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Doom 3 Source Code To Be Released This Year
An anonymous reader writes "John Carmack just confirmed during his QuakeCon 2011 keynote that the source code to Doom 3 will be released this year. The source drop will follow the release of their Rage game in October. Carmack has also challenged other game developers to release their old source code."
How out of date is your hardware? Doom 3 was released 7 years ago.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Open Source is not a dumping ground for old and useless shit.
According to Wikipedia, an id Tech 4 game was released this year and there's another one scheduled for next year.
Good for John Carmack. This code base is past the point where it offers serious competitive advantage. The value of an id Tech 4 game today is based on how good the game is, which is really as it should be. So there isn't really much reason why it shouldn't be open sourced -- except that most companies "just don't do that."
Even if the code was "old and useless shit" (which it obviously is not), how many companies actually throw away their old and useless shit? Most hoard it like it's diamonds. So kudos to Carmack and co. for sticking to their guns continuing to challenge the industry to move forward.
Breakfast served all day!
It's a shame that a lot of old games (including DOS games, circa 1995) have been consigned to the graveyard of dead software, where they can't be ported/maintained because they have no sources and need emulation, they can't be bought except for second/third/20th-hand, they can't be copied/preserved because of copyright. It's shameful, really. I feel quite angry about that tbh, and I'm delighted to see game creators make an effort to release their code.
I sometimes see people arguing that releasing the code is impossible because some parts are based on proprietary code they don't have the rights to. I wish they would just cut that code out and release the rest. There are a lot of eager fans out there who would be very happy to rewrite that code and even develop drop-in open-source replacements that can be reused for other ports (yes, even entire game engines). Let's not let old games end up like old films, rotting away in the archives of underfunded libraries without anyone knowing they ever existed.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
Not everything has an alterior motive.
Your life mgiht be improved if you realize this.