Star Trek - Elite Force 2 Source Code Released

Thanks to Shacknews for pointing to a Ritualistic announcement that the Star Trek Elite Force II game DLL sourcecode is now available for download, thus "allowing people to create their own single and multiplayer mods" for this recently-released PC FPS, which was fairly well-received on its release earlier this year. It joins a number of recent full or partial source code releases from games such as Call To Power 2 and Homeworld, although, as with many source releases, "this code and the dll that it will build will only work with a full copy of [the game]."

Re:tsarkon reports greased up yoda doll billie jea

[1arkhaine]

Thank you, AC, that was very helpful.

Except, of course, that Yoda is from Star Wars, not Star Trek. oops.

sources released this year

[sardiax]

no love for the duke3d source?

Re:sources released this year

[WWWWolf]

no love for the duke3d source?

Bah. ID should release Doom 3 this month and GPL Quake3Arena source as a christmas present =)

The ice has broken!

[leonbrooks]

I note that a user-done Linux port of Homeworld followed within weeks of that release. I wonder how long it is before game developers can just supply a script and artwork, then stand back and watch their app being written. (-:

Either way, it's too late to prod the genie back into the bottle now. Open Source is well and truly coming to commercial gaming.

This kind of practice might also make the WINE developers' jobs easier, because they don't have to guess at what a game is trying to accomplish with a given weird set of system calls, which means that they don't have to cover all of the possible uses for a call when implementing it, only the actual uses.

Re:The ice has broken!

[The Munger]

I think it's getting to the stage where you could dedicate a site to games with (partially) open source code. The list seems to grow all the time. The list of Doom and Quake modifications people have done since they went GPL is huge. Following Elite Force 2, Call to Power source was released in the last week as well. It just seems to be the way that works for developers (and their publishers) at the moment.

Re:The ice has broken!

[Mike Hawk]

Read what you want to read out of this, but this is just a glorified SDK.

Either way, it's too late to prod the genie back into the bottle now. Open Source is well and truly coming to commercial gaming.

Just because you state it so firmly doesn't make it true. As soon as an open source game runs on an unmodified Gamecube, then "Open Source" (capitalization yours) will have "truly come to commercial gaming." Until then its just amateurs making crappy, buggy mods.

Crappy, buggy mods

[leonbrooks]

Until then its just amateurs making crappy, buggy mods.

That's the whole point. Until now, it's mainly been the professionals making crappy, buggy mods. When you open the field, there's scope for natural selection to operate.

Dumb question about all these source code releases

[wrinkledshirt]

I'm wondering just how useful having this code released is. For instance, anybody can get at the Linux source but not everybody can understand it.

What I'm wondering is, are there extra tools for the developer along with these source releases? Map generators and the like? Comments that show where you can twiddle with weapons physics and such? Good modular programming that shows you were to substitute the in-game models for your own user generated ones?

That's the sort of stuff I wonder about.

Don't get me w

Umm.. not complete source code

[LocoBurger]

Just a note so there's no confusion.. This is NOT the complete source code of the game, so no one can take this and make it run on FreeBSD or BlueOS or something. It is merely the mod source, so that mod writers can make mods now. Just about every FPS releases this type of source code moments after or even before the release of the game is on store shelves.

This is a non-news item.

good thing

[Blob Pet]

IIRC, most of the team that developed EF2 had been let go after the game went gold. The chances of any official mods like the add on pack for EF1 are next to nil; they're basically saying, "Go make you're own mods."