Activision, Raven Release 2 Star Wars Games Under GPL

hypnosec writes "Activision and Raven Software game studios have open sourced a couple of their games so that people can play as well learn from the code. The gaming companies have released the source code of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast through SourceForge."

I think those two games

[Psyborgue]

Are Quake 3 based, if I remember correctly, which is already open-source. What is the point of this, especially since it doesn't look like they've released the game assets?

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[Svartalf]

Access to the GHOUL2 damage engine mods on top of it?

Re:I think those two games

[mwvdlee]

Access to Q3 engine modifications, tweaks and usage examples?

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[MouseAT]

I wonder if this means someone will port JK2's physics/damage engine over to Jedi Academy. Jedi Academy was (on paper) a much better game, but the lightsaber combat was HORRIBLE compared to its predecessor.

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[am 2k]

Yes, I don't know what they've done with it, but in Jedi Outcast, saber-on-saber fights needed actual skill, while in Jedi Academy it was just flailing around randomly until one of the involved parties hit.

It'd be like releasing DuckTales under GPL

[tepples]

especially since it doesn't look like they've released the game assets?

Like DuckTales, Star Wars is a Disney franchise, and Disney is famous for sponsoring the Copyright Term Extension Act. I can't foresee what would cause Disney to change its policies to allow the release of anything it owns under a license for free cultural works [freedomdefined.org].

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[tepples]

[Disney VR] are also famous for releasing the engine which eventually became Panda3D. There is nothing wrong with companies protecting their IP.

So in a way, this release is typical for Disney: free the computer programs and leave the cultural works non-free.

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[thoughtlover]

Yet another reason I don't give a single red cent to Disney or the like. Vote with your dollars, folks. As cool as it would be to attend Dapper Day at Disneyland, I'd rather not till they do the right thing and release that mouse back into the wild where he should have been over two decades ago.

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[operagost]

Mickey Mouse is a registered trademark. A Mickey Mouse movie is a copyrighted work.

What "Mickey Mouse is copyrighted" means

[tepples]

When people say "Mickey Mouse is copyrighted", what they mean is that the character has appeared only in copyrighted works; therefore, any other work featuring the character would be an infringing derivative work. In addition, the precedent in Dastar v. Fox is that trademarks cannot be used to extend the term of an expired U.S. copyright. Therefore, in 2025 when U.S. copyright in Plane Crazy, The Gallopin' Gaucho, and Steamboat Willie is expected to expire, Mickey Mouse's likeness will no longer distinctive

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[waerloga01]

Until it gets extended, yet again. Registered on creation in 1928, under the terms of the then effective Copyright Act of 1909, Steamboat Willie would have expired in 1984.

Re:I think those two games

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't shit all over a nice gesture? I would love to see this become a regular thing, and maybe this is a test case to judge reactions for future action?

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[Sigg3.net]

I love sentences that randomly have question marks attached?

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[BobNET]

They're based upon Quake 3, but might not be identical to it. Compare to Heretic and Hexen, both of which were based upon Doom but added things like an inventory and flight abilities. (Both of those games were also from Raven.)

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[Hatta]

Now someone can port it to Linux.

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[erroneus]

That was my first thought. It was also to update it and to add more to the stories. Speaking of which, I hope there will be some volunteerism from celebrity actors who would voice famous star wars characters for us.

Gameplay and art and all that are parts of the whole. I also liked playing the stories. And having a small team get involved with writing some story line, getting voice actors to perform it and the game designers to create the stages of the new 3D worlds would be awesome to watch.

I guess part

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[Hatta]

I don't think this includes any of the assets. It's going to be like Freespace Open. You can play the original game on Linux, if you bought the game. If you didn't, there's tons of user generated content. I don't think it will take long for the community to throw together some Jedi models and arena maps.

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[Hatta]

Nope, those are just some user created levels. The assets are indeed the whole storyline and stuff, including player models, maps, textures, voices, and music.

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[Hsien-Ko]

The roadblock is doing new skeletons and animations from scratch . You can't just simply use the same animations, that would be illegal.

It would take a lot of competence, tlaent and familiarity with Blender and game engines to do that, which is frankly, quite lacking in the FOSS community, to be honest.


And no clamoring for the IQM format or SDL will change anything. It didn't work for RTCW, ET, or Doom 3.

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[Briareos]

Errr... Star Control 2 [sourceforge.net]?

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[Svartalf]

Heh...

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[Svartalf]

Is that all you can manage? I suspect that either Ryan or myself will find the time and make it happen. Right now, I've been kinda...swamped...with real-life concerns (Since, unlike Ryan, it's not my day-job yet...) to be overly active...

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[c0d3g33k]

That's all that needs to be said, oh clueless A/C. Go look at Svartalf's profile to get yourself a free helping of context.

Re:Linux port.

[Svartalf]

Depends on how fast I can get the Steam releases of the games I'm responsible for the Linux version of out the door- and if Ryan can beat me to the punch... >:-D

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[X0563511]

I just want to say: you two kick ass.

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[RedHackTea]

Their README says nothing about making it work on Linux... If they're only making it work and run on Windows, then no big deal...

linux code already in there

[Anonymous Coward]

There are files in the zip that indicate at least some rudimentary linux support (joystick, memory handling), dated Dec 2000. This may be leftover from the Quake 3 engine however.

Compiled versions?

[blahbooboo]

Where can I get the compiled binary for these two games?

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[tankbob]

steam....

Version control: You're doing it wrong!

[TheRaven64]

While I applaud their use of a revision control system (git, in this case), perhaps someone should explain to them that uploading a single .zip file with all of the code in it somewhat defeats the point...

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[rbowen]

Presumably so that other people can continue the development.

Re:Version control: You're doing it wrong!

[rbowen]

I've been talking with the developer in question this morning, and he'll be putting the code into Git this evening or this weekend, as he has time.

Please add to summary

[Jim Hall]

Hi. Can you add that note to the article summary? That should head off a lot of comments.

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[bill_mcgonigle]

Thank you for your work on Sourceforge.

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[tankbob]

When the Doom source was released people used it to create a new update to date engine that required the original assets to play. This generates increased sales in the original.

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[Agent ME]

You can't see the value of the engine being open source? It's the same situation as with the Doom games, Quake 1-3, and Duke Nukem 3d. You still need to own the game to play it, but people can update the engine to have new features, work better on more platforms, and use it as a base for their own games.

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[Hsien-Ko]

You can't GPL works of a big franchise. That's just pounding sand.

One could start a media project that infringes on nothing with absolutely nothing derivative of the Star Wars universe, calling things like "shaftpoles" (they're shafts of light that form within a pole), maybe even dropping the sci-fi setting altogether.

Original Jedi Knight

[roninmagus]

I wish they'd release the code for Jedi Knight (the first one) if only for nostalgia. I spent many of my 12-year-old nights making levels for that game in JED.

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[Carrot007]

Original?

Well if a sequal if original

I spent many hours at Uni on Dark Forces II.

This question has been asked many times as lots of people would love an updated version (since the hw version was very specific to the cards of the time and the software version was very low res). I'm sure the conclusion reached was that it has been lost.

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[roninmagus]

True, I forgot that JK was itself a sequel.

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[Sigg3.net]

If we're talking Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, then it should run reasonably well in Wine now. If you've lost the install media that you paid for, there are backups on TPB. Personally, I take good care of my JK cardboard box edition. It's one of the best SP experiences in my life, and the first real multiplayer I tried before escaping into Quake2: CTF II.

The cutscenes, sounds and atmosphere are really great Star Wars material.

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[sepp256]

It looks like one of the JK2 devs started a petition a while back requesting the release of Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 source. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/jkcoderelease/ [ipetitions.com] Maybe we can get some /. traffic to boost the number of signers on this petition.

How does licensing work on this?

[asylumx]

How does releasing this code to OSS interact with trademark law from Lucas (or Disney now, I guess)? If I go fork this now open-source software, am I allowed to release a new version with any affiliation to Star Wars or does it fall on my shoulders to go in and remove anything that might be protected IP?

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[i kan reed]

I think the trademarks are entirely retained. Presumably, they'll have to go out of their way to keep from using the trademarks "Star Wars" and "Jedi" in any forked productions.

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[asylumx]

That's what I was thinking. So releasing this is more for academic purposes rather than for any directly applied purpose as OSS, right?

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[alen]

disney still owns the trademark on star wars
activision releasing the code doesn't mean anyone can make and sell a star wars game based on it. you can release it for free as long as you don't make any revenue from it

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[i kan reed]

This is factually incorrect. You could hypothetically make a star wars game, acquire the licenses to the trademark and universe copyrights and sell it, but anything with the word "Star Wars" on it can get you sued otherwise.

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[93 Escort Wagon]

How does releasing this code to OSS interact with trademark law from Lucas (or Disney now, I guess)? If I go fork this now open-source software, am I allowed to release a new version with any affiliation to Star Wars or does it fall on my shoulders to go in and remove anything that might be protected IP?

The code release terms stipulate You MUST change the name of anything you develop from this source to "Mall Wars: Jersey Nights".

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[X0563511]

How about Space Balls: The Game?

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[westlake]

How does releasing this code to OSS interact with trademark law from Lucas (or Disney now, I guess)?

What you have is the source code for the modified Quake engine.

What you don't have are the rights to the Star Wars IP. Characters and props. Background art. Script and story. Music, sound effects and vocal performance.

grep -r [wW][tT][fF] jediAcademy | wc -l

[Anonymous Coward]

returns 99.

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[flimflammer]

I think that's inside one of their MFC tool programs. I also found this in one of the code pages for one of those:

void FuckingWellSetTheDocumentNameAndDontBloodyIgnoreMeYouCunt(LPCSTR psDocName)
{
if (gpLastOpenedModViewDoc)
{ // make absolutely fucking sure this bastard does as it's told... //
gpLastOpenedModViewDoc->SetPathName(psDocName,false);

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[Bosconian]

Let's see your variable names after 50 revisions, compilations, and failures when you're fairly gosh-darned sure you followed all available examples and documentation.

But yes, for a final released product, that should not necessarily have passed a review.

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[flimflammer]

Programmers are people too. We all get agitated from time to time, especially when crunch time comes around. I don't think I've seen a single codebase completely devoid of passive aggressive comments on some level.

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[loufoque]

What kind of idiot puts a comment on the same line as a left brace?

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[flimflammer]

Seems that was the coding standard for this project. Every single brace tied to an if statement describes what it's checking for.

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[loufoque]

Use grep -rFi.
Seriously.

Luke...

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the source!

Who will be first to compile them to Javascript?

[fygment]

On your mark ... get set ... go! (Ready ... steady ... go?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emscripten [wikipedia.org]

More!

[supertall]

I hope SOF2 is next ...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[absurd2718]

An AI_Jedi walks into a bar. Bartender asks, "What'll you have?" AI_Jedi responds, "A Jedi Mind Trick." Bartender asks, "How do you make that?" AI_Jedi replies, "Fuck it, just Force it."

Re:List of 'fuck' in Jedi Academy

[safetyinnumbers]

\code\game\q_math.cpp(545): i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the fuck?

That''s part of the Quake III fast inverse square root [wikipedia.org].

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[ubersoldat2k7]

\tools\ModView\oldskins.cpp(596): // {"February", 28}, // fuck the leap years

I guess we won't be playing this on 2016

Passive aggressive comments.

[flimflammer]

I always love searching the source code for common swears, where you can tell crunch time came around and everyone is frustrated with everyone else. These codebases are ripe with fun ones.

May the source be with you ...

[ScaledLizard]

... always.

Linux port

[DMJC]

Personally I can't wait to get Linux native binaries of this game. Should be possible to port it to some more obscure architectures like PPC and ARM. It's not just for modding an engine, lots of other platforms benefit too. Jedi Academy on Solaris.

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[Hsien-Ko]

You think they'd take assets of the Star Wars IP and release it into the wild under the GPL?

Past source releases didn't Free their assets either.


There's a lot of point to this source release. Modders (who have the original games) can extend the engine for making their mods have more features. Engine coders can scrape some of the engine bits (like fixed flare implementations, marks on models) to other id Tech3 engines. Even maybe even the ICARUS stuff (if it's in there) can be backported to iostvef to

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[Luciano Moretti]

What's happened in the past (Doom, Doom 2, etc) is that the engine source is released (which is this) and then ported/extended. You can then load in the game assets from a CD you own (wad files in the old Doom) as the format of the map files, textures, artwork, etc doesn't need to be changed. So while the assets won't be released, you could still use this to play on Linux assuming you have a legal copy of the game assets (IE own a copy of the original game). This is probably a legal grey area that hasn't