CoreBreach Aims To Go Open-Source

CoreCode, the company behind the CoreBreach, has exclusively shared with Phoronix their plans to open-source this multi-platform anti-gravity racing game. The Core3D engine is also set to be opened up along with the game itself.

CoreBreach came to Linux last year following its availability on Mac OS X and Windows. Back on December it launched and I mentioned at that time they may plan to eventually open-source it.

Besides being a unique racing game, what also makes CoreBreach interesting is that it's written in Objective-C and was originally written for Mac OS X and the libraries available on Apple's operating system, but was made available natively for Linux via GNUstep -- the de facto open-source implementation of Apple's Cocoa libraries. (There's more technical details in this earlier article.)

Well anyhow, CoreCode is now ready to announce their plans to open-source their custom 3D game engine as well as CoreBreach itself. The engine is to be LGPLv2 licensed while the game will be put out under the GPLv2. The game assets (artwork, etc) will continue to be closed, just like what happens when id Software open-sources their older id Tech engines.

The open-sourcing is set to happen once CoreCode has hit their 33,333 sales -- a total for all platforms combined, including via any online distribution services (e.g. Steam and Desura), and does count already existing sales since the game was released a year ago. This amount is what they say will "cover the costs" of development. However, they haven't shared with me yet how many copies of the game they actually have sold already to know how close this goal is to becoming a reality. If the goal is not reached, they may still open-source it, but not immediately.

As far as why CoreCode is open-source friendly, they say, "CoreCode has a long history in working on and publishing open-source software. Since 2004, CoreCode has published about two dozens applications liberally licensed under the BSD/MIT licenses as well as contributed to more than a dozen other open source projects. Even during the development of the commercial game CoreBreach a significant part of the developement-time has been spent on contributing to other open source projects like Cocotron, GNUstep and freetype-gl through bug reporting/analysis and patches."

Julian Mayer of the Austrian-based CoreCode also mentioned that the idea for open-sourcing CoreBreach came as a result of comments made within the Phoronix Forums -- this is in part why they're letting Phoronix run with the exclusive open-source plans first.

For those wishing to buy CoreBreach for their favorite operating system or to learn more information, visit the CoreCode.at web-site. The cost of the game is only $7 USD. Below are some videos showing off the racing game.