Two Lucasarts Games Go Open Source!

Two Lucasarts games by Raven have been released to Open Source!

After LucasArts closure, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy go open source

Reported on Ars Technica:
“We’re all still reeling from Disney’s shuttering of LucasArts yesterday, and tributes to the once-indomitable game studio are sprouting up all over the Web. One such tribute sure to bring a smile to programmer geeks everywhere comes from development house Raven, which has this morning released the source code for its two Star Wars titles: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. The two FPS titles were released in 2002 and 2003 and continued the story of Kyle Katarn, the bounty hunter and Jedi first introduced in 1995’s Dark Forces.

‘We loved and appreciated the experience of getting to make Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy for LucasArts,’ noted Raven in a statement. ‘As a gift to the persistently loyal fanbase for our Jedi games and in memory of LucasArts, we are releasing the source code for both games for people to enjoy and play with.’

The two titles were very popular at release, with Jedi Outcast featuring one of the first deathmatch multiplayer experiences set in the Star Wars universe. According to Kotaku Australia, the code released this morning is only for the single-player portion of both games. This is typical of source code releases for major titles, as the networking code used in multiplayer often uses licensed or proprietary chunks of code that cannot be licensed as open source. Both games are available under the GPLv2 license.

We’re working on our own ‘Ars remembers LucasArts’ tribute post, which should be up later today.”