Doom 3 source code released

THE BIG EFFING Doom 3 source code has finally been released by Id, and is available now on Github.

The slightly modified code was delayed due to an issue with the shading software used, which is owned by Creative.

Responding to a question on Twitter about the effort required to rewrite the code, founder and technical director of Doom creator Id Software John Carmack said, "this demonstrates the idiocy of the patent -- the workaround added four lines of code and changed two."

There is an irony here. The Depth Fail shading patent in question is owned by Creative but colloquially named "Carmack's reverse".

"Lawyers are still skittish about the patent issue around 'Carmack's reverse', so I am going to write some new code for the doom3 release," said Carmack earlier in November and he prepared for the rewrite.

"The Doom 3 GPL source code release does not include functionality enabling rendering of stencil shadows via the 'depth fail' method, a functionality commonly known as 'Carmack's Reverse,'" reads the source code note in acknowledgement.

Doom 3 was first released in 2004, and the Github code not does contain any game data. µ