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Quake 3 Source Code to be Released
fwice writes "QuakeCon has just kicked off and at the end of the keynote speech, John Carmack made an announcement saying that the Quake 3 sourcecode will be released shortly. "
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Yes, really nice of them to do this time and time again. It's worth mentioning though that not only id opensources their previous generation games.
To name a few, Star Control 2 was opensourced and is being developed on Sourceforge. Beneath the Steel Sky sourcecode was also opened. It would be great to see this trend continue and expand.
You can be a nice guy, even if you have millions of dollars. Although there are some posts which discusses the significance of this release, years after the game went out, i feel like i should remind you guys: this is not a donation to poor software houses so that they can come up with a new hit.
This is about letting some other (even if they are in the software industry or not) guys learn something from what you have done.
Carmack has been one of the legends of the genre, and even if his usual habit (create the best visual environment possible, and go on) has started to loose it's success (half life vs doom 3) there is no doubt that he is very very good programmer. For a lot of other programmers, it's a good oppurtunity to see what kind of tricks he's been doing.
The release is late, but this makes it fair for the companies who paid to licence the engine. If you can't make money from a source code in 4 years after you've bought it, than you have much more serious problems than this release. It's kinda sad to see all those complaints, since Carmack has no obligation to release code, and he gets complaints instead of thanks when he does it.
I'll possibly never compile the thing since i don't have time for that as an "enterprise developer" (oh god, why did i fail so badly?), but it'll feel good to have source code of quake 3 somewhere around my hard drive.
Whatever, good work Mr. Carmack, thanks..