Doom 3 source code finally released

By Tom Phillips Published 23 November, 2011

Carmack announces free download now available.

Rage developer id Software has released the entire source code of its seminal shooter Doom 3.

Aspiring developers can now download the code completely free, id co-founder John Carmack tweeted last night.

Doom 3's inner workings were ready to go at the start of the month, but last-minute legal issues temporarily held up its release - Carmack was forced to re-write some of the code to placate "skittish" lawyers nervous about the release of a particular section.

The release was announced by Carmack during his keynote speech at this year's Quakecon event, where he expressed the wish for other developers to follow suit.

The full code is available to download from Github.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Phillips

Tom joined Eurogamer in 2010 and has quickly made his mark writing news and columns and coming up with puntastic straplines. Questionable beard.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 1d ago

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  • JohnnyHeaven #1 2d ago

    slighty OT but Doom 3 is probably one of my favourite games of all time. i must of played through that game 4 times. i know im in the minority

  • Shakey_Jake33 #2 2d ago

    Excellent stuff. Gestures like this massively help the young game developers of the future.

  • Eraser #3 2d ago

    Wouldn't say it's my favorite game, but I did massively enjoy it (and the expansion pack) and it didn't receive as much credit as it should have.

  • molekiller #4 2d ago

    Finally! Now at last the CoD engine can be upgraded, lol.

  • andijames #5 2d ago

    This is a fantastic way for coders of today (up and coming) to examine the innards of an engine and game built by a very highly respected developer. More companies should do this i think personally.

  • LaFlamaBlanca #6 2d ago

    This can only be good for the games industry

  • erp #7 2d ago

    I know the word "finally" in the story title refers to the legal wrangles that delayed the release of the source for a little while, but it does read a little ungrateful in a way - like, "it's about time!".

    So few of the *big* companies do this - in fact I can't think of one other - that really the slight delay in the release of this source is an irrelevance. Indeed, a few more *years* could've passed and this would still be a tremendously generous gift from iD Software.

    Huge kudos to Carmack & co.

  • Bennicus #8 1d ago

    @andijames
    From some of the code I've seen, it's a good thing most companies don't do this! Up-and-coming coders could easily learn a lot of bad habits from most game code. The Doom 3 code looks pretty tidy from what I've seen so far though, respect to id. :)

  • Trillion #9 1d ago

    What an excellent thing to do. Well done John Carmack.