Quake III Source Code To Be Released Thread

Taken from IGN.com, with the article dated August 12th:

At QuakeCon today, id Software's annual event down in Texas, John Carmack announced that the Quake III source code will be released under the GPL, "hopefully some time next week," to be available on their FTP site.

In a presentation that lasted well over an hour, streamed live for free at the official website, quakecon.org, Carmack rambled over a dozen different topics, covering development on next-generation platforms and the viability of physics processors, but the highlight for us PC kids was probably when he mentioned, almost as an aside, that Quake III source was going to be freely available in a week or less. The motivation appeared to stem from his recent experience with cell phone game development, where a product could be created from stem to stern inside of one man-year of time (as opposed to the hundred or more man-years it takes for a triple-A PC title).

Carmack said he hopes to spur "creativity in the development environment" but stressed that "It's not about the magic source code that's there...It's about the execution," and that it's easy to get wrapped up in the fact that you have a name-brand engine, even though you might not have the resources to do anything with it. He added, "The last ten percent [of development] turns out to be ninety percent of the work." Interestingly, when asked about plans to develop on the PSP, he compared its performance level to something that the Q3 engine could fit inside of, so development with this engine might not be technologically limited to the PC and consoles.

He also added that high-end cell phones gaming technology is rapidly approaching what's possible on dedicated portable gaming devices, although there may only be a "one- to two-year window" before the bar is raised again.

Can't wait. This is good news for Quake modders. This means that it should be available this week.

Edited by: Karuto

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