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Beyond Castle Wolfenstein Re-Compiled
hypethetica writes "In memory of game developer Silas Warner, a fan-based port of the original PC boot-diskette version of the 1985 classic, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, has been disassembled, CPU speed fixed, and Soundblaster support has been added. The new game executable,
blessed by Silas' widow, runs in DOS, Windows, and DOSBox emulators. Both the executables and source code (x86 assembly) are available for download."
The guy who did this (jeff?) seems to want to remain fairly anonymous for some reason. I couldn't find any info on who he really is on his page. It's the same guy who did the Jumpman conversion a while back.
Oh! And he's looking for another project!!! Who are you so I can send you my shelf-full of old DOS games I can't play anymore??? (Though I'm sure none of the disks work anymore.)
Actually, he has a pretty nice tutorial on how to recreate source from bootable games and how to implement speed fixes. It's a pretty nice read.
John Carmack mentioned something in his GDC talk about how he would consider letting outside companies remake the older id games with the DOOM3 engine and sell them at a discount price. This would send me running to the stores the second they are released.
I think he got a kick out of it. Unfortunately we weren't hiring senior engineers at the time, so I never got a chance to work with him.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Don't confuse this with the iD/Apogee shareware game.
It's more like Metal Gear Solid, but 2D. Not a shoot-em-up bloodfest, more of a stealth/strategy game.
I remember the Commodore guys calling the PC Wolf3D a 'stupid action game'
LOL
cczz
That was back in the days when most games consisted of mindlessly eating dots or mindlessly shooting waves upon waves of enemy something and strategy amounted to getting a power pill or not shooting friendlies, this game came along.
You could change uniforms and sneak around as a guard. (Something today's games rarely let you do)
Shooting treasure chests revealed ammo, uniforms, nothing, or sometimes exploded the entire room.
Guards would shout at you in real speech!
You could run away from guards by hiding in rooms until things cooled off.
It was a huge change in complexity of games. Wolfenstein 3D was a great honorarium to it, but obviously not the same game.
I'd like to see "7 Cities of Gold" redone. I'd also like to know how the heck you establish a self-sustaining colony in that game! I never did figure out how.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Considering that they disassembled a copyrighted piece of software, can they get sued under the DMCA?
In fact can people get sued for even the simple possesion of a disassembler?
May the Maths Be with you!
... Prince of Persia?
You're welcome.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Slashdotted already? Sad....
Take another look at the text involved.
The exemption is *only* WRT reverse-engineering on anti-circumvention on software to which you are able to do what you're doing under copyright law. It does *not* provide a new fair-use exemption under copyright law.
The DMCA's clauses providing exemptions for reverse engineering to ensure compatibility do not extend to shielding one from copyright infringement. The original work is still copyrighted. Just because you (may) not be hit by the DMCA's anticircumvention laws doesn't mean that you are legally clear in regard to the actual copyright on the software. You have modified a disassembled copy of the original (rather than producing a clone, which would be legal), and hence are distributing a derivative copy of a copyrighted work to which you do not own the copyright or a license to the copyright. The DMCA doesn't concern you -- traditional copyright law does.
The clause in the DMCA gives the example of the Internet Archive needing to be able to put software to which they *have rights* and are not infringing on copyright ("If the Internet Archive is given computer software..."). The exemption only allows them to modify the software. It does not grant them more rights under copyright law.
Read discussion here
The extent of this ruling is to cover people that write and apply cracks that allow software to run on newer media formats that would otherwise not have the right to do so (If the CD becomes obsolete, it is legal to bypass Safe CD). It does not mean that any works that are protected by Safe CD become public domain.
It is possible that Silas' widow owns the copyright, if Silas published his own game. In this case, she probably *does* have the ability to grant you distribution rights, and you're fine.
May we never see th
I can't count the hours I spent tweaking, compiling, and testing robots. Great fun.
Even wrote myself a disassembler, to see how other robots worked.
Great job for the crew that did this, but idSoftware did it a hell of a lot better with creation of Wolfenstein 3D. With the current creations of the assortment of Return to Castle Wolfestein titles, I believe we all owe ID a huge favor. *bows to John Carmack*
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
ahh brings back memories
I still dont know what the guard used to say, does anybody know what german words were used.
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
I found the word usedr ching for pass, finally... it was haunting me
on http://dict.leo.org/?p=1WIM..&search=Ausweis
sea
ok then the guard would yell Achtung (attention) i think.
that is if you didnt bribe first or give him the password, or shoot him.
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
I have yet to play this, but from the screenshots and what you've just said, it appears to be more similar to the old metal gear games (metal gear, metal gear 2, MG solid snake, etc.) which were in 2D but still had the hide-and-seek elements.
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
I remember getting a mod of Castle Wolfenstein called Castle Smurfenstein, complete with audio encoded smurf song and a bloodcurdling scream.
Not too long later I got the mod to dino eggs called Dino Smurfs. Oddly enough, I'd purchased both games retail (a rarity back then).
Interesting... I googled on it and find out today the series came out in reverse order, or at least was meant to come out in a different order - look here for Dead Smurf Software info. Apparently Tom Hall of Id thought it was the first mod too (actually the first total conversion). It seems an appropriate next step to some of the stuff that was happening at the time (I had friends that created a popular Ultima editor, and we were huge WizEdit fans [and later the better Wizardry Scenario Editor] for Wizardry).
This game has very little to do with the later games by id, and was not written by them. This game was written by Silas Warner, and it's not really an action title, like Wolf3d and RTCW are.
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
Achtung Schweinhund!
The scariest words that ever emanated from a 8 bit box as the SS guard rushes into the room guns blazing...
Because the joystick was broken on the Apple ][ (owned by the most popular man in residence) my friend and I played using two paddles - one to control the gun and the other to move the prisoner which made it that much scarier as we tried to sneak up behind the guard to shoot him in the back - or worse - throw a grenade and not hit a wall and blow everyone smithereens
Wolfenstein (and The Prisoner) was a unique game than transcended graphics and sound - wait a second - I'm starting to sound like an oldtimer...
The problem I see is that most old games are made in assembler, and I guess most people have been brought up on C++ or Java, with only a dash of assembler usually 68000.
Still I would love to see Bullfrog's Syndicate again. Too many Theme (Park/hospital) (Original/Inc/World) games.
PS: No cocky replies such as:
And your point is...
Im so L337...
All you lazy westerners...
etc...
Dan/Dani Bunten made them both.
M.U.L.E. has no PC version however.
- John H.
Then go buy some games in the Classic NES Series for Game Boy Advance. <sarcasm>Heck, go buy Classic NES Series Pac-Man for $20, even when Wal-Mart is selling Pac-Man Collection (a GBA Game Pak containing Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, and Pac-Attack (a 'tris game) for GBA) for $10.</sarcasm>
John Carmack mentioned something in his GDC talk about how he would consider letting outside companies remake the older id games with the DOOM3 engine and sell them at a discount price.
I thought Id Software shut down the WolfenDOOM project, which aimed to remake the Wolfenstein 3D with the Doom II engine, on copyright grounds.
That'd be like asking for Super Mario Bros. where you could jump twice as high. Part of the challenge of SimCity was cramming as many citizens as you could into 120x100 tiles. If you want a bigger land map, then spawn more ZSNES instances.
Are the Doom / Quake / Whatever engine APIs backwards compatible???
Probably not. Porting would start with a map converter, hand-editing each map to bring it up to Doom 3 specs, and then making models for the enemies to replace the GBA-style scaled sprites. Because Doom had somewhat of a Robotron feel to it, with hordes coming at the player from all directions, the models would have to be much simpler at a given LoD than the models of Doom 3, which according to previews has a more Resident Evil style horror feel with fewer enemies.