Free quake some day?

[kbdrate]

I was delighted to hear that Romero released the levels. And to top it off, it's under the GPLv2.

Now we have several GPLed engines to choose from and the map source files. I don't know the license for the high resolution textures. The quakec is published but I'm not sure about its license.

How close/far away are we from an actual GPL quake? Not nexuiz or anything like that. I mean a GPLed game that is close to the retail quake? Are we just missing the models and sounds or is there more to it?

Or is this a bad goal? I don't know how id software would feel about it. Perhaps they would like for the community to develop a free quake. Maybe they cannot release it entirely GPLed because 1) it may bring a small revenue, or 2) it involves a lot of copyright issues such as tracking down people. I imagine #2 isn't a real issue since people who work for id software wouldn't keep copyright.

[Canadian*Sniper]

I'd say it's very unlikely that Quake will be free. It's not like Doom and Doom2 are free. Even those old dos games like space quest aren't free. A professional gaming company would do what they do best, create games for a profit.

But Quake is pretty much a free game. You could get away with just pak0 and play on custom mapped servers.

[Baker]

The deathmatch can now be "freed" rather easily ... there is a surplus of candidate replacement models, the maps can be recompiled with non-ID Software textures and OpenQuartz has a collection of some things that work well (and some things that are too ugly/heinous for inclusion which will need to be replaced.)

Single player can't be freed ... monster models/sounds are lacking those would be enourmously difficult to create... at least nothing resembling single player as we know it.

There are other matters to consider such as copyright and naming and such, but those things are minor and likely so technical that ID wouldn't care much about them.

The QuakeC isn't a real issue ... in deathmatch those run on the server and the client doesn't need to have it, and even then the progs source was released and many mods have been GPL'd so I doubt ID would be particularly possessive of the progs.

Yeah, for single player that isn't true [maybe], but a GPL or "free" single player isn't going to happen any time in the near future due to the monster models/sounds issue, a major obstacle putting single player way too far out of reach for .)

I think ID Software has GPL'd as much of Quake as they actually can ... they can't legally GPL the sounds as they licensed them. I don't know about the textures but those were never much of an issue ... at least for deathmatch where "authenticity" is not a major concern.

But keep in the mind the type of "free" that can be achieved wouldn't be totally compatible with the existing environment, although many servers could easily be made to be compatible with both a "FreeQuake" and the "Real Quake".

And a "FreeQuake" couldn't be called that or anything with the word Quake in it. That'd be using ID's trademark, which isn't permitted.

/I already have all of this worked out and have had for months. The GPL'ing of the ID maps is the removal of a major obstacle -- very nice!

[Bank]

http://openquartz.sourceforge.net/

[kbdrate]

Okay, so if you focus on multiplayer then it will be possible for people to play with a fully GPLed client? I don't care too much about the anti-cheat situation. I'm interested in if there can be another free game like nexuiz that can be included with Linux releases.

Would nexuiz be able to incorporate the DM levels in a later release?

And a "FreeQuake" couldn't be called that or anything with the word Quake in it. That'd be using ID's trademark, which isn't permitted.

Is this true? Microsoft Office has a competitor OpenOffice.org. As litigious as Microsoft is, I would expect them to threaten the OpenOffice.org project if they could. The only naming trouble OpenOffice.org has is the name "OpenOffice." They had to change it because of some conflict with an existing project.

Anyway, it wouldn't be an obstacle once word gets out. People will use it no matter what the name is.

[scar3crow]

Atari owns the rights to Blood and its gamecode - they were fine with qBlood, a project to port Blood to the Quake engine - except for the name. Their lawyers contacted the project because of the word Blood in the title... It is now Transfusion. Oddly enough, theyre fine with the team using the game textures and sounds...

[kbdrate]

Their lawyers contacted the project because of the word Blood in the title... It is now Transfusion. Oddly enough, theyre fine with the team using the game textures and sounds...

Heh. That shows you lawyers don't always act on what's legal or not.

Lawyers can send cease and desist letters even if what you are doing is perfectly legal. Intimidation is a part of what corporate lawyers do. If a person gets a letter from a lawyer, they automatically assume the lawyer has valid position.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

its a bit retarded to claim single-words are trademark's or copywritten..

Thats like saying,I make a program and I call it "Tsunami" and register it as a trademark , that is supposedly giving me the authority to sue anyone who ever makes a program,or any type of application,or anything using Tsunami as a name.

its got to be the most retarded shit EVER. Doom was a word well before it was a game,just like Blood,Quake,etc.

Now, words that are unique like for example "Microsoft" , "Mortal Kombat" (note the K not the C) , "Atari" , "Dell" , "Compaq" , "Corvette" , and the list of legitimate words that were CREATED/MODIFIED represent a legitimate ideal for copyrighting a word or set of words. but copyrighting words that are acknowledged in the english dictionairy/other dictionairy's, its just plain stupidity and shouldnt be allowed in my opinion.

Combinations of words is a different story,like "989 Studio's" , "Duke Nukem" , "3D Realms" , "iD Software" , etc. That I can see as an acceptable form of trademarking/copyrighting ,but to be allowed to use a single word from the dictionairy as a name of anything,be it a game,a company,or any shit that can be copywritten as a name,and protest that no one else can use it later,its just plain retarded.They should just fucking give us a thumbs up and promise not sue us for providing Quake1 as a full-game download or some shit

/me stops bitching

[IEEE 802.11]

Call it Ekauq. You can pick up Dauq Damage. Fire your Lian gun. Long live Enur Ekauq Sulp! I think I just brought Elvis' soul from the grave... better spawn Relbmahs for help.

Now let's all download Wolfeinstien ET and play online free!

[Aquashark]

instead let's make an online petition for freeing Quake (at least the multiplayer part)

the QW community will back it up for sure

that might get some attention from id..

[Baker]

I'd back it. Everyone would.

But alas, I don't believe it is possible.

ID doesn't own the rights to the sounds and possibly not all of the textures outright, at least that's what I've read ... maybe I'm wrong.

They licensed the sounds from a company, according to that one thread at Quakeworld.nu, some of the textures have the NIN logo in them.

At least that's my understanding. But hey, if someone starts one I can imagine everyone will sign it but I fear the effort would be quite futile due to all of the entanglements.

At least that's my understanding from the "heresay", I could be all wrong and have misplaced faith in the "heresay".

[mithril]

I'm bumping this old thread since I just happened to come across the announcement of the GPL'd maps and didn't know about it before. I know virtually nothing about making quake maps, but it seems from the previous posts that you can't for example make a completely identical dm3.bsp map from the maps Romero released? There are additional things (textures?) needed in order to create an identical set of maps to the original ID ones? If so, has anyone contacted Romero about it? It seems to me his intention was to make completely free the maps, so maybe he's just not aware he didn't release enough stuff to do it.

As for the other models/sounds/whatever maybe someone should try to contact Romero and/or Carmack to get the info directly from the source on whether its possible. I'd be willing to try contacting them but first I'd like to know more about what exactly we need.

[Entar]

There is a project in the works ( it's mostly discussed at http://forums.inside3d.com ) for replacing the copyrighted content with free stuff to make a "free quake." Very much possible, as OpenQuartz already did it, albeit in a not-high-quality way.

[scar3crow]

ID doesn't own the rights to the sounds

Romero did most of the sounds, American McGee did a few as well, from what I understand the rest was filled in with stock cds. This is why a cat on a show will make the zombie noise and so on - I dont know why Reznor was credited with sound effects as Ive heard nothing of him actually making them. He made the CDA tracks, and those were right at the end of the games production - they developed with a separate soundtrack playing that they happened to like.

[Canadian*Sniper]

any sources on that info scar3crow?