Parts of the Unreal Engine to be Opened

Mr.Pantz writes "Epic's GreenMarine updated his .plans with some news on Linux support (and such) and UT. Here's the goods: I have permission from Tim to open source certain parts of the engine for the purposes of improving Linux support. What I would like to do is make available the code I have written for Glide, Mesa, input, and audio. I would appreciate Linux programmers taking the time to submit improvements to me at brandon@epicgames.com. I will look into putting up a webpage for this and perhaps a discussion forum. Please email me your input or ideas. I'm leaving to go home for Thanksgiving tomorrow, so I may not be able to start on this until I get back on Friday. Right now I'm working on the Mesa renderer, because I would like to release that soon, if possible. The code that I open source will not allow you to really dig very deep into the engine, but it will let you do a lot of stuff to the renderer and X windows interface. Since my time is split between non-Linux related projects, the Linux port could no doubt be improved if it gets some attention from experienced Linux programmers. "

Comments

It's a good start

[jd]

It's easy to be cynical, and say "hey, they just want a better interface for Linux", but think of it this way. If the Open Source code produced is of exceptional quality, and doesn't hurt the commercial value of Unreal, then they might be tempted to take another step, and release part (or all) of the engine.

If a baby is taking it's first steps, you don't scream at them for not winning marathons, but you might offer encouragement for what they can do. The same is true here.