Would it be possible for the original Call of Duty and UO to have support for ioQuake3? The original engine problem has been fixed, it was related to Sophos and Punkbuster.
Almost anything is possible with enough work, but that is very unlikely to happen.
With regard to any issues with the original id quake 3 client, well, that’s why ioquake3 exists. Please use our Player’s Guide to get started:
I’m only bumping this given I’m in the process of reviving and old gaming community and could see the benefit in providing support for all Quake 3 engine related games. I have to wonder if any of these commercial games might be willing to submit their modified source code for this purpose given it would absolutely be of use to them given the number of gamers on Linux that naturally prefer native support over Wine any day of the week…
Of course that’s assuming they even bothered to hang on to old source code over the years…
Unfortunately, unless Activision’s leadership has a big change of heart and wants to spend money on producing open-source releases of the call of duty engines it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen. Many of these other games also use middleware for audio or other functions that can’t be open-sourced. Some quake 3-powered games also forked at odd points during Quake 3’s development, and wouldn’t be easily compatible, but that’s the least concerning issue. All of the business concerns would be the biggest issues.
It’s realistically not going to happen unless a dedicated person or group wants to clean-room reverse-engineer other games to reimplement their game code and whatever engine modifications they need. That is a lot of work.
Yeah, I understand that. I was just wondering if I were to take on a monumental task like this with some friends what the likelihood would be that they would be willing to share the old source if they had it to at least make the reverse engineering process a little smoother. Obviously, it would have to be done either way, but if there were some ways to not reinvent the wheel entirely, that would definitely be preferred…
if you somehow had access to the original source code to the old CoD games you wouldn’t have the copyright for them and any product (code repository, executable binaries for players to download) would get taken down by activisions lawyers.
Well, yes of course if I did it without permission. If I, on the other hand, convinced them that this would increase their profit margin by driving sales for their older titles to Linux users who would be more than willing to purchase the titles on Steam so they could play them on Linux, I can’t see how this wouldn’t be worth their while… Sure it may not make them millions, but profit is profit…
The cost for activision’s software engineers to review the source code and remove third-party dependencies, then to pay their lawyers and executives to approve an open source license would be huge. And that’s all just for the Windows source code that would be missing functionality from any now-missing third-party dependencies. If, for some reason, Activision decided that they were going to do it anyway, they might not even choose a license that is compatible with quake 3’s GPL v2 source license. More to the point, the entire engine as they licensed it from id software is a third-party dependency that would require negotiations with Zenimax to approve a release depending on the terms of the original contract, which is probably lost to time.
The other alternative is a Loki-style port, where a porting house pays tens of thousands for the opportunity to license and re-release the game. That’s what nightdive and others do, today. I bet activision never wants to work with anyone doing that kind of work specifically for Linux ports, again. Any closed-source port couldn’t use the ioquake3 project’s work. The reality of how small this market is probably just doesn’t make sense. Especially when windows pretendulation probably works well enough for most people.
Activision’s move to the Battle.net launcher over Steam means they’re less interested in updating any Steam games. The good part of this change is that re-releases on Bnet seem more likely.
With all of their big remasters they’ve worked with their internal studios, afaik.
I’m with you. I would love to see the code to these old games released, and to support every Quake 3-engine game inside the ioquake3 project. I just don’t think Activision and Zenimax will ever be onboard with open source again. If you already have a business background then maybe you know something I don’t. Then, please do try, I just think any time would be better spent picking your favorite and cleanly reverse engineering CoD to work with the original assets. It would take forever, but that’s the only method that has any chance.
@MrNuclearMonster is correct.
Just the legal team would cost more money than the game would ever return.
Also big corporations care about one thing: satisfying investors.
One solution is to reverse engineer the game and make your own open source COD1-compatible ioquake3 engine iteration. It’s obvious that this would not fare well legally.
You could also make your own open-source version of COD1 based on ioquake3 from scratch. This would probably be way easier to distribute and as long as you dont brand or completely rip something from the game you should be fine on the legal side of things.
The COD1 iteration of ID Tech 3 is not much different from the original so you basically already have “the real” foundation to build your game on. To make a basic multiplayer COD1-styled game is doable by a small team or even individual. However if you are seeking to recreate the singleplayer campaign, map editor, mod tools etc then you are looking at a bigger project.