In a surprise email from Raven Software employee James Monroe, James "Quasar" Haley of Team Eternity has been notified that the source code for Heretic and Hexen has been re-released under the GNU General Public License, and is now available from Sourceforge.
Having the code relicensed required a community effort spanning almost a decade. At its height, this included an online petition, an open letter, snail mail campaigns, e-mail, an international action item on GNU.org, insider efforts by Chris Rhinehart of Human Head Studios and Doom's own John Romero, and other activities carried on individually by countless community members.
This release is of monumental importance, as it will allow GPL Doom source ports to freely integrate support for Heretic and Hexen without requiring the code to be rewritten from scratch or to be emulated through empirical testing. The door is also now open for new ports such as "Chocolate" Heretic and Hexen, and for such ports to be distributed in free software packages.
The latest Nightdive remaster is an excellent example of bringing beloved classics into the modern age.
QuakeCon 2025 is officially underway, with the largest LAN party in North America also being the place for exciting news for id Software titles. From the return of a keystone franchise in the FPS genre to updates for DOOM: The Dark Ages, DOOM Eternal and more.
DSOGaming writes: "Back in February, we informed you about an AI-enhanced high resolution texture pack for Hexen. Created by modder ‘gmh4589’, that texture pack significantly improved the textures of this classic shooter. And today, I’m happy to report that there is a new AI-enhanced texture pack for Heretic."
Awesome. I already have these running under Doomsday anyway, but I'd love to see what people can do with this stuff.
Heretic especially was awesome..