time unless you want another dejavu fist-person-shooter. For those of you skilled enough, you will discover ROTT is an enhancment of Wolfenstein3D and you should just turn back now because the enhancments are quick and dirty to get the job done on x86's.
The only people capable of saving ROTT are at http://www.icculus.org.
Glad to help, flame away!
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
I hope you're not just trying to play the game for free. You can already download a demo version with 20% of the levels and 90% of the weapons. The source code won't get you the rest, you'd still have to find the datafiles to enable them (such as from the full version of the game).
Getting this to work will probably be harder than you're expecting. Looking at the history of commerical FPS released as GPL (Wolf3d, DooM, Quake, Quake2), there'll be a lot of work needed to just make something compile, and then more work to get the colors, framerates, and file-locations right. The companies consider it a favor that they're releasing code at all- spending extra time writing updated directions isn't likely to be on their agenda.
Your surest bet, honestly, is to wait for someone else to solve those problems. In a situation like this, an expert can find the answer faster than you'd find the question.
Come back in 3 weeks and check around for a distribution set to compile on your favorite OS. For instance, initial release of DooM source code would only compile on DOS with a commercial (Watcom?) compiler, and absolutely would not play sound. But today you can download ZDoom or PrBoom to run on any desktop PC (via SDL, for instance)
I'm actually interested in porting this too Gameboy Advance. From my early inspection with gbadv, it has planar video memory layout, similar to the PCs vga planer memory modes(mode2? can't remember now...)
Jason fuckface, you have a problem if I confront you with a 9mm pistol??? I would like to shoot one bullet through your brains. Perhaps I will do it. Watch out fucker!
Cool! Only here could I have my life threatened by an anonymous person for disagreeing about the impact of the release of source code upon a deceased programmer's legacy.
Hey! I could become the Alan Berg of Slashdot! I might get a "Your Rights Online" story for that!