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id Releases Open Source Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone

Posted by Soulskill on from the ach-mein-leben dept.

An anonymous reader writes "id Software has released a port of the classic Wolfenstein FPS to the iPhone. Some of the coding was done by John Carmack himself, who also used original code combined with new code from Wolf3D Redux. The original code was open sourced years ago, and enthusiasts have been updating it, which made the port considerably easier for id. It's available in the iTunes App Store, but the source is available for free at id's website." Carmack also posted a detailed writeup about the decision to bring Wolf3D to the iPhone, including design notes and a few snippets of code. At the end, he says, "I'm going back to Rage for a while, but I do expect Classic Doom to come fairly soon for the iPhone." Kotaku got a chance to try the game at GDC: "It's not just a good reproduction of the original, it seems better."

26 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So when... by stonedcat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wolfenstein doesn't contain the BFG... you're thinking of Doom.

    --
    You can't take the sky from me.
  2. Apple suckers drooling over decades-old ports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You guys always get shafted waiting for the ports.

  3. Re:So when... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

    When you kill enough dogs or turn the soldiers into dog food, an animal rights activist will beat you to death with your own iPhone. :P

  4. So what? by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doom already runs on Rockbox. If the iPhone were an open platform, this would have happened a long time ago.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  5. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by The+Warlock · · Score: 4, Informative

    The game engine is open-source, but the levels and art assets have always been non-free.

    --
    I've upped my standards, so up yours.
  6. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by sokoban · · Score: 5, Funny

    God, I hate paying people for their work. It makes me feel so dirty and wrong.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
  7. Re:So when... by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just install the PETArometer app on your iPhone. When a PETA member sneaks up on you, the iPhone emits the 'Call of the Flower Children'. You can then strangle the dirty hippie with your baby seal skin scarf.

  8. Re:Wasn't that the.... by Medgur · · Score: 4, Informative
    Not quite, the wikipedia article is quite thorough on the history

    The earliest two documented first person shooters were Maze War and Spasim. Maze War was the most similar to modern first person shooters, as it featured characters fighting on foot. Development of the game began some time in 1973 and was likely completed before Spasim, however its exact date of completion is unknown. Spasim had a documented debut at the University of Illinois in 1974. The game was a rudimentary space flight simulator, which featured a first-person perspective.[5] Spasim led to more detailed combat flight simulators and eventually to a tank simulator, developed for the U.S. army, in the later 1970s. These games were not available to consumers and it was not until 1980 that a tank game, Battlezone, was released in arcades. A version was released in 1983 for home computers, the first successful mass-market game featuring a first person viewpoint and 3D graphics.[27]

    Id Software released Hovertank 3D in 1991, which pioneered ray casting technology to enable faster gameplay than 1980s vehicle simulators. Later developers added texture mapping with Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (by Looking Glass Technologies), a role-playing game featuring a first person viewpoint and an advanced graphics engine, released in 1992. During development, this led to Catacomb 3-D which was actually released first, in late 1991, and introduced the display of the protagonist's hand and weapon (magical spells) on the screen.[27]

  9. Graphics quality by Mprx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The graphics are crisp, intense duplicates of the original.

    But from the screenshot we can see that both the sprites and the textures have been filtered. Filtering the textures is no problem, but the sprites are "pixel art" - they are designed around the pixel boundaries to pack more detail into a limited resolution. It's the same principle as manually hinting fonts. The only acceptable scaling method for pixel art is unfiltered "nearest neighbor" scaling, as used in the original game. This new version is not "crisp", it is an ugly blurred mess.

  10. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd be happy to pay to see Carmack do live performances.

  11. Re:I welcome the competition! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just remember, you need a Mac "pro" model to develop. Have fun!

    not according to my $300 amd based hackintosh.

  12. why hasnt this been tagged johncisgod yet by Meshugga · · Score: 4, Informative

    - which would be the natural thing to do.

    i'm seriously losing faith in /. readers history education.

  13. Enlarging pixel art by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    The only acceptable scaling method for pixel art is unfiltered "nearest neighbor" scaling, as used in the original game.

    There exist algorithms for enlarging pixel art that overcome both the blocky appearance of nearest-neighbor resampling and the blurry appearance of linear resampling. The Scale2x algorithm, for instance, can be applied multiple times. The hq2x, hq3x, and hq4x can be applied only as the final step, but with amazing results.

    1. Re:Enlarging pixel art by Mprx · · Score: 3, Informative

      They sometimes work, but when they fail the results are more distracting than nearest neighbor resampling. The "Yoshi" sign in Test Case 2 is a good example, where the algorithm has failed to identify the gradually sloping line and exaggerated the stepped appearance.

    2. Re:Enlarging pixel art by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting
      John Carmack wrote:

      Unfortunately, an attempt at increasing the quality of the original art assets by using hq2x graphics scaling to turn the 64x64 art into better filtered 128x128 arts was causing lots of sprites to have fringes around them due to incorrect handling of alpha borders.

      Workaround 1: Use Scale2x instead.
      Workaround 2: Do the alpha with Scale2x and the red, green, and blue with hq2x on a copy of the image modified such that each transparent pixel duplicates the non-transparent pixel closest to it.

  14. Re:Wasn't that the.... by Enderandrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What really gets me is how Ultima Underworld never gets the credit it deserves. It shipped before Wolfenstein 3D, and was a better game to boot.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Underworld

    You could look up and down, you could jump, swim, examine objects, interact with objects, there were RPG stats, etc. Gameplay was non-linear, and there was even an honest-to-goodness story. Lighting was dynamic, and there was even auto-map.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Spector

    Spector never gets the respect he is due either.

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  15. Carmack Rocks! by jcr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    John Carmack has a very well-deserved reputation for generosity. A couple of years ago he gave one of his NeXT slabs to a friend of mine on a "free to good home" basis. He not only gave it to her, he paid for the shipping.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:Carmack Rocks! by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 3, Funny

      Not only that, but what the dev team estimated would take them at least 2 months, Carmack did in four days.

      And on the fifth, sixth, and seventh days, He rested.

  16. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 3, Informative

    I suspected as much but when I checked out the zip, it's actually got all the level data there.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  17. Re:Sweet by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What's more sweet? Something that pushes the hardware a bit more.

    http://www.x-plane.com/iPhone/iPhone.html

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  18. I think the Wolf3D Redux guy made a big mistake... by 7+digits · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...by not forwarding his email to his current address.

    "I sent an email to the Wolf 3D Redux project maintainer to see if he might be interested in working on an iPhone project with us, but it had been over a year since the last update, and he must have moved on to other things."

    He'll probably learn about the missed opportunity by reading slashdot...

  19. Re:I think the Wolf3D Redux guy made a big mistake by Paralizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I thought the same thing. If he's still a developer, he really missed a huge opportunity. On the other hand, he can still say that some of his work was used in a commercial game for the iPhone, selected by Carmack himself, which is a pretty cool thing to be able to put on your resume.

  20. aarrrggghhhhh by Eil · · Score: 4, Informative

    From Carmack's TFA:

    I sent an email to the Wolf 3D Redux project maintainer to see if he might be interested in working on an iPhone project with us, but it had been over a year since the last update, and he must have moved on to other things. I thought about it a bit, and decided that I would go ahead and do the project myself.

    Can you imagine doing a simple port of a trivial (but classic) game that nearly everyone has forgotten about and then missing that one email from John Effing Carmack himself saying, "hey, want to work with me on this?"

    Somewhere there is a developer kicking himself HARD for not checking his sourceforge email account.

  21. Re:Sweet by Em+Ellel · · Score: 3, Informative

    When theres no Apple Store in your country? (that's like 90% of the globe). Not trolling I really would like to know. Proxy? gift cards? some hack?

    JailBreak your phone, then either install apps manually or use one of the number of AppStore alternative Installers (Cydia comes to mind)

    -Em

    --
    RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
  22. Re:So when... by houghi · · Score: 4, Funny

    reminds me of the joke "Seal walks into a club."

    Also what is it with these Peta campaigns? If I wear fur, they will keep showing naked ladies? Sounds counterproductive to me.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  23. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by Blackdognight · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Come on people. Pay the $5. This is the exactly kind of behavior we keep asking for! They're releasing the source and not treating us like we're all thieves. Let's reward them for giving us the benefit of the doubt.

    Besides, if you could afford to buy yourself an iPhone or iPod touch, you can likely afford it. (Especially considering what ATT charges for data packages.)