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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. "

17 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.

  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: 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.

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

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

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

    as always, filerush has got the goods: clickies

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

    We can finally have Quake 3 on linux!

    Oh, wait...

  7. 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?
  8. 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

  9. 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.
  10. 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.

  11. 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

  12. 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.

  13. 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 :)

  14. 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..