[quake3] Greetings

[Ludwig Nussel]

monk at rq3.com wrote:
> We'll probably modify ioquake3.exe (or whatever) to become an automatic
> launcher for our mod, Reaction.  There's an ego boost going on when you
> can tell people to double-click Reaction and have it launch your own GAME,
> even though it's using an engine developed by other people.  And, somehow,
> it feels like when you do this, you're done.  You've made it.  You've
> progressed from making a mod to making a game.  It's a psychological
> thing, really.

Psychological issues are unfortunate. Ioq3 could be treated more
like a system library than a game of it's own if that helps. After
all games on Windows e.g. also sometimes force the user to upgrade
things like directx from external sources. ioq3 could be extended
further to make it customizable enough to make it look like a
different game when launched with appropriate parameters. You can
already change the mod it starts with (fs_game) and change the
master server (cl_master).

> So getting rid of the key checking and the baseq3 media is worth it from
> the mod-moving-to-standalone perspective.

For that purpose whether or not keys are checked could be made
configurable. The behavior could depend on whether pak files from
baseq3 are referenced (IIRC Thilo came up with this idea in IRC).
If none are referenced the mod could choose to disable key checking.
We should proably also enforce use of a different master server
then. Kind of unfair to waste id's ressources in this case.

> But since we're keeping most of our code in QVM, any ioq3 updates we want
> to roll in should cause minimal fuss.

The point is if you fork, even with minimal changes, you have to do
the updates yourself.

> Though I suppose that if the QVM still runs on baseq3, we could keep our
> source closed, if we really wanted to.  So that might be a consideration
> for making an ioq3 mod instead of directly modifying the engine.  We're
> going full opensource, planned to do it since day one.

As long as your code is entirely based on the id sdk you have to
stick with their license. If you take stuff from ioq3's GPL'd game
code your code has to be GPL as well. IMO it's also highly
questionable whether you can legally bundle your proprietary stuff
with ioq3 and pretend that this is one product.

cu
Ludwig

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