cohost ask: open source old unreals

@ETPC asked:

should tim sweeny open source unreal engine 1 and 2

absolutely. i gather the reason this doesn’t happen (at least for 1) is a valve-style “it would require a fair bit of work nobody ever feels like doing”. but it would fucking rule

i feel like it’s not acknowledged enough that unreal engine 4/5 is in the weird position of being the only commercially available game engine, in the sense of what a “game engine” traditionally was: tools and tech emerging from game development, not just for game development. it’s not a good state of affairs

i’m not real into it myself, but there are folks who specifically want to make mega-lightweight games that run on anything and look like they’re from 2001 or earlier, and it sucks that the tools from that time still exist but aren’t available. there’s no good reason you can’t take the tools that made Deus Ex, which were great tools, and do things that would have made a pentium 3 die on the spot, in a shipping game, on steam.

some of the doom/quake engines are open source, but tools-wise those never were as good as unreal, because unreal then was already a licensing-first company, actively trying to build tools for licensees to use and be happy with. unreal 1 would be empowering for indie developers in ways that things like unity and godot never quite can be, and all they would have to be is available. doesn’t seem like all that tall an order


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