Slashdot Mirror
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."
Perhaps ET-GPL.zip, RTCW-SP-GPL.zip and RTCW-MP-GPL.zip are of interest?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
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...
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!
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
Yeah, no need to call the guy a troll. I just opened the FTP link and at first it just showed an empty directory. After refreshing, it showed a bunch of files. So he probably ran into this issue. What's up with the Troll mod these days, anyway? Seems it's applied to anything the mods have even a slight problem with, rather than a person posting something to intentionally cause trouble.
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.
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.