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I believe one of the major issues will be Doom 3's use of the "zfail" algorithm, which Creative claim a patent on. Generally, Creative license this patent to ga
by bri3d 15y ago
I believe one of the major issues will be Doom 3's use of the "zfail" algorithm, which Creative claim a patent on. Generally, Creative license this patent to game developers in exchange for the game supporting OpenAL (a net win for Creative as it means their sound cards can make the game run faster and more people will buy them), but I'm not sure what the terms on a source release would be. Take a look at [1] for more info.
[1]: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doomworld-news/45868-doom-3-code-may-contain-patented-algorithm/ http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doomworld-news/45868-doom-3-code...
- maleadt 15y agoCarmack has said somewhere (I can't retrieve the source right now) that an alternative, slower method will be used in the GPL'd codebase, effectively working around Creative's patent claims.
- exDM69 15y agoOh this is just silly. Thankfully the patented algorithm is ridiculously simple, so someone can write an open source patch to use the better stencil algorithm. No doubt whatever derivatives will spring from the D3 source will use the single pass method. While being at it, it shouldn't be too hard to use geometry shaders for the shadow volume extraction in the D3 engine. Hmm, maybe I should do it :)