Ioquake3-Derived Spearmint 1.0 Engine Coming Next Month, But Ceasing Development

Spearmint, an enhanced version of the open-source ioquake3 engine in turn derived from the id Tech 3 source code, will see the big "1.0" milestone in October. But that will also coincide with the developer and ioquake3 maintainer ceasing work on this engine now with an eighteen year lineage.

Next month will be 10 years that developer Zack Middleton has been involved with the open-source Quake 3 engine scene and one of the maintainers of ioquake3. Over this time he's worked on the Spearmint engine along with various other engine mods and games. He was also the developer behind the ioquake3-powered turtle fighting game.

After a decade of being involved in the ioquake3 scene, he will be permanently leaving it in October. But before doing so he will release Spearmint 1.0.

Spearmint is the ioquake3 fork to allow for a flexible engine for new games and support extra features. He's been working on it for years but has decided to now part ways with the initiative.

Middleton announced on his blog, "I’m pretty satisfied with the state of features and improvements that I’ve completed over the last 10 years. Of course there is still many things left that could be done; I just don’t care to continue working on the Quake 3 engine and I’m tired of the pressure I apply to myself to work on it."

He has yet to decide on any future game/software development. (Sadly there isn't much going on these days with the id Tech 4 sources / ioDoom3. Personally for those looking to get into open-source game engine work, I'd recommend checking out Godot.)