Star Trek - Elite Force 2 Source Code Released
Thanks to Shacknews for pointing to a Ritualistic announcement that the Star Trek Elite Force II game DLL sourcecode is now available for download, thus "allowing people to create their own single and multiplayer mods" for this recently-released PC FPS, which was fairly well-received on its release earlier this year. It joins a number of recent full or partial source code releases from games such as Call To Power 2 and Homeworld, although, as with many source releases, "this code and the dll that it will build will only work with a full copy of [the game]."
I note that a user-done Linux port of Homeworld followed within weeks of that release. I wonder how long it is before game developers can just supply a script and artwork, then stand back and watch their app being written. (-:
Either way, it's too late to prod the genie back into the bottle now. Open Source is well and truly coming to commercial gaming.
This kind of practice might also make the WINE developers' jobs easier, because they don't have to guess at what a game is trying to accomplish with a given weird set of system calls, which means that they don't have to cover all of the possible uses for a call when implementing it, only the actual uses.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Just a note so there's no confusion.. This is NOT the complete source code of the game, so no one can take this and make it run on FreeBSD or BlueOS or something. It is merely the mod source, so that mod writers can make mods now. Just about every FPS releases this type of source code moments after or even before the release of the game is on store shelves.
This is a non-news item.