The group, who worked at Softdisk in Shreveport, Louisiana developing games for the Gamer's Edge video game subscription service and disk magazine, was composed of programmers John Romero and John Carmack, designer Tom Hall, artist Adrian Carmack, and manager Jay Wilbur.
In Octoberâ∽ecember 1990, a team of employees from programming studio Softdisk calling themselves Ideas from the Deep developed the three-part video game Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, the first game in the Commander Keen series. The original version of the game allows the player to save their progress at any point, though in many of its ports the player can only save between levels. Secret areas containing treasure, health refills, or ammunition can be found in hidden rooms revealed by activating certain wall tiles that slide back when triggered. Points can also be scored by killing all enemies in a level, collecting all treasure, finding all secret areas, or completing a level under a par time the player's completion ratio and speed is displayed when a level is completed. Points are scored by killing enemies or collecting treasures scattered throughout the levels. The player begins each episode with three lives and can gain more by finding extra-life tokens or by earning enough points. If the player's health falls to zero, they lose one life and start the level over with a knife, a pistol, and eight bullets. The player's health is represented by a percentage starting at 100, which is diminished when they are shot or attacked by enemies. While the levels are presented in a 3D perspective, the enemies and objects are instead 2D sprites presented from several set viewing angles, a technique sometimes referred to as 2.5D graphics. The player can find weapons and ammunition placed in the levels or can collect them from dead enemies weapons include a knife, a pistol, a submachine gun, and a rapid-fire chain gun. While traversing the levels, the player must fight Nazi guards and soldiers, dogs, and other enemies while managing supplies of ammunition and health. Levelsâten in the original episodesâare grouped together into named episodes, with the final level focusing on a boss fight with a particularly difficult enemy. To finish a level, the player must traverse through the area to reach an elevator. Each level is themed after Nazi bunkers and buildings. The game is broken up into levels, each of which is a flat plane divided into areas and rooms by a grid-based pattern of walls and doors, all of equal height. Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter presented with rudimentary 3D graphics. An additional episode, Spear of Destiny, was released as a stand-alone retail title through FormGen.
The game was released through Apogee in two sets of three episodes under the shareware model, in which the first episode is released for free to drive interest in paying for the rest. Wolfenstein 3D features artwork by Adrian Carmack and sound effects and music by Bobby Prince. He and designer Tom Hall designed the game, built on Carmack's engine, to be fast and violent, unlike other computer games on the market at the time. After a design session prompted the company to shift from the family-friendly Keen to a more violent theme, programmer John Romero suggested remaking the 1981 stealth shooter Castle Wolfenstein as a fast-paced action game. In mid-1991, programmer John Carmack experimented with making a fast 3D game engine by restricting the gameplay and viewpoint to a single plane, producing Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3-D as prototypes.
I provide these for you to print out and use for beating the game.Wolfenstein 3D was the second major release by id Software, after the Commander Keen series of episodes. I do not want others to copy them and use them for themselves on their webpages, that would be unfair and you would be like a trator to wolfenstein if you did.