Quake 2 Source Code Released Under The GPL

Masem (and many others) writes: "The source code for Quake 2 is now available until the GPL license. The .plan file for John Carmack has the details." The Id Software site is of course slammed with demand for the code. Hopefully other mirrors will be available.

Really A great Thing

[peripatetic_bum]

You have to hand to Carmack to be a real good guy.

Sure he cant show you everything he's doing right now,

but by releasing, under GPL, the source code,

I think he letting people really learn how a true master

programs.

This is just a Good Thing

Re:Really A great Thing

[Wild Wizard]

err no they where polygon based hence the big differance in gameplay between doom and quake.
doom had sprites whish were fast and you could have lots of monsters which was cool
where as quake had to calculate all these polygons for each and every monster
which meant they had to cut back on the number of monsters you would encounter in a level which made the game pretty crummy to play in comparision

Gotta love Carmack

[I-man]

This, among many other reasons, is why I admire John Carmack.

Some may grumble that he only releases old products, no longer commercially valuable, in this fashion. To that I say "shush!". I for one look forward to browsing through the code of such a lovely 3D engine. The learning opportunity alone is grand, to say nothing of what will be done with the code now that it's out there.

Thank you, John.

Re:No thanks, John.

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

I think that if he really should deserve reverance, he should release the source *as it happens*.

You haven't had your labotamy re-done lately, right? You imply that someone that is trying to make a $ should release everything they type for free?

When was the last time M$ released the source for M$ Golf? Oh, wait, they never did. OK, well, when was the last time SquareSoft released the souse for the FF seires. Oh wait, they never did. Hmmm...

Seems like Mr. Carmack is onto something...

Wake up, man.

Re:No thanks, John.

[Genom]

when was the last time SquareSoft released the souse for the FF seires.

Actually, I think it would be hellishly cool if Square released the FF6 engine - it's outdated enough to be useless to their competitors, but cool enough to still have a VERY wide fanbase (plus, releasing under the GPL would make sure that anyone making improvements would have to contribute back - a good thing, IMHO at least). I could see fan-based programming for the SNES emulators skyrocket if they did.

Of course, right now they wouldn't do it, as the GBA would most probably run the FF6 engine just fine -- and they probably have plans to make a couple games for it...

...then again, that's a lot of probably's, and I'm only on my first cup of coffee ;P

Re:No thanks, John.

[juhaz]

People don't buy game engines. Companies do buy game engines. Derivative games don't sell, you say? Well, think again, guess what for example Valve used for Half-Life? That's right, Quake, and they paid for it, probably quite a bit of money. And it's certainly not the only successfull non-id game using ID's engine, do you think they would've paid for that engine if it was right there under the GPL right after the Quake went out of the press?

So you really think, ID should just give away it's code for their competitors to use for free?
What are you guys smoking these days?

Re:No thanks, John.

[Suppafly]

Since halflife is based off of the Q2 engine, and Counterstrike is a cool free mod for halflife, I wonder how long until we can have a totally free version of counterstrike not requiring the purchase of halflife..

Money and other problems

[DragonMagic]

First off, Carmack seems to release the source code after two other complete games come out. Q1 Source came out after Q3A hit the shelves, now Q2 after Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

But don't forget, that if they released the source code when the game was being created, not only couldn't they make money on the license, but also other companies would be able to compete on the same level without paying a price for it.

Carmack gets paid for his programming skills, but you're arguing that he should get paid to program *everyone's* game, including his competitor, from one company. All the other companies could release their own Quake 3 Arena clones and make money, without even bothering to do anything with the programming.

And don't forget, that when Q3A sold for $40+, id didn't get all $40. It goes from id, to Activision, to the distributor, sometimes to the wholesaler or direct to the big name store, and then possibly to a smaller store. By then, after the expenses of doing the packaging and the duplication, you're talking only a couple dollars profit per game direct to id... Split that among their, what, twelve workers now in the proper ratios, and that's not that much. Less than a dollar each, probably.

Even multiplied by a few million, that's not that much money to pay those huge salaries. How do they make it up? Licensing.

With licensing, there is *no* middleman. It's a contract between id and the company licensing the engine. In the end, it's probably a larger chunk of change than a first month's release returns.

And secondly, you have to remember, as with Carmack's .plan update, that when you release the full code, people *will* find the ways they can use to cheat. They can modify the source for themselves, recompile the engine, and have it work for them. Therefore, the rampant cheats would cause multiplayer to go to pot upon release.

No, what Carmack does is *more* than enough, and these are the factors not only he, but id and other people who can understand the business, realize, and have to protect not only themselves, but their consumers, from these problems.

Re:Money and other problems

[Ironpoint]

>>First off, Carmack seems to release the source code after two other complete games come out. Q1 Source came out after Q3A hit the shelves, now Q2 after Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

>>But don't forget, that if they released the source code when the game was being created, not only couldn't they make money on the license, but also other companies would be able to compete on the same level without paying a price for it.

snip, snip

To add to what you have said, I believe there were two factors for the timing of the release:

1. Its Christmas

2. With Anachronox's release, there were no more Quake 2 licensed games in production.

Re:No thanks, John.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, as an academic exercise, it goes against nearly all the "rules" of having others learn about your code. It was once a lovely 3D engine, now it's akin to releasing the hardware schematics for the TI-99/4A.

huh? the existance of quake 3 takes nothing from the value of quake 2. it's still the same game. it's still the same code. if there is something you don't know that's in the quake 2 code, then there is something you can learn from the quake 2 code. if there is something in the quake 3 code that you don't know, well, that's why carmack is writing it, instead of you, and that's why he gets to drive the (forward-reference) expensive cars you mention.

If you're going to release the source, why not go whole hog? They already have copyrights stemming back many years.

the only semi-sound business models that include open-source code involve profiting from support of that code. that business model simply doesn't work in the context of games for consumers. and without a sound business model, there would be no quake, q2, or q3, as the company would've gone bankrupt with doom.

I think that if he really should deserve reverance, he should release the source *as it happens*.

i doubt he's after reverance. and it's not reverence that's being expressed in this forum, it's appreciation.

There is such a small percentage of the population that would actually download and compile the source for Quake 3 Arena. If the copyright laws stand, he could release the code under a heavily-modified GPL (say, the idPL) and basically state you can use the engine, just not the artwork. Those who would argue that they make significant money off licensing the engine are fooling themselves. They are a multimillion dollar company, and every new Quake or Doom game nets them more millions. They're percentages for licensing revenue must be paltry.

i don't think that the loss of licensing revenue would put them out of business. but increased competition in the marketplace from other companies that get a free (as in beer) engine and only have to pay some artists just might put them out of business.

Carmack drives expensive cars that very few people can afford -- he could stand to give away the full source code at the time the game is released so that the academic world can study his graphic routines. As such for now, he only seems like the snob I once read about in an interview. Asked if he felt he learned anything from his teachers, he said, "Not much, because I was smarter than they were". Being a decent technological coder doesn't exempt you from hubris.

so, your real problem with carmack is not that he doesn't give away his source as he writes it, but that he hasn't become a public servant after finding contentment in his expensive cars? or is your problem the fact that he's smart (or had dumb teachers)?

Not really.

[digitalunity]

To sweepingly state that you are greater than your teacher in any class is nearly always a mistake. However, to state that all things must be learned in school is equally as much a fallacy. I don't write graphics engines, but my coding skills are far improved from when I began. To date, my only CS class has been AP Hypercard(oxymoron?) in highschool.

I've learned to program somewhat proficiently in C/C++/ASP/PHP3&4(a little) and Perl all without taking a single class. It isn't to say that classes don't have their place; only that they aren't required(but helpful).

Re:No thanks, John.

[Scudsucker]

Quake 3 was a big victim of piracy

I doubt that very much. Quake 3 uses the same online authentication system used by Half-Life; each cd comes with a key and only one copy of that key can play online at any one time. That is a very powerful incentive NOT to "share" the game and your key with others that you just spent $50 on (prolly under $20 now).

I'm greatful.

[digitalunity]

I really am. Why? Look at a lot of older companies like Sierra who have games they'll never make another penny off of. Why not release it into public domain or GPL it? No motive. However, when you look at truly great people like John Carmack who've more than given back to his community, it makes me feel good inside. Like maybe, to him, it's not all about the money.

I wish more companies and programmers had such insight.

mirror

[dsmey]

http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/~meyerds/quake2.zip

Responsible and Generous

[DarkZero]

id Software, as always, is being responsible and generous to its fans. Instead of keeping its source code under wraps until the game is released to the public domain by copyright law some time in the year NEVER, id Software has decided to release the source code for a game that it is no longer using so that the fans may tinker with it and learn from it.

If any of the people from id Software are reading this (which there is a chance of): Thank you. You rock.

Re:Responsible and Generous

[MindStalker]

Yawn, if you want to create a closed source game, I'm SURE Id software would license you a copy just for that. Ungrateful bastard.

actually, you can probably even do that

[markj02]

I don't think the GPL would require you to share media that are associated with the engine, since the GPL only talks about source code and linking. So, if you want to create a commercial game that people can't distribute freely based on the Quake2 engine, you can probably even do that.

Re:actually, you can probably even do that

[MindStalker]

Then you'd have to encrypt the the content files you include, that would get icky, and slow the game down.

Re:Responsible and Generous

[reidbold]

Read the .plan before you flame. If you create a true total conversion, you can give (or sell) a complete package away, as long as you abide by the GPL source code license.

Re:Responsible and Generous

[ndogg]

Perhaps, but is it worse than not releasing it at all?

Re:Responsible and Generous

[Yottabyte84]

GPL is in some ways better then public domain. Publishers aren't too hot for it, but it's great for the users. They can tweak it, make totaly new games that borrow code, etc, all of which will also be avaible for free. GPL is 'By users, for users'

Re:Responsible and Generous

[HeUnique]

Got a short memory, eh?

Back then when Quake 3 was out for Linux, 3D graphics on Linux was laughable at best! there was barely any DRI implementation and there was XFree 3.3.6 (and no Xv extensions, no Xinerama, etc)

John Carmack was among the guys who helped developed 3D drivers for Linux thanks to Matrox releasing specs. The trick that you had to do in order to reserve DMA with kernel booting... history...

So he is more then just a game programmer, and he intend to help further when the next Doom will be out.

Re:Responsible and Generous

[Cuthalion]

I frequently run into it on here, but the notion that programmers are a fungible and reallocatable resource is distasteful and wrong.

Programmers who are good at a particular task are good at it because they like it and they understand it well. I'm sure that John Carmack could do a perfectly fine job at writing a GUI or the kernel or improving mozilla or whatever, but if he excells at writing 3d engines, and that's what he wants to do who is any of us to say otherwise. I say we're lucky that his talent and interests are aligned such that we can enjoy them at all! Think of all the people who are like John Carmack but instead of writing 3d games write code that is of no interest to anyone but themselves (this is fine too).

At least you didn't make the claim that open source development is 'wasting its time' with two competing projects. That one REALLY pisses me off.

Merry Christmas to all Programmers

[Hangtime]

I admit, I'm not a good programmer. I am a code monkey who is working to be a good programmer. One of the ways you become one is looking at good code. I have peaked at both Doom and Quake to just see what goes on in the head of one of the best programmers in the world. In doing so I have picked a few pointers without even realizing it until I did it. So thanks Mr. Carmack, you have given me a Christmas present, the gift of better programming.

Re:Merry Christmas to all Programmers

[tshak]

I have peaked at both Doom and Quake to just see what goes on in the head of one of the best programmers in the world. In doing so I have picked a few pointers without even realizing it...

And this, sir, is how we get Memory Leaks.

Re:Merry Christmas to all Programmers

[Hangtime]

If showing genuine appreciation is considered in that context, I guess then I do fellate everyone who goes out of their way to do something nice. Merry Christmas...even to the ACs.

I have the source

[thekernel32]

Go to my box at linuxhost.cc [linuxhost.cc]and you can download the quake2.zip file containing the source.

I got it before the slashdot story hit...

And its now in cvs

[_generica]

You can find the code in the quakeforge [quakeforge.net] cvs:

cvs -d :pserver:[e-mail]:/cvsroot/qua ke login (just hit enter)

cvs -d :pserver:[e-mail]:/cvsroot/qua ke co quake2

um, ok posted it to edonkey as a mirror :)

[linzeal]

quake2.zip [ed2k]

If you don't already have Edonkey [edonkey2000.com] its got linux clients as well. :)

Cheating.

[Oily Tuna]

ID software are totally correct about the cheating aspects of releasing the code.

There will always be people who try to cheat, and some who succeed. Releasing the source makes it significantly easier to make a cheating client.

However,

i) The benefits of having the source to an extremely successful games outweighs the disadvantages of increased cheating (unless you're a victim of the cheating ... try a lan party instead of the internet next time).

ii) By seeing what the cheats come up with, perhaps the next generation of client-server games will have better cheat avoidance in the server and/or the protocol - we can learn from past mistakes or oversights.

Re:Cheating.

[dstone]

By seeing what the cheats come up with, perhaps the next generation of client-server games will have better cheat avoidance

Yes, especially if the cheat coders release their cheats as Open Source also. ;-)

Hey now, if a cheat applied to GPL'ed source doesn't follow the GPL itself, we can just sue all the cheat coders out of existence! Perfect.

Free The Cheats!

Re:Cheating.

[Lostman]

This was a problem we had when the Quake1 and Quakeworld source code was released.

A "group" released the cheat "Quake World Radar Edition" that put autoaim and a radar into a standard client. It was done actually very nce. They released no source code for anything that they did.

It was even "better" when, a year later, that same group came forward and told everyone "Hey, remember that QWRE we put out? It was trojaned. It has been reporting your ip, name, (other info), and even your WINDOWS CD KEY to us!" -- and they released logs to prove that it was true (pas the cdkey).

Hmm.. it was a huge uproar because EVERYONE and their mother demanded the source code for this from them.

This let me know something in particular... while the GPL "should" be valid -- it can ONLY be enforced by the copyright owner. Lemme tell you: Carmack didn't feel it was necessary to go after these people.

Anyways. . . you say that you can get the cheats from them and fix them. I am guessing thats not true. They will have closed source cheats that somehow make it around the net, and if you are lucky enough to find out who made it they will say "We wont give you the source code" or (my favorite) "we GAVE the source code out. Its not OUR fault that the people YOU got it from didnt give it to you" -- and since it would be snaking its way across the net who can be sure that it wasnt true?

Ah well, huh?

(And I am sure I stated SOMETHING wrong with the GPL and people are going to say "nuh-uh" -- thats fine. End of the matter is that cheat mods for these games will be closed source.. that just wont change...)

doh!

[llamalicious]

now I have to learn C, so I can write 3.21, so I can keep my quake2 server from being hacked! :)

Merry Christmas to me!

Good, a distraction!

[Some Dumbass...]

While everyone's busy downloading the Quake II source code, maybe I can mange to download kernel 2.4.17!

Lint

[Oily Tuna]

Someone needs a copy of Lint

gamex86.dll - 0 error(s), 332 warning(s)

Flamebait maybe - but if a build of my project generated 332 warnings I'd be fired.

Re:Lint

[Anonymous DWord]

Not if a build of your project sold 20 gazillion copies, you wouldn't. ;-)

Re:Lint

[Oily Tuna]

To be fair, if you drop the warning level back down to 3 (the VC default) you get

quake2.exe - 0 error(s), 8 warning(s)

lots of level 4 warnings occur in Microsoft's own headers (yes ... I think this is crap, it makes warning level 4 useless. MS - fix your SDK!)

QuakeSrc.org - shameless plug.

[Ndr_Amigo]

Ever since the Quake1 source release two years ago, a lot of intresting (and a lot of unintresting mind you) ports of the Quake engine have shown up. www.quakesrc.org reports on these new engines, as well as hosting some projects and a large set of tutorials. If anyone is intrested in coding off a quake-based engine, this is a good place to start. No Quake2 content yet, but give it a few days... www.open-quake.com is also a good site reporting on news in the Quake engine scene. End plug :)

This matters little

[MSBob]

I'm gonna be pissing on the parade here but this GPL release is not going to change the state of linux gaming. Currently the biggest issue with linux gaming is a lack of easily configurable 3D which translates to a lack of decent 3D games.

Don't get me wrong I appreciate this Christmas gift from ID as much as the next nerd but I doubt this will have much of an effect on Open Source gaming as a whole.... But it's cool nonetheless :)

Thank you IdSoftware.

Re:This matters little

[jslag]

I'm gonna be pissing on the parade here but this GPL release is not going to change the state of linux gaming.

Probably won't end world hunger either. So? Let's appreciate what JC does, not complain that he doesn't solve all our problems for us.

Re:This matters little

[entrigant]

I'm gonna be pissing on your parade here too, but I honestly don't think the intention was to change the state of linux gaming. Believe it or not Quake2 isn't a Linux only game. This also might surprise you, but it's been out for a while too... What you just said would be like saying releasing the doom source was for the purpose of improving linux gaming. That wasn't the idea.

Mirror

[tunah]

Break my computer [tunah.net]

Re:Mirror

[tunah]

I hate DNS.

Better (maybe) [202.89.149.194]

(Check those URLs!)

Darn cool

[Error27]

I would say something like, "I wish more game companies would open source their old games."

But I can't say that because Quake II isn't that old yet.

Instead I'll just say a big, "Thank you," to ID. It's darn, darn cool to open the source on this.

first impressions...

[markj02]

Looks like nice, clean, readable C code. It's not all that large--175kloc. Memory management via functions wrapping malloc, using some kind of zone strategy. It's interesting that there don't seem to be that many complex data structures--that's probably why this code can still be written reasonably nicely in C with manual storage management.

This code looks very different from what CS courses teach you or expensive OOP consultants recommend. It's kind of reminiscent of the traditional UNIX code: very concrete and just tries to get the job done.

Re:first impressions...

[kreyg]

I thought it looked almost exactly like typical CS code, actually not too different from my style.... until I saw line 577 in ref_gl/gl_light.c:

"store:"

WTF? Search "store"....

Line 488:

"goto store;"

And the style Nazi in me went: NNNOOOOOOOO! :-)

This must be a remnant of something, an "else" would have sufficed. :-)

Re:optimization or beauty

[kreyg]

Yes, except in this case, nothing odd is happening, and it's not handling an error, it just skips over a single block of code that could be enclosed in a single "else" block. :-)

Not to show any disrespect to John - I'm a game / rendering programmer myself, and I would by lying if I said I wasn't envious of his skill and drive. I just thought it was funny that the first thing I stumbled across was a classic example of "for the love of God, never do this!"

Some day, some day I will stop reading /. all day and surpass id... :-)

Re:optimization or beauty

[Cryptnotic]

Perhaps there used to be some other code there in a previous version that needed to be skipped over.

By the way, the standard POSIX way of handling an interrupted system call is like this:

again:
status = select(....);
if (errno == EINTR)
goto again;

Sometimes you don't want to screw around with a while loop.

Another example is when searching for something:

while (x) {
for (i=0; iA; i++)
for (j=0; jB; j++)
for (k=0; kC; k++)
if (something[i][j][k] == somethingelse)
goto found_one;

found_one:
}

The other way of doing it that I know is making an "int found=0;", then adding "&& (!found)" to each of those for loops and replacing the "goto" with a "found=1". But that's a pain in the ass. It's too much typing.

Cryptnotic

Re:optimization or beauty

[Cryptnotic]

Doh. My stupid less than signs didn't work.

Oh well, you get the idea.

Cryptnotic

Re:optimization or beauty

[SecretAsianMan]

Oooh, mod parent up! There's a programmer that has no strange religious distaste for the goto statement, one who realizes that it has its uses!

I'd like to add one: error processing.

void func(void)
{
if (func1())
goto err;
/* ... */
if (func2())
goto err;
/* ... */
if (func3())
goto err;
/* ... */
return;
err:
/* error handler */
}

Re:optimization or beauty

[(void*)]

That is assuming that nothing takes places between each call to func1(), func2() and func3(). If you have to execute something between them, then putting it in the boolean test makes things VERY ugly.

Re:optimization or beauty

[GregWebb]

I have to admit that, early serious training being in Pascal I'm no fan of GOTOs ;-) but my instinct would go for three nested do whiles, each with two stopping conditions. I'll only use a FOR loop if I'm certain I want it to execute that particular number of times, anything else always feels a little icky too me :-)

One thing, though - speed. I remember once getting frustrated with a program's slow performance, so I swapped a critical loop from for .. next to do while out of curiosity. Speed went through the roof.

Now, I can't believe that's globally applicable but it was curious and I'd be interested to know if anyone else had seen that sort of test.

Re:optimization or beauty

[Cryptnotic]

In C, the following for statement:

for (A; B; C) {
[body];
}

is exactly equivalent to:

A;
while (B) {
[body];
C;
}

I think Pascal does things a little differently, which is why you might have noticed a speed difference.

Cryptnotic

Re:optimization or beauty

[pclminion]

"Screw around with a while loop?" What is so screwy about it? What is so hard to understand about this:

for(;;) {
status = select(...);
if(state != EINTR)
break;
}

Don't bitch about branch optimization. That select() call is trapping into kernel mode. Who cares about a branch in the face of that?

Your second situation makes more sense. I usually never have loops nested that deep, though. The only time I really use goto is for progressive unrolling after error:

mem1 = malloc(10);
if(!mem1) goto fail_mem1;
mem2 = malloc(10);
if(!mem2) goto fail_mem2;
...
fail_mem2:
free(mem1);
fail_mem1:
return -1;

Of course these unrolling sequences can be much longer and more complex. It's really the best you can do in a language that has no exceptions. In C++ you would use exceptions and destructors for this.

Yet another mirror...

[matt-fu]

http://matt.fluxcapacitor.net/quake2.zip

3.16 -vs- 3.20

[mojo-raisin]

Looking at quake2/changes.txt it looks like the version of Quake2 that was GPL'd was 3.16. But id has released binaries of version 3.20.

Anyone know if there are major differences between these versions?

Re:3.16 -vs- 3.20

[GiMP]

I am pretty sure Zoid was working on Quake after 3.16, who has since left iD Software. I do not know any details, but this may be related to why the source is older..

Doesn't matter much anyway, after it gets hacked for a month or two.. it will have the current bugs fixed, and of course a bunch of new ones to worry about :)

Re:3.16 -vs- 3.20 (spammish...)

[XoXus]

Here's some of the changelog entries from 3.19 and 3.20 that would be kinda important to compatibility and general goodness. Hmmm... and even if Zoid worked on Quake after 3.16, wouldn't that be considered work-for-hire, and thus the ownership of the code revert back to id software?

- "Water surfing" that was present in 3.17 has been fixed (holding jump while
on the surface of water let you swim at full speed).
- Environment maps (env) are now autodownloaded (if allow_download_maps is set).
- Spectator support added.
- New server cvar: sv_airaccelerate. This controls the optional air
acceleration facility. [esp. if you want QuakeWorld physics!]
- Fixed the long standing Quake2 bug of where you would occasionally spawn
or teleport and find yourself either looking straight at the ceiling or
down at the floor.
- ... flowing transparent textures now works. [in software renderer]
- Fixed a case where a person joining a server could be invisible
- Linux: Complete rewrite of the OpenGL library handling. [!!]
- Railgun shots now go through gibs as well as other players.

Most of them should be fixable by various people, but some might take a while (like the OpenGL rewriting). Also, I'm guessing that most of those bugs would be relatively obscure and could be tricky to fix (Carmack obviously didn't get it correct the first time, and he _wrote_ the damn thing!).

Dreamcast game engine?

[NanoGator]

Any chance somebody will set up a Q2 community for improving/modifying the code? I'd really like to monitor what happens here. I can see some really cool potential here.

My personal interest in this project is that some independent game makers make some free, yet good quality games for Dreamcast. Wouldn't that be cool? The DC is $50, and can play burned CD's, which makes it an ideal candidate for this type of thing.

In any case, if the GPL licensing of Q2 sparks some quality spin-offs, this could be a welcome evolution of cross-platform games.

Re:Dreamcast game engine?

[GiMP]

Quakeforge [quakeforge.net], a project improving the original quake, already has the quake2 source in CVS.. you can find them in #quakeforge on OPN [openprojects.net].

I did some work on quakeforge a while back, did some cool things.. but I've moved on, however.. myself and others have come back, although I may or may not make any changes.. as I am busy with some other small project [kernel.org] at the moment.

q2 source and q3 mods

[Anonymous Coward]

this should definatly help mods such as Reaction Quake3 [reactionquake3.com], which are ports of popular Quake2 mods such as Action Quake2. In order for them to be good ports, they had to recreate q2 physics. This was nearly impossible until now with the source code :).

Of course, there are still games with quake2 and quake1 code (especially halflife, which is a quake1-based game with quake2 features). I wonder how id's licensing plans with companies like Valve (who made halflife/counterstrike), interfere with the opening of source code.

Hey, every other company in the world, take notes!

[GrouchoMarx]

THIS is how a company makes money producing Free Software. Don't, at least not at the beginning. I'm sure RMS would have my head for this, but it's the truth.

Consumer-oriented retail software and GPL code are simply incompatble as a business model. If Id released the source for RtCW today, they wouldn't make a penny on their retail sales. Somone would get the source code, edit one line, stick it on an FTP server, and make it available to the world free (as in beer), and most people would get it from there. There would be no legal reason to stop them, and every financial reason for them to do so. That goes for any consumer-targeted application, game, utility, or whatever. You just can't make money with consumers that way. (Consumers aren't interested in "selling support". If they need you to support it, then it was a bad program to start with in their minds.)

Now here comes Id. They develop excellent code, and sell it and license it commercially like any other company. Then, once they've made their money back with a nice comfortable profit and moved on to bigger and better things, they open source the code. They're not doing anything more with it, so why should they prevent others from enjoying it? It's the original idea behind copyright in the first place! Author(s) get limited monopoly for a limited time so that they can make a living producing content, then it goes to the public domain. (OK, that would be more BSD license than GPL, that's a minor issue.)

For the FSF and its supporters, economics aren't the issue, it's all principle and philosophy and idealism. That's all well and good, I agree with their ideals for the most part. But idealism must be tempered by reality to produce pragmatism sometimes. The Id model is the best way I've seen to make money in the consumer space while still supporting Free Software / Open Source (take your pick).

Unless someone else has a better suggestion on how to make money in the consumer space with FS/OS code (remember, after the cash register the consumer doesn't want to ever have to talk to you), we should all bug companies to follow Id's excellent example. If they balk at the "lost revenue", just show them Carmak's twin Lamborginis. ;-)

Re:Hey, every other company in the world, take not

[zhensel]

Well, there's always the option of releasing the source code, but not the game media. Kind of like how you can always download the doom executable for free, but without the WAD files, no luck playing the whole game. This would work with many companies, but unforunately not id - a huge percentage of their income comes via engine liscensing. Of course, by formulating a decent liscense (I doubt the GPL would work for this), they could release the source code and prevent people from profiting off of it. This could conceivably make id a good deal more money as companies and individuals could experiment with using/modifying the code on their own before deciding to create a full product with it and paying id. A problem still pops up with this model though, as mod authors could instead make standalone games, claim them as non-profit, and id would then lose out on the money they get from mods' requirement of having the original game. It's definitely a tricky issue, but it's not impossible to release up-to-date code and still profit greatly from your efforts.

Re:Hey, every other company in the world, take not

[ChaosDiscord]

If Id released the source for RtCW today, they wouldn't make a penny on their retail sales. Somone would get the source code, edit one line, stick it on an FTP server, and make it available to the world free (as in beer), and most people would get it from there. There would be no legal reason to stop them...

Of course, RtCW is pretty worthless without levels to play through. The engine without levels is of no value to your average gamer. Just because you open source your engine doesn't mean you need to open source your levels, models, textures, sounds, and other data.

There are risks of making your engine open source (As you point out, Id makes money selling its engine to other developers, open sourcing their current engine would kill this model. Also, competing companies could take the engine, saving software development time and focus on developing levels, effectively allowing your competition to leach your work.). But the threat that no one would buy your game isn't there. I buy a game for well crafted, fun levels. The engine is just the foundation that those levels are built on.

I definately agree I'd love to see out of date source made available. I have a number of games I own that I can't play because they're too old (MS-DOS based). I'm perfectly willing to take a stab at updating them, but it's practically impossible to do without the source. There is a risk that this would hurt sales (as I spent time playing old games instead of new games), but I suspect the drop is sales would be minimal (I like shiny new games too much to just stop buying them).

No Mac version included?

[appleprophet]

The zip includes the platform specific files for irix, linux, solaris, unix, windows, and even rhapsody!@ Yet there's not a glimmer of MacOS code, either for X or classic.

I'm guessing this is because ID software didn't port it to Mac, rather Logicware did the classic port and OmniGroup did the OS X port. However, this doesn't explain why the code for so many other OS' is included... Did ID Software actually port Q2 to rhapsody, for example?

Oh well, it would be really nice if Logicware or (more probably) the OmniGroup could donate their mac specific code. Do either of the above two companies actually own their Mac specific source code? Is this why ID Software is hesitant to include it in this package?

Oh well, I have no idea, I'm just thinking out loud.

Makefile fix -- compiling under linux

[XoXus]

Here's a patch to get the source to compile under linux -- Carmack forgot to use cl_newfx.c!

http://members.optushome.com.au/davidsymonds/q2m ak efile.diff

3 Cheers for Carmack!

[Jagasian]

Hip hip HORRAY!!!!

I wish more game developers would adopt his model.

1. Make awesome game.
2. Sell awesome game.
3. Make lots of money in the process.
4. Gamers love game, gamers play game, gamers have fun for many years.
5. Instead of letting a game die ("bit rot", ala Darklands and many other great games), release game as open source to the community (this is true public service people).
6. Coders learn from one of the greatest.
7. Community grows.
8. Repeat ad infinitum.

Sure the hardcore open source fanatics will give a thumbs down to the fact that Carmack wants to make money, but then again, they are fanatics.

I also love how Carmack does it during Christmas... kind of puts a tear in your eye :-) Oh, and I also heard that Carmack does more traditional charity works like buying toys for poor kids during Christmas.

Well, I have bought every game that Carmack has made since Wolf3D... and I am going to buy the new Doom game too. Its important to support the greats.

All those other guys

[Jagasian]

All of those other guys copy Carmack, make clones of his games... so why don't all of those other guys open source their games like Carmack does? Really, it would be a good thing for the game industry... let the next generation learn from the last.

Thank you, John...

[cr0sh]

I have been waiting for this for a very, very long time. I purchased Q2 for Windows many moons ago, and it is one of the games I miss under Linux. Guess it is time to compile it now.

BTW - does anybody know whether _everything_ works, like sound, joystick, mouse, etc - or is it just the graphics engine and game code (ie, playable with keyboard and pretty gfx, but no sound or joystick support)? Just curious how well this thing really runs...

Hmm - now I am wondering if I should try basing my future VR system on this code...

Re:Thank you, John...

[mihalis]

Well, you could have bought a linux copy of the game if it was that important to you!

Chris

-completed quake2 under slackware

Re:Thank you, John...

[cr0sh]

It wasn't that important to me - plus, I already had the data files - why pay again? I suppose you could argue "to show the want for the Linux version" but had I (and everyone else, let's say) bought the Linux version - how would that have helped it being GPL'd (ignoring the fact that JC was inevitably going to do this anyhow)?

JC has shown a way to make money, and still open source your product after it has enjoyed a long success. I hope others follow in his footsteps.

Re:Thank you, John...

[cr0sh]

Oh, re: the joystick, sound, etc...

While I haven't gotten around to compiling it yet, I did download the source, and saw that there was code for the Linux version for sound and joystick support, among other things. I guess I answered that question myself...

Re:Thank you, John...

[cr0sh]

Easy response - I am not a gamer, so yeah - I didn't notice it.

I like to play Q2 - but I am not a frag-fest maniac like some friends of mine. I enjoy most FPS games for the scenery, the engine - more than the game itself. Most of these games are simply "shoot anything that moves", for the most part.

I have always wanted to know what could be done with the engines themselves - and this engine was no exception...

Hidden in the code...

[DarkHelmet]

And I'm sure somewhere in the code is hidden:

3d realms and epic megagames are weenies

:)

fast mirror

[siliconincdotnet]

http://www.siliconinc.net/quake2.zip [siliconinc.net].

Enjoy, and happy fragging.

They Skipped a Whole Generation of Games...

[BigJimSlade]

Dear Lord, how will I be able to startup ComanderKeenForge.net without the source code to Comander Keen!?!?!?!?! It's just not fair to leave us hangin' like this!!! :)

How widely applicable is this release model?

[gonerill]

First, like every other sensible person here I think it's terrific that Carmack and ID have this strategy for releasing older code under the GPL. I've noticed that a lot of comments have argued that this is a strategy that many or all software firms should adopt with the GPL --- develop commercially and profit in the short run, release source to community when development cycle has moved two products down the road.

I wonder, though, whether ID find it much easier to pursue this strategy because they're in the game market? Games (and *especially* FPS/Multiplayer games) are a market segment where most buyers want the newest engine, best graphics, etc. Could a company that made Wordprocessors or Spreadsheets pursue this model as easily and still make profit like ID? I'm not saying it would be impossible, but it seems to me that many users would have a much higher tolerance for using a free, three-year-old version of their wordprocessor than using a pricely new version (assuming the company didn't do nasty things like change the .doc format, etc). This isn't true of games. So while I like this "Develop-Sell-Wait-GPL" approach, I'd bet that the "Wait" time of a company like ID is amongst the shortest of any software market segment.

Inside the ID offices:

[doublem]

"Hey, we're not making much off the Quake II engine anymore now that we've shifted everything to Quake III. Should we mothball it, maybe even lose the source so no one could even compile it anymore, just like every other game company does with their code?"

"Hell No! That doesn't match my master plan!"

"Master plan?"

"You must be new here. I want all programmers to either learn from my masterful code, or bow before me acknowledging my skill."

"How you gonna do that?"

"Same way Linus did. GPL it! My code shall never die! I will forever be known as the father of thousands of computer games. My code shall outlive the very civilization in which we live. Through my GPLed code, I shall achieve immortality! Mwhahahahahaha."

"Yeah. OK. I'll put together a tarball and drop it on the FTP server."

To himself: "Besides, if I give my brother and sister coders enough samples of my work, sooner or later they'll design the tools necessary fro me to move off of Windows once and for all, and do all my coding under Linux. They'll have to, just so they can continue to hack and improve my own work. Soon, very soon I'll be able to launch Afterstep and compile to Win32 with the click of a button."

(Dramatic Pause)

"And then I'll never have to use Windows again! Mwhahahahahahahahahaha!"

Thanks

[John Carmack]

Thanks for the kind comments, it helps me brace a bit for some of the really vile hate mail that is already starting to come in from the people worried about cheating.

Bill Heineman is preparing the mac source code for Q2 for a release.

We will see about getting the 3.21 changes we missed into an updated release.

I am also happy to say that another old game's code will be released under the GPL soon. We can always hope that it becomes a trend...

John Carmack

Re:Thanks

[dadragon]

I am also happy to say that another old game's code will be released under the GPL soon.

Please tell me it's Commander Keen... :)

Re:Thanks

[Art Tatum]

Ditto. Q2 is cool and all but CK, written for really low end hardware, has to be a tour de force of ingenious coding. Oh, and BTW RtCW rocks, John. ;-) I like the teamwork aspect of the multiplayer a lot and think that taking the FPS genre in a more intellectual direction in the future is a great angle--maybe even integration of Adventure/Role-playing and FPS or adding combat flight-sim/tank-sim components? Could be cool....

Re:Thanks

[raduffy]

3.21 Will be out soon, Timothee located it and repacked the zip. Should be up soon.

robert...

finally

[Suppafly]

Now someone can finally make a version of the sims that allows you to kill your neighbors easily and quickly and that has netplay

Re:Wow, already!?

[hexix]

heh, actually I think you still do. Doesn't ID just open the source code to the 3D engines but keep the levels only available by buying the game. I thought that was the deal.

Re:Wow, already!?

[VALinux]

Now at least I don't have to have a pirated version of QII (*cough*).

Yes you do, you walking talking dick. As Carmack mentions in his plan, only the engine is GPL, the game-specific data (skins, maps, sounds) are still copyrighted.

Do you have any idea how much of a dick you look like? "This is great, I like Quake II so much more than Quake or Quake 3. Now that Carmack is giving it away, I don't have to feel guilty about stealing it from him." Way to support the community, piece of shit.

Re:Wow, already!?

[Jagasian]

I agree. Its sick how some people actually want to destroy or harm the good things in this world. Why steal from someone who gives far more than his share?

Carmack deserves praise right now, and the fact that a few trolls need to feel their moment of power by doing something stupid... well, kind of ruins the Christmas spirit that Carmack started by releasing the source code in the first place.

Re:Wow, already!?

[Magila]

but crappy multiplayer.

Huh? Quake more than any other game defined FPS multiplayer as we know it today. Yeah it only came with strait DM out of the box but that on it's own was a big deal back then. And then came the mods. CTF? Team Fortress? Rocket Arena? all created during the golden age of Quake mods. Quake is still considered by many to be the finest multiplayer FPS ever. The fact that you make such a comment makes me doubt you ever seriously played Quake online.

Re:Wow, already!?

[FyRE666]

Dude, if you lived next door to me and were playing Quake with the sound up, blasting through a subwoofer at 3AM, it wouldn't just be the game scaring the hell out of you...

Actually, it's late.

[Doktor Memory]

Actually, I'm kinda surprised that it took this long. Mr. Carmack had mentioned a while ago (like, 8-12 months) that the only thing holding up the Q2 source release was that they were waiting for the final two Q2-engine-license games to ship, since apparently they were legally embargoed from GPLing the code until that happened. Those two games were, natch, Anachronox and Daikatana (cue inevitable snickering here). Anox shipped several months ago, and, uh, we all know what happened to Daikatana.

Hopefully the fact that it took him so long to get around to packaging up the Q2 source for GPL release means that they've been burning the midnight oil on DOOM 3, and we'll get to see it soon.

Re:Actually, it's late.

[mewsenews]

You are right about the imbargo related to unreleased quake2-engine games, however, it seems to have become tradition to release the code around christmas time (perhaps as a gift), as this is when the Doom code, the Quake code, and now the Quake II code have been released (I'm not sure about Wolf3D's code release date)

Re:Actually, it's right on time.

[Jagasian]

Nah, I am not surprised. Carmack has always been a bit of a romantic (in a software engineer sort of way). He seems to like releasing his source code during the Christmas season. Not only that, I have heard that Carmack actually physically goes to a toy store and buys lots of toys for poor kids. I am telling you guys, Carmack is a romantic.

Well, I guess if he really wanted to get weird with it, he could release it on Dec 25th... but this way the code can be mirrored so that by the 25th, every boy and girl can have their own copy of the source code.

Re:/.ing

[MindStalker]

Well I know that so far palantine is keeping CS servers cheat free now, and doing a damn good job at it, just hope it can stay that way.

Re:free data files?

[XoXus]

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Quake+2%22+TC

Re:nope ~ Re:free data files?

[Jagasian]

If you really wanted to be a good person, you could return the favor to Carmack by going out and buying a(nother) copy of Quake2. Its only right to return the favor.

Re:nope ~ Re:free data files?

[SaberTaylor]

No offense, but I didn't enjoy Quake, too dark and dizzy, and therefore feel zero urge to buy it. I have no pirated games if you're implying that. Is it bad to want to play with this Quake2 and free data files?

Re:nope ~ Re:free data files?

[Lumpy]

Ahem and buy Q3 for linux.

if everyone that ran Linux bought Q3, we would have seen Id happily release more for linux instead of calling it a failure.

Re:Great...

[ewhac]

Dude, what are you complaining about?

Looking at a static piece of source code can tell you only so much about a network protocol. You actually have to watch the thing working before you start to see how things interrelate (especially if the commenting was poor). This is why the TCP/IP Illustrated series of books continue to be best-sellers among the networking crowd, even though they've been able to look at the *BSD IP stack source code for years.

Because you've taken the trouble to do dumps and in-depth analysis of a live connection, you are way ahead of the game. The Q2 networking code will be cake for you to take apart and modify.

No quest for knowledge is ever wasted.

Schwab

Re:quake2.conf?

[XoXus]

Yeah, here's a hint:

LoadLibrary("ref_softx.so") failed: can't open /etc/quake2.conf (required for location of ref libraries)

It can't find /etc/quake2.conf, which tells it where to find the renderer modules. Stick a single line in that file (a path to the *.so files), and make it world readable.

Re:Website

[xiana]

Heh, a redesign of the idsoftware.com webpage is in progress, and we should have a brand-spanking new page up in the not so distant future (...hopefully...)

-Xian

Re:What does this exactly mean, help me here

[SuiteSisterMary]

It's GPLed, so do what you like with the source, so long as you distribute the source and any changes you make yourself. What you CAN'T distribute is art, models, music, or anything that actually makes 'quake 2 the GAME' as opposed to 'the quake 2 ENGINE.'