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."

Comments

More DOS Games!!! Yay!

[lunarscape]

There are still some minor timing issues left, but it's certainly playable on my P4 here at work--er, I mean, at home. Yes, home.

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.

Re:More DOS Games!!! Yay!

[wcb4]

And he's looking for another project

I vote vote Sun Tzu's Ancient Art of War.. I loved that game. Found a copy a year or two ago and it was unplayable (enemies moved so fast you could not counter) Would love to play that one again though, wasted many , many hours back in college playing it.

Re:More DOS Games!!! Yay!

[BinLadenMyHero]

hmm...
prince of persa, karateka, another world, test drive

ah, the memories...

Re:More DOS Games!!! Yay!

[hypethetica]

I'm not really annonymous (the source code at least has my first and last name in it.)

I just want the attention to go to the game and the nostalgia, not to me. The last thing I want is to take credit away from the original author.

Thanks for the comments and for trying it out. I hope it works for you and brings back some old times.

-jeff!

Awesome

[th1ckasabr1ck]

I wish more older game companies would release newly compiled versions of their games, or at least make them open source so that fans can go ahead and do it themselves. And it doesn't have to be a free for-the-fans type move, in a lot of cases I am more than willing to pay for a version of an older game that could run on my current machine.

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.

Re:Awesome

[foidulus]

I was talking with my friends about this on the weekend... how cool it would be to remake DOOM and DOOM II with the DOOM3 engine. I'd definitely put some money down for that.
Well, Doom 3 is supposed to be a re-telling of the original doom...though no word on doom 4 being a re-telling of doom 2 :P

This is awesome

[iocat]

Silas Warner was super cool. One of the few times I've ever been rendered speechless was when this giant guy handed me his resume at our GDC job booth. I was like, "Hi, ok you've worked at Virgin, you some Sega CD codecs... ... oh, cool... ... wait a minute... .... Holy Shit, You're SILAS WARNER!!"

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.

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Silas Warner's Resume

This is a very different game than Wolf3D

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:This is a very different game than Wolf3D

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Wolf3D FAQ.

"The The idea for Wolfenstein came from an old Apple ][ game called Castle Wolfenstein that the id guys liked. They had come up with the idea of the 3D, texture-mapped, smoothly scrolling ngine, and needed a game to use it with. Castle Wolfenstein seemed ideal. They couldn't think of a better name, so their legal guys went out and got the copyright on the name, and Wolfenstein 3D was born!"

You don't understand man...

[the_skywise]

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.

7 Cities of Gold

[Hoi Polloi]

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.

Is this legal

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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?

Re:Is this legal

[hypethetica]

Yes it's legal. I knew this question would be raised, so I added a thingy in the faq:

In October of 2003, congress passed 4 clauses to the DMCA which allow reverse engineering for this type of application.
Specifically "3. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. ...The register has concluded that to the extent that libraries and archives wish to make preservation copies of published software and videogames that were distributed in formats that are (either because the physical medium on which they were distributed is no longer in use or because the use of an obsolete operating system is required), such activity is a noninfringing use covered by section 108(c) of the Copyright Act."

-jeff!

Did somebody say...

[Rayonic]

... Prince of Persia?

You're welcome.

Legal status

[0x0d0a]

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.

Re:Legal status

[hypethetica]

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.

Which she has. I probably should have quoted the entire section from my FAQ:
Q) Do you have the rights to distribute this game?

A) Yes. Silas Warner's wife has granted permission to release the source code and game executables as a small memorial of his work.
id Software owns the name "Wolfenstein", but not this particular piece of work. id's legal department has been notified of this project, and so far, have not stepped in to shut it down. Sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission.
Hopefully anyone who sees the effort involved in returning this piece of software to the modern world will see that it was done as a labor of love, not as a way to line pocketbooks.
--

DMCA wise, I guess it's kinda grey. It allows for reverse engineering to bypass protection (which I did), but not neccesarily for releasing the whole friggen source code! ;) I did spend some serious time searching for some kind of ruling for/against this type of work, but I couldn't find anything to support either case, as this is a rather unusual situation.
As if it's not obvious, IANAL. I'll gladly seek your councel if the hammer comes down on me for doing this, but I think I can sleep soundly.
-jeff!

Yet another Silas Warner classic

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Robot War

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.

Wolfenstein is the first game I remember modded

[Creepy]

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).

I grok

[hung_himself]

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...

Re:I think you're confused

[MilenCent]

And yes. The first Wolfenstein was a side scroller...

No, from what I can tell, it was considerably more than that. Pre-Solid Metal Gear is a closer match.

Wolf3D and RtCW innovated that by making it an FPS.

Creating the FPS is innovation. Riding that one-trick pony to the bank over and over and over again is not. Since Wolf3D, id has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. All they do anymore is shooters.

John Carmack is still a genius nonetheless.

This may very well be, but I wish he'd apply his genius to things other than FPS's.

Which do you think would be harder to make?

Unquestionably, it's harder to design a good, original game than to implement it. Just look around the shareware game selections of any software repository -- how many times has Tetris been redone? Asteroids? Breakout? Marble Madness?

The original Wolf is a much richer game than Wolf3D, because if offers strategic choices above "twitch" gameplay.

- John H.