This is uncharted territory and we are essentially running an experiment. For this reason we’re not licensing or open sourcing the game’s assets - the art, music, and IP will still be protected for the time being. But all of the code that makes the game run will be made public. We have not chosen the exact license under which we will be open sourcing the game’s code, but it will be one of the OSI’s approved open source licenses.
This means you’ll be able to browse the codebase, modify the code, share the code, host your own servers, experiment with mechanics, or just satisfy your curiosity about how an MMORPG ticks under the hood.
I mean, Id did this for years with Quake engines as well, so we kind of know how this works out. The assets tend to be the really difficult part for open source community to replicate. Still cool that they’re doing it though.
Incidentally, this is where AI tools could really help open source community to make it easier to create nice looking open assets for the game engines like this.
I don’t expect ai/LLM tools to make it easier to create nice looking art, but they should make it easier for anyone to create their own placeholder graphics that at least would allow them to run the game on their own.
So am I understanding this correctly that means no private servers, just convenient ways to create your own client?
From the linked site’s home page:
Wow, completely blew past this. Thanks.
I mean, Id did this for years with Quake engines as well, so we kind of know how this works out. The assets tend to be the really difficult part for open source community to replicate. Still cool that they’re doing it though.
Incidentally, this is where AI tools could really help open source community to make it easier to create nice looking open assets for the game engines like this.
I don’t expect ai/LLM tools to make it easier to create nice looking art, but they should make it easier for anyone to create their own placeholder graphics that at least would allow them to run the game on their own.
I’d argue this is a good example of LLMs being used by artist to create nice looking art https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=envMzAxCRbw