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Return To Castle Wolfenstein Source Code Released
geefau writes with news that id Software has released the source code to Return To Castle Wolfenstein (single player and multiplayer), along with Wolfenstein – Enemy Territory, under the GPL. The linked article notes that "these only include the game source code, not the graphics. You need the full games for those."
Which seems a bit old. As I look through each of these files, none seem to be related to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein – Enemy Territory, Return to Castle Wolfenstein single-player or Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer. A few directories up I see Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone but all I'm seeing are older games that have been open sourced with notes from John Carmack. There are a lot of Doom and Quake utilities and Wolfenstein 3D but ... I cannot find these other engines. Am I missing something? Is the Quake code the same engine?
Gamasutra ran a similar story back in August but there's no press release on id's site about such a commitment to the GPL. One would think that if this did happen at QuakeCon it would be on QuakeCon's news site. Did someone make an announcement and confuse Wolfenstein 3D with the later games or is there a legit place you can get the source with a GPL license alongside it?
My work here is dung.
Title and summary are wrong: the article is not about Castle Wolfenstein.
ET itself has already been ported by iD software to Linux, the build environment should be there too...
I know the Quake 3 sourcecode simply includes a Visual Studio solution file which can be opened and converted to VS 2005/2008 without problems. I do have to agree that it's a pain that it doesn't actually build out-of-the-box (out-of-the-installer) though, but with a little bit of creative Googling it's not a problem that cannot be solved.
The source code for Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory was released under the GNU GPL on August 12, 2010.
-- Chaos, panic, pandemonium... My job here is done!
I don't want to sound like a dick or anything, but if you give up after 5 minutes you probably weren't going to get very far with it anyways.
Yeah, I bought RTCW on Steam a couple months ago and it's buggy junk on a modern 64-bit system. I had to copy a certain file from an older ATI video driver and put it into RTCW's program folder before it would even run.
Similar problems with at least some of id's older Windows games as well, such as WinQuake and Quake 2.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Not sure about ATI cards or Linux, but for Windows and Nvidia cards, you can specify in the driver settings to send the smaller, older list of GL extensions to a game to prevent bugs like that. No hex editing required.
It's not Castle Wolfenstein, the classic Apple ][ game, for which the source code was released; it was for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a game for which Slashdot's use of the "classic games" story icon is dubious.
Please note that while ID software gives up the code of the binary, they still retain the copyright on all maps, graphics and sounds. So if one want to play the game legally one either need to own a copy or recreate all those files in a non-infringing way.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Technically correct, but gp was talking about the context of buying a DRM-encumbered game. So ownership is already there. You buy it, play for a few years, then you get the source. You can rebuild it without DRM, or someone else will. And it will come with a giant "You have to own the original game files" disclaimer. From that perspective, DRM works as it should. A temporary monopoly.
This benefits people who legally own the game but have an encumbered copy. If you don't own the game, you are not affected by the DRM, so there is no solution to be provided. You wait until the copyright expires like everyone else does for every other bit of work. If you are affected, ID provides a reasonable remedy, and in a reasonable time frame, above and beyond what they are required to provide.
That requirement btw is public domain status after a limited time. This is an intermediate step where the owner can make changes or improvements, like fixing the legs on a wobbly table or sawing off a third of it to fit it in a new space. If you aren't affected, the copyright status of the game files affects you as much as if you didn't own the table - which is to say not at all, positively or negatively.