Activision, Raven Release 2 Star Wars Games Under GPL

hypnosec writes "Activision and Raven Software game studios have open sourced a couple of their games so that people can play as well learn from the code. The gaming companies have released the source code of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast through SourceForge."

Comments

I think those two games

[Psyborgue]

Are Quake 3 based, if I remember correctly, which is already open-source. What is the point of this, especially since it doesn't look like they've released the game assets?

Re:I think those two games

[mwvdlee]

Access to Q3 engine modifications, tweaks and usage examples?

Re:I think those two games

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't shit all over a nice gesture? I would love to see this become a regular thing, and maybe this is a test case to judge reactions for future action?

Re:I think those two games

[MouseAT]

I wonder if this means someone will port JK2's physics/damage engine over to Jedi Academy. Jedi Academy was (on paper) a much better game, but the lightsaber combat was HORRIBLE compared to its predecessor.

Re:I think those two games

[BobNET]

They're based upon Quake 3, but might not be identical to it. Compare to Heretic and Hexen, both of which were based upon Doom but added things like an inventory and flight abilities. (Both of those games were also from Raven.)

It'd be like releasing DuckTales under GPL

[tepples]

especially since it doesn't look like they've released the game assets?

Like DuckTales, Star Wars is a Disney franchise, and Disney is famous for sponsoring the Copyright Term Extension Act. I can't foresee what would cause Disney to change its policies to allow the release of anything it owns under a license for free cultural works.

Version control: You're doing it wrong!

[TheRaven64]

While I applaud their use of a revision control system (git, in this case), perhaps someone should explain to them that uploading a single .zip file with all of the code in it somewhat defeats the point...

Re:Version control: You're doing it wrong!

[rbowen]

I've been talking with the developer in question this morning, and he'll be putting the code into Git this evening or this weekend, as he has time.

Original Jedi Knight

[roninmagus]

I wish they'd release the code for Jedi Knight (the first one) if only for nostalgia. I spent many of my 12-year-old nights making levels for that game in JED.

How does licensing work on this?

[asylumx]

How does releasing this code to OSS interact with trademark law from Lucas (or Disney now, I guess)? If I go fork this now open-source software, am I allowed to release a new version with any affiliation to Star Wars or does it fall on my shoulders to go in and remove anything that might be protected IP?

Re:Linux port.

[Svartalf]

Depends on how fast I can get the Steam releases of the games I'm responsible for the Linux version of out the door- and if Ryan can beat me to the punch... >:-D

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:models

[Agent ME]

You can't see the value of the engine being open source? It's the same situation as with the Doom games, Quake 1-3, and Duke Nukem 3d. You still need to own the game to play it, but people can update the engine to have new features, work better on more platforms, and use it as a base for their own games.

Re:grep -r [wW][tT][fF] jediAcademy | wc -l

[flimflammer]

I think that's inside one of their MFC tool programs. I also found this in one of the code pages for one of those:

void FuckingWellSetTheDocumentNameAndDontBloodyIgnoreMeYouCunt(LPCSTR psDocName)
{
        if (gpLastOpenedModViewDoc)
        { // make absolutely fucking sure this bastard does as it's told... //
                gpLastOpenedModViewDoc->SetPathName(psDocName,false);
                gpLastOpenedModViewDoc->SetTitle (psDocName);
        }
}

I have so much sympathy for this anonymous programmer.

Re:List of 'fuck' in Jedi Academy

[safetyinnumbers]

\code\game\q_math.cpp(545): i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the fuck?

That''s part of the Quake III fast inverse square root.