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Classic Games (Games) Open Source Games

Return To Castle Wolfenstein Source Code Released 92

Posted by timothy from the now-you-can-be-free dept.
geefau writes with news that id Software has released the source code to Return To Castle Wolfenstein (single player and multiplayer), along with Wolfenstein – Enemy Territory, under the GPL. The linked article notes that "these only include the game source code, not the graphics. You need the full games for those."
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Return To Castle Wolfenstein Source Code Released More

Return To Castle Wolfenstein Source Code Released

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  • When I open up the FTP link [idsoftware.com], the latest modified listing I see is:

    GtkRadiant-GPL.zip Feb 17 2006

    Which seems a bit old. As I look through each of these files, none seem to be related to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein – Enemy Territory, Return to Castle Wolfenstein single-player or Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer. A few directories up I see Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone [slashdot.org] but all I'm seeing are older games that have been open sourced with notes from John Carmack. There are a lot of Doom an

    • Re:I'm a Little Confused (Score:5, Informative)

      by fbjon ( 692006 ) on Monday September 20, 2010 @08:19AM (#33634366) Homepage Journal
      Perhaps ET-GPL.zip, RTCW-SP-GPL.zip and RTCW-MP-GPL.zip are of interest?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Perhaps ET-GPL.zip, RTCW-SP-GPL.zip and RTCW-MP-GPL.zip are of interest?

        Ah, they were showing time stamps and not dates. I'm an idiot, ignore that post.

      • Re:I'm a Little Confused (Score:4, Informative)

        by noidentity ( 188756 ) on Monday September 20, 2010 @09:24AM (#33634822)
        Yeah, no need to call the guy a troll. I just opened the FTP link and at first it just showed an empty directory. After refreshing, it showed a bunch of files. So he probably ran into this issue. What's up with the Troll mod these days, anyway? Seems it's applied to anything the mods have even a slight problem with, rather than a person posting something to intentionally cause trouble.

      • There is also wolfsrc.zip from 1996!
        FTP server seems to be in the midst of a slashdotting. Half of my downloads were 0 byte files the first couple tries.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AnonymousClown ( 1788472 )
      You don't see these files? File:RTCW-MP-GPL.zip 3250 KB 8/12/2010 2:22:00 PM
      Or
      File:RTCW-SP-GPL.zip 3642 KB 8/12/2010 2:21:00 PM

      Try refreshing the page. I'm downloading RTCW-SP as I type.....

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Suki I ( 1546431 )
      I confused myself and misread Wolfenstein – Enemy Territory as "Emmy Territory" and started thinking award. Thank goodness my thinking brain kicked in before anybody found out!

      • Re:I'm a Little Confused (Score:5, Funny)

        by cheater512 ( 783349 ) <nick@nickstallman.net> on Monday September 20, 2010 @08:24AM (#33634400) Homepage

        Hmm a FPS based at the Emmy Awards? That could become a best seller.

        • Team Colbert vs. Team Stewart? :) Lots of innocent(insofar as that is possible for celebs) bystanders...I'd play that.

          • As long as Stewart was given a small paint ball gun and Colbert was given an arsenal of rocket launchers and guns with explosive rounds. I'd also give Stewart the ability to throw his own shoes, while I'd give Colbert a Samurai sword and some deadly throwing knives.

            And of course, some of the innocent celebs would have the ability to fight back, and to go on a rampage of their own, just to make sure Team Colbert doesn't win all the time.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Lumpy ( 12016 )

              you know little of Colbert/Stewart.....

              There are NO innocent Celebs... They all are guilty.

              I'd dress colbert as Judge Dredd, full flag graphics. That would be the most fitting.

            • There are no "innocent celebs"!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Suki I ( 1546431 )
          Too bad they don't have creative points :) That was excellent.

    • Shock! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      eldavojohn, trolling? Say it ain't so!

  • It has a VS project. I'm trying to open it in VC Express (It gave me a "Product needs to be reinstalled error" - ????). Anyway, it's been a while, isn't there a way to export VC projects as makefiles?

    Porting to Linux is on my mind.....

  • Pretty exciting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20, 2010 @08:33AM (#33634446)

    Looking forward to seeing Wolf:ET and its mods getting the polish and extra features we've seen with ioquake3.

    • True Combat: Elite [truecombatelite.com] looks to be already delivering on that front. Too bad I've found it impossible to get running on Windows or Linux.

    • These are two of my favorite linux games. I have high hopes on what others will do with this. (Fingers crossed on a 64 bit client.)

      It will be nice to be able to install these games (minus game data) through apt. And I am sure people will quickly be working on open source game artwork and maps. Heck, there may already be a lot of that out there for Enemy Territory already since people have been modding it for many years.

  • "Return to" Castle wolfenstein. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Rhaban ( 987410 ) on Monday September 20, 2010 @08:37AM (#33634462)

    Title and summary are wrong: the article is not about Castle Wolfenstein [wikipedia.org].

  • Instructions? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by iONiUM ( 530420 )

    Is there instructions somewhere on how to compile this and such on the different platforms?

    Whenever ID releases stuff like this I'm interested in playing with it but after 5 minutes of not knowing how to build it I usually just give up and move on. I do admit part of the confusion is probably because I'm a .NET developer, and almost all my experience is with csc and VS. I guess I shouldn't say that on /., since I'll get trolled for being a MS developer, but..

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Eraesr ( 1629799 )
      I know the Quake 3 sourcecode simply includes a Visual Studio solution file which can be opened and converted to VS 2005/2008 without problems. I do have to agree that it's a pain that it doesn't actually build out-of-the-box (out-of-the-installer) though, but with a little bit of creative Googling it's not a problem that cannot be solved.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Eponymous Coward ( 6097 )

      I don't want to sound like a dick or anything, but if you give up after 5 minutes you probably weren't going to get very far with it anyways.

    • Given that pretty much all id releases to date of products targeting Windows (i.e. WinQuake and above) were in form of Visual Studio solutions, I'm not sure what the problem is. For everything I've seen so far - Q1, Q2, Q3, Radiant - you just open it in VS and build it, pretty much.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday September 20, 2010 @08:48AM (#33634532)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Good News! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Nimey ( 114278 ) on Monday September 20, 2010 @09:18AM (#33634762) Homepage Journal

      Yeah, I bought RTCW on Steam a couple months ago and it's buggy junk on a modern 64-bit system. I had to copy a certain file from an older ATI video driver and put it into RTCW's program folder before it would even run.

      Similar problems with at least some of id's older Windows games as well, such as WinQuake and Quake 2.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not sure about ATI cards or Linux, but for Windows and Nvidia cards, you can specify in the driver settings to send the smaller, older list of GL extensions to a game to prevent bugs like that. No hex editing required.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      I actually loaded up RTCW on both a Windows XP and Linux PC the other week as I was feeling a bit nostalgic.

      Quit making me feel old.

  • Old news, eh? (Score:4, Informative)

    by BagOCrap ( 980854 ) on Monday September 20, 2010 @08:51AM (#33634558) Homepage

    The source code for Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory was released under the GNU GPL on August 12, 2010.

  • Great releasing it as open source would attract more developers!
  • The COPYING.txt included in RTCW-SP-GPL.zip begins with a copy of version 3 of the GNU GPL, but is then followed by additional and modified terms, which suggests to me that it is not actually GPLed.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by _|()|\| ( 159991 )
      I guess that's what I get for tuning out the whole GPL 3 debate. Section 7 specifically governs the additional terms applicable to RTCW. Actually understanding what section 7 means is an exercise for another day.
      • One of the flaws that they hoped to address with GPLv3 was that there were at least four humans capable of reading and fully understanding version 2. This has since been fixed.

  • Unilateral copyright law by ID (Score:5, Interesting)

    by horza ( 87255 ) on Monday September 20, 2010 @10:03AM (#33635136) Homepage

    Valve and ID have pretty much redefined copyright law in their own way, much to the benefit of consumers and society as a whole. I can buy my ID games through Steam, and I know the moment I buy a new computer I can be running all my games again in a couple of mouse clicks. No complicated DRM, limited number of installs, needing my CD in the drive, or any other BS. It IS DRM but Valve have slowly earned the trust of users over the years.

    Then after a number of years, when sales have long since peaked and dropped, ID release the source code. This fulfills the social contract whereupon we give copyright for a number of years on the software after which it drops into the public domain. A DRM-ridden binary blob from a long-defunct software house is hardly fulfilling their end of the bargain. Looking at the source code also gets people interested in writing graphics code or games, can be used for educational purposes, some of the useful algorithms can be re-purposed (and not necessarily in the same domain, it could be anywhere), and it can give a new lease of life to the game through enthusiasts.

    I know if I was a games programmer who I would want to work for. As it is, I'll just be a satisfied customer.

    Phillip.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by hitmark ( 640295 )

      Please note that while ID software gives up the code of the binary, they still retain the copyright on all maps, graphics and sounds. So if one want to play the game legally one either need to own a copy or recreate all those files in a non-infringing way.

      • Re:Unilateral copyright law by ID (Score:4, Interesting)

        by RobVB ( 1566105 ) on Monday September 20, 2010 @11:59AM (#33636982)

        It's been done with OpenTTD [wikipedia.org]. It's a remake of the old Transport Tycoon Deluxe, using open source code (reverse engineered instead of released by the original owners, but that's not the point) and the original graphics. For those who don't own a copy of the original game and thus don't have the right to use the graphics, there's an open source package file.

        Sure, it's probably a lot easier to create a graphics pack for a 2D game than a 3D game like RTCW, but this still opens new doors.

      • Re:Unilateral copyright law by ID (Score:5, Informative)

        by b4dc0d3r ( 1268512 ) on Monday September 20, 2010 @12:25PM (#33637420)

        Technically correct, but gp was talking about the context of buying a DRM-encumbered game. So ownership is already there. You buy it, play for a few years, then you get the source. You can rebuild it without DRM, or someone else will. And it will come with a giant "You have to own the original game files" disclaimer. From that perspective, DRM works as it should. A temporary monopoly.

        This benefits people who legally own the game but have an encumbered copy. If you don't own the game, you are not affected by the DRM, so there is no solution to be provided. You wait until the copyright expires like everyone else does for every other bit of work. If you are affected, ID provides a reasonable remedy, and in a reasonable time frame, above and beyond what they are required to provide.

        That requirement btw is public domain status after a limited time. This is an intermediate step where the owner can make changes or improvements, like fixing the legs on a wobbly table or sawing off a third of it to fit it in a new space. If you aren't affected, the copyright status of the game files affects you as much as if you didn't own the table - which is to say not at all, positively or negatively.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hitmark ( 640295 )

          funny. if it is a temporary monopoly that one wants, drm is not needed or even buttering the bacon.

      • Which is how it should be, really. Totally in the spirit of OSS.

        They've released the code, meaning anyone from hobbyists to (OSS) rival games companies can make use of it and release new and interesting software, and the owners of copies of the game get the source code so they can truly control their purchase forever.

        Meanwhile the developer keeps control of the "creative" bit, and keeps an incentive for people to buy the game from them.

        If only this were a model that other software companies could grasp, the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )

      Id is the only company with the balls to be honest and fulfill their end of the copyright by releasing the code.

      Scumbag companies like micro-soft, EA, and others that lock up their abandon-ware forever like greedy children screaming "MINE MINE!"....

      Companies like ID are the only honest software companies.

  • When I read the headlines here, I thought this was old news, even something that should be in history books. ID Software released the source code more than a decade ago for Wolfenstein 3D, so for those who have wanted to dabble in the software it has certainly been available for what John Carmack said was some awful code that he was embarrassed about even releasing because of how shoddy the work is compared to what he is doing now. Still, it was worth looking at then.

    Still, the news here isn't that the so

  • The awesome game urban Terror really needs a technology upgrade, I hop they glom on this and run with it. That would really rock.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by morari ( 1080535 )

      I thought that Urban Terror was already running on the Quake 3 engine? Return to Castle Wolfenstein was also running on said engine, as I recall. Are the differences really that great?

  • Not Castle Wolfenstein (Score:4, Informative)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Monday September 20, 2010 @10:34AM (#33635530) Homepage
    It's not Castle Wolfenstein, the classic Apple ][ game, for which the source code was released; it was for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a game for which Slashdot's use of the "classic games" story icon is dubious.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

      You make me want to boot up my old Apple //e or IIgs and do a full disassembly of the original game, but I don't know if my floppies will boot or just shed their magnetic substrate onto the drive head.

    • According to Wikipedia, Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released on November 19, 2001.

      Since a decent number of people are ranting about a 100 day delay for Blockbuster to send out games (which seems perfectly reasonable to me, just like the netflix/redbox's delays for movies), I think an almost 9 year old game qualifies as classic for most people.

  • Not being ungreatful but... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Please, can we have the Doom 3 source code? The Dark Mod could be so much better if the devs had source access. Since we all know Thief 4 will be a consolized, uneditable mess, the future lies in The Dark Mod for us classic Thief fans. The original Thief games are buggy as hell on modern systems and the original publishers don't give a crap about us anymore. They refused to release the code for those Dark Engine games, so we have to do crap like disable multiple cores just to play them.

  • your contribution is much appreciated. I can't wait to see all the new ideas built off of this release.

  • It was already released at least a month ago. In fact the renderer in ET has already been replaced with the XreaL renderer (http://xreal-project.net/) by now and people are already working on converting the stock maps using bump maps and what not.

  • This is one of the big reasons I love buying your games. They'll have a life after the original targeted platform passes because of continued efforts based on the code you release. :)

  • Since all this political mire is becoming so deep I have been trying to think of a good game angle that would require minimal effort to roll out but could adequately ridicule politifools in a appropriately warped manner.

    Imagine waxing all the idiots, elephant guns, mule launchers, exploding teabags, and another unelectable wannabe turned victim around every corner. Collect PAC money, rob the citizenry, pay off the mob, sell worthless stock, pull off billion dollar ponzi schemes and more.

    The spewing of col

  • One word... Android! Can't wait!

  • Does anyone know any good non-bot servers for ET-Wolf? I have been itching to play this again but most servers I hit have no human players.

    Also, please keep in mind that I am in the US. I don't mind playing people from other parts of the world, but I have noticed that many European servers block based on pings.

    Hopefully, we will see a lot more open up once this game starts hitting our distro's repositories.

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