Quake III source code released

By Corey Brotherson Published 22 August, 2005

Carmack spills his magic source.

This year's QuakeCon has seen the release of the much-awaited Quake III Arena source code for you lucky, lucky people.

As expected, you can get to play with the game's engine and generally get inside the guts of the classic PC first-person shooter, with a 5.6MB file available to download – as previously promised by id Software bigwig, John Carmack. Although there are a few key exceptions within the code that you must note, budding codies will no doubt make the most of this rather special opportunity that Carmack says hopes will help encourage "creativity in the development environment."

We expect nothing less than greatness from you.

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About Corey Brotherson

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Comments (11) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • TiTaniXNEz #1 7 years ago

    Q3F was the "Fo,Shizzle".

  • MrGrumpy.au #2 7 years ago

    There'll be heaps of April fool jokes come April 2006 because of this source.

    Lets see the headlines from the future:
    - "Q3 Arena Ported to Atari VCS/2600 - Runs at 15fps"
    - "Q3 Arena Ported to Colecovision - Runs at 17fps, Mario & Smurf as special characters"
    - "Q3 Arena Ported to TI-84+ - Runs at 3fps, but quite playable"
    - "Q3 Arena Ported to LG Fridge - Runs at 30fps, frag while you eat"

    and so on...

    Seriously though there could be an XBox (maybe also the Cube) port come from this as the DC/PS2 got their own version of the game (which were impressive considering the technology).

    What I would like to see is a more stable Mac OSX port, that would be nice even though this is an old game.

    Cheers

  • deaner #3 7 years ago

    Q3 Arena was alright on PS2.

    Not great... but alright.

  • deepmenace #4 7 years ago

    "Q3F was the "Fo,Shizzle"."

    i'm not exactly the authority on ghetto-speak but doesnt that roughly translate to:

    "Q3F was the "For, Sure"

    sorry for nitpicking but im in a foul mood.

  • WangFu #5 7 years ago

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fo+shizz le

  • smelly #6 7 years ago

    "Seriously though there could be an XBox (maybe also the Cube) port "


    Erm.. unless it was given away "on the dodge" to those people who have chipped machines.. then no.. it wont.

  • kangarootoo #7 7 years ago

    I love it when people do this sort of thing. Its good for games all round, be it as a help to those learning to code for games or just interesting reading for those already in the business. Sharing info is good news in my book and considering his code is his livelihood Mr Carmack is being pretty generous putting it in the public domain (I know it isn't current and he has new ideas, but all the same).

  • MrGrumpy.au #8 7 years ago

    Smelly, that was my point.

    I've learnt that people will port anything to anything, it's just the nature of the beast.

  • penhalion #9 7 years ago

    Not really good for anything really. You can't sell anything you make with the engine so why make the effort to learn it?

    I suppose you could spend a year learning how the engine was put together. Then spend another year writing your own...then another year making a game.

    This is like gicing away a 20 tonne statue. You can look all you want and if you have a chizzle you can break bits off but, then I would sue your ass for altering it. You can't sell the statue either, even if you change the look of it and paint it all pretty.....sheesh what was the point!?

  • Mashum #10 7 years ago

    @penhalion

    The daft statue analogy doesn't really cover what the main point of this, to share ideas and to see how other people tackle the same problems, even if the source is a bit old now.

    It's OK though - you don't have to read it if you don't want to ;)

  • L0cky #11 7 years ago

    ' Not really good for anything really. You can't sell anything you make with the engine so why make the effort to learn it?'

    You can sell it.