id Software releases Doom 3 source code

Id Software boss John Carmack has released the source code to the legendary first-person shooter Doom 3.

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

Carmack himself had to make some changes to the source code to comply with license restrictions – plus the actual game data has been removed (obviously), but now anyone can create their own games based on the engine, or modify the existing Doom 3 engine itself.

The open source community has already benefited from the source code opened by id Software, and there are numerous games that use the quake3 engine and its derivatives.

Carmack announced that he would release the code during his keynote speech at this year’s Quakecon event, where he encouraged other developers to do the same.

The full Doom 3 code is available to download from Github.