Wolfenstein 3D shoots onto web
Blast from the past
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Classic proto first-person shooter Wolfenstein 3D is now free to play, courtesy of developer Bethesda.
The game that paved the way for Doom was released by iD Software 20 years ago, and Bethesda has written it up in handy cross-platform browser form.
Once again you can dash through single-storey mazed - with textured walls but not floors or ceiling - shooting at eight-side Nazi soldier, officer and zombie sprites.
There's even an armour-clad Adolf H to dispatch if you get far enough.
Always check out the Third Reich iconography - there's often a secret room hidden behind. And this version makes the famous Pac-Man special level available to play.
Want to know more? Check out Reg Hardware's own Antique Code Show celebration of Wolfenstein 3D - or jump straight in and play the game. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Groundbreaking, 20 year old game appears on web
It's raycasting in Javascript, which explains its poor performance, then it's using the browser to scale the image slices:
http://wolfenstein.bethsoft.com/game/js/raycaster.js
http://wolfenstein.bethsoft.com/game/js/renderer.js
When I ported this to ARM in 1994, John Carmack suggested using BSP trees for rendering; it would have been much faster but I was too far along to replace my renderer. If they did that here I think it would pretty much fly.
It is very sad that modern GHz+ processors with JIT Javascript still can't beat an 8MHz ARM2 :(
@Shades: Re: El Reg Votards...
Pay no mind to the downvotes. If you were to post a comment about tomorrow's weather, it would get downvoted by people who either 1) thought your prediction was wrong, or 2) downvoted you because they had a trip to the beach planned and did not like your forecast, irrespective of it being right or wrong. Downvotes have no meaning whatsoever.
(While it might be nice to say that downvotes are an inverse indicator of insightfulness and perspicacity, in truth they really have no larger meaning.)
What I found interesting about your post was your mention of Iron, which is/was entirely unknown to me. I am using Firefox 3 for the sole reason that it is the best of a bad lot, but possibly might upgrade to Iron.
Thank you for the tip.
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