Achtung Wolfenstein Screenshots

Thermodyne writes: "The sequel of the game that helped invent the fps is being developed and the first of the screenshots have been released here. The game is based on the Quake 3 engine, but seems to stray away from the original intent of the first game." I can't begin to count the number of hours I lost in wolf3d ... course, I hope it does stray from the original game: who wants to run around shooting dogs and finding hidden switches for 30 levels? The lighting in some of those screenshots is super impressive. (check out that flame thrower). Sadly, I think my fps days are past me. I played The Sims for the first time last week. What an amazing game.

Comments

It's sad, really

[Wind_Walker]

You know, like every geek out there, I drooled over Wolfenstein 3D. It was new, different, and you could actually kill people. If memory serves, that is the reason that I first bought a sound card, was to hear the screams of the dead soldiers.

But now, FPS has become a cliched genre. "Ooh, what do I do now? I search for a switch and it lets me exit the level! How original!" How many games have come out recently that are FPS? ALL OF THEM. The only exceptions are RTS games like Starcraft (itself only a new skin on top of Warcraft).

PC games have hit a rut, and developers have no good ideas anymore. It nearly makes me want to buy an old Nintendo and bust out Bubble Bobble. PC game (and console, anymore) developers have no creativity and can't find a good storyline with a map and a flashlight.

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That's just the way it is

Re:It's sad, really

[ACK!!]

Wait a second what about Half-Life? Listen it is an old game but I am personally VERY disappointed that other game companies did not take the hint and start creating FPS games with more depth and storyline treatments. Come on the idea of looking through the eyes of a character in a game and running in first person through an action sceneriao is wonderful.

I think the industry has hit a rut and I agree with that but the possibilities are endless. I think the comparison is close to Sci-Fi literature which has the most possibility of brilliant ideas but constantly gets mired down in crappy output from publishers wanting to make another space opera and the quick buck.

Re:It's sad, really

[ackthpt]

Sadly I think my fps days are past me. I played The Sims for the first time last week. What an amazing game.

But now, FPS has become a cliched genre.

Indeed. These games have bored me stiff, since completing the original W3D. Really, I have to drink 4 shots of espresso just to even read reviews of this stuff without drifting off into rapid eye movement.

Like Sims (which also bored me to tears after the first evening playing it, but I actually played it for 4 hours before dislodging my lower jaw with a large yawn.) But strategy, yeah!, get me screaming profanities at my computer when some 60K compiled C program (the old Conquest grid game) takes away my favorite planet and I'm fixated. I'll get even! Bits will be spilled! AAARRRGHHHH!!!!!!

I've loved reading books on tactics and strategy and playing games written by someone who relies more on recursive functions than collision detection. The journey, like the old saying, is the reward, not the destination (the last few turns are kinda dull as I mop up the enemy.) Need more of these games.

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Re:It's sad, really

[nomadic]

How many games have come out recently that are FPS? ALL OF THEM.

What's worse than that is they're the same FPS! I'm not just talking about look and feel, I mean codebase. Are the Quake 3, UT, and Half-life engines so perfect that nobody is even trying to design new ones?

And don't get me started on RTSes. It's kind of sad, the computer game industry went from one where people designed games out of love to one where everyone's trying for the next blockbuster. Kind of like what the movie industry went through in the early 80's.
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Re:It's sad, really

[nomadic]

Some of the mods are really new games in my opinion; even if you discount them, Gunman Chronicles is based on the Half-life engine, and I think it qualifies as a new game.
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For The Record ..

[citizenc]

.. this editorial was written as a response to Grey Loki's editorial entitled Are We Living In A Broadband World?.

For the goatse.cx weary, http://www.3dactionplanet.com/features/editorials/ broadband/

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CitizenC

Re:For The Record ..

[antdude]

Also, http://www.3dactionplanet.com/features/editorials/ modemusers/ is a good article about game developers and companies for analog modemers.

Re:For The Record ..

[grappler]

For the goatse.cx weary, http://www.3dactionplanet.com/features/editorials/ broadband/

I don't see what the big deal is - you move the mouse over a link and the url shows up in the status bar.

Rob Malda, always ahead of the curve:

[Wakko Warner]

I played The Sims for the first time last week. What an amazing game.

Yeah, that one's cool, but there's this new game coming out called "Chess" that I hear is *really* awesome. Anyone got a chance to play it yet?!

- A.P.

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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.

Re:Rob Malda, always ahead of the curve:

[SimHacker]

Originally, the "ai" in the game was smart enough that it would always figure out the best thing for the characters to do all of the time, but that meant that anything the poor player told them to do would just make their lives worse off. That resulted in bad game play. So Will Wright decided to tone down the ai and "blur" their motivation, so they choose randomly between several good actions to do, instead of always choosing the best. Good game play is much more important than having the best possible ai.

There's also a good reason for the way time is distorted: it amplifies the importance of building a house with "good feng shui". If your characters take 15 minutes to take out the garbage, you need to rearrange your furniture and add some doors and trash cans, so they can live more efficiently. That's the whole point of the game! It's about building an efficient household, and the family of Sims evaluates how good your design is, by living in it.

-Don

Inspiration?

[Lion-O]

Now why do I get this feeling that these people completely ran out of ideas and in order to get more money in start doing re-runs? The screenshots look nice, but are we really waiting for a game which basicly offers more of the same?

IMHO its a total shame that the whole game market seems to be totally out of inspiration these days. Sometimes you come across a title which offers a complete new setup (based on something allready these I guess) but in most cases its just more of the same. The last game I've bought (Oni) is IMO a good example; its a 3rd person 'fight / shoot 'm up' but offers quite some new options. Ever fought 3 man at the same time by disarming one poor bastard and shooting the rest with his weapon? I've never seen Lara Croft do that, to name just another 3rd person game and perfect example. IMO another game which just kept on going adding basicly nothing to gameplay, just nicer landscapes and some new moves, in order to get gain more money.

As I said; the screenshots looked nice. The game itself is a shame IMVHO. Why not put the effort and money into something new?

Re:Inspiration?

[Metrol]

Why not put the effort and money into something new?

That's something like saying, "why do all these movies still have light projected through them to show on a screen". All the while ignoring the fantastic advances in the technology producing those images.

The original Wolfenstein wasn't the end of all fps games, it was merely the beginning. This techology is maturing before our eyes into a genre closer to interactive movies rather than simply just a game. A good case in point would be the first couple of levels of Unreal, and even more so with Half-Life. One of the most important aspects of each of these games is that they include characters that you should not just gun down, and in many cases are a part of the interactive story.

In my mind, it's not so much the notion of inventing something new, but rather to take these wonderful technologies to the realms of artists, writers, and designers to give them depth that goes WAY beyond the media constraints of TV or movies.

Reason we're not off on to completely new paradigms for this type of gaming is that we're really just getting out of it's infancy. There are still some really great problems to get through, like how to effectively interact with other computer characters beyond just shooting them.

On a side note, was reading an article recently in PC Gamer about a new game that hopes to recreate the entirety of WWII as a multi-player game. Bringing together all these different technologies to allow you to work on strategy, tactics, FPS involvement, flight sim, and all that. Forget the name of it as I lent the mag to a bud of mine who is a huge history nut. The great thing about all this, is that we're just now seeing this kind of depth of plot and gaming coming to together.

Re:Inspiration?

[Raven667]

In my mind, it's not so much the notion of inventing something new, but rather to take these wonderful technologies to the realms of artists, writers, and designers to give them depth that goes WAY beyond the media constraints of TV or movies.

My idea, games should be about fun, not technology. No, I don't run around with my DEC PDP-1 saying "Spacewar is it, all other games are just derivitave trash", but gameplay must come first. Look at the store shelves sometime, most games are "Foo II" or "Bar 3 Ultra" or some such jazz, same gameplay, rehashed graphics. The last new genre that I can remember is the real-time stragety, and it has been published to death.

Bagh! Enough ranting for now.

Re:Inspiration?

[-Harlequin-]

My idea, games should be about fun, not technology. No, I don't run around with my DEC PDP-1 saying "Spacewar is it, all other games are just derivitave trash", but gameplay must come first. Look at the store shelves sometime, most games are "Foo II" or "Bar 3 Ultra" or some such jazz, same gameplay, rehashed graphics. The last new genre that I can remember is the real-time stragety, and it has been published to death.

It sounds like you're talking about Hollywood movies, and in a sense you are because the problem is largely the same - There is no limit to the number of directors with clever, deep, new, experimental ideas for film, and with the talent to make them. But they'll never get the funding they need to make those films because Hollywood is not about entertainment, it's about money. And since cringe-comedy "there's something about Mary" films are cheap to make and earn lots at the box-office, that's the type of film that the corporations will fund.

In the game industry, it does not matter if your game is good if you can't get the shelf space to sell it, and getting that shelf space is a game of intrigue and back-room deals that usually requires millions in marketing just for the up-front entry fee - regardless of eventual success. That's assuming you've got a great game. Getting there itself requires that you find funding, and that usually means going to investors. And investors are not usually interested in trying out something new because something untried is likely to fail in this industry.

The solution? I don't know. Everyone thought that Doom was the solution - it was a bestseller that bypassed the shelves alltogether. A new era was dawning in which the games availible to buy would nolonger be limited to the shelf space (and associated politics) of retailers. But it seems Doom was a once-off and we're back to square one, despite the new ubiquity of the net.

The film industry has been around longer than the game industry. How have they solved the problem?
Well OK, they haven't, but they seem to have made a little more progress towards alternative systems. Unfortunately, I suspect some of this is due to film being considered "culture" and thus more ameniable to things like government aid, while games are "youth timewasters" and thus entirely at the mercy of the largest/lowest-common-denominator tendancies of unfettered capitalism.

It's so stupid - we have a huge alternative distribution channel sitting unused, but the whole games market is locked into a vicious cycle that doesn't look like it can be broken any time soon.

Re:Inspiration?

[Raven667]

Damn good point, you know there is still a small underground industry for things like hardcore wargames that only sell a few thousand or tens of thousands of copies. Going back to shareware would definitely be an improvement.

The forgotten original

[Faust7]

Is "the first game" supposed to mean Wolfenstein 3-D? There were two Wolfenstein games before that, Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. I don't know what system they were originally designed for, but I think they were made by Muse Software--at least, that's what I remember seeing on the title screens of the Apple II versions (along with some copy-protection cracker handles, heh).

Where are the nazis???!!!

[phaze3000]

The screen shots show all these weird alien looking guys - where are the nazis? They look more like the goombas from the Super Mario Bros film than anything (except for the swastikas of course). I was looking forward to kicking some far-right butt...

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Re:Where are the nazis???!!!

[nachoworld]

The Nazis are all too busy for the screen shots because someone set up us the bomb and they are trying to sweep them out. I think that we'll be seeing more pics of them soon however, as this guy here has stated that 'all the base are belong to us.' As you can see from the background, he's right.

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Re:Where are the nazis???!!!

[oddrune]

You missed the "Pictures" part of the site -- featuring nazi-dressed models with a whip.

How can anyone resist these two nazi's?

:-)

Re:Where are the nazis???!!!

[Erasmus Darwin]

The screen shots show all these weird alien looking guys

While looking through the screen shots, I couldn't help but imagine someone like Jeff K. suggesting that the new Wolf3D game should have killer robots and zombies and flamethrowers and ninjas and tanks and mummies and...

What's everyone waiting for?

[xFoz]

Load up an Apple II emulator.
Play the original Escape From Castle Wolfenstien.
The classic that started it all.
Bribe guards, kill guards, and talk to guards!
All in glorious 1D!

The Original Wolfenstein

[call -151]

The original Wolfenstein was from Muse software in 1981 for the Apple II, and was one of the first with (almost recognizable) speech- "Achtung!"

Check out this page for a screenshot from the Apple II if you want a little memory trip. The page also has info about running it under emulation on a PC.

The first of the screenshots?!?

[James Foster]

Uhm... The first screenshots were released over a year ago.

Castle Smurfenstein!!

[ehintz]

When I was young and foolish I wasted many an hour blowing Smurfs to hell... The game was called Castle Smurfenstein, and was basically ripped off from Wolfenstein. They claimed that SMURF stood for Secret Military Undergound Resistance Force, and that the smurfs were actually Hitler's last chance at revenge. They would make all the worlds children peace loving and docile, then the smurfs would pop up with submachine guns and blow 'em all away, thereby reviving the third reich...

There is something rather pleasing about sticking a virtual gun in a Smurf's chest, hearing it beg for it's little blue life, and then blowing it to hell... ;-) I may have to go find myself an Apple II emulator and relive my glory days as Smurfbutcher Bob...
Regards,

More details about the game...

[Cyrix Haldir]

I run an italian gaming site, and some time ago we interviewed Jonathan Knight from Return to casle wolfenstein dev. team... he gave us some details, maybe you are interested in them :)

The interview is available in english and italian.

Hope you enjoy it...

Crap, WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY off topic. =)

[citizenc]

Woops, wrong thread. Wrong post. Oh hell, this is even on the wrong FORUM! Feel free to mod me down to the netherreigons of Slashdot. =)

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CitizenC

I don't like those mutants and monsters...

[antdude]

[begin rant] I like realistic characters like in the original Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, and the 2D versions. The game doesn't feel like Wolfenstein without those infamous Nazi soldiers, commanders, etc. Do we really needs mutants, zombies, robots, monsters, etc.? To think about that, I think this game will have strange weapons as well. :(

I don't think I will want this game. [end of rant]

Re:I don't like those mutants and monsters...

[Cuthalion]

What? Wolfenstiein3d had zombies! Those were those guys that waved their arms around while the shotguns in their chest fired. Dr. Schabb would turn you into one if you weren't careful! (I believe that was Episode 2).

Did you play beyond the free downloads ever?

Re:I don't like those mutants and monsters...

[antdude]

Oh yeah. Those enemies were annoying. I liked the other human enemies. Yes, I played the whole game.

Re:I don't like those mutants and monsters...

[antdude]

You meant Xen levels (alien worlds). Ugh!

Re:I don't like those mutants and monsters...

[antdude]

That was in the PC version as well. It's secret levels so... :)

that is NOT the engine's fault...

[Forrestina]

ok, so, there's an engine. it controls the framework of the game, rendering things, etc etc....

that engine can handle pretty much any texturing and modeling that you want to throw at it (within reason of course, it is only a game). but, it could be used to make things look like anything.

if things are cartoonish, that was a choice of the developers of the game, not the developers of the engine itself.

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A really old classic

[Fervent]

I had to check the date on this story, just to make sure Slash wasn't fucking up. Weren't these screenshots out a *while* ago (like 3-4 months). I certainly remember seeing that flamethrower.

Revival of old games

[smoondog]

I remember in the mid-late 80's there was a revival of old games with upped graphics. Super Mario Bros, Pacman land (or world or something) and other games. I would love to see a new revival of modern fps games and the end of the side shooter era....

-Moondog

Mein Leben

[aprentic]

My favorit part was always the fscked up German that the guards would babble out as they shot at you or died.

Nice try....

[Symbiosis]

but your Zero Wing refrences seem a bit forced. I've no problem with you trying to spice up your post a bit, but next time let's try and incorporate it a little better and make flow a bit more nicely, k? ;-)>

Thanx :-)>

The Sims on Linux

[SimHacker]

I ported The Sims to Linux months ago, at the beginning of last summer, but Loki took ages to answer my email, and just didn't seem to be interested... Go figure. Anybody know what's up with them these days?

Maxis was interested though, because the next vewrsion of The Sims Online will run on a Linux server. So now I'm working on optimizing it to run the multi player server side of the game on Linux without any graphics.

If Loki had ever gotten their act together, then The Sims for Linux could have been published a while ago. I busted my ass and did a lot of work on my own time to try to make it happen, but Maxis isn't interested in publishing games on Linux, and I can't publish it all by myself. Are there any companies out there besides Loki who are interested in porting The Sims Online client to Linux? Does anyone want to start a new Linux game company?

I've already done most of the hard work (it takes 2 hours to compile), and it'll be a slam dunk top seller. I hope to publish it soon after the Windows version is released, but I've totally given up on Loki.

Back in 1992, I ported SimCity Classic to Unix, and added multi player capability, multiple views, chat, shared whiteboard, pie menus, and a bunch of other features. A year or so ago, I ported it to Linux and optimized it so it runs at least 17 years a second on my 500 mhz laptop, or more than a million years in less than a day. SimCity Classic runs so fast, it's a twitch game! And only on Linux. I hope to publish that as soon as I can hammer out a new contract with Maxis.

-Don

Re:This simply glorifies Naziism and Violence.

[Symbiosis]

Hmm... Columbing doesn't seem to ring a bell... I'll do a search online and get back to you on that one ;-)

Now, Waco, I remember that one... just one thing... this faulty memory of mine... I don't remember anyone placing the blame for Waco on the video game industry of that time... rather than Wolfenstein, I'd say part of the violence at Waco was learned through, oh, I dunno, military/SWAT/etc. training... just a guess.... ;-)

/me sits back and waits for cynicism levels to subside...

Ok, sorry about that, just had to get that out of my system... :-)

Violence turns people into assholes, not killers.

[SimHacker]

Violent games do worse things than turn people into killers. If only they really did turn people into killers, more kids would murder their families and friends, and maybe it would clean up the gene pool a bit. But even worse, violent games turn people into ASSHOLES, who we now have to put up with, day in and day out, because murdering them is illegal! For this legacy, we have Doom and Quake to thank.

-Don

Re:Medal of Honor

[demon]

Well, id Software isn't doing "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", just so you know. I don't know offhand what the name of the company is that's doing the game, but I do know that id isn't.
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Re:This simply glorifies Naziism and Violence.

[demon]

Yet again id software show that they have no concern for the moral welfare of children. But this time they have sunk to previously uncharted depths. The subject matter is too serious to feature in a 'game' (if you can call graphic portrayal of extreme violence a game).

What makes you say this? "[M]oral welfare of children"? How is that their responsibility? They make games, and those games are not for kids. What do you want, for Carmack to go around to your local computer software store, and stand in front of all of id's titles on the shelves, checking the age of everyone who looks at 'em? C'mon, give me a break. One word - parents. But then, that'd be too big an imposition on them - they can't actually be expected to RAISE the snot-nosed brats they bring into this world?

(Note, I don't think all kids are snot-nosed brats, but they're getting more and more common.)

It's time slashdotters voted with their wallets. There are plenty of games out there which do not encourage Naziism or Violent behaviour, and which are equally entertaining. Games like The Sims, Myst, Riven, etc I could go on.

How does this game, or the original Wolf3D, encourage Naziism? You're KILLING the Nazis. :P And Myst and Riven - all I have to say is yawn.

Games developers need to grow up and develop a sence of social responsibility. These games are turning normally reasonable folk into deranged psycho killers. Have we learned NOTHING from Columbing and Waco ?

Umm. You watch too much TV, methinks. It's been proved that there is no substantial connection between youth violence and video games - in fact, how about RESEARCHING it. You'll find that since the gaming industry has gotten big, school shooting incidents have gotten LESS common. The media just gives them more coverage.

And how does it have anything to do with Waco? That was a cult, plain and simple. Don't go dragging in completely unrelated issues!
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All your base

[The Original Bobski]

Somebody set us up the website

My Perfect Game

[N8F8]

I'm pretty much a 3D junkie. Each year I buy the latest video card and the lated First Person Games. I install the video card, reinstall the drivers a bazillion times along with game patches hoping to get the thing to run. Every time I am disappointed. The moment of disappointment comes when I sense the futility of walking down 3D hallways mindlessly shooting seemingly endless supplies of uglies and bad guys. Pointless. A taste of what I really want and a feast of mindless violence.

What do I want? I want a sense of wonder and exploration. Danger, surely. But not mindless killing. I want a challenge. A challenge to think and learn. Myst was a start, but instead of treading down that path, all the game developers are marching lockstep down a dead-end path of designing stupid games. Until they figure out their mistake I am resigned. Resigned to the only game that comes close. Its called life. Not always as pretty or mysterious as a CGI Generated-3D world, but , at the end of the day it's the only other game available.

Re:Quake3 engine

[-Harlequin-]

The top three screenshots look pretty good - I don't think they look very cartoonish:

http://www.3dactionplanet.com/wolfenstein/images /p hoto/index.asp

The ones below with more cartoony subject matter look more cartoony, but that's the point - I think you're confusing the engine with the way the artists use it. The Quake2 engine rendering looks a lot more cartoony to me than Q3 does, though the art, design, lighting, etc, are more cartoony in Q3A.

Or maybe we just grew up watching different styles of cartoon :-)

Re:Fallout

[Erasmus Darwin]

Ok, the original Fallout might be a valid counter-agrument, [...] has an original storyline and plot.

Was Fallout original, innovative, and an all-around great game? Hell, yes. Was the plot original? Not quite -- the whole "military base churning out bad guys in a post-apocalyptic future" storyline is nearly identical to that of its unofficial predecessor, Wasteland.