Id to release Doom3 source code

[sanxiyn]

"Note that Doom 3's famous shadow renderer is based on technology patented by Creative Labs."

This is a very sad situation, given that this technology was independently rediscovered and popularized by John Carmack. He learned about the patent only after the fact.

[Arjuna]

Yes, it's interesting to note that the technique is known as "Carmack's Reverse."

On the topic, John Carmack said[1]:

"The patent[2] situation well and truly sucks. We were prepared to use a two-pass algorithm that gave equivalent results at a speed hit, but we negotiated the deal with Creative so that we were able to use the zfail method without having to actually pay any cash. It was tempting to take a stand and say that our products were never going to use any advanced Creative/3dlabs products because of their position on patenting gaming software algorithms, but that would only have hurt the users."

[1] http://newenthusiast.com/carmacks-reverse-still-an-issue-200...

[2] The patent number 6,384,822, "Method For Rendering Shadows Using A Shadow Volume And A Stencil Buffer", can be read here: http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=Om0LAAAAEBAJ

[runevault]

To me that whole debacle was one of the biggest examples of the problems with the patent system today. For all intents and purposes Creative patented a mathematical formula.

[aninteger]

This article is almost a month old now. I'd guess we will see a release around December like they have done in the past. I wouldn't expect anything before October. This will be the first id software release in c++ and it will be interesting to see what subset of the c++ language they used.

[barrettcolin]

You can get a pretty good idea from looking at the mod sdk code, which is available from here: http://iddevnet.com/doom3/

There's quite a lot available in the game code; the physics system at least, maybe also the script interpreter? I haven't looked in a while.

[empika]

I'm sure Carmack says alot more about the patent issues and open sourcing the engine in the keynote. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgYG-_ha28

[spdy]

It is amazing how technical his talk is it`s really intressting if you have a progamming background.

And it just so different to any other keynote for a game i have ever seen.

edit: 5 mins to the end he talks about the doom3 opensource

[hiena03]

I hope they include the changes to the engine made for ET:QW. I'm particularly interested in megatexture. But they say "Doom3 source code" not Id tech 4, so they probably won't.

[shabble]

There's a nice writeup of someone going through the original quake code: http://fabiensanglard.net/quakeSource/index.php

Seems to turn up in most threads about iD engine source/dev - I'll do it this time :)

[aw3c2]

And if you want to follow an experienced programmer's quest to make a fast and stable DirectX9, C++ Quake engine then follow http://mhquake.blogspot.com/

[DuqE]

I know nothing about game development, I just play them, but would be interested in seeing the source code of this game.

[dmaz]

Carmack has released id's previous engines, they're pretty interesting to read, and folks are still maintaining them. The technology ioquake3[1] is 10 years old now, but well-maintained as an open-source project. Darkplaces[2] is a heavily-updated Quake I engine that maintains backwards compatibility with Q1 while using fairly modern game programming techniques. Google ported Darkplaces to NaCl a while ago, and it has renderers in OpenGL, Direct X, and OpenGL ES now.

[1] http://svn.icculus.org/*checkout*/quake3/trunk/README [2] http://git.xonotic.org/?p=xonotic/darkplaces.git;a=summary

[jacques_chester]

FWIW, the source code for Quake 1-3 is already available. Quake 3 in particular has been a subject of ongoing work.

[a3_nm]

No mention of license, though.

[fserb]

previous games were released under GPL, this one should probably follow.

[yason]

I must say that, unlike with Doom I and II, it will certainly be more exciting to wade through the source code and learn tricks than actually play the game and wade through the endless monotonic, boring action.

[aw3c2]

Doom 3 is actually a very nice if somewhat cheesy horror shooter.

[ScaryPlotter]

August 4, 2011 ?