Quake 3: Arena Source GPL'ed

inotocracy writes "At John Carmack's Quakecon 2005 keynote he promised that the Quake 3 Arena source code would soon be released-- turns out he wasn't just pulling our leg! Today it was released, weighing in at 5.45mb, it makes for a quick download and a whole lotta fun. Developers, start your compilers!"

Re:UT forever.

[Anonymous Coward]

How big is the game engine that you wrote? 5 megs is a lot of code.

Re:UT forever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tiny!? I'd like to see you write over 5mb worth of code.

porting

[jaavaaguru]

I wonder what the most bizarre platform this can be ported to now is?

Real download link

[cortana]

Anyone fancy posting a link to the actual download, rather than yet another javascript-implemented, advert-laden bullshit fest, registration required download portal?

hey can i complain too

[Anonymous Coward]

every time something gets released for free i loved to gripe and complain about something totally ancillary, like the fact that i cant get it fast enough...

and then i entered the second grade.

Thank you

[__aajwxe560]

In this day and age of everyone trying to patent this, litigate that, and everything in between, it's refreshing to see a company, that really doesn't have any motive to make any money off of this, AND in an industry where this concept seems somewhat unusual, release its source code, instead of letting this go off into some useless void. Actions like can only help the industry as a whole, as some burgeoning programmer will have many sleepless nights ahead spending his/her own time learning the tips and tricks employed in this source code. Thank you.

Re:Unreal Engine 4

[FLAGGR]

Chances that UE3 will be GPL'd: 0
Chances that Doom3 will eventually be open source (minus that code they had to license or something): 1

Carmack kics Sweeney's ass. By the way, doom3 etc was designed for - you guessed it - doom3, while UE3 is designed to be used as an engine for lots of games, so its not a fair comparision. But hey, if we're going to throw around numbers, how bout you take a guess at how many games have used the Quake engines? It's pretty damn high.

p.s. Ubisoft using your engine isn't exactly a selling point. Most of their games are shit tastical. Maybe if they're not coding the engine they'll be able to focus on not sucking, maybe.

And that's why id Software rocks.

[HerculesMO]

No, id Software doesn't rule because they are open sourcing an outdated graphics engine. There will always be complainers...

They rule because they are open sourcing it to make room for cheap games based on that engine. Carmack and Co know that they don't have to give the engine out, but the people that follow their games religiously, this is kind of 'giving back to the community'. The fact this engine will be open sourced means that it can also be improved upon, free of charge. Indy developers (mind you, id Software is one of the FEW left) get a chance to develop a great game -- albeit one that lacks a bit graphically compared to the D3 and HL2 standards -- to cater to a niche crowd and make a name for themselves.

The sheer price to enter the market for game developing is HUGE. Especially when it costs more money to develop a reliable engine than to buy one from somebody else. Those engines can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and for a small gaming firm, or even a lone developer, that entry fee is too high a price to pay.

id Software should be commended for their efforts to continue supporting open source, make room for solo developers, and help broaden the PC gaming genre as we know it by including those who previously had restraints on their investment into gaming.

And to those of you assholes who continually compare Doom3's engine to the Source engine, and say it sucks... just write an engine that's even half as good as the Q3 engine, and then maybe you can say what sucks, and what doesn't. Doom3 may not have been graphically spectacular in its own instance, but I have a feeling that the engine behind it will do much of what the Q3 engine did -- pave the way for amazing games, and challenge hardware AND software vendors to up their efforts to support the T&L and effects that the D3 engine is spectacular at.

Last OpenGL version ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since carmack is choosing the Xbox 360 as his main developmentplatform (Direct3D) does this mean that he will be ditching OpenGL?

Maybe now the OS X version will be fixed?

[solios]

Seriously. The last version of Q3A (that I'm aware of, anyway) for OS X has a glitchy, game-crashing plasma gun.

Oh, and the screen dumps I've taken (multihead, radeon9600) are static, as opposed to game content. o.O

Re:Thank you

[Frogmanalien]

It does seem ironic, especially since just a few comments above someone asks whether you can actually still buy it in the stores (which, having tried, I can confirm is next to impossible) that there are other companies out there who hold onto their intellectual propetry beyond reason. There are so many classic DOS games that would be great to play, but you can't buy. The games industry may have matured, but it still hasn't reached the critical level where (like movies and music) classic titles are held with such high esteem that it seems shocking to go into a decent CD/DVD store and not be able to get a classic title from twenty years ago...

As a personal plea to the software co's out there- please let your old games be free... or at least available to buy! What point is owning a product if you don't sell it?

News oppt'y for cheating?

[ch-chuck]

I already get my butt kicked every time, but won't this allow server operators to make special hacks for their own advantage?

Re:Last OpenGL version ?

[jericho4.0]

I would be open to that if it was available on other platforms! But it's not, it's only available on windows, and no matter how you feel about OSS, GNU hippies, and the like, that's not good.

License problem, GPL/BSD mixed code?

[hauk]

I see quite a bit of BSD licensed code in there or usage thereof. Any BSD license with an advertising clausal is incompatible with the GPL (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html [gnu.org]) still Quake3 is licensed under the GPL. Wouldn't this be a problem?