Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory Public Source Released

DeadBugs writes "According to Blue's News: 'The public source code for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is now available from id Software, Activision, and Splash Damage (the developer working on Doom 3's multiplayer content), offering modification authors the resources to create mods for the free multiplayer shooter.' First they release a free game, and now free source code for it - there are download links at Splash Damage's files section."

Comments

First Post, and stuff....

[WFFS]

:p

This just gets better and better. I ran a networked ET session for high school kids earlier this month, and it was a hit, but having the source just makes it better, as I can now get my students to play with it as well.

I don't get it

[sirmikester]

While I'm all for releasing a game and its source for free, I don't see how a professional game studio can exist without selling anything. Maybe they are trying to prove themselves as a legitimate development house so that they can get paid projects later. Interesting strategy if that's the case, sort of like professional mod makers.

Re:I don't get it

[rogueMonkey]

The way I understand it, they make their money by creating the multiplayer part of ID's games. That is where their money is. Now, giving away the source code to ET will only create great mods, great community feelings and positive publicity.

The cost? An aging engine. They are working on DOOM 3... Unlikely that they (Splash) will be selling any more games based on the old engine. This is a win(the community)-win(splash for free publicity)-win(splash for possibly finding new talent in the community a la CounterStrike) situation.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

It is Activision giving the code away. Splashdamage got paid for Enemy Territory because they kept up their part of the contract. They are now working on at least some part of the multiplayer for DOOM 3.

Background to ET:
Enemy Territory was originally to be a retail expansion for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, including both singleplayer (by MadDog IIRC) and multiplayer, developed by Splashdamage. Increasing scope of ET led to it later being announced to be a full, standalone retail game. However, there was problems with the singleplayer portion - perceived within the Wolf communities to be due to the singleplayer supporting bot's AI. Left with no working singleplayer, but a working multiplayer, Activision decided to release it, presumably to at least gain some PR (for both Activision and Splashdamage) out of what they would have to pay for regardless.

What I'd really like to see ..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. is the source code for the original two Wolfenstein games, though I suppose that they were written in 6502 assembly. (For the kiddies: Castle Wolfenstein is over 20 years old.) I loved those games, but if I could change anything about them I would get rid of 1) the annoying flicker effect when you ran into the walls, which could get you killed/captured very easily and 2) the damn time that it took to open up all of the treasure chests! (Who the hell wants to wait 60 seconds to find a vat of sauerkraut?) :)

Re:What I'd really like to see ..

[Radius9]

He said the original Castle Wolfenstein. Castle Wolfenstein 3D by id is NOT the original Castle Wolfenstein. The original was a top down 2D game, and I know I played it on the Apple 2, but I don't know what other platforms it may have been available on.

Read closely, kids

[AndyBusch]

Ahem, the public source code was released, not the engine code (obviously, but...). This is just for modmakers. Really cool, but the engine's still viable business for id.

Not too much of a surprise

[darkjedi521]

Considering the game was released for free, there isn't too much to gain by keeping the source locked up. It also shows the ID thinks the source is past its prime, as they tend to release their older engines when they have been replaced by the next big thing.

Wolf Fan say DejaVu

[superpulpsicle]

Ok last time they released the source for the original RTCW, there were a ton of cheaters spawning out of nowhere. Then punkbuster and a million different patches came. It was DLL hell everytime.

This time, wolf ET is a free game with no finanical backing or any development attention as a matter of fact. Some bored 15 year old is going to create new aimbots and player-kicker scripts using the source.

As if activision isn't ignoring and neglecting this game enough.

Re:Wolf Fan say DejaVu

[Mike Hawk]

As the wise Justin Timberlake once sang, "Cry me a river." They totally and 100% gave the game away. No charge. Gratis. If you are unhappy with the product please cease playing the game immediately, uninstall the application, and return it to you point of purchase for a full refund.

Ungrateful bitch.

P.S. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory includes punkbuster so if cheating ever becomes a problem, use the methods outlined on Evenbalance.com to report your findings and complain to them. OR since the mod source is out, write your own anti-cheat. Or you know what, keep whining on random internet message boards, I'm sure that might help too and will definitely encourage other companies to give games away.

Re:Wolf Fan say DejaVu

[Anonymous Coward]

Aimbots and wallhacks are made using OpenGL hacks, the source code is not at all necessary, and largely irrelevant. The actual engine code (different to source code, and not released) could be used for some fairly elaborate cheats. Sourcecode however cannot, at least not unless the cheat is installed on the server (in which case you can be amply screwed anyway).

There has always been very little cheating in RTCW, verging upon nil since Punkbuster took effect. There are however many amazingly skilled players, perhaps you were... a little confused?

ET however, has had plenty of cheats avilable, mainly aimbots, wallhacks, ESP, cham hacks and suchlike. Free games seem to attract kiddiez, you'll find the same with Americas Army (it's even worse there). According to the cheater forum I frequent to keep track, all of the ET cheats are currently detected by Punkbuster.

That is, all the widely available ones. Cheaters who keep their hacks private are unlikely to ever be detected unless fingered with the PB screenshot facility.

Releasing a game for free, then paying for Punkbuster, then releasing an update patch... "As if activision isn't ignoring and neglecting this game enough." Yeah, OK.

- DG
www.rtcw.co.uk

Re:Wolf Fan say DejaVu

[PainKilleR-CE]

That is, all the widely available ones. Cheaters who keep their hacks private are unlikely to ever be detected unless fingered with the PB screenshot facility.

If Half-Life set any example for the cheating community, the cheaters will start (or already have) releasing the source to the cheats, which essentially puts a lot of custom cheats out there. Hopefully PB's adjusted their detection (and screenshot) methods significantly in the last couple of years to make it a lot harder for cheaters to bypass it.

Re:Wolf Fan say DejaVu

[digitalgiblet]

I've been playing a good bit of ET with punkbuster and have only seen a couple of times when I was sure someone was cheating. One was pretty funny because there was an axis character who would not die. Another allies player and I stood over him and shot him and shot him. He would fall down, then in a couple seconds he would come back to life as if a medic had revived him. We must have put him down 6-7 times before we just toasted him with grenades...

On the other hand, I have been on several teams that were accused of cheating. Invariably the accusations came from new players who were dismayed that we won so quickly. I tried to explain to them that it's all about the objectives... Our team was simply focusing on the objectives while their team was playing Quake-style (run around and shoot anything that moves).

Incidentally I've noticed that I've gone through different stages as a player of this game... First I was playing just to have fun, then playing to complete objectives, then playing to win ranks and awards. My most recent change was to switch from playing games without friendly fire to games with friendly fire. It's almost a different game. The strategy of shooting your teammates just in case they are an enemy covert in disguise just isn't as appealing (at least not to your teammates). You also can't unload a tommy-gun into one of your guys just to move him out of the way... ;-)

I hope the result of releasing the public code is that we get lots of cool new mods and not lots of kewl new cheaters...

Re:Wow!

[Deraj DeZine]

Except this is only the source for making mods. The source that most games release shortly after the game is in stores. The game cannot be ported and the engine cannot be used for other projects.

That headline's misleading and this isn't really news...

Re:what can you do with a public source?

[AndyBusch]

The public source allows you to make game mods. For example, Quake Rally for Quake 3, or Counter-Strike for Half-Life. Or even something as simple as the mutators in Unreal Tournament. You can change game physics and make a new game within the engine, but can't change how the engine renders stuff.

Now about about some new maps? (Slightly offtopic)

[MMaestro]

There are only 6 official maps and they get boring, very quickly. Why? Close quarters and open areas along with the ability to call in airstrikes/artillery and panzerfausts (for some reason the Allies use them too) means just two or three field ops or soldiers can bottleneck an entire team. Oh and I wouldn't recommend you stand around in your spawn for too long. Most players have figured out exactly where and at what angle to fire mortars into opposing spawn areas. Hopefully we'll see some more mods and maps which steer players away from this kind of spawn killing.

The License seems a little restrictive.

[polyp2000]

In particular I noticed these prohibited acts...

section 2 (prohibitions)

One may not --

h. reproduce or copy the Software (except as permitted by section 3. hereinbelow);

i. publicly display the Software;

j. prepare or develop derivative works based upon the Software;

you are allowed to distribute the software but
section 3 which describes permitted uses;

basically rules out everything except distributing the unaltered code without commercial gain.

To me, it really doesnt seem worth looking at with these kinds of restrictions. And presumably the mere fact of looking at the code could potentially lead to IP Violations if you were to develop a similar game.

I'll post the full licese as an AC after this message, but I'd like to here your views / interpretations of the license because it seems rather restrictive to me.

Re:Is the same source shared across platforms?

[polyp2000]

It looks like it , there is a /src/unix directory in there ... although im still rummaging through

Finally some good mods for ET

[freidog]

ET is an excpetional game (arguably the best team based shooter around)
but none of the vitals were scripted in the .pk3 files. Only cosmetic things like sounds and models can be changed.
The actual game play stuff, rate of fire, damage, splash damage, weapon type and class, objective types, player classes ect were hard coded. Which pretty much prevented us from making and underlying changes to the actual play of the game.
Hopefully this source will change that.

This is not the source, and not Open Source

[smcv]

"Public source" seems to mean the header files to compile against, and the source code for the RTCW:ET-specific bits of the game (i.e. not the engine). This is the same sort of thing as the Half-Life SDK which the original (pre-commercial) Counterstrike was based on.

(For Debian users: if this was in Debian, it'd be a binary package called something like rtcw-enemyterritory-dev :-)

As for the licensing (Polyp2000: thanks for posting the text), many game SDKs have restrictive EULA-like licenses (presumably the publishers insist on them) which mean that the majority of distributed mods for those games are likely technically illegal, as are many activities which an average gamer would probably consider perfectly reasonable.

In this case, among other things, the EULA asserts that you can't back up the SDK to a CD (only to "one (1)" hard disk), and that commercial distribution of a "New Creation" (mod) is not allowed (so magazines which distribute "RTCWstrike", or whatever the next big mod is called, on their cover CDs are potentially in trouble).

This isn't Free Software, it's not Open Source, and indeed the "non-commercial distribution" stipulation probably means it wouldn't even make it into Debian's non-free section.

OT:Doom 3 Multiplayer

[Xenolith]

I remember someone from ID saying that the DOOM 3 multiplayer was going to be peer to peer instead of client/server. Is that still the case? Did I hear that wrong? Thanks