Cat Mother Open-Sources Game Engine

Mr.Oreo writes "According to Flipcode, Finnish videogame development company Cat Mother Ltd. has now closed its offices, but in their last meeting the company board decided to publish all company source code as open source. A large part of the game assets are also available. Published material includes a fully playable prototype of a 3rd person action/adventure game, and a commercial quality in-house 3D-engine (C++/DirectX9). The source code is published under the BSD license, and the content is published under the GPL license. Just downloaded the engine and snooped through it - it looks pretty complete, and definitely worth having a look at if you're a 3D code monkey."

It's things like this ...

[Kleedrac2]

that really make me renew my faith in open-source. This is what it's truly good for in the private sector. I get annoyed every time I hear some kid say that Half-Life should be open-sourced just because the sequel is coming out and it's based on Quake II which is open-source anyways. This is what Open-Source should be though ... the company is defunct and the technology would go to waste otherwise ... why not give it away under the BSD liscense so you can still get the kudos. Hell, maybe the original developers will get to finish their dream in their spare time!!

Yay!

[sniser2]

Whoooo!! Flood of hilarious [jesusfreakin.com] games. Now all that's needed is some open source coders with lots of physics knowledge and lots of time on their hands -> TEH ULTRA-YAY! Think that stair/truck dismount shit! I guess there might be more constructive purposes for a 3d engine, but as a gamer I can't think of any myself =/

OS games

[Henry V .009]

I would like to see what benefits accrue to this company in mods and improvements over the next year. This is interesting stuff. I hope they release their in-house documentation too.

Re:OS games

[rlowe69]

I hope they release their in-house documentation too.

This is a game development company. What documentation? ;)

The Best Documentation

[QEDog]

The game manual... and we all know how accurate those are.

"I know how to program games, A to jump, and after I get the flower, B for fireballs... dumdi dumdi dum"

Nice ..

[.milfox]

to see that the time they spent won't be in vain, and that their efforts will live on.

Thanks, Cat Mother. :P

What happens next?

[IM6100]

The question I have to ask, and maybe I am being skeptical, is 'what happens next?' I see that they've shut down the company web page, and there's downloadable code available on a sourceforge page. I don't see any links on the sourceforge page for anybody involved in an ongoing project. Does that sort of thing 'grow' out of the code eventually? How?

i hope other companies follow this path

[incubusnb]

not only older finished products, but cancelled products that didn't make it to the world should be presented in Open Source.

i remember when certain games that i was looking forward to would get cancelled, if more companies released the source, at least there would still be a chance for it to be a finished product.

for example, EA's Motor City was a great game, now its closed the doors on the server, why can't they release the source code under the GNU and allow people to setup their own servers, or to re-program on offline mode. now my $60 product is useless and my Faith in EA is damaged. just because they can't use the soucre anymore, doesn't mean nobody else could.

I applaud Cat Mother's innovative ideals, the world would be a better place if more companies saw Open source the same way.

Re:i hope other companies follow this path

[Oddly_Drac]

"my Faith in EA is damaged"

Seriously, if you had faith in EA Games, you'd be quite late in renouncing them now. They're rapidly becoming the most generic gaming brand on the planet.

Re:i hope other companies follow this path

[raxhonp]

Actually it's nothing new. Do you remember golgotha [3dgamers.com]? That game doesn't even have a website anymore [linuxtoday.com].

Re:i hope other companies follow this path

[illuminata]

It doesn't hurt my feelings too much when a game company doesn't release code to a discontinued or unreleased game. That code still might have value and could be used in a forthcoming title by the company. If they can release code, great. If not, I wouldn't look down upon the company because of it.

Check out their news timeline

[stoborrobots]

what's funny is that the news on their homepage [catmother.com] suggests that their company timeline was:

1. Get seed funding from Venture Capitalists
2. Become a registered Xbox developer
3. go bust!

So now their trying the slashdot principle:

1. Release all code as open-source
2. ???
3. profit!!!

OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully this gets ported to OpenGL... DirectX is useless for non-Windows platforms.

Re:OpenGL

[abdulla]

I'm inclined to believe (due to my own limited experience perusing 3D engine source code) that it'd be easier to convert from DirectX to OpenGL than the other way around, due to certain games using immediate mode in OpenGL whereas with DirectGraphics it's all packed in to Vertex/Index buffers which would be easy to port over to OpenGL using vertex buffer objects or even vertex arrays. In the end, I'm pretty sure someone will have a crack at it and it shouldn't be too hard.

Anyone else see the irony in this?

[madaxe42]

They've gone bust, and gone opensource. Since this, their site and product has probably received more interest than it ever has. This is an excellent business move... Expect these guys to produce The Next Big Thing(tm).

Kudos

[Quill_28]

For releasing under the BSD license and not GNU.

Re:Kudos

[overbom]

Kudos [...] For releasing under the BSD license and not GNU

Actually, the game content is released under the GPL. The game engine is BSD.

If you ask me, that's the better way to do it. For anyone that purchased this game (if it was ever available, that is), this means that anyone that continues to support it can release game patches, etc, and subsequent games with the associated content are GPL as well. Viva la revolucion!

However, anyone that decides that they like the game engine can take it and run w

Golgotha

[pragma_x]

Its interesting to note, this is not the first time a game company has decided to give the world their unfinished product.

Crack.com opened up 'Golgotha', along with 'Abuse', back in 1998. Everything about this, including the source is located here [jonathanclark.com].

Products?

[mugnyte]

I'm not a big gamer, so I don't know what Cat Mother ever released. Googling doesn't return much, but someone tell they've actually had at least 1 game finished. Otherwise, it doesn't say much that they're releasing code. How does one know it's "production quality" if nothing ever went to production?

Re:Products?

[jkajala]

Its a good idea to be a bit spectical, there are a lot of open source 3D-engines out there with a wide range of quality. Cat Mother never had a chance to finish any games, but the team itself was very experienced and in my opinion, this is visible if you take any look at the stuff we released. For example I've been working in the game industry since -96. Internationally published titles include Max Payne (original PC version) and Thrust, Twist'n'Turn (both published by Take2). Of course my opinions are hi

It's Better This Way

[Black Mage Balthazar]

Another reason I like this is that a lot of blood, sweat, and perhaps tears went into this engine. I'm sure many programmers put a lot of effort in, and now their work isnt' going to die. I've read stories about old programs ending up in some companies data repository, never to be accessed again. Now this engine will live on and hopefully inspire more programs to be written (we can always use more games).

I'm also glad that the company is behind this move, as oppose to the Sierra/Falcon 4.0 kerfuffle.

Issues with graphics zip file

[EdgarRice]

One of the three zip packages, the one containing the images and 3dS models, is causing me problems. It unzips fine, but when I try to click on any of the file icons to open them, I get an Explorer error and that Explorer window shuts down. Has anyone else experienced this?