Quake 3 Source Code to be Released 394
fwice writes "QuakeCon has just kicked off and at the end of the keynote speech, John Carmack made an announcement saying that the Quake 3 sourcecode will be released shortly. "
E = MC ** 2 +- 3db
Will it be modified? (Score:5, Interesting)
Should be interesting...
Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)
A reasonable model (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish there were some other commercial developers that could manage to follow the same sort of pattern. Do some of the old X11 nVidia drivers contain sufficiently outdated stuff that they could be safely open sourced? Are there some other applications that are currently locked up, not being sold nor developed, that could be opened up? I assume part of the problem is bookkeeping: you can keep software on your books as an asset even if you probably couldn't make a dime trying to sell it anymore - and "goodwill from the community" doesn't fit into accounting.
Jedidiah.
This is the reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't wait? Do it yourself. (Score:5, Interesting)
DXQuake3 : http://www.dxquake3.dsl.pipex.com/ [pipex.com]e s.htm [pipex.com]
DXQuake3 features : http://www.dxquake3.dsl.pipex.com/dxquake3_featur
Hopefully we'll see Tenebrae3! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Will it be modified? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been looking forward to this for a while. I had tons of fun writing normal mods for Q3.
Re:Will it be modified? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually... The Doom source release consisted of only the Linux version, not the code for the DOS version, because id used a third-party DOS sound driver. So they simply stripped the DOS version out. Didn't much matter anyway, considering that neither the DOS nor Linux versions were particularly useful when the Doom source was released.
And thinking about it, all of their source releases were rather devoid of comments. There were actually comments included in the code, but not a lot of them, and it's not uncommon to see a couple of pages of rather dense code with only a couple of one line comments splattered around. I think that's mostly their coding style - there were very few comments in the first place, rather than having been stripped out. And what would be the point in stripping the comments? To make the code harder to read? Then why would they release it at all?
As for "company secrets", you are aware that id tend to be very open about what they're doing, and quite freely share new ideas and methods with everyone else (maybe not the instant they come up with them, but they don't seem big on the whole "company secrets" bit), right? And considering the age of Quake 3, there's probably nothing at all in there that would count as a secret, because virtually everyone who wants to know how something like Q3 works already does.
Re:Can't wait? Do it yourself. (Score:1, Interesting)
native alsa sound support! (Score:4, Interesting)
maybe quake 3 will finally work with dmix.
Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released (Score:2, Interesting)
Legacy cheating isn't as much of a problem, which is why the Quake1 GPL wasn't much of an impact; but legacy cheating still happens.
Giving away an engine, then selling maps isn't feasible for several reasons. One is due to conflicts and interoperability: most game servers currently allow you to download scenarios and models (for free, obviously) to overcome that. Are you gonna block downloads?
If you want restricted distribution and less cheating, you're gonna have to either GPL the client and keep the server secret or GPL the server and keep the client secret.
Relying on soley single player scenarios to sell a game also isn't the best strategy. Currently, every heavily played FPS and RTS relies on multiplayer for popularity. Even RPGs are relying on multiplayer.
This only applies to PC games. You can GPL a console game and not worry as much. However, GPLing console code is stupid, because you can't play your own games on your console without unlicensed modding.
Re:Will it be modified? (Score:5, Interesting)
Great news for artists and researchers. (Score:5, Interesting)
We host and or link to [selectparks.net] about 120 game-based artworks many of which are built on/for Quake3.
Over the years several artists wanting to sell work to museums and/or have work shown in museums/galleries have hit a legal 'glass ceiling' due to the issue of IP. This has resulted in game-based artworks that rely on proprietary third-party engines having less-than equal opportunity where other mediums are concerned.
This is welcomed greatly in the art world. True to form as always, thanks John.
Re:Now... (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, ids ported q3 uses OSS, wich is kind of deprecated now and doesnt even work with all soundcard drivers (i have to hack it through esddsp to get mmap-stuff to work), with the program released as free software anyone is allowed to make it work with ALSA, JACK, or whatever they see fit.
This will help MOD projects based on Q3A kick off (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let the race to port this begin... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Quake 3 Source Code to be Released (Score:3, Interesting)
All I was suggesting was that it'd be technically possible for a small (and abnormal :)) company to maintain a GPLed fork of the Q3A source for their own game engine (and thus not have to pay the large id licensing fee), but the aforementioned engine would be useless without their content. And they could sell their content under whatever license they chose.
Note that I wasn't (and still am not) saying it'd be likely, or even plausible. Just that it'd be possible.
Re:This is great (Score:3, Interesting)
The Precursors [medievalfuture.com] are recreating the MOD music the game originally shipped with and have replaced about 75% of the in-game ditties and larger pieces. They supply this music in both ready to listen forms and in a form that can be dropped in UQM's data directory. It adds some atmosphere to an already good game.
Old news? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's all available in his blog [armadilloaerospace.com]
From January:
Quake 3 Source
I intended to release the Q3 source under the GPL by the end of 2004, but we had another large technology licensing deal go through, and it would be poor form to make the source public a few months after a company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for full rights to it. True, being public under the GPL isnt the same as having a royalty free license without the need to disclose the source, but Im pretty sure there would be some hard feelings.
Previous source code releases were held up until the last commercial license of the technology shipped, but with the evolving nature of game engines today, it is a lot less clear. There are still bits of early Quake code in Half Life 2, and the remaining licensees of Q3 technology intend to continue their internal developments along similar lines, so there probably wont be nearly as sharp a cutoff as before. I am still committed to making as much source public as I can, and I wont wait until the titles from the latest deal have actually shipped, but it is still going to be a little while before I feel comfortable doing the release.
Re:This is great (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hopefully we'll see Tenebrae3! (Score:4, Interesting)
For shit's sake, Quake 3 was the first Id game to actually support mods as first-class citizens with their own keybinding menus and stuff. The Q3 TCs are an order of magnitude more complete than the Q2 ones because of it (Action Q2 is nice, but having to use the console for everything is inexcusable in a modern game).
Plus, Q3 allowed for replacement of all major media in game, without even modding. This means that there are already numerous replacement collections of player models and weapon models available on Polycount (not having monster models makes it easier) and maps on various mapping sites. As a result, all you'd have to replace to make a FreeQ3 TC would be the textures and sounds - everything else has been done already (whereas Q1 didn't have prevalent player-model and weapon-model replacements at the time of opensourcing).
This is by far some of the best news the opensource gaming world has ever seen. I can't wait to see this capitalised on.
Bad for the players (Score:2, Interesting)
if... (Score:3, Interesting)
engines nowadays are far more advanced than q3's, so it isn't very viable for most commercial ventures. still it's quite a nice little engine that runs beautifully on current and older hardware.
good job iD.
Re:punkbuster not included (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, that could just be my experience... Maybe some of you love punkbuster. But IMO nothing works better than alert administrators monitoring their servers. A pain, I know, but sharing this task is something that makes a room a community. I keep coming back the the game Red Faction... It's not the newest, or even the most fun, but it doesn't use punkbuster and the admins of the servers I frequent are diligent and fair when it comes to booting modders and abusers.
Think PS/3 + Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Realtime texture map generation, natural sounding audio effect, all kinds of things become possible.
Re:This is the reason (Score:2, Interesting)
Oooh, I'm stupid. Woohoo!
Well, you've got me nailed, but I'm still trying to figure you out. You proudly buy products you don't like from people who are filthy rich?
Said another way, Carmack builds a new engine, makes millions from it, slaps a game around it, makes millions more. When he's squeezed an engine dry (keep in mind Q3 source was delayed because there was more money to be made) he releases it to the community under the GPL. No loss to him, great PR move. Because of his grand self sacrifice you give him your money even though you think his games stink.
While I respect your freedom to do this, I still don't get it. If I find an old pair of pants which doesn't fit me anymore and give it to a hobo, will you send me a check?
Re:Will it be modified? (Score:4, Interesting)
Er, no. Companies never make _engine source_ available. Otherwise you'd be able to easily circumvent copy protection, cheat detection, etc.
What companies make available is _mod source_, eg modules which the engine loads and runs the mod code. Different engines handle this in different ways. For instance UT uses a VM similar to java. quake3 offers VM as well as machine-native DLLs.
In essence the engine is the linux kernel and mods are linux executables.
HL1 and HL2 are based off of _quake1_ engine code. HL2 still has a lot of icky quake SDK cruft in it, if you bother to look. It simply is not better than quake3. The only reason why it might "appear" to be good is that it is a very simple engine running very simple mods -- the amount of traffic traveling over the link is very small.
But give it a complex game to run, with tons of complex entities and complex gamestates, and it will not do as well as q3 engine games.
quake3 works _excellent_ in high packetloss and high latency situations. i've tested it to eg 80% packetloss and 500ms latency and it was still playable.
and er... unlagged doesnt change player movement prediction. it does make a change to serverside extrapolation if clients drop command packets, but that's a different thing entirely.
Disclaimer: I wrote etpro [anime.net] and ettv [anime.net].