Wolfenstein 3D
Wolfenstein 3D is a 1992 first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen for MS-DOS. It was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein, and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. In Wolfenstein 3D, the player assumes the role of Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis. The player traverses each of the game's levels to find an elevator to the next level or kill a final boss, fighting Nazi soldiers, dogs, and other enemies with a knife and a variety of guns.
Wolfenstein 3D was the second major independent release by id Software, after the Commander Keen series of episodes. In mid-1991, programmer John Carmack experimented with making a fast 3D game engine by restricting the gameplay and viewpoint to a single plane, producing Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3-D as prototypes. After a design session prompted the company to shift from the family-friendly Keen to a more violent theme, programmer John Romero suggested remaking the 1981 stealth shooter Castle Wolfenstein as a fast-paced action game. He and designer Tom Hall designed the game, built on Carmack's engine, to be fast and violent, unlike other computer games on the market at the time. Wolfenstein 3D features artwork by Adrian Carmack and sound effects and music by Bobby Prince. The game was released through Apogee in two sets of three episodes under the shareware model, in which the first episode is released for free to drive interest in paying for the rest. An additional episode, Spear of Destiny, was released as a stand-alone retail title through FormGen.
Wolfenstein 3D was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. It garnered numerous awards and sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995. It has been termed the "grandfather of 3D shooters", and is widely regarded as having helped popularize the first-person shooter genre and establishing the standard of fast-paced action and technical prowess for many subsequent games in the genre, as well as showcasing the viability of the shareware publishing model at the time. FormGen developed an additional two episodes for the game, while Apogee released a pack of over 800 fan-created levels. Id Software never returned to the series, but did license the engine to numerous other titles before releasing the source code for free in 1995, and multiple other games in the Wolfenstein series have been developed by other companies since 2001.
Gameplay
Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter presented with rudimentary 3D graphics. The game is broken up into levels, each of which is a flat plane divided into areas and rooms by a grid-based pattern of walls and doors, all of equal height. Each level is themed after Nazi bunkers and buildings. To finish a level, the player must traverse through the area to reach an elevator. Levels—ten in the original episodes—are grouped together into named episodes, with the final level focusing on a boss fight with a particularly difficult enemy. While traversing the levels, the player must fight Nazi guards and soldiers, dogs, and other enemies while managing supplies of ammunition and health. The player can find weapons and ammunition placed in the levels or can collect them from dead enemies; weapons include a knife, a pistol, a submachine gun, and a rapid-fire chain gun. The player can also find keys that allow them to pass through locked doors. While the levels are presented in a 3D perspective, the enemies and objects are instead 2D sprites presented from several set viewing angles, a technique sometimes referred to as 2.5D graphics.The player's health is represented by a percentage starting at 100, which is diminished when they are shot or attacked by enemies. If the player's health falls to zero, they lose one life and start the level over with a knife, a pistol, and eight bullets. The player begins each episode with four lives and can gain more by finding extra-life tokens or by earning enough points. Points are scored by killing enemies or collecting treasures scattered throughout the levels. Points can also be scored by killing all enemies in a level, collecting all treasure, finding all secret areas, or completing a level under a par time; the player's completion ratio and speed is displayed when a level is completed. Secret areas containing treasure, health refills, or ammunition can be found in hidden rooms revealed by activating certain wall tiles that slide back when triggered. The original version of the game allows the player to save their progress at any point, though in many of its ports the player can only save between levels.
Plot
Wolfenstein 3D is divided into two sets of three episodes: "Escape from Castle Wolfenstein", "Operation: Eisenfaust", and "Die, Führer, Die!" serve as the primary trilogy, with a second trilogy titled The Nocturnal Missions including "A Dark Secret", "Trail of the Madman", and "Confrontation". The protagonist is William "B.J." Blazkowicz, an American spy of Polish descent, and the game follows his efforts to destroy the Nazi regime. In "Escape", Blazkowicz has been captured while trying to find the plans for Operation Eisenfaust and imprisoned in Castle Wolfenstein, from which he must escape. "Operation: Eisenfaust" follows his discovery and thwarting of the Nazi plan to create an army of undead mutants in Castle Hollehammer, while in "Die, Führer, Die!" he infiltrates a bunker under the Reichstag, culminating in a battle with Adolf Hitler in a robotic suit equipped with four chain guns.The Nocturnal Missions form a prequel storyline dealing with German plans for chemical warfare. "A Dark Secret" deals with the initial pursuit through a weapons research facility of the scientist responsible for developing the weaponry. "Trail of the Madman" takes place in Castle Erlangen, where Blazkowicz's goal is to find the maps and plans for the chemical war. The story ends in "Confrontation", which is set in Castle Offenbach as he confronts the Nazi general behind the chemical warfare initiative.
Spear of Destiny
An additional episode, titled Spear of Destiny, was released as a retail game by FormGen. It follows Blazkowicz on a different prequel mission, trying to recapture the Spear of Destiny from the Nazis after it was stolen from Versailles. FormGen later developed two sequel episodes known as "mission packs", Return to Danger and Ultimate Challenge, each of which feature Blazkowicz as he fights through another Nazi base to recover the Spear of Destiny after it has been stolen again as part of a plot to build a nuclear weapon or summon demons.Development
In October–December 1990, a team of employees from programming studio Softdisk calling themselves Ideas from the Deep developed the three-part video game Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, the first game in the Commander Keen series. The group, who worked at Softdisk in Shreveport, Louisiana, developing games for the Gamer's Edge video game subscription service and disk magazine, was composed of programmers John Romero and John Carmack, designer Tom Hall, artist Adrian Carmack, and manager Jay Wilbur. After the release of the game in December through shareware publisher Apogee Software, the team planned to quit Softdisk and start their own company. When their boss, Softdisk owner Al Vekovius, confronted them on both their plans and their use of company resources to develop the game—the team had created it on their work computers, both in the office after hours and by taking the computers to John Carmack's house on the weekends—the team made no secret of their intentions. After a few weeks of negotiation, the team agreed to produce a series of games for Gamer's Edge, one every two months.Ideas from the Deep, now formally established as id Software, used some of these to prototype ideas for their own games. Adrian Carmack used them to push his preferred, dark art style, while John Carmack began to experiment with 3D computer graphics, which until then was largely the purview of flight simulators such as Wing Commander and slower adventure games such as Mercenary. Carmack found that this was largely due to the limitations of personal computers of the time, which had difficulty displaying a fast action game in 3D due to the number of surfaces it needed to calculate, but felt that the increasing computational power of PCs meant that it may be possible. During 1991, he experimented with limiting the possible surfaces the computer needed to display, creating game levels with walls designed only on a flat grid rather than with arbitrary shapes or angles. He also took the unusual approach of creating the displayed graphics through ray casting, in which only the surfaces visible to the player were calculated rather than the entire area surrounding the player. After six weeks of development, Carmack had created a rudimentary 3D game engine that used animated 2D sprites for enemies. Id Software then used the engine for the April 1991 Softdisk game Hovertank 3D, in which the player drives a tank through a plane of colored walls and shoots nuclear monsters. In the fall of 1991, after the team—sans Wilbur—had relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, and he had largely finished the engine work for Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy, Carmack decided to implement a feature from Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, a role-playing game in development by Blue Sky Productions. Ultima Underworld was planned to display texture-mapped 3D graphics without Hovertanks restrictions of flat walls and simple lighting. Deciding that he could add texture mapping without sacrificing the engine's speed or greatly increasing the system requirements as Underworld was doing, Carmack enhanced the engine over six weeks from Hovertank 3D for another Softdisk game, the November 1991 Catacomb 3-D. Upon seeing it, Scott Miller of Apogee began to push the team to make a 3D shareware action game.
In November 1991, with the second Commander Keen trilogy of episodes nearing completion and their contractual obligations to Softdisk almost finished, id Software sat down to plan out their next major game. Designer Tom Hall, who initially wanted to do a third Keen trilogy, recognized that Carmack's programming focus had shifted from the 2D side-scrolling platform game series to 3D action games. After an initial proposal by Hall of a sci-fi project, "It's Green and Pissed", Romero suggested a 3D remake of the 1981 Castle Wolfenstein. The team was interested in the idea, as Romero, Hall, and John Carmack all had fond memories of the original title and felt the maze-like shooter gameplay fit well with Carmack's 3D game engine, while Adrian Carmack was interested in moving away from the child-friendly art style of Keen into something more violent. Encouraged by the reception to his idea, Romero expounded on it by proposing a "loud" and "cool" fast action game where the player could shoot soldiers before dragging and looting their bodies. The core of the gameplay would be fast and simple, for Romero believed that due to the novelty of a 3D game and control scheme, players would not be receptive to more complicated, slow gameplay. He felt the game would occupy a unique place in the industry, which was then dominated by slower simulation and strategy games. Adrian and John Carmack were excited by the prospect, while Hall felt that it was enjoyable enough, and that since he was the company's designer that they could return to his ideas at a later date.
Initially the team believed that they would be unable to use the Wolfenstein name due to trademark issues, and came up with multiple possible titles. They contacted Castle Wolfenstein developer Silas Warner, but learned that Muse Software had shut down in 1986, with all rights to Wolfenstein sold. The rights last belonged to someone in Michigan, and the team was able to purchase the trademark around mid-April 1992 for US$5,000, gaining the right to use the name Wolfenstein 3D. The game concept met with immediate approval from Scott Miller of Apogee, who considered id Software his star developer, and he guaranteed id a US$100,000 payment on the project. Mark Rein, who had been brought on a few months prior as id's probationary president, also sold the idea of doing a retail Wolfenstein project to FormGen, which had published id's December 1991 Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter, overcoming the publisher's concerns over Wolfensteins proposed content. This put id in the unique position of selling simultaneously to the shareware and retail markets.
The project officially began on December 15, 1991. Romero and Hall designed the gameplay and aesthetics. Romero wanted the goal to be "to mow down Nazis", with the suspense of storming a Nazi bunker full of SS soldiers and Hitler himself, as well as dogs, blood "like you never see in games", and straightforward, lethal weapons. He also composed the general storyline for the game. Hall designed the levels while also adding collectible objects in the form of treasure and food for health items. He also did sketches for the bosses and the title screen. Carmack programmed "the core" of the game's engine in a month; he added a few features to the Wolfenstein 3D engine from Catacomb 3-D, including support for doors and decorative non-wall objects, but primarily focused on making the game run smoother and faster with higher-resolution graphics. The game was programmed chiefly in ANSI C, with its scaling and ray casting routines written in assembly. The graphics for the game were planned to be in 16 color EGA, but were changed to 256 color VGA four months before release, which also enabled the game to have higher resolutions. Romero in turn worked on building a game with the engine, removing elements of the initial design, like looting enemy bodies, that he felt interrupted the flow of fast gameplay. The sprites for the enemies and objects were hand drawn at eight different angles by Adrian Carmack using Electronic Arts's Deluxe Paint II. Initially the team had an external artist who assisted him and created animated wall textures, but the team felt that the quality was poor and did not use it in the game. The level design, by Romero and Hall, due to the grid-based level design, took some inspiration from Pac-Man, and paid homage with a hidden Pac-Man level. Romero later said in 2017 that making the levels was uninteresting compared to those from Commander Keen and had to prompt Hall to finish the maps with the promise of being able to buy himself a brand new car. The team was going to include some anti-fascist references and Nazi atrocities, but left them out to avoid controversies. They ensured that the presentation of the game created the atmosphere that they wanted, adding violent animations by Adrian Carmack for enemies being shot and music and sound effects by Keen composer Bobby Prince to make the guns sound exciting. Prince took some inspiration from his days as a platoon soldier in the US Army. With the aid of a 16-bit sampler keyboard and cassette recorder, he composed realistic sounds from a shooting range in addition to Foley sounds. The development team along with Scott Miller did the voicing for the enemies. Some of the enemy shouts were based on the original Castle Wolfenstein game.
As development continued, id Software hired their former Softdisk liaison Kevin Cloud as an assistant artist, and moved the company out to Mesquite, Texas, near where Apogee was located. Scott Miller of Apogee was pleased to have his star developers nearby, and agreed to not only increase their royalty rate to 50 percent, but have Apogee create their next game for Softdisk, ScubaVenture, so that id could focus on Wolfenstein. The game was intended to be released using Apogee's shareware model of splitting it into three episodes and releasing the first for free, with ten levels per episode. The level maps were designed in 2D using a custom-made program called Tile Editor, which had been used for the entire Keen series as well as several other games. Upon finding out that the team was able to create a level in a single day using the program, Miller convinced them to instead develop six episodes, which could be sold in different-sized packs. Around the same time, the team changed members and structure: id fired probationary president Mark Rein and brought back Jay Wilbur, who had stayed in Shreveport, to be both their CEO and business team; Bobby Prince moved into the office temporarily to record sound effects, while Adrian Carmack moved out of the office to get away from the noise.
As the game neared completion, FormGen contacted id with concerns over its violence and shock content. In response, id increased these aspects; Adrian Carmack added skeletons, corpses, and bloody wall details, and Hall and Romero added screams and cries in German, along with a Death Cam that would show a replay of the death of the final boss of an episode. The team also added "Horst-Wessel-Lied", the anthem of the Nazi Party, to the opening screen. John Carmack, meanwhile, added in walls that moved when triggered to hide secret areas, a feature that Hall had been pushing for months but which Carmack had objected to for technical reasons. Hall also added in cheat codes, and wrote a back story for the game. The team did a month of playtesting in the final stage of the game's development. In the early morning of May 5, 1992, the first episode of the shareware game was completed and uploaded by Apogee and id to bulletin board systems. The other episodes were completed a few weeks later. The total development time had been around half a year, with a cost of around US$25,000 to cover the team's rent and US$750 per month salaries, plus around US$6,500 for the computer John Carmack used to develop the engine and the US$5,000 to get the Wolfenstein trademark.
The following summer, most of the id Software team developed Spear of Destiny. The single-episode game was a prequel to Wolfenstein 3D and used the same engine, but added new audio, graphics, and enemies. It was created in two months, and was published commercially by FormGen in September 1992. The publisher was concerned that the material would be controversial due to holy relics associated with World WarII, but Romero felt it was similar to the Indiana Jones films. Instead of working on the game, John Carmack experimented with a new graphics engine that was licensed for ShadowCaster and became the basis of the engine for id's next game, Doom.