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. "

Comments

Will it be modified?

[mattdev121]

I wonder if this source code will be modifier and edited some way to keep some company secrets hidden or if the comments will be purged.
Should be interesting...

Re:Will it be modified?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like they're taking out the punkbuster code. The evenbalance people seem kinda secretive about their code, I suppose for security through obscurity. I saw the Q3A code while working on Medal of Honor, and there's nothing really secret or special about it. ID's cool about GPL'ing their old code, so I doubt they'll modify anything except the punkbuster stuff.

I've been looking forward to this for a while. I had tons of fun writing normal mods for Q3.

Re:Will it be modified?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of their other source releases (every game dating back to Wolfenstein 3D) were tampered with in any way before releasing them.

Actually... The Doom source release consisted of only the Linux version, not the code for the DOS version, because id used a third-party DOS sound driver. So they simply stripped the DOS version out. Didn't much matter anyway, considering that neither the DOS nor Linux versions were particularly useful when the Doom source was released.

And thinking about it, all of their source releases were rather devoid of comments. There were actually comments included in the code, but not a lot of them, and it's not uncommon to see a couple of pages of rather dense code with only a couple of one line comments splattered around. I think that's mostly their coding style - there were very few comments in the first place, rather than having been stripped out. And what would be the point in stripping the comments? To make the code harder to read? Then why would they release it at all?

As for "company secrets", you are aware that id tend to be very open about what they're doing, and quite freely share new ideas and methods with everyone else (maybe not the instant they come up with them, but they don't seem big on the whole "company secrets" bit), right? And considering the age of Quake 3, there's probably nothing at all in there that would count as a secret, because virtually everyone who wants to know how something like Q3 works already does.

Re:Will it be modified?

[leathered]

It may be five year old technology but it was way ahead of it's time when it was launched. My first impression of Quake III was how crap it looked on my fairly up to date hardware back then. It was only a couple of years later when I bought a GeForce 3 did I finally see what a wonderful engine Carmack and co had come up with.

Re:Will it be modified?

[bani]

Ok, um. HL1 and HL2 have "excellent" netcode? Now I know for certain you're not a modder. :-)

I think you should understand what exactly moding entails. It is not an addition, it is a modification, of whatever sections of the engine source the company has chosen to make available.

Er, no. Companies never make _engine source_ available. Otherwise you'd be able to easily circumvent copy protection, cheat detection, etc.

What companies make available is _mod source_, eg modules which the engine loads and runs the mod code. Different engines handle this in different ways. For instance UT uses a VM similar to java. quake3 offers VM as well as machine-native DLLs.

In essence the engine is the linux kernel and mods are linux executables.

HL1 and HL2 are based off of _quake1_ engine code. HL2 still has a lot of icky quake SDK cruft in it, if you bother to look. It simply is not better than quake3. The only reason why it might "appear" to be good is that it is a very simple engine running very simple mods -- the amount of traffic traveling over the link is very small.

But give it a complex game to run, with tons of complex entities and complex gamestates, and it will not do as well as q3 engine games.

quake3 works _excellent_ in high packetloss and high latency situations. i've tested it to eg 80% packetloss and 500ms latency and it was still playable.

and er... unlagged doesnt change player movement prediction. it does make a change to serverside extrapolation if clients drop command packets, but that's a different thing entirely.

Disclaimer: I wrote etpro and ettv.

Excellent!

[destx]

Does anyone know of projects that have been waiting for the source? I'd be interested to see what people are planning to do with it.

A reasonable model

[Coryoth]

This seems such a reasonable model for making money out of software, but still keeping in touch with open source. Let's be honest, there are areas of software development that get some benefit from a commercial model and the cash incentive from selling your software when you're done. Game engines, where being cutting edge counts for a lot, is one of those areas. At the same time, software tends to go out of date fairly quickly, and if it was developed as a commercial app then it often ends up as abandonware, lost to the world - no longer being sold. Once you've stopped making cash out of your software then open source it and provide the community something to play with. You can end up with results like Tenebrae which is a fairly impressive open source engine considering it is built originally from Quake I source.

I wish there were some other commercial developers that could manage to follow the same sort of pattern. Do some of the old X11 nVidia drivers contain sufficiently outdated stuff that they could be safely open sourced? Are there some other applications that are currently locked up, not being sold nor developed, that could be opened up? I assume part of the problem is bookkeeping: you can keep software on your books as an asset even if you probably couldn't make a dime trying to sell it anymore - and "goodwill from the community" doesn't fit into accounting.

Jedidiah.

This is the reason

[Aggrajag]

This is the reason I actually buy every title from iD Software, even if I don't like the actual game (Quake 3, Doom 3).

Re:This is the reason

[TrappedByMyself]

that is only obvious to people who can actually think.

Oooh, I'm stupid. Woohoo!
Well, you've got me nailed, but I'm still trying to figure you out. You proudly buy products you don't like from people who are filthy rich?
Said another way, Carmack builds a new engine, makes millions from it, slaps a game around it, makes millions more. When he's squeezed an engine dry (keep in mind Q3 source was delayed because there was more money to be made) he releases it to the community under the GPL. No loss to him, great PR move. Because of his grand self sacrifice you give him your money even though you think his games stink.
While I respect your freedom to do this, I still don't get it. If I find an old pair of pants which doesn't fit me anymore and give it to a hobo, will you send me a check?

Can't wait? Do it yourself.

[deVoid99]

If you can't wait for the Quake3 source, I've already replicated most of the Quake3 engine's features, and released source & binaries.

DXQuake3 : http://www.dxquake3.dsl.pipex.com/
DXQuake3 features : http://www.dxquake3.dsl.pipex.com/dxquake3_feature s.htm

Re:Can't wait? Do it yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one reason id Software is so great. They're committed to using the right API. None of this fly-by-night DirectX crap from Microsoft. These people have done development on Unix-like programs, so they're firmly grounded in multi-platform code. Too many gaming companies just completely ignore that.

Hopefully we'll see Tenebrae3!

[SynapseLapse]

That would be sweet: http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/

Re:Hopefully we'll see Tenebrae3!

[Pxtl]

Fsck that. Tenebrae is a friggin' techdemo. I want to see something actually useful... like all the huge Quake3 TCs released as standalone opensource games and bundled with Linux distros.

For shit's sake, Quake 3 was the first Id game to actually support mods as first-class citizens with their own keybinding menus and stuff. The Q3 TCs are an order of magnitude more complete than the Q2 ones because of it (Action Q2 is nice, but having to use the console for everything is inexcusable in a modern game).

Plus, Q3 allowed for replacement of all major media in game, without even modding. This means that there are already numerous replacement collections of player models and weapon models available on Polycount (not having monster models makes it easier) and maps on various mapping sites. As a result, all you'd have to replace to make a FreeQ3 TC would be the textures and sounds - everything else has been done already (whereas Q1 didn't have prevalent player-model and weapon-model replacements at the time of opensourcing).

This is by far some of the best news the opensource gaming world has ever seen. I can't wait to see this capitalised on.

native alsa sound support!

[Internet_Communist]

I hope this means someone will add native alsa sound support. Who needs oss kernel emulation w/mmap?

maybe quake 3 will finally work with dmix.

Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released

[ejito]

You can't release commercial multiplayer games (what the q3a engine was built for) on GPL'ed engines, unless you want dozens of hacks ready for cheaters when the game hits the shelves. With the release of code, instead of just hooking dll's, they can code straight onto the engine to make every basic hack. This is why modders don't GPL their code, even though they give away their product for free.

Legacy cheating isn't as much of a problem, which is why the Quake1 GPL wasn't much of an impact; but legacy cheating still happens.

Giving away an engine, then selling maps isn't feasible for several reasons. One is due to conflicts and interoperability: most game servers currently allow you to download scenarios and models (for free, obviously) to overcome that. Are you gonna block downloads?

If you want restricted distribution and less cheating, you're gonna have to either GPL the client and keep the server secret or GPL the server and keep the client secret.

Relying on soley single player scenarios to sell a game also isn't the best strategy. Currently, every heavily played FPS and RTS relies on multiplayer for popularity. Even RPGs are relying on multiplayer.

This only applies to PC games. You can GPL a console game and not worry as much. However, GPLing console code is stupid, because you can't play your own games on your console without unlicensed modding.

Great news for artists and researchers.

[delire]

We host and or link to about 120 game-based artworks many of which are built on/for Quake3.

Over the years several artists wanting to sell work to museums and/or have work shown in museums/galleries have hit a legal 'glass ceiling' due to the issue of IP. This has resulted in game-based artworks that rely on proprietary third-party engines having less-than equal opportunity where other mediums are concerned.

This is welcomed greatly in the art world. True to form as always, thanks John.

Re:Now...

[blechx]

Not as much of a joke as you migth think.
For example, ids ported q3 uses OSS, wich is kind of deprecated now and doesnt even work with all soundcard drivers (i have to hack it through esddsp to get mmap-stuff to work), with the program released as free software anyone is allowed to make it work with ALSA, JACK, or whatever they see fit.

This will help MOD projects based on Q3A kick off

[Thilo2]

Especially in germany - where there is an age restriction on the Quake3 game and you cannot easily buy it. For instance, the Quake3 mod Padmod which can be found here http://www.worldofpadman.com/ has astonishing artwork while at the same time being without blood and from the concept suited for children (it's still fun for adults though). Unfortunately, the MOD does not have many gamers right now - one reason for this is certainly the ban on quake3 itself. With a seperate build one can now circumvent this ban which will hopefully bring new users to mod projects like these.

Re:Let the race to port this begin...

[Krunch]

Modern ttys support colors too: http://sam.zoy.org/libcaca/

Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released

[Pete]

You seem to be assuming that any such company would have to keep the game source code closed. I absolutely agree that most "normal" companies would indeed want to do that, the idea of making their game code available under the GPL would probably make their heads explode :). And you're exactly correct that if they wanted to use the Q3A engine but keep their code closed, they could pay id a (probably quite high) license fee for non-GPL access to the Q3A code.

All I was suggesting was that it'd be technically possible for a small (and abnormal :)) company to maintain a GPLed fork of the Q3A source for their own game engine (and thus not have to pay the large id licensing fee), but the aforementioned engine would be useless without their content. And they could sell their content under whatever license they chose.

Note that I wasn't (and still am not) saying it'd be likely, or even plausible. Just that it'd be possible.

Re:This is great

[dmaxwell]

0.40 of UQM is fantastic. It supports various scaling options now. The biadv scaler is absolutely beautiful; the game looks good at 800x600 and above resolutions. It also gives you the option of 3DO graphical menus or the PC menus. The in-game graphics of course are the 3DO versions which are superior to the old PC version. It is even better to play now than it was then.

The Precursors are recreating the MOD music the game originally shipped with and have replaced about 75% of the in-game ditties and larger pieces. They supply this music in both ready to listen forms and in a form that can be dropped in UQM's data directory. It adds some atmosphere to an already good game.

Old news?

[XpirateX]

I submitted this story about 7 months ago: Quake III Source Release Delayed Sunday January 02, @01:42AM Rejected

It's all available in his blog

From January:
Quake 3 Source

I intended to release the Q3 source under the GPL by the end of 2004, but we had another large technology licensing deal go through, and it would be poor form to make the source public a few months after a company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for full rights to it. True, being public under the GPL isnt the same as having a royalty free license without the need to disclose the source, but Im pretty sure there would be some hard feelings.
Previous source code releases were held up until the last commercial license of the technology shipped, but with the evolving nature of game engines today, it is a lot less clear. There are still bits of early Quake code in Half Life 2, and the remaining licensees of Q3 technology intend to continue their internal developments along similar lines, so there probably wont be nearly as sharp a cutoff as before. I am still committed to making as much source public as I can, and I wont wait until the titles from the latest deal have actually shipped, but it is still going to be a little while before I feel comfortable doing the release.

Re:This is great

[Jagasian]

Are they still using lossy compression for the voices and other audio? Also, have they made it so that you can use the pre-rendered CG video from the 3DO version? It has been a while since I have tried the UQM. I'd love to see the game has everything that the PC and 3DO version had. I first played the 3DO version, and it is still a favorite of mine, but there were things missing from the 3DO version. I'd hate to see the UQM not include the few goodies present in either of the previous versions.

Bad for the players

[RedACE7500]

I remember when they released the Q1 source code. I still avidly played Quake 1 (Quakeworld Team Fortress) and it completely killed the game due to rampant cheating that followed.

if...

[KillShill]

copyright laws were anywhere near sensible, we'd be getting the source code for all programs on a regular basis. not that i'm trying to diminish iD's contribution but let's keep things in perspective. or as they used to say "keep your eyes on the prize, hold on".

engines nowadays are far more advanced than q3's, so it isn't very viable for most commercial ventures. still it's quite a nice little engine that runs beautifully on current and older hardware.

good job iD.

Re:punkbuster not included

[nunchux]

Punkbuster... Yeah. I guess it works some times. But I've also been booted for being a Mac user (and thus a version behind), booted for using a CD key that was compromised (on a game I paid for, at that... good luck working that situation out), booted because some griefer accused me of cheating because I got off a lucky sniper shot or something. And when you're marked a cheater in one server, you can be marked a cheater in ALL servers-- making the multiplayer mode of a game I paid full price for worthless. I'm looking directly at you, Soldier of Fortune 2 (not my only punkbuster game, but the one where I had the worst problems.)

Of course, that could just be my experience... Maybe some of you love punkbuster. But IMO nothing works better than alert administrators monitoring their servers. A pain, I know, but sharing this task is something that makes a room a community. I keep coming back the the game Red Faction... It's not the newest, or even the most fun, but it doesn't use punkbuster and the admins of the servers I frequent are diligent and fair when it comes to booting modders and abusers.

Think PS/3 + Linux

[tolkienfan]

You'll be able to build on the source code base to create some AWESOME effects with the cell processors, on top of the existing structure.

Realtime texture map generation, natural sounding audio effect, all kinds of things become possible.