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158-432: The Doom concept was proposed in late 1992, after the release of Wolfenstein 3D and its sequel Spear of Destiny . John Carmack was working on an improved 3D game engine from those games, and the team wanted to have their next game take advantage of his designs. Several ideas were proposed, including a new game in their Commander Keen series, but John proposed a game about using technology to fight demons inspired by

316-510: A virtual reality arcade game. The 1994 Acorn Archimedes port was done in UK by programmer Eddie Edwards and published by Powerslave Software. By 1994, a port for the Sega Mega Drive was under development by Imagineer , who intended to release it by September, but it was cancelled due to technical problems. The 1994 Classic Mac OS version of the game had three releases: The First Encounter ,

474-467: A Death Cam that would show a replay of the death of the final boss of an episode. The team also added " Horst-Wessel-Lied ", the anthem of the Nazi Party , to the opening screen. John Carmack, meanwhile, added in walls that moved when triggered to hide secret areas, a feature that Hall had been pushing for months but which Carmack had objected to for technical reasons. Hall also added in cheat codes, and wrote

632-541: A High District Frankfurt Court case evaluating the Nazi imagery within Wolfenstein 3D determined that video games did not fall under this allowance. The court ruled that because video games drew younger audiences, "this could lead to them growing up with these symbols and insignias and thereby becoming used to them, which again could make them more vulnerable for ideological manipulation by national socialist ideas". Up through 2018,

790-409: A back story for the game. The team did a month of playtesting in the final stage of the game's development. In the early morning of May 5, 1992, the first episode of the shareware game was completed and uploaded by Apogee and id to bulletin board systems . The other episodes were completed a few weeks later. The total development time had been around half a year, with a cost of around US$ 25,000 to cover

948-513: A battle with Adolf Hitler in a robotic suit equipped with four chain guns . The Nocturnal Missions form a prequel storyline dealing with German plans for chemical warfare . "A Dark Secret" deals with the initial pursuit through a weapons research facility of the scientist responsible for developing the weaponry. "Trail of the Madman" takes place in Castle Erlangen , where Blazkowicz's goal

1106-628: A book. After the multiplayer component was coded, the development team began playing four-player multiplayer games matches, which Romero termed " deathmatch "; he proposed adding a cooperative multiplayer mode as well. Cloud named the act of killing other players " fragging ". According to Romero, the deathmatch mode was inspired by fighting games . The team frequently played Street Fighter II , Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting during breaks, while developing elaborate rules involving trash-talk and smashing furniture or equipment. Romero later stated that "you could say that Japanese fighting games fueled

1264-585: A demonstration of the look he was trying for, and that photograph was the one used by Punchatz. Electronic Arts 's Deluxe Paint II was used in the creation of the sprites. Like they had for Wolfenstein 3D , id hired Bobby Prince to create the music and sound effects. Romero directed Prince to make the music in techno and metal styles; many of the songs were directly inspired by songs from popular metal bands such as Alice in Chains and Pantera . Prince felt that more ambient music would work better, especially given

1422-462: A designer, he was becoming seen in the company as the most important source of ideas; the company considered taking out key person insurance on Carmack but no one else. Hall spent the next few weeks reworking the Doom Bible to work with Carmack's technological ideas, while the rest of the team planned how they could implement them. His adjusted vision for the plot had the player character assigned to

1580-593: A draft of the script that had Fats worked into the narrative, but after reading it, Gleason declined to reprise the role because he felt that the character seemed to have been added as "an afterthought". The Color of Money had its world premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City October 8, 1986. The film went into wide release in the United States October 17, 1986. The American release

1738-415: A feature from Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss , a role-playing game in development by Blue Sky Productions . Ultima Underworld was planned to display texture-mapped 3D graphics without Hovertank ' s restrictions of flat walls and simple lighting. Deciding that he could add texture mapping without sacrificing the engine's speed or greatly increasing the system requirements as Underworld

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1896-469: A game about using technology to fight demons, inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons campaigns the team played, combining the styles of Evil Dead II and Aliens . The concept originally had a working title of "Green and Pissed", which was also the name of a concept Hall had proposed prior to Wolfenstein , but Carmack soon named the proposed game after a line in the film The Color of Money : "'What's in

2054-456: A hub system of maps, and monorails later appeared in later Doom or id games. Work continued, and a demo was shown to Computer Gaming World in early 1993, who raved about it. John Carmack and Romero, however, disliked Hall's military base-inspired level design. Romero especially felt that while John Carmack had originally asked for realistic levels as they would make the engine run quickly, that Hall's level designs were uninspiring. He felt that

2212-450: A hustler named Julian, who is outmatched at nine-ball by the young and charismatic Vincent. Recognizing Vincent's skill, and his girlfriend Carmen's inexperience at luring players to lose money, Eddie tells the couple of their excellent potential for hustling. Carmen visits Eddie alone to inquire about his interest in Vincent. Finding him working at Child World, Eddie invites Vincent to leave

2370-408: A knife, a pistol, and eight bullets. The player begins each episode with four lives and can gain more by finding extra-life tokens or by earning enough points. Points are scored by killing enemies or collecting treasures scattered throughout the levels. 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;

2528-411: A large military base on an alien planet, Tei Tenga. At the start of the game, as the first of four player character soldiers, named Buddy, played cards with the others, scientists on the base accidentally open a portal to Hell, through which demons poured through, killing the other soldiers. He envisioned a six episode structure with a storyline involving traveling to Hell and back through the gates which

2686-433: A method of publishing, leading to a wave of other shareware first-person shooters. The game's high revenue compared to prior, smaller 2D titles led Apogee as well as others in the shareware games industry to move towards larger, 3D titles built by larger development teams. During development, id approached Sierra Entertainment , then one of the biggest companies in the industry and employer of several of their idols, with

2844-419: A month, Wolfenstein 3D averaged $ 200,000 per month for the first year and a half. The game sold 250,000 copies by 1995 and grossed $ 2.5 million in revenue. Wolfenstein 3D won the 1992 Best Arcade game award from Compute! , the 1992 Most Innovative Game and Best Action Game awards from VideoGames & Computer Entertainment , the 1992 Reader's Choice — Action/Arcade Game award from Game Bytes ,

3002-566: A problem. He began to spend less time working in the office, and in response John Carmack proposed that he be fired from id. Romero initially resisted, as it would mean that Hall would not receive any proceeds, but in July he and the other founders of id fired Hall, who went to work for Apogee. Hall was replaced in September, ten weeks before Doom was released, by game designer Sandy Petersen , despite misgivings over his relatively high age of 37 compared to

3160-425: A racing game, before working on an enhanced version of the Wolfenstein engine to be licensed to Raven Software for their game ShadowCaster . For this engine, he developed several enhancements to the Wolfenstein engine, including sloped floors, textures on the floors and ceilings in addition to the walls, and fading visibility over a distance. The resulting engine was much slower than the Wolfenstein one, but

3318-558: A rudimentary 3D game engine that used animated 2D sprites for enemies. Id Software then used the engine for the April 1991 Softdisk game Hovertank 3D , in which the player drives a tank through a plane of colored walls and shoots nuclear monsters. In the fall of 1991, after the team—sans Wilbur—had relocated to Madison, Wisconsin , and he had largely finished the engine work for Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy , Carmack decided to implement

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3476-467: A series of pool halls , with Eddie taking most of any winnings and absorbing losses. Eddie attempts to teach him the art of hustling, but Vincent balks at having to play below his ability. At a pool hall run by his old acquaintance, Orvis, Eddie becomes fed up with Vincent's arrogance, and leaves him. In Vincent's absence, Eddie reminds Carmen that they are partners with a mutual business interest in Vincent. Eddie returns to find Vincent grandstanding, beating

3634-542: A shareware release; The Second Encounter , with 30 exclusive levels; and The Third Encounter , with all 60 levels from the DOS version. An Atari Lynx version of the game was offered earlier by Atari for id, but work on the port was never started, save for a few images. A 3DO version was released in October 1995. The Apple IIGS port was started in Fall 1994 by Vitesse with Heineman as

3792-437: A single plane , producing Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3-D as prototypes. 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. He and designer Tom Hall designed the game, built on Carmack's engine, to be fast and violent, unlike other computer games on

3950-530: A single game. In 1993 Apogee also published the Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades pack, which included 815 fan-made levels called "WolfMaster", along with a map editor titled "MapEdit" and a random level generator named "Wolf Creator". A retail Wolfenstein episode double the length of the Apogee episodes, Spear of Destiny , was released through FormGen on September 18, 1992. FormGen later published two mission packs titled "Return to Danger" and "Ultimate Challenge", each

4108-410: A story at all: "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie; it's expected to be there, but it's not that important." Rather than a deep story, John Carmack wanted to focus on the technological innovations, dropping the levels and episodes of Wolfenstein in favor of a fast, continuous world. Hall disliked the idea, but Romero sided with Carmack. Although John Carmack was the lead programmer rather than

4266-420: A third Keen trilogy, recognized that Carmack's programming focus had shifted from the 2D side-scrolling platform game series to 3D action games. After an initial proposal by Hall of a sci-fi project, "It's Green and Pissed", Romero suggested a 3D remake of the 1981 Castle Wolfenstein . The team was interested in the idea, as Romero, Hall, and John Carmack all had fond memories of the original title and felt

4424-407: A weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on a scale of A+ to F. The film was praised for the major cast. Vincent Canby , writing for The New York Times , commented on the "three fully realized" main characters, and that the journey with them throughout the film

4582-488: Is "most satisfying". Canby, however, also commented that it "lacks in narrative shapeliness", before giving the film 9 out of 10. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times called these characters an "electrifying unholy trio", and praised the metaphors between hustling and pool. Miami Herald writer Bill Cosford, however, commented that "whatever Scorsese and Price have to say about these marvelous characters, it

4740-455: Is a first-person shooter presented with rudimentary 3D graphics . 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. Each level is themed after Nazi bunkers and buildings. To finish a level, the player must traverse through the area to reach an elevator. Levels—ten in the original episodes—are grouped together into named episodes, with

4898-552: Is a 1986 American sports drama film directed by Martin Scorsese . It is the sequel to the 1961 film The Hustler . Like the previous film, The Color of Money is based on the 1984 novel by Walter Tevis . The film stars Paul Newman reprising his role as "Fast Eddie" Felson, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor . The film also stars Tom Cruise playing a pool hustler, and features Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as

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5056-410: Is divided into two sets of three episodes: "Escape from Castle Wolfenstein", "Operation: Eisenfaust", and "Die, Führer, Die!" serve as the primary trilogy, with a second trilogy titled The Nocturnal Missions including "A Dark Secret", "Trail of the Madman", and "Confrontation". The protagonist is William "B.J." Blazkowicz , an American spy of Polish descent , and the game follows his efforts to destroy

5214-463: Is not anything interesting". Tom Hutchingson of Radio Times said that Newman "deserved" to win an Oscar for his performance. Reviewers compared The Color of Money with other Scorsese films. Jason Bailey, writing for Flavorwire , described the film as only "mid-level" for the director, but that it was so "overpowering ... jazzy and boisterous" that he could not help but enjoy. The Chicago Tribune 's Gene Siskel commented that

5372-565: Is to find the maps and plans for the chemical war. The story ends in "Confrontation", which is set in Castle Offenbach as he confronts the Nazi general behind the chemical warfare initiative. An additional episode, titled Spear of Destiny , was released as a retail game by FormGen . It follows Blazkowicz on a different prequel mission, trying to recapture the Spear of Destiny from the Nazis after it

5530-424: The Dungeons & Dragons campaigns the team played. The initial months of development were spent building prototypes, while Hall created the Doom Bible , a design document for his vision of the game and its story; after id released a grandiose press release touting features that the team had not yet begun working on, the Doom Bible was rejected in favor of a plotless game with no design document at all. Over

5688-516: The Doom world was still a variation on a flat plane, in that two traversable areas could not be on top of each other, it could have walls and floors at any angle or height, allowing greater level design variety. The fading visibility in ShadowCaster was improved by adjusting the color palette by distance, darkening far surfaces and creating a grimmer, more realistic appearance. This concept was also used for

5846-537: The Game Boy Advance (2002), Xbox Live Arcade , and PlayStation Network . These ports' sound, graphics, and levels sometimes differ from the original. Many of the ports include only the Apogee episodes, but the iOS port includes Spear of Destiny , and a 2007 Steam release for PC, macOS, and Linux includes all of the FormGen episodes. Bethesda Softworks , whose parent company bought id Software in 2009, celebrated

6004-458: The "grit is gone", for Scorsese was not backed up by a veteran contributor, as in his other works. People commented that the film benefited from the cast of characters, and Scorsese's choice of actors. For The Color of Money , Newman received the Academy Award for Best Actor , his first Academy Award and his seventh nomination. The soundtrack album of the motion picture was released by MCA Records in 1986. Robbie Robertson produced

6162-547: The 1993 Best Action/Arcade Game, Best Entertainment Software, and People's Choice awards at the Shareware Industry Awards , the 1993 Best Action Game award from Computer Gaming World , and a Codie award from the Software Publishers Association for Best Action/Arcade Game. It was the first shareware title to win a Codie, and id (with six employees) became the smallest company to ever receive

6320-399: The 20th anniversary of Wolfenstein 3D ' s release by producing a free-to-play browser-based version of the game in 2012, though the website was removed a few years later. Id had no clear expectations for Wolfenstein ' s commercial reception, but hoped that it would make around US$ 60,000 in its first month; the first royalty check from Apogee was instead for US$ 100,000. The game

6478-739: The Deep developed the three-part video game Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons , the first game in the Commander Keen series. 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. After

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6636-615: The Germany software ratings board, the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) refused to rate any game that included inappropriate symbols and imagery, effectively banning the game for sale within the country. By May 2018, a new court ruling was made in response to a parody web browser game, in which the Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed there were no breaches of the law in the game's content. Following this,

6794-595: The Nazi regime. In "Escape", Blazkowicz has been captured while trying to find the plans for Operation Eisenfaust (Iron Fist) and imprisoned in Castle Wolfenstein, from which he must escape. "Operation: Eisenfaust" follows his discovery and thwarting of the Nazi plan to create an army of undead mutants in Castle Hollehammer, while in "Die, Führer, Die!" he infiltrates a bunker under the Reichstag , culminating in

6952-525: The Super NES version a good conversion that retained the good music, huge levels, and overall fun of the original game and dismissed the censoring in the version as inconsequential. In 1995, Total! ranked the game 84th on their "Top 100 SNES Games" list. Electronic Gaming Monthly rated the Jaguar version similarly to the Super NES version, commenting that the graphics and audio were superior to other versions of

7110-589: The Triad: Wolfenstein 3D Part II , designed by Tom Hall using the Wolfenstein 3D engine, but during development the game was changed into a stand-alone title with an enhanced engine, Rise of the Triad . Additionally, Softdisk produced Catacomb Abyss using the prototype Wolfenstein 3D engine from Catacomb 3-D as part of the Catacomb Adventure Series trilogy of sequels. Although Wolfenstein 3D

7268-515: The artists sculpted models of some of the enemies out of clay, and took pictures of them in stop motion from five to eight different angles so that they could be rotated realistically in-game; the images were then digitized and converted to 2D characters with a program written by John Carmack. Adrian Carmack made clay models for the player character, the Cyberdemon and the Baron of Hell, before deciding that

7426-545: The award. Wolfenstein 3D was noted as one of the top games of the year at the 1993 Game Developers Conference . Wolfenstein 3D was well received by reviewers upon its release. Chris Lombardi of Computer Gaming World praised the "sparse [but] gorgeous", "frighteningly realistic", and "extremely violent" graphics, as well as the immersive sound and music. Noting the violence, he warned "those sensitive to such things to stay home". Lombardi concluded that Wolfenstein 3D , alongside Ultima Underworld released two months prior,

7584-556: The ban was reversed by the German government in August, having determined that the Wolfenstein 3D decision was outdated since the USK now included age ratings alongside other content warnings, and that video games should be considered as art under the social adequacy allowance. In November 2019, Wolfenstein 3D was formally struck from the "Index", the list of games banned from sale in Germany. After

7742-489: The best arcade games ever created for PC", highly praised the graphics and sound, and said that the "fast-paced action" could keep players enthralled for weeks if they were not concerned about the violence. Sandy Petersen , in the first "Eye of the Monitor" column, claimed that "there is nothing else quite like Wolfenstein " and that it had "evolved almost beyond recognition" from the original 1981 game. He enthusiastically praised

7900-508: The bosses and the title screen. Carmack programmed "the core" of the game's engine in a month; he added a few features to the Wolfenstein 3D engine from Catacomb 3-D , including support for doors and decorative non-wall objects, but primarily focused on making the game run smoother and faster with higher-resolution graphics. The game was programmed chiefly in ANSI C , with its scaling and ray casting routines written in assembly . The graphics for

8058-408: The boxy, flat levels were too similar to Wolfenstein ' s design, and did not show off everything the engine could do. He began to create his own, more abstract levels, beginning with a curving staircase into a large open area in what became the second level of the final game, which the rest of the team felt was much better. Hall was upset with the reception to his designs and how little impact he

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8216-509: The case?' / 'In here? Doom.'" The team agreed to pursue the Doom concept, and development began in November 1992. The initial development team was composed of five people: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, artists Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud , and designer Tom Hall. They moved offices to a dark office building, which they named "Suite 666", and drew inspiration from the noises coming from

8374-457: The character, Minnesota Fats , played by Jackie Gleason in The Hustler . Newman said that he had wanted the character to appear, but that none of the attempts to include him fit well into the story that was being written. According to Scorsese, Gleason apparently agreed with Newman's opinion that Minnesota Fats was not essential to the film's story. Scorsese said that Gleason was presented with

8532-565: The company estimated that one million shareware copies were distributed worldwide. Over 20 percent of its sales were from outside of the US, despite the lack of any marketing or non-English description and despite the game being banned from sale in Germany due to its inclusion of Nazi symbols by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons in 1994, and again in 1997 for Spear of Destiny . Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu reviewed

8690-436: The company out to Mesquite, Texas , near where Apogee was located. Scott Miller of Apogee was pleased to have his star developers nearby, and agreed to not only increase their royalty rate to 50 percent, but have Apogee create their next game for Softdisk, ScubaVenture , so that id could focus on Wolfenstein . The game was intended to be released using Apogee's shareware model of splitting it into three episodes and releasing

8848-404: The contractor hired for the port had made no progress. Taylor, along with programming other features, added cheat codes ; some, such as "idspispopd", were based on ideas their fans had come up with while eagerly awaiting the game that the team found amusing. By late 1993, Doom was nearing completion and player anticipation was high, spurred on by a leaked press demo. John Carmack began to work on

9006-402: The controls as overly sensitive. He concluded that the game, then over three years old, "still packs a punch as a first-person shooter". Wolfenstein 3D won GamePro ' s Best 3DO Game of 1995 award, beating the acclaimed The Need for Speed and D . Maximum , on the other hand, while stating that the 3DO port was better than the original and as good as the Jaguar version, felt that it

9164-560: The creative impulse to create deathmatch in our shooters". Doom was programmed largely in the ANSI C language, with a few elements in assembly language , on NeXT computers running the NeXTSTEP operating system. The data, including level designs and graphics files, is stored in WAD files, short for "Where's All the Data?". This allows for any part of the design to be changed without needing to adjust

9322-467: The deal rather than solely accepting payment in Sierra stock as a measure of Williams's seriousness. Williams refused, which id interpreted to mean that Williams did not truly recognize the potential of Wolfenstein 3D and the company, and the deal fell through, causing id to decide to remain an independent company for the foreseeable future. By the end of 1993 just before the release of their next game, Doom ,

9480-472: The demons used, and the destruction of the planet, for which the players would be sent to jail. Buddy was named after Hall's character in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign run by John Carmack that had featured a demonic invasion. Hall was forced to rework the Doom Bible again in December, however, after John Carmack and the rest of the team had decided that they were unable to create a single, seamless world with

9638-416: The dentist's office next door. They also cut ties with Apogee Software , who had given them the initial advance money for creating their first game, Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons , and through which they had published the shareware versions of their games to date. While they had a good personal relationship with owner Scott Miller , they felt that they were outgrowing the publisher. Cloud, who

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9796-428: The engine code. Carmack had been impressed by the modifications made by fans of Wolfenstein 3D , and wanted to support that with an easily swappable file structure, and released the map editor online. Romero and Carmack spent the early stage of development focusing on engine features instead of the game concept. Wolfenstein had required levels to be a flat plane, with walls at the same height and at right angles; while

9954-433: The film was an inferior followup to The Hustler . Based on 48 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes , the film received an 88% approval rating from critics, with an average score of 7.10/10. The site's consensus reads: "That it's inferior to the original goes without saying, but Paul Newman and Tom Cruise are a joy to watch, and Martin Scorsese's direction is typically superb." Review aggregator website Metacritic reported

10112-502: The final level focusing on a boss fight with a particularly difficult enemy. While traversing the levels, the player must fight Nazi guards and soldiers, dogs, and other enemies while managing supplies of ammunition and health . 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 . The player can also find keys that allow them to pass through locked doors. While

10270-423: The first for free, with ten levels per episode. The level maps were designed in 2D using a custom-made program called Tile Editor (TEd), which had been used for the entire Keen series as well as several other games. Upon finding out that the team was able to create a level in a single day using the program, Miller convinced them to instead develop six episodes, which could be sold in different-sized packs. Around

10428-429: The first half of 1993, Carmack worked on improving the graphics engine. After Romero's level designs started to cause engine problems, he researched and began to use binary space partitioning to quickly select the portion of a level that the player could see at any given time. In March 1993, the team stopped work on Doom to spend three weeks building a Super Nintendo Entertainment System port of Wolfenstein 3D , after

10586-475: The first network that they planned to upload the game to—the University of Wisconsin–Parkside FTP network—that even after the network administrator increased the number of connections while on the phone with Wilbur, id was unable to connect, forcing them to kick all other users off to allow id to upload the game. When the upload finished thirty minutes later, 10,000 people attempted to download it at once, crashing

10744-404: The game and returns Vincent's money. Determined to win legitimately, Eddie faces Vincent in a private match, declaring, "I'm back!" The Color of Money was released by Touchstone Pictures , after both 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures declined. The film was shot in 49 days with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and a budget of $ 14.5 million. It is an adaptation of the 1984 novel of

10902-486: The game five months after release, describing it as: "View from the character's point of view: It's a real shooter. The game is easy to play, and it runs well ... This is the only game of its type." The Apogee episodes' sales vastly exceeded the shareware game sales record set by the developer's earlier Commander Keen series and provided id with a much higher profit margin than the sales of its retail counterpart; where Commander Keen games were bringing Apogee around $ 10,000

11060-509: The game to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) for a US$ 100,000 advance. The team was busy with the development of Doom , plus their work on Spear of Destiny , and ignored the project for seven or eight months, finally hiring Rebecca Heineman to do the work. She made no progress on the port, however, and the id team members instead spent three weeks frantically learning how to make SNES games and creating

11218-507: The game were planned to be in 16 color EGA , but were changed to 256 color VGA four months before release, which also enabled the game to have higher resolutions. Romero in turn worked on building a game with the engine, removing elements of the initial design, like looting enemy bodies, that he felt interrupted the flow of fast gameplay. The sprites for the enemies and objects were hand drawn at eight different angles by Adrian Carmack using Electronic Arts 's Deluxe Paint II . Initially

11376-423: The game's levels to find an elevator to the next level or kill a final boss , fighting Nazi soldiers, dogs, and other enemies with a knife and a variety of guns. Wolfenstein 3D was the second major independent release by id Software, after the Commander Keen series of episodes. In mid-1991, programmer John Carmack experimented with making a fast 3D game engine by restricting the gameplay and viewpoint to

11534-586: The game's release, id Software licensed the engine to other developers, like the Commander Keen engine before it, as part of a series of engine licensing deals that id has made throughout its history; games using the Wolfenstein 3D engine or derivatives of it include Blake Stone , the Capstone Software games Corridor 7 and Operation Body Count , as well as Super 3D Noah's Ark . Apogee intended to produce an expansion pack in 1993 titled Rise of

11692-506: The game, and Eddie is inspired to play again. After some success, Eddie is beaten by Amos, a hustler. Humiliated, Eddie leaves Vincent and Carmen with enough money to make it to Atlantic City. Eddie enters the Atlantic City tournament, in which he triumphs against Vincent. Vincent and Carmen surprise Eddie with $ 8,000; his "cut" of Vincent's winnings. Vincent says that he intentionally lost their match. In his semifinal match, Eddie forfeits

11850-411: The game, but criticizing the faster movement of the player character as making it less fun to play. A GamePro review of the Jaguar port was highly complimentary, saying Wolfenstein 3D "set a new standard for PC gaming" and that the Jaguar version was the best to date, and better than the original due to its increased graphics and sound capabilities. A Next Generation review of the Jaguar version

12008-449: The gameplay and aesthetics. Romero wanted the goal to be "to mow down Nazis", with the suspense of storming a Nazi bunker full of SS soldiers and Hitler himself, as well as dogs, blood "like you never see in games", and straightforward, lethal weapons. He also composed the general storyline for the game. Hall designed the levels while also adding collectible objects in the form of treasure and food for health items. He also did sketches for

12166-429: The gameplay would be fast and simple, for Romero believed that due to the novelty of a 3D game and control scheme, players would not be receptive to more complicated, slow gameplay. He felt the game would occupy a unique place in the industry, which was then dominated by slower simulation and strategy games. Adrian and John Carmack were excited by the prospect, while Hall felt that it was enjoyable enough, and that since he

12324-563: The genre's popularity. Immediately following its release, most of the team began work on a set of new Wolfenstein episodes, Spear of Destiny . As the episodes used the same game engine as the original game, id co-founder and lead programmer John Carmack instead focused on technology research for the company's next game, just as he had experimented with creating a 3D game engine prior to the development of Wolfenstein 3D . Between May and Spear of Destiny ' s release in September 1992, he created several experimental engines, including one for

12482-480: The genre, as well as showcasing the viability of the shareware publishing model at the time. FormGen developed an additional two episodes for the game, while Apogee released a pack of over 800 fan-created levels. Id Software never returned to the series, but did license the engine to numerous other titles before releasing the source code for free in 1995, and multiple other games in the Wolfenstein series have been developed by other companies since 2001. Wolfenstein 3D

12640-517: The genre. More modern reviews include one for the Xbox 360 port in 2009 by Ryan McCaffrey of Official Xbox Magazine , who heavily criticized it for non-existent enemy AI and bad level design and found it notably inferior to Doom , and one that same year by Daemon Hatfield of IGN , who gave the PlayStation Network release of the game a warm reception, saying that while it was "dated and flawed", it

12798-532: The girlfriend of Cruise's character. The plot follows the trio as they hustle pool halls and make their way to a nine-ball tournament in Atlantic City. The film received a generally positive critical response on its release, although some critics thought that the film was an inferior followup to The Hustler . Former pro-pool player "Fast Eddie" Felson has given up the game and is now a successful liquor salesman in Chicago . However, he partners with pool players, including

12956-478: The goal of seeing if they could make a deal with the company. After viewing Commander Keen and an early version of Wolfenstein 3D , CEO Ken Williams offered to buy id Software for US$ 2.5 million and turn it into an in-house development studio. The team was excited by the deal, but had felt there was a large culture clash between the two companies during their visit to Sierra and were hesitant to accept; Romero proposed asking for US$ 100,000 in cash up front as part of

13114-586: The guns sound exciting. Prince took some inspiration from his days as a platoon soldier in the US Army. With the aid of a 16-bit sampler keyboard and cassette recorder, he composed realistic sounds from a shooting range in addition to Foley sounds. The development team along with Scott Miller did the voicing for the enemies. Some of the enemy shouts were based on the original Castle Wolfenstein game. As development continued, id Software hired their former Softdisk liaison Kevin Cloud as an assistant artist, and moved

13272-440: The hardware limitations of the time on what sounds he could produce, and produced numerous tracks in both styles in the hopes of convincing Romero; Romero, however, still liked the metal tracks and added both styles. Prince did not make music for specific levels; most of the music was composed before the levels they were eventually assigned to were completed. Instead, Romero assigned each track to each level late in development. Unlike

13430-477: The hardware limitations of the time, which contradicted much of the new document. At the start of 1993, id put out a press release by Hall, touting Buddy's story about fighting off demons while "knee-deep in the dead", trying to eliminate the demons and find out what caused them to appear. The press release proclaimed the new game features that John Carmack had created, as well as other features, including multiplayer gaming features, that had not yet been started on by

13588-475: The idea of doing a retail Wolfenstein project to FormGen , which had published id's December 1991 Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter , overcoming the publisher's concerns over Wolfenstein ' s proposed content. This put id in the unique position of selling simultaneously to the shareware and retail markets. The project officially began on December 15, 1991. Romero and Hall designed

13746-420: The idea. Additionally, after completing an episode the player is given a three-letter code in addition to their total score and time. This code was intended to be a verification code as part of a high-score contest, but the sudden prevalence of editor programs resulted in the cancellation of the contest without ever being formally announced. Imagineer bought the rights for the game, and commissioned id to port

13904-509: The initial developer, with later graphics assistance by Ninjaforce Entertainment, but due to licensing problems with id it was not released until February 1998. An open source iOS port programmed by John Carmack himself was released in 2009. An unofficial port for the Game Boy Color was made in 2016. An Android port titled Wolfenstein 3D Touch (later renamed ECWolf ) was released and published by Beloko Games. Other releases include

14062-407: The level he had played it "a thousand times". The first level, made by Romero, was the last created, intended to show off the new elements of the engine. The ending screen of each level, like in Wolfenstein 3D , displays a "par time" for the level, as set by Romero. In late 1993, a month before release, John Carmack began to add multiplayer to the game, first teaching himself computer networking from

14220-415: 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's health is represented by a percentage starting at 100, which is diminished when they are shot or attacked by enemies. If the player's health falls to zero, they lose one life and start the level over with

14378-624: The lighting system: rather than calculating how light traveled from light sources to surfaces using ray tracing , the engine calculates the "light level" of a section of a level, which can be as small as a single stair step, based on its distance from light sources. It then darkens the color palette of that section's surface textures accordingly. Romero used the map editing tool he developed to build grandiose areas with these new possibilities, and came up with new ways to use Carmack's lighting engine such as strobe lights. He also programmed engine features such as switches and movable stairs and platforms. In

14536-635: The map editing tools id Software used with the games. The source code for the original Wolfenstein 3D engine was released by id in 1995; when making the 2009 iOS port, Carmack used some of the enhancements to the engine made by fans after its release. The game's technical achievements also led to numerous imitators such as Ken's Labyrinth , Nitemare 3D , The Terminator: Rampage , Terminal Terror and The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki , among others. Although id Software did not develop another Wolfenstein game, as their development focus shifted to Doom shortly after release, and has never returned to

14694-421: The maps with the promise of being able to buy himself a brand new car. The team was going to include some anti-fascist references and Nazi atrocities, but left them out to avoid controversies. They ensured that the presentation of the game created the atmosphere that they wanted, adding violent animations by Adrian Carmack for enemies being shot and music and sound effects by Keen composer Bobby Prince to make

14852-431: The market at the time. Wolfenstein 3D features artwork by Adrian Carmack and sound effects and music by Bobby Prince . 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. An additional episode, Spear of Destiny , was released as a stand-alone retail title through FormGen. Wolfenstein 3D

15010-414: The market towards first-person shooters. It has also been credited with confirming shareware distribution as a serious and profitable business strategy at the time; VideoGames & Computer Entertainment claimed in September 1992 that the game "justified the existence of shareware", and in July 1993 Computer Gaming World claimed that it "almost single-handedly" demonstrated the viability of shareware as

15168-400: The maze-like shooter gameplay fit well with Carmack's 3D game engine, while Adrian Carmack was interested in moving away from the child-friendly art style of Keen into something more violent. Encouraged by the reception to his idea, Romero expounded on it by proposing a "loud" and "cool" fast action game where the player could shoot soldiers before dragging and looting their bodies. The core of

15326-489: The model for the player character's arm holding a gun, and Adrian's snakeskin boots and wounded knee for in-game textures. Romero was the body model used for cover; while trying to work with a male model to get a reference photograph for Don Ivan Punchatz to work from, Romero became frustrated while trying to convey to him how to pose as if "the Marine was going to be attacked by an infinite amount of demons". Romero posed shirtless as

15484-430: The multiplayer component; within two weeks he had two computers playing the same game over the internal office network. Adrian Carmack was the lead artist for Doom , with Kevin Cloud as an additional artist. Additionally, Don Ivan Punchatz was hired to create the package art and logo, and his son Gregor Punchatz created some of the monsters. Doom was the style of game that Adrian Carmack had wanted to create since id

15642-419: The music, the sound effects for the enemies and weapons were created by Prince for specific purposes; Prince designed them based on short descriptions or concept art of a monster or weapon, and then adjusted the sound effects to match the completed animations. The sound effects for the monsters were created from animal noises, and Prince designed all the sound effects to be distinct on the limited sound hardware of

15800-459: The next day for six weeks of hustling on the road, culminating in a nine-ball tournament in Atlantic City . Manipulating Vincent's insecurities about Carmen and giving him a valuable Balabushka cue stick , Eddie persuades him to accept his offer. Eddie's abrupt departure upsets Julian, as well as Eddie's girlfriend, Janelle. Vincent and Carmen hit the road with Eddie in his Cadillac , visiting

15958-417: The next six months, Hall designed levels based on real military bases, Romero built features, and artists Adrian Carmack and Cloud created textures and demons based on clay models they built. Hall's level designs, however, were deemed uninteresting and Romero began designing his own levels; Hall, increasingly frustrated with his limited influence, was fired in July. He was replaced by Petersen in September, and

16116-458: The original Apogee release, both of which were cancelled. A pushable wall maze led to a sign reading "Call Apogee and say Aardwolf " ("Snapity" in beta versions); it was intended that the first person to find the sign and carry out its instructions would win a prize (consisting of US$ 1,000 or a line of Apogee games for life), but the quick creation of level editors and cheat programs for the game soon after release led id and Apogee to give up on

16274-540: The other early-20s employees and his religious background. Petersen later recalled that John Carmack and Romero wanted to hire other artists instead, but Cloud and Adrian disagreed, saying that a designer was required to help build a cohesive gameplay experience. They relented and Petersen was hired. The team also added a third programmer, Dave Taylor . Romero directed Petersen to revise Hall's levels with as many changes as he saw fit in order to meet his guidelines for what made for interesting levels. Petersen and Romero designed

16432-409: The planned US$ 40 price—he decided to leverage the shareware market as much as possible, buying only a single ad in any gaming magazine. Instead, he reached out directly to software retailers, offering them copies of the first Doom episode for free, allowing them to charge any price for it, in order to spur customer interest in buying the full game directly from id. Doom ' s original release date

16590-426: The player's completion ratio and speed is displayed when a level is completed. 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. 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. Wolfenstein 3D

16748-453: The pool hall's best player but scaring off a wealthier mark . Eddie and Vincent talk frankly, agreeing that Vincent must curb his ego if they are to succeed. Eddie and Carmen struggle to rein in Vincent's showboating. After a string of successful games, Vincent plays the famed Grady Seasons, but is directed by Eddie to dump the game to inflate the odds against Vincent in Atlantic City. Goaded by Grady, Vincent nearly fails to throw

16906-473: The pool table were inspired by those of the nuns in that film. Paul Newman said that the best advice he was given by Scorsese was to "try not to be funny". Cruise performed most of his own pool shots. An exception was a jump shot over two balls to pot another. Scorsese believed that Cruise could learn the shot, but that it would take too long, so the shot was performed for him by professional player, Mike Sigel . Cruise mentioned that, to prepare for

17064-556: The port by March 1993. This version was written in C and compiled in the 65816 assembly language, making use of binary space partitioning rather than raycasting in order to give it speed. Carmack had to resize existing images to fit the SNES resolution. Nintendo insisted on censoring the game in accordance with their policies; this included first making all blood green and then finally removing it, removing Nazi imagery and German voice clips, and replacing enemy dogs with giant rats. The port

17222-402: The port's graphics and quality to what he later claimed was four times more detail than the DOS version. He also removed the changes that Nintendo had insisted on. The game itself, however, had to be slowed down to work properly on the console. Wolfenstein 3D has also been ported to numerous other platforms. In 1993, Alternate Worlds Technology licensed Wolfenstein 3D and converted it into

17380-420: The possible surfaces the computer needed to display, creating game levels with walls designed only on a flat grid rather than with arbitrary shapes or angles. He also took the unusual approach of creating the displayed graphics through ray casting , in which only the surfaces visible to the player were calculated rather than the entire area surrounding the player. After six weeks of development, Carmack had created

17538-552: The problems of keeping the clay consistent under lighting while moving the models through animations was too great. Later, he had practical effects specialist Gregor Punchatz build a latex and metal sculpture of the Spider Mastermind. Punchatz got the materials from hardware and hobby stores and used what he called "rubber band and chewing gum effects". The weapons were toys, with parts combined from different toys to make more guns. They scanned themselves as well, using Cloud's arm as

17696-455: The project. His design was a science fiction horror concept wherein scientists on the Moon open a portal from which aliens emerge. Over a series of levels the player discovers that the aliens are demons; Hell also steadily infects the level design as the atmosphere becomes darker and more terrifying. While Romero initially liked the idea, John Carmack not only disliked it but dismissed the idea of having

17854-454: The public continuously throughout development on the nascent internet. Id began receiving calls from people interested in the game or angry that it had missed its planned release date, as anticipation built over the year. At midnight on Friday, December 10, 1993, after working for 30 straight hours testing the game, the team uploaded the first episode to the internet, letting interested players distribute it for them. So many users were connected to

18012-418: The release of the game in December through shareware publisher Apogee Software , the team planned to quit Softdisk and start their own company. When their boss, Softdisk owner Al Vekovius, confronted them on both their plans and their use of company resources to develop the game—the team had created it on their work computers, both in the office after hours and by taking the computers to John Carmack's house on

18170-407: The rest of the levels for Doom , with different aims: the team felt that Petersen's designs were more technically interesting and varied, while Romero's were more aesthetically interesting. Romero's level design process was to build a level or part of a level, starting at the beginning, then play through it and iterate on the design, so that by the time he was satisfied with the flow and playability of

18328-448: The role, he bought a pool table for his apartment and practiced for hours on end. Standing in for the valuable Balabushka cue in the movie is a Joss J-18 (which became the Joss 10-N7), made to resemble a classic Balabushka. Sigel was a technical director , and he and fellow player, Ewa Mataya Laurance , served as technical consultants and shot performers in the film. Absent from the film is

18486-477: The same length as Spear of Destiny , in May 1994, and later that year published Spear of Destiny and the two mission packs together as the Spear of Destiny Super CD Package . Id released the original six Apogee episodes as a retail title through GT Software in 1993 and produced a collection of both the Apogee and FormGen episodes released through Activision in 1998. There were two intended promotions associated with

18644-445: The same name by Walter Tevis , and was written by Richard Price . Although it features some characters from the novel, it was not written to be a sequel. A screenplay was written by Tevis, but the filmmakers decided not to use it. Jean-Pierre Léaud was briefly considered for the role of Vincent. It was shot in and around Chicago, with much of the filming taking place in pool and billiard halls, rather than in built sets. The film

18802-672: The same time, the team changed members and structure: id fired probationary president Mark Rein and brought back Jay Wilbur, who had stayed in Shreveport, to be both their CEO and business team; Bobby Prince moved into the office temporarily to record sound effects, while Adrian Carmack moved out of the office to get away from the noise. As the game neared completion, FormGen contacted id with concerns over its violence and shock content. In response, id increased these aspects; Adrian Carmack added skeletons, corpses, and bloody wall details, and Hall and Romero added screams and cries in German, along with

18960-406: The series, multiple Wolfenstein titles have been produced by other companies, sometimes using game engines developed by id. The first of these newer Wolfenstein games was Return to Castle Wolfenstein in 2001, a reboot of the series, and the most recent titles are the 2019 games Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot . The Color of Money The Color of Money

19118-513: The shareware episodes. Formgen's Spear of Destiny mission packs "Return to Danger" and "Ultimate Challenge" were reviewed by Paul Hyman of Computer Gaming World , who praised the updated graphical details and sound, as well as the smooth gameplay, but noted its overall dated graphics and lack of gameplay changes from the original game. The early ports of the game also received high reviews, though their sales have been described as "dismal". The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly called

19276-403: The speed and gameplay, calling it "a fun game with lots of action" and "a fun, fairly mindless romp", though he did note that at higher difficulty settings or later levels it became extremely hard. The Spear of Destiny retail episode was also rated highly by Computer Gaming World ' s Bryan A. Walker, who praised the added enemy types, though he noted that it was essentially the same game as

19434-515: The success of Wolfenstein were interested in pursuing more games of that type. Additionally, the other two co-founders of id were not interested in creating another Keen game: John Romero , the designer of Wolfenstein , was not interested in doing another "cutesy" game, and lead artist Adrian Carmack preferred to create art in a darker style than the Keen games. John Carmack soon lost interest in Keen idea as well, instead coming up with his own concept:

19592-584: The success of Wolfenstein 3D led id to receive multiple calls every month from investment companies looking to make id a publicly-traded company, which were all turned down. In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Wolfenstein 3D the 97th-best computer game ever released. The game is also recognized as the principal cause for Germany banning video games that contain certain types of symbols and imagery from extremist groups like Nazis under its Strafgesetzbuch section 86a up through 2018. Section 86a had "social adequacy" allowances for works of art, but in 1998,

19750-432: The team did not feel that they needed a design document at all, as they had not created one for prior games; the Doom Bible was discarded altogether. Several ideas were retained, including starting off in a military base, as well as some locations, items, and monsters, but the story was dropped and most of the design was removed as the team felt it emphasized realism over entertaining gameplay. Some elements, such as weapons,

19908-463: The team had an external artist who assisted him and created animated wall textures, but the team felt that the quality was poor and did not use it in the game. The level design, by Romero and Hall, due to the grid-based level design, took some inspiration from Pac-Man , and paid homage with a hidden Pac-Man level. Romero later said in 2017 that making the levels was uninteresting compared to those from Commander Keen and had to prompt Hall to finish

20066-527: The team or even designed. The company told Computer Gaming World that Doom would be " Wolfenstein times a million!" Early versions were built to match the Doom Bible ; a "pre-alpha" version of the first level included the other characters at a table and movable rolling chairs based on ones at the id office. Initial versions also retained " arcade " elements present in Wolfenstein 3D , like score points and score items, but those were removed early in development as they felt unrealistic and not in keeping with

20224-453: The team to make another game in the Commander Keen series; the team had created seven episodes in the series in 1990–91 as their first games, but the planned third set of episodes had been dropped in favor of Wolfenstein 3D . While Carmack was initially interested in the idea, the rest of the team was not. They collectively felt that the platforming gameplay of the series was a poor fit for Carmack's fast-paced 3D engines, and especially after

20382-413: The team was able to purchase the trademark around mid-April 1992 for US$ 5,000. Thus they were free to use the name Wolfenstein 3D . The game concept met with immediate approval from Scott Miller of Apogee, who considered id Software his star developer, and he guaranteed id a US$ 100,000 payment on the project. Mark Rein , who had been brought on a few months prior as id's probationary president, also sold

20540-408: The team worked increasingly long hours until the game was completed in December 1993. Doom was self-published by id on December 10, 1993, and immediately downloaded by thousands of players. In May 1992, id Software released Wolfenstein 3D . It is often referred to as the "grandfather" of first-person shooters , setting expectations for fast-paced action and new technology, and greatly increased

20698-471: The team's rent and US$ 750 per month salaries, plus around US$ 6,500 for the computer John Carmack used to develop the engine and the US$ 5,000 to get the Wolfenstein trademark. The following summer, most of the id Software team developed Spear of Destiny . The single-episode game was a prequel to Wolfenstein 3D and used the same engine, but added new audio, graphics, and enemies. It was created in two months, and

20856-478: The time, even when many sound effects were playing at once. Id Software planned to self-publish the game for DOS -based computers and set up a distribution system leading up to the release. Jay Wilbur, who had been brought on as CEO and sole member of the business team, planned the marketing and distribution of Doom . He felt that the mainstream press was uninterested, and as id would make the most money off of copies they sold directly to customers—up to 85 percent of

21014-403: The tone. Other elements, such as a complex user interface, an inventory system, a secondary shield protection, and lives were modified and slowly removed over the course of development. Soon, however, the Doom Bible as a whole was rejected: Romero wanted a game even "more brutal and fast" than Wolfenstein , which did not leave room for the character-driven plot Hall had created. Additionally,

21172-493: The university's network. Within hours, other university networks were banning Doom multiplayer games, as a rush of players overwhelmed their systems. While Doom was in development, five pre-release versions were given names or numbers and shown to testers or the press. Wolfenstein 3D Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen . Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS , it

21330-454: The weekends—the team made no secret of their intentions. After a few weeks of negotiation, the team agreed to produce a series of games for Gamer's Edge , one every two months. Ideas from the Deep, now formally established as id Software , used some of these to prototype ideas for their own games. Adrian Carmack used them to push his preferred, dark art style, while John Carmack began to experiment with 3D computer graphics , which until then

21488-562: Was "required playing for any first-person shooter fan". Wolfenstein 3D has been called the "grandfather of 3D shooters", specifically first-person shooters, because it established the fast-paced action and technical prowess commonly expected in the genre and greatly increased the genre's popularity. It has also been called "the Citizen Kane of shooters". Although some prior computer shooting-based games existed, they were generally scrolling shooters , while Wolfenstein 3D helped move

21646-460: Was "the first game technologically capable of creating a sufficient element of disbelief–suspension to emotionally immerse the player in a threatening environment", stating that they knew of no other game that could "evoke such intense psychological responses from its players". Wolfenstein twice received 5 out of 5 stars in Dragon in 1993; Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser termed it "definitely one of

21804-414: Was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made . It garnered numerous awards and sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995. It has been termed the "grandfather of 3D shooters", and is widely regarded as having helped popularize the first-person shooter genre and establishing the standard of fast-paced action and technical prowess for many subsequent games in

21962-407: Was deemed acceptable for an adventure game like ShadowCaster . Following the release of Spear of Destiny and the completion of the ShadowCaster engine, id Software discussed what their next game would be. They wanted to create another 3D game using Carmack's new engine as a starting point, but were largely tired of Wolfenstein . Lead designer Tom Hall was especially weary of it, and pushed for

22120-496: Was doing, Carmack enhanced the engine over six weeks from Hovertank 3D for another Softdisk game, the November 1991 Catacomb 3-D . Upon seeing it, Scott Miller of Apogee began to push the team to make a 3D shareware action game. In November 1991, with the second Commander Keen trilogy of episodes nearing completion and their contractual obligations to Softdisk almost finished, id Software sat down to plan out their next major game. Designer Tom Hall, who initially wanted to do

22278-411: Was edited by Thelma Schoonmaker , who used closeup shots of pool balls being played, as well as wider visuals of the players, to get across the visual of a pool hall. Director Martin Scorsese cited the influence of techniques and lighting in the 1947 Powell-Pressburger film, Black Narcissus , when making The Color of Money . In particular, he stated that the extreme closeups of Tom Cruise around

22436-412: Was founded, one with a dark style and demons. He and Cloud designed the monsters to be "nightmarish", and developed a new technique for animating them. The intent was to have graphics that were realistic and dark as opposed to staged or rendered, so a mixed media approach was taken to the artwork. Unlike Wolfenstein , where Carmack had drawn every frame of animation for the Nazi enemy sprites , for Doom

22594-401: Was having as the lead designer; Romero has since claimed that Hall was also still uninterested in the Doom concept at all. Hall was also upset with how much he was having to fight with John Carmack in order to get what he saw as obvious gameplay improvements, such as flying enemies. The other developers, however, felt that Hall was not in sync with the team's vision for the game and was becoming

22752-518: Was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein , and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. In Wolfenstein 3D , the player assumes the role of Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis. The player traverses each of

22910-404: Was involved in id's business dealings, pushed for id to take over shareware publishing duties themselves after investigating and finding that Apogee was unable to reliably handle the volume of customers buying id's games through Apogee. He convinced the others that the increased sales revenue would make up for the problems of handling their own publishing. The two companies parted amicably, and Doom

23068-482: Was largely the purview of flight simulation games such as Wing Commander (1990) or wireframe 3D in games on mainframe computers . Carmack found that this was largely due to the limitations of personal computers of the time, which had difficulty displaying a fast action game in 3D due to the number of surfaces it needed to calculate, but felt that the increasing computational power of PCs meant that it may be possible. During 1991, he experimented with limiting

23226-489: Was less enthusiastic, terming it good but not up to the standards of newer games. Its review of the Macintosh version of the game was also mild, stating that "there isn't a staggering amount of freshness here, but the action is fast, deadly, and (surprise) addictive". Major Mike of GamePro commended the 3DO version's complete absence of pixelation , fast scaling, "rousing" music, and high quality sound effects, but criticized

23384-406: Was limited to select theaters throughout the country, with the film opening in more theaters during the next four weeks of its initial release. After its run, the film grossed $ 52,293,982 domestically. The film was released on DVD January 3, 2000, and on Blu-ray June 5, 2012. The Color of Money received a generally positive critical response on its release, although some critics thought that

23542-469: Was not designed to be editable or modified, players developed character and level editors to create original alterations to the game's content. John Carmack and Romero, who had played numerous mods of other games, were delighted, and overrode any concerns about copyright issues by the others. The modding efforts of Wolfenstein players led id Software to explicitly design later titles like Doom and Quake to be easily modifiable by players, even including

23700-521: Was published commercially by FormGen in September 1992. The publisher was concerned that the material would be controversial due to holy relics associated with World War   II, but Romero felt it was similar to the Indiana Jones films. Instead of working on the game, John Carmack experimented with a new graphics engine that was licensed for ShadowCaster and became the basis of the engine for id's next game, Doom (1993). The first episode

23858-441: Was released as shareware for free distribution by Apogee and the whole original trilogy of episodes made available for purchase on May 5 as Wolfenstein 3D , though the purchased episodes were not actually shipped to customers until a few weeks later. The second trilogy that Miller had convinced id to create was released soon after as an add-on pack titled The Nocturnal Missions . Players were able to buy each trilogy separately or as

24016-571: Was released in Japan on February 10, 1994, under the name Wolfenstein 3D: The Claw of Eisenfaust before being released in North America and Europe later that year. Using the source code of the SNES port, on a whim John Carmack later converted the game to run on the Atari Jaguar . Atari Corporation approved the conversion for publication and Carmack spent three weeks, assisted by Dave Taylor , improving

24174-589: Was selling at a rate of 4,000 copies a month by mail order. PC Zone quoted a shareware distributor as saying Wolfenstein 3D was the top shareware seller of 1992. By the end of 1993, sales of the Apogee episodes of Wolfenstein 3D as well as Spear of Destiny had reached over 100,000 units each, with the Apogee game still selling strongly by the end of the year as its reach spread without newer retail titles to compete with it for shelf space. By mid-1994 150,000 shareware copies were registered and id Software had sold another 150,000 retail copies of Spear of Destiny ;

24332-432: Was set to be self-published. Early in development, rifts in the team began to appear. Hall, who despite having wanted to develop a different game remained the lead designer and creative director for the company, did not want Doom to have the same lack of plot as Wolfenstein 3D . At the end of November he delivered a design document , which he named the Doom Bible , that described the plot, backstory, and design goals for

24490-561: Was so aged compared to recent releases like Hexen: Beyond Heretic and the PlayStation version of Doom that a new port was pointless, with the game now "somewhat tiresome and very, very repetitive". A reviewer for Next Generation asserted that Wolfenstein 3D was "still as addictive as it ever was" but essentially agreed with Maximum , contending that anyone interested in first-person shooters would have either already played it on another platform or "moved on" to more advanced games in

24648-481: Was stolen from Versailles . FormGen later developed two sequel episodes, "Return to Danger" and "Ultimate Challenge", each of which feature Blazkowicz as he fights through another Nazi base to recover the Spear of Destiny after it has been stolen again as part of a plot to build a nuclear weapon or summon demons . In October–December 1990, a team of employees from programming studio Softdisk calling themselves Ideas from

24806-499: Was the company's designer that they could return to his ideas at a later date. Initially the team believed that they would be unable to use the Wolfenstein name due to trademark issues, and came up with multiple possible titles. They contacted Castle Wolfenstein developer Silas Warner , but learned that Muse Software had shut down in 1986, with all rights to Wolfenstein sold. The rights last belonged to someone in Michigan , and

24964-455: Was the third quarter of 1993, which the team did not meet. By December 1993, the team was working non-stop, with several employees sleeping at the office; programmer Dave Taylor claimed that the work gave him such a rush that he would pass out from the intensity. Id only gave a single press preview, to Computer Gaming World in June, to a glowing response, but had also released development updates to

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