id to Release Doom 3 Source Code

[Shawn Zipay]

As part of his QuakeCon 2011 keynote, John Carmack revealed that the source code for Doom 3 will be released after RAGE is released.

Carmack said once RAGE is released, id will focus on giving the DOOM 3 source code to the public. It will be released sometime this year. Carmack said this is also a challenge to other developers to release old source code. It helps the development community and id.

Carmack has wanted to release the source code for quite some time now and was recently granted permission from parent company Zenimax. The exact time for the code's release is not yet known but at least it's narrowed down a bit. Carmack is also urging other game developers to follow suit saying that it will help the developer community.

[Linux]

I think this is a really awesome idea and I have a feeling that this is going to be another changing point for gaming. Releasing source code for old games allows both programmers and non-programmers a like to get a better understanding of how something is built and to be able to really see the interwoven code of how the game was build. I've always been curious to see source code for a game (the released version not some leaked bs that someone asshat hacked). So this should be interesting, Doom 3 was a huge game and I think there is a lot that people can learn from this when it happens.