#ORIGINAL WOLFENSTEIN 3D SOFTWARE#

And that's precisely the kind of scale-up we're talking here.ДЄlthough very basic first-person games such as Spasim and Maze War had existed in the late '80s, followed by first-person RPGs like Ultima Underworld in the early '90s, Wolfenstein accelerated the concept like never before. Okay, technically it refined pre-existing ideas into a newer, better format, but then, rocks and caves existed before we invented houses. Never in human history, except perhaps during World War 2 itself, has the process of shooting men in the face from a first-person perspective been more popular.

You see, the FPS is fairly well-liked these days.

#ORIGINAL WOLFENSTEIN 3D SOFTWARE#

Thank you, Fabien Sanglard, for writing the book and inspiring this project and thank you to id Software for releasing the source code to enable curious folks like myself to learn.Kind of a big deal, this one. If you curious about how the renderer is implemented, I highly recommend you read the Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D. In the same spirit, here is the source code of my implementation вЂ“ please respect the licenses! рџ™‚ Knowing what I know now, it seems misleading to call these games вЂњfake 3DвЂќ but I can see the challenges of explaining the nuances to me as a child.ДЄs a tinkerer, I found the openness of the project engaging in a way I didnвЂ™t expect: itвЂ™s empowering to not only read and understand the code powering such an influential piece of software but also to be able to tweak it to satisfy my curiosity or to adapt some parts of it to my own project (like how I used the assets but not the renderer). Note that players and enemies can travel vertically in Wolfenstein 3DвЂ™s successors such as DOOM: I donвЂ™t know how this effect is achieved and how it relates to вЂњfake 3DвЂќ so IвЂ™ll just have to read through the Game Engine Black Book: DOOM. There is also no conception of vertical space: every level exists on one floor and everything in the game is placed onto it. The objects in the game world, including characters, are placed in the two dimensional space defined by the walls but are stored and drawn just like an image youвЂ™d see on a website: вЂњflatвЂќ.

However, the rendering of the floors and ceilings is an illusion: theyвЂ™re just a solid color. The walls are actually rendered in 3D: the engine calculates their projections into 3D space. So whatвЂ™s so fake about the 3D portayed in Wolfenstein 3D and games like it? As I understand it, itвЂ™s nuanced. If these screenshots look distorted compared to the original Wolfenstein 3D, itвЂ™s because I ran out of steam before I fixed the aspect ratio. HereвЂ™s my renderer displaying the first level of Wolfenstein 3DвЂ™s shareware download: ItвЂ™s neat that the original Wolfenstein 3D code is open source and that its asset formats are well documented because it allowed me to run my renderer using the original maps and textures. HereвЂ™s the result with a texture and a map I generated myself: While reading, I realized, вЂњHey вЂ“ I can do that!вЂќ and set about reimplenting the renderer: specifically, the algorithm that generates and textures the walls in a 3D perspective. I recently satisfied my curiosity by reading through Fabien SanglardвЂ™s very enjoyable book, Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D, which explains how Wolfenstein 3D was built. When I was young, I was told that games like Wolfenstein 3D use вЂњfake 3DвЂќ and ever since IвЂ™ve been wondering what they meant by that.

Original wolfenstein 3d