Quake 3 source code released

(bani) #1

ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/quake3-1.32b-source.zip

(Mr.Mxyzptlk) #2

Yaaay!

(Joe999) #3

awesome. thanks for the hint

(Jaquboss) #4

I have to install Q3 and play with this :slight_smile:
I hope that ET source will follow…

(ouroboro) #5

they should have waited till there was a next generation game on the shelves. hopefully there will be before the kiddiez start releasing their next generation of engine hooks, courtesy of the hippy-like open source mentality…

oh well, at least VAC2 is out. guess i’ll go see if DOD is still a wretched hive of scum and villainy, like ET is about to become :angry:

i am truly disturbed by this and am not even sure if i’ll keep gaming. this open source “free love” movement has got to stop. it’s fine for operating systems, but not for games. it only helps the hackers, it never sprouts any kickass anticheat solution, like open source linux sprouts security features just as fast as there are new exploits. gaming doesn’t have that same whitehat spirit. it’s all just little snot-nosed punks who see this as an opportunity to wreak havoc.

gg id. gfg.

(Joe999) #6

guess what? today is christmas 4 u, others already had quite a while ago :smiley:

http://www.splashdamage.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=65

(SCDS_reyalP) #7

Joe999: That is the game code, not the engine code. The q3 game code has been availabl for years. The q3 engine code was only just released. The ET engine code has not been, nor is there any particular indication that it will be. The ET engine is based on the Q3 engine, but isn’t exactly the same.

(kamikazee) #8

Whas this a joke or are you simply refering to something that seemed right?
He want’s the engine source, not the mod code. :wink:

(SCDS_reyalP) #9

The next generation is on shelves. D3 may suck for MP, but it is the next gen. Q4 isn’t far off either.

i am truly disturbed by this and am not even sure if i’ll keep gaming. this open source “free love” movement has got to stop.

I’m glad that John Carmack and the rest of the folks at id disagree. Not to mention all the up and coming game programmers and modders.

it’s fine for operating systems, but not for games. it only helps the hackers, it never sprouts any kickass anticheat solution, like open source linux sprouts security features just as fast as there are new exploits. gaming doesn’t have that same whitehat spirit. it’s all just little snot-nosed punks who see this as an opportunity to wreak havoc.

It isn’t a matter of ‘spirit’. The two situations represent fundamentally different problems, and aren’t even remotely comperable.

In any case, given that all the PB code is ripped out of the released q3 engine source, drop in engine replacements will be somewhat troublesome to use on PB enabled servers. Nor is the Q3 source directly usable with other Q3 engine games like RTCW, ET, COD etc.

(ouroboro) #10

i hope you’re right. basically i feel like my dog was just hit by a car and i need to be convinced that everything is ok…

WHY can’t SOMEBODY take this release and FINALLY destroy hackers once and for all (in q3 games)? i would HAPPILY stay on this engine FOREVER if that were to happen.

ah, but i guess that’s why it hasn’t happened and it never will :wink: PROGRESS, MY BOY! PROGRESS!

(Jaquboss) #11

Well, ouroboro, someone looked forward to add something to Q3 ( like better gfx engine, mp3/ogg support, voice communication support ) , or have good engine for his own game ( Q3 is still good base )

(DG) #12

I think the current id business model would make for a very interesting case study, maybe not quite dissertation level but i think the material is there to right an A-graded university essay.

Releasing code would certainly be a positive part of it, you just need to remember SD have origins in Q3F to see how quickly you can get payback. Then there’s OSP, WTV, ETPro and ETTV: OSP and WTV clearly sold more copies of RTCW, and OSP was even included in ET. The same essentially occured for ETPro and ETTV, if you ignore the unrelated aspect of ET being free, and they also resulted in a minor technological enhancement for the engine (2.60 patch).

Granted non of the above devs used freely available engine code, but it seems clear to me that doing so eventually comes around for payback, espeically when considering the complexity of modern game code means programmers surely have to be much more skilled and experienced.

(ouroboro) #13

it just seems like it’s more exciting to make a new mod than to destroy cheaters once and for all. i truly believe it’s possible. i would think that it would be great fun and quite challenging and fulfilling to defeat cheaters. if i had the ability, that is where i’d focus my talents, rather than making ragdolls and destructable objects. it just doesn’t seem like anyone’s interested enough to make it absolutely paramount. we keep getting better eye candy, but what’s the point if you can’t find an honest game? give us a secure engine first, THEN flesh it out with graphics. punkbuster is fantastic, but either they’re not making enough money to throw at the problem, or they’re not qualified, because cheating is still rampant. then again, valve has thrown millions into VAC and still failed miserably.

imho, if a person/group were to finally crush cheating for good, they would be the greatest hero in the history of gaming. it would be a milestone exceeding the release of DOOM 1, tbh.

(kamikazee) #14

Humans make mistakes. Other humans point out those mistakes. And some others will allways take advantage of the confusion during the time it takes to get the errors fixed to use the error in their advantage.

Look, what you’re asking is just too much. If they needed to check the engine for physics bugs or do i know what else, no progress would be made as it would simply take too long.

Gonna put this famous quote here:

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. (Rich Cook)

(DWM|Commando) #15

I hate to break it to you but I doubt anyone who mods will stop hackers “once and for all” (not to downplay anyones talant here) but cpmpanies like microsoft and apple have so of the best coders and they still suffer from hacking problems. Hackers will most likly be able to hack anything and everything ever created, and they have the upside b/c no company can constantly release new patches forever for any system/game, and that’s what it would take. So i guess you just have to say “f - it” and realize there isnt much you can do except catch the odd wall hacker, and enjoy what mods that do come out. :smiley:

(kamikazee) #16

Simple sollution: watch 'n kick 'm. (make sure you got proof, of course. so many guys out there yelling “hacker!” for no reason)

(DG) #17

no, it’s just a hell of a lot harder to do the latter, and anyway the two arent mutually exlusive.

I cant really see releasing code to have a really significant effect on cheating from a non cheaters POV - cheats exist before, cheats exist after.

fwiw there’s some comment about eradicating cheaters in one of the QuakeCon keynote/chat articles, basically suggesting that’s only going to happen when bandwidth is at the point where MP gaming is basically streaming video from the server. Seems a bit excessive but then I’m not the game programmer guru.

(Sauron|EFG) #18

And by that time we’ll have image recognition software that puts us back at square one. :stuck_out_tongue:

(SCDS_reyalP) #19

I’d say for wallhacks, it’s pretty much right on. Of course, as Sauron points out, you could still do aimbots with image rec.

The fact is, the way current FPS games are built certain kinds of cheating will always be possible. Preventing them will always be an ongoing battle of detection and obfuscation. If you look carefully at the way nature of the problem, you can prove that it is impossible to build 100% effective anticheat in current FPS games.

Of course, you can design games that make certain kinds of cheats irrelevant. Take out hitscan weapons, and aimbots become fairly pointless. Give everyone radar, and wallhacks aren’t worth much.

Where does the quake3 engine release fit into all this ? As far as I can tell, it doesn’t give cheaters a whole lot they didn’t have before.

  • The released code won’t work on PB enabled servers, and getting around that will be hard. So building a ‘cheat’ replacement for the engine is still problematic.
  • They already had access to the game client, which is one logical place to build cheats.
  • using stuff from the q3 source directly with other q3 engined games isn’t trivial, so the impact on games other than q3 itself will be somewhat less.
  • anything that is possible with the source is possible without it. Harder, but still possible.
    OTOH, it does give them a few things:
  • It makes it easier to do various things at the network layer, which up till now would have been rather hard.
  • Greater understanding of the game as a whole obviously will help anyone trying to hack it.

Bottom line, it will be of some use to cheaters, but it isn’t the end of the world for all q3 descended games.

(carnage) #20 
fwiw there's some comment about eradicating cheaters in one of the QuakeCon keynote/chat articles, basically suggesting that's only going to happen when bandwidth is at the point where MP gaming is basically streaming video from the server. Seems a bit excessive but then I'm not the game programmer guru.

of course that we prob will never see as an average machine spends 66% CPU rendering graphics, so then the games will be like quake 10 so with 10vs10 thast a hell of a lota stuff to do per frame

and bandwith wont be enough alne as with ET we have clent prediction but if u were streaing ur image from the server there would be no way to beat the lag