Source code old id Software games becomes open source

Gamedeveloper id Software has released the source code of some of its first games under an open source license. These include the games The Catacomb, Catacomb 3D, Catacomb and Hovertank 3D, which were released under the Softdisk Games label at the time.

The games were written in Turbo Pascal and C++, reports John Carmack, co-founder of id Software, on his Twitter account. The rights are currently held by Flat Rock Software, but the company has decided to make the games freely available under a GPLv2 license, Phoronix said. Only the source code has been made available. The assets of the games are not free; a license still needs to be requested for this.

The released source code includes the 2d shooters Catacomb and The Catacomb, the 3d variant Catacomb 3D based on the Wolfenstein 3d engine and the tank shooter Hovertank 3D. The games were mainly released for PCs that ran on ms-dos, although Catacomb also came out for the Apple II.