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Wolfenstein 3-D Celebrates 20 Years With Free Browser-Based Version
Dr Herbert West writes "20 years ago today, id software released Wolfenstein 3D, inspired by the classic Apple II game, Castle Wolfenstein. To celebrate, Bethesda Softworks on Wednesday released a free, browser-based version of the iconic first-person shooter. Users can pick which level they wish to play in the browser version, even the secret levels."
Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a remake made in 2001. The Apple II games by Muse Software were Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. Wolfenstein 3D was not an official remake of them, but it was inspired by them.
Was there a game that came before Return To Castle Wolfenstein. ÂAnd was it ever ported to a more advanced machine than the Apple II (like Atari or Comodore)?
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
They wanted my fucking bitrthdate so I gave them 1/1/1900.
WTF, is our fucking legal system so screwed that having some dipshit fucking form where anyone can lie is preferable to to just letting anyone play?!?
Nevermind don't answer that. That was rhetorical.
DOn't want to get the pedant NAzis all worked up here.
Yes, let's take a game originally coded in tight X86 assembly language, then shit all over it by converting it into super slow Javascript.
I guess this is why they haven't fixed all of those bugs in Skyrim. They were too busy making a browser-based Wolfenstein.
Nah man, this is the tech demo for the Elder Scrolls MMO. I shit you not.
It's hard to tell from looking at it now, just how much of a revelation Wolfenstein3D really was. Compared to modern games, the graphics look like crap, and even back then, we had games with better graphics in the cut scenes, but we all knew that cut-scenes were pre-rendered, slowly, on much bigger machines. The idea that our simple desktop systems could create that level of 3D realism on the fly was astonishing! The first time I saw it, I kept wondering if it was going to make my CPU explode from all the calculations it must be performing.
Works just fine is a bit of an overstatement. Took me a few minutes to reorient to the controls and remind myself why we started actually using the mouse with DOOM. Ouch.
The textures are fucked for me. As I walk by a dead body there is clearly a frame that flashes of the soldier standing erect...every time. The side panels of doors also render as a rainbow.
Aside from that its very jerky, not smooth at all. Looks better with the browser in full screen mode but, still rendering badly.
I know its free but, as someone who played the original, for all its faults, it was better than this.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
* Castle Wolfenstein: 1981 (on the Apple ][. Atari and Commodore shortly thereafter)
* Beyond Castle Wolfenstein: 1984
* Hovertank 3D: 1991 First FPS
* Wolfenstein 3D: 1992
* Return to Castle Wolfenstein: 2001. A very, VERY different game!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
"German internet censorship laws at work" Isn't it instead the German law about displaying Nazi symbols? I can't recall if it was W3D, I think it may have been, that was released on Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Day of Remembrance. I thought that was pretty tasteless but probably due to lack of knowledge. I wrote to the developer and he wrote back and told me, "It doesn't matter, it's only a game." I didn't agree but there's room in this world for civil disagreement.
As of this posting, the port linked in the article doesn't work on Opera 11.64 (Win 32). Luckily, Wolfenstein 3D has already been ported to a 4KB Java applet, for the 2011 Java4K competition. Go play it there instead.
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Because between Doom3 and Rage, iD has been in gradual decline, a pale shadow of what successful 'indie/shareware' gaming can become given fame and success. iD is like all the bands that are 'still together' after 20-30 years even though have the members have been drummed out/left because the vision and excitement that once made the company great has long since past.
Go read up on Adrian Carmack's dismissal and then put that into perspective with the iD sellout and you'll see that this had been planned for quite some time. Combine that with Valve and Epic's success with their game engines' licensing compared to the 4th generation of iD's (And it's not like we've seen a bunch of Tech 5 games either!) and you know the writing has been on the wall since midway between when Q3A and Doom3 came out.
What kind of moron would buy an Apple ][ in 1985?
In 1985 the Amiga was released. The C-64 was a better and cheaper computer then an Apple ][. Many, many better choices by then. The //e wasn't worth mentioning, ship had long sense sailed. Apple was just milking the moron market.
Don't get me wrong. I loved my Apple ][. I still occasionally started it in 1985. But by then it was nostalgia.
'Escape from Castle Wolfenstein' is certainly a classic game. Just cause you missed out doesn't change that.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Try picking a lock without sound. You're supposed to get a click when one of the three digit numbers hits, but I had no sound, so I was playing the state lottery to kill Hitler. I did it once. The worst part is if you died, thats it, restart. So not only did you have to get a three digit combination right, you had to use that dagger to slay guards and make your way to the bottom of the bunker and out with 1 life.
God spoke to me
You really need to watch the Bethesda "video podcast" of John Carmack playing Wolfenstein 3D and commenting on it - it's fascinating stuff.
Particularly as he brings up exactly the point you're talking about and how the big studios, with multi-year plans for a single game can make really epic stuff but loose out on a lot of the ingenuity and flexibility a small group of people can have. If you plan to make a game in just a couple of months, you can perfect the gameplay or pull and scrap "features" as necessary to make the game truly fun, whereas on a big AAA title you can't really do that without potentially pushing the project back years - assuming it gets released at all.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amDtAPHH-zE
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Fuck you, youtube^Wgoogle, I'm not going to create an account just because someone somewhere thought someone else somewhere else might possibly be sometimes in future be offended by pixels of red color.