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Quake 3 Source Code to be Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the way-better-than-any-textbook dept.

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. "

77 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. This is great by ibentmywookie · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is why I love idsoftware. Now we'll see some cool stuff done with the quake III engine, like with Doom Legacy, quakeforge, etc etc.

    Yay :)

    --
    -- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
    1. Re:This is great by Irashtar · · Score: 5, Funny

      Indeed, they deserve a 21 railgun salute, but who would waste that much shooting at the roof of the map?

    2. Re:This is great by gothfox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:This is great by Novus · · Score: 2, Informative

      Beneath a Steel Sky was reimplemented by the ScummVM team based on source code provided to the ScummVM team by Revolution Software Ltd. The original BaSS source code was not open sourced, but the ScummVM reimplementation is open source. Quoting from ScummVM AUTHORS file:

      Special thanks to:
      [...]
                    Tony Warriner and everyone at Revolution Software Ltd. for sharing
                    with us the source of some of their brilliant games, allowing us to
                    release Beneath a Steel Sky as freeware... and generally being
                    supportive above and beyond the call of duty.

      Similarly the original Star Control II source (PC or 3DO) was never released; what Toys for Bob released was a barely working Windows port of the 3DO version. This has been cleaned up into The Ur-Quan Masters.

    4. Re:This is great by NewStarRising · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "giving modders tools to create "Hot Coffee" type games."

      Modders have always had tools to put their own content on computers.
      The problem with the "hot coffee" content was that the game publisher supplied it. The tools were never the problem.

      --
      b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
      MadDwarf
    5. Re:This is great by dmaxwell · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    6. Re:This is great by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

      id software could still make profits licensing the Quake III engine to game developers

      They do. Still make a profit, that is. When they release an engine, they release it as GPL. Anyone can make a game out of it, but then they must release their game under the GPL. As a result, many companies will choose to purchase a commercial license instead of dealing with the issues imposed by the GPL.

      The only real reason for the lead time on Open Sourcing their software is that ID doesn't want to help competitors by outright teaching them the technology they developed. Once the technology is old hat, then keeping the source closed becomes less important.

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    7. Re:This is great by Jagasian · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    8. Re:This is great by stupidfoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The whole game doesn't have to be GPL. You could charge for the game since it would most likely include custom models, sounds, images, etc. that would be entirely outisde of the open source engine. They still would have to make available the original code and the modified engine code, but the rest of content is there's to do with as they wish.

    9. Re:This is great by The+Evil+Couch · · Score: 2, Funny

      wholly untrue. I know that slimeball lawyer is making those claims, but he's full of shit. there's nothing but smooth skin underneath those pixelated squares

      --
      The World's Worst Webcomic!
  2. Will it be modified? by mattdev121 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    --
    mattdev@server$ touch /dev/genitals
    cannot touch `/dev/genitals': Permission denied
    1. Re:Will it be modified? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Will it be modified? by uchian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No point really, it's five year old technology. While it's great for people coming into the gaming industry, there won't be anything in the quake 3 code that the competitors haven't already discovered for themselves, and also with the advance of the technology of gpu's, a lot of the neat tricks in quake 3 will probably be either unnecessary on the latest graphics cards, or will be completely supplanted by some other technology.

      However, given source releases of other games (remember descent), they may clean out some expletives from various comments :-)

    3. Re:Will it be modified? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:Will it be modified? by leathered · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
    5. Re:Will it be modified? by QuaZar666 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think I remember that they did have to modify Quake 1, due to various licensing issues. I would expect that this would be the same thing with Quake 3. Might not be that difficult since 90+ of the code was made by ID.

    6. Re:Will it be modified? by Guspaz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I consider netcode to be the method of which the server and client communicate game states, and how that data is used. Unlagged makes several changes to the way that the client deals with that data, such as implementing much better client-side player movement prediction, as well as server-side latency correction.

      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. In the case of Quake 3, while the low-level network handling code isn't provided, as I understand it the modder has control over what goes over that link.

      HL1 and HL2 have excellent netcode, probably the best available on the market. If you are going to claim otherwise you're going to have to give a reason. HL1/HL2 work well in low bandwidth situations, is very adjustable based on available bandwidth server and client side, has good movement prediction, features latency correction, works well even with packetloss, and so on. It is generally quite reliable. And it is most assuredly better than Quake 3, especially from the server side. Unlagged makes a great deal of progress, however, to improving Quake 3's playability under worse than normal conditions. Despite the main feature of the mod being the latency correction, the new movement prediction probably has a greater impact.

      UT2003/2004 has "ok" netcode. On a low latency low-loss link, it is rather decent, though the lack of latency correction found in many modern games is a downside. However UT2003/4 don't handle packetloss or high latency very well.

      BF1 was horrible. I have very limited experience with BF2, so I can't really comment on it, but from what I've seen it has made at least some small improvements. How small I can't tell without further play.

    7. Re:Will it be modified? by bani · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.
    8. Re:Will it be modified? by Guspaz · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

      True enough, at least now. At one time I wrote a Q3 mod called GibHappy. It was very simple, however. But in reality it matters how the netcode performs for endusers, not how pretty or ugly the code itself is.

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

      It depends how you define "engine". If you strictly mean the 3D engine, you'd be right. But in Quake 3's case, a lot of the code that I would call the engine (as in game engine) is contained in what you call the mod source. For example, the Q3 AI system is entirely contained within the "mod source".

      The same applies to the higher level netcode; it's not in the executable, it's in the QVMs/DLLs. But netcode is undeniably part of the engine.

      My point is is that the engine code is not strictly limited to the executable.

      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.

      That'd be incorrect, though. HL1 is pretty much entirely Quake 2, with a few lines from Quake 1. So say Valve themselves, and since they're the only ones who truely know how much code they took from each, we should defer to their statements. HL2 was written from scratch, though that is a topic of much debate. Regardless, unless I'm mistaken the "SDK" for Quake 1 was all in Quake C, so it is impossible that any of it made it into HL1, let alone HL2.

      If you consider Quake 3 to be complex and HL2 to be simple, well, you'll certainly have an easy time coding in the future. But I disagree with you; Quake 3 doesn't pump nearly as entities down the pipe as HL2, or even some HL1 mods (Natural-Selection anyone?), and without Unlagged it's missing stuff from newer games like client-side movement prediction and latency correction.

      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.

      Are you referring to Q3 now, or ET? ET doesn't feature the same netcode. For one thing it DOES have latency correction and IIRC, client-side movement prediction. The game (Q3) might play fine for YOU when you have 80% packetloss and a ping of 500, but without client-side movement prediction, the other players will see you teleporting from point to point as your packets come in sporadically.

      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.

      Re-reading the Unlagged documentation, I'll admit it isn't clear as to if it does the prediction client or server side. If it is really doing it server side, well, then, that remains a particularly crappy part of the Quake 3 netcode even with Unlagged. But then again Neil Toronto was always big on doing everything serverside, so it'd make sense.

      In my mind, the lack of latency correction alone is enough to make me consider a game's netcode "unpleasant". But the lack of proper prediction is a big nono. Quake 3 can be forgiven due to it's age, but that doesn't mean it's even remotely good. Ever watch people going over the top jump pads on Q3DM17? Since there is no movement prediction players don't move smoothly in mid-air, they appear to be moving at a much lower framerate than the game is actually moving; they're only being updated for every packet received from the server (Once every 20 seconds by default). Prediction and interpolation go a VERY long way towards a smoother online experience. Quake 3 is lacking in this department. But your experience seems to be with ET, which already features much better netcode... and prediction!

  3. Let the race to port this begin... by WoTG · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Will Quake 3 run on a PDA, cell phone, DVD player, or a camcorder? I have a distinct feeling that we're going to find out really soon.

    Oh yes, and start imagining the Beowulf clusters...

    1. Re:Let the race to port this begin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      as long as they port it to text mode I'll be happy.

      ttyquake

      some screens for the lazy
      screen shot

    2. Re:Let the race to port this begin... by Krunch · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

      --
      No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
    3. Re:Let the race to port this begin... by pchan- · · Score: 3, Funny

      Finally, I get to use my natural smoothing and antialiasing feature. A game that looks better with my glasses off than with me wearing them.

  4. Cool by mistermark · · Score: 5, Informative

    Cool! this also means projects like DEVMAP and QQQ can be released to a bigger audience

  5. Excellent! by destx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  6. torrent of carmacks keynote by i88i · · Score: 5, Informative

    as always, filerush has got the goods: clickies

  7. A reasonable model by Coryoth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
    1. Re:A reasonable model by Lisandro · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, it's a good compromise. iD releases its older engines sources as GPL while still selling commercial licences for them to be used in closed source software. And apparently, they do sell them, for everything back to the original Quake engine.

          It's a great gesture, and iD gets (as it should) a lot of respect from the OSS community from it; i just wanted to point out that they still do make cash out of their "older" engines. No conflict of interests there.

  8. Now... by iignotus · · Score: 5, Funny

    We can finally have Quake 3 on linux!

    Oh, wait...

    1. Re:Now... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      or at least ported for mac osx86 intel

      and really see how fast it is ..

    2. Re:Now... by blechx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Now... by joeljkp · · Score: 2, Informative
      It's a plugin for ALSA that lets you play multiple sounds through the same channel at the same time. The format for the config file is a pain, but the following worked for me:

      Put all this into a .asoundrc in your home dir:
      pcm.!default {
              type plug
              slave.pcm "dmix"
      }
      Note that this is for a single sound card with a single audio channel, etc.

      To test, try starting up two mplayers or something.
      --
      WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
  9. Quake 3 Source Code to be Released by Agret · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article name is misleading as the Quake 3 source has been slated for release for a very long time now. It was pushed back because someone licensed the engine right at the end of its life cycle.

    --
    Have you metaroderated recently?
    1. Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released by richy+freeway · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, you're dumb. Yes, they could have had the source for free but without the licensing deal they couldn't have made any money out of it.

    2. Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released by Pete · · Score: 4, Insightful
      They (ie. Company X) could (at least in theory) make money out of selling a Quake 3 derivative under the GPL - it's just that their source code would also have to be under the GPL. That wouldn't mean anything for their content - maps, graphics, sound effects, music, etc. They wouldn't be obliged to make that available under GPL.

      The only practical result from a company selling a game based on GPLed source code is that they couldn't easily do any copy-protection tricks on their game content.

      To be fair, it'd be kind of tricky to make any real money from such a project - especially with the large number of fairly decent free mods available for Quake3 engine games. But it's theoretically possible... :)

    3. Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released by richy+freeway · · Score: 2, Informative

      Fair point well made. Not really the norm though is it? :)

    4. Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, the company in question could have wanted to modify the engine and retain their own code, for example maybe they wanted to include a custom physics engine, or update the graphics engine in it. Under a license agreement with id they can do this, but by using the GPLed engine they cant do this. How many games do you know that use the Quake3 engine without even minor tweaking of the engine? Its not a simple case of 'Engine' 'Content' and making money from the content.

    5. Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released by ejito · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    6. Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released by Pete · · Score: 2, Interesting
      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.

  10. This is the reason by Aggrajag · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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).

    1. Re:This is the reason by TrappedByMyself · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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?

      --

      Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
  11. Can't wait? Do it yourself. by deVoid99 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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

    1. Re:Can't wait? Do it yourself. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Interesting, but it does conflict a bit with some of the appeal of Q3: Being based on OpenGL so as to be easily cross-platform.

    2. Re:Can't wait? Do it yourself. by MaestroSartori · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nice feature list, and I'm sure it all works fine.

      However...

      Quake 3 also runs on Linux & Mac. Not to denigrate your project whatsoever, but it *is* DirectX and thus (depending on how you've organised stuff) might not be straightforward to port.

      --
      Game dev and music blog
    3. Re:Can't wait? Do it yourself. by turgid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Next you can write a cross-platform Direct X library that uses OpenGL as a back end. That would be very useful indeed.

      --
      Stick Men
    4. Re:Can't wait? Do it yourself. by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why is OpenGL legacy; just because you say so?

      DirectX isn't the end; especially since the two biggest game platforms out there don't support it: Gameboy Advance and Playstation2. Programming in DirectX limits him to PC games.

      --

      GPL Deconstructed
  12. Re:Licensing by Coryoth · · Score: 4, Informative

    The licensing scheme will, of course, be of an utmost importance to the community of developers and the "article" doesn't say anything about it. Let's hope it will be a truly free license, preferably GPL, so that the source can actually be modified and re-distributed.

    Well the Doom, Quake, and Quake II source were all released as GPL, so I'm unsure why you would expect Carmack to suddenly change his mind and go with something different for the Quake III source.

    Jedidiah.

    --
    Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
  13. Re:Licensing by NeoChaosX · · Score: 5, Informative

    Of course it's going to be GPL. Carmack release the Quake 1 and 2 source code under the GPL, so why wouldn't he do the same for Q3?

    --
    One man's selflessness is another man's annoyance.
  14. Re:punkbuster not included by The+Evil+Couch · · Score: 3, Informative

    anti-cheating/hacking program that was born from the cesspit that Counterstrike became IIRC, and is now the industry standard for preventing cheating and hacking in online first person shooters.

    --
    The World's Worst Webcomic!
  15. Re:Licensing by Antony.S · · Score: 4, Informative

    He said in the keynote that it would be GPL (and then he went on for the best part of 5 minutes talking about how much he loves the GPL etc).

  16. Nosferatu Total Conversion by 88NoSoup4U88 · · Score: 4, Informative
    This vampire themed Total Conversion looks very promising. They were waiting for the source to be released, so they can release this game for free.
    They made some nice changes to the engine : a particle engine, Ingame video playback, Cube maps, Specular maps, Lightblooms and some more modifications.

    Have a look at this screenshot or even better, the videos

  17. Hopefully we'll see Tenebrae3! by SynapseLapse · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Hopefully we'll see Tenebrae3! by Pxtl · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

  18. A shameless site plug by Ndr_Amigo · · Score: 4, Informative

    One site to keep an eye on for your Quake3 source needs is QuakeSrc, particularly the forums.

    Most of the current Quake engine moders hang out here.

  19. In other news. by jotux · · Score: 5, Funny

    3D realms just announced they are about to start writing the source code for Duke Nukem Forever.

  20. Re:one question for everyone by _Shorty-dammit · · Score: 4, Informative

    "directx" isn't just graphics, it's sound, input, etc. Doom3 uses opengl for graphics, period. It doesn't get converted to anything else, there'd be no point in that at all. It might use directx for other things besides graphics perhaps, mouse input, keyboard input, sound, etc.

  21. Re:Payback for banning by _Shorty-dammit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    or you could grow up and get on with your life, heh. Why would you even give a rat's ass anymore? You'll find that *not* acting like a fool will get you not-so-surprisingly few bans...

  22. Give me Quake III on DEC Alpha or give me death! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The Alpha Troll hath sp0ken!

  23. Thanks id by ribblem · · Score: 5, Informative

    I saw the source for Quake 3 long ago since I work for an IHV. I think the biggest benefit it will have over its predecessors is that it is much cleaner and easier to understand/modify (at least from my brief examination it seemed this way to me). It should be very straight forward to add in VBOs which numerous licensees have done. It will be a little more work to cleanly add fragment programs, but still not bad. Again licensees have already done this proving it's doable. Adding in stencil shadows really shouldn't be too much work. I'm sure adding FBO wouldn't be much work either, but depending on the effects you want to use this for they could take some effort. While I'm not as well versed in physics I imagine someone should be able to expand the physics engine of Q3 to the now popular rigid based per triangle collisions.
    At this point for tons less work than writing a game engine from scratch you'd have a very nice modern engine for whatever you want as long as you release the source with it.
    Thank you id Software.

  24. XBOX Doom 3 by Phil+John · · Score: 4, Informative

    was quite heavily re-written (hence the delayed launch date) by a company who was already au-fait with xbox development. I suspect they ripped out carmacks opengl code and put in a direct-x replacement, converting shaders manually etc. They also didn't have to deal with creating different render paths for different hardware (geforce 3 vs geforce fx vs radeon etc.) and only stuck to the nvidia card in the xbox, therefore reducing the amount of work required immensely.

    --
    I am NaN
  25. Let me clear this up: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Heya, Ghostface here (leader of the Nosferatu Team)

    No we are not really waiting for the Quake3 src in order to release Nosferatu for free. The game is based upon a heavily modified version of the Qfusion Engine which in turn is based on the Quake2 sourcecode.

    Engine : Quake 2 -> Qfusion - > Nosferatu Engine

    No Quake3 in there ;)
    We just use some data formats from quake3 :)

  26. native alsa sound support! by Internet_Communist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --

    If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
  27. And if you actually want to read the comments... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    And if you actually want to read Carmack's comments it's helpful to have a link to them rather than the Planet Quake homepage:

    http://www.gamecloud.com/article.php?article_id=10 68

  28. More companies should follow. by RoadWarriorX · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think this is one of the great examples of the balance of free software in a business market. The software companies always state that the number one reason why their never release the source code of their product is that they do not want to loose their intellecutual property...ever.

    Id has enough sense to realize that there is a point in a piece of software's lifecycle where their innovation has made "enough money". So, they can release their Quake X engine under GPL to benefit the community, while at the same time their can still license the core engine to commercial product. The release of the GPL engine gets people motivated to use the engine in new, innovative ways. They see the code, they understand the code, then they may use it in their project. No matter if the project is GPL or a commercial venture, Id provides the options! Isn't that great?

    --

    Coderz 4 Life
  29. The moral of the story is: by Fuzuli · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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..

    1. Re:The moral of the story is: by phrasebook · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You can be a nice guy, even if you have millions of dollars.

      Or maybe: you can be a nice guy, when you have millions of dollars (and you've gotten over the Ferrari thing).

  30. Great news for artists and researchers. by delire · · Score: 4, Interesting


    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.

  31. Keen? by YowzaTheYuzzum · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, this is great and all... but how about they release the Commander Keen source code already?

  32. Dopefish lives. by ikkonoishi · · Score: 2, Funny

    They can't release it.

    Dopefish ate it.

  33. Your reasoning (was Re:A reasonable model) by Laebshade · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Your reasoning/idea sounds awfully like the idea behind copyrighted material entering public domain.

  34. This will help MOD projects based on Q3A kick off by Thilo2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  35. But it used to be closed source. by fmaxwell · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When Quake III was released, it was a closed source game that ran on Microsoft Windows.

    I thought that the general Slashdot consensus was that GPL-licensed, open source development under Linux yields better quality products. If that's so, where are the open-source, first-person shooters that must already put Quake III to shame?

    Prediction: Quake III will be released under the GPL, just like the previous ones, and a bunch of open source fanatics will slave over it, never really understanding how it all works. They will make trivial changes to it before losing interest and no viable, popular products will ever come of their efforts.

    1. Re:But it used to be closed source. by justins · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Congrats to them for their efforts and thanks on behalf of those who enjoy playing it, but let's see a viable open source FPS that competes with, and exceeds, the big-boys. And I mean one developed from the ground up as open source.

      The problem is that the "open source" nonsense is just fucking irrelevant one way or the other. Make a killer new game engine, something competitive with Doom 3, and release it under the GPL. What have you got? Not much.

      The difficulty in getting a killer new game out is in the content and design, not the cost or difficulty of creating a game engine. Look, there are plenty of mod teams that have access to the doom3 engine's features already. They won't match the commercial doom3-based games, and it's not because they have a game engine which isn't competitive. It's because the game engine is largely irrelevant.

      To get a "viable open source FPS that competes with, and exceeds, the big-boys" the first thing you need to do is convince professional artists and level-designers to work really hard for free. Good luck with that.
      --
      Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
  36. Old news? by XpirateX · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  37. Bad for the players by RedACE7500 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  38. if... by KillShill · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
  39. Re:punkbuster not included by nunchux · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.