Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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.
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).