The problem is I started it as a hobby, but like all things with regular schedules, it starts to become more like a job, something I felt I had to do. This isn’t what I wanted from this. I wanted to have fun writing reviews, and get a bit of community interaction. It was starting to happen, but getting up for work and realising that night I’d have to spend my time playing Wolfenstein 3D started to get annoying. I enjoy playing it, but not as a requirement.

This isn’t the end, and I will be updating again in the future, but for now I want to just chill out and relax. In the meantime, as I always say, there’s a form you can use to submit your own reviews, which will go on here. It’d be nice to see other writing styles than mine on here, and get some community involvement.

Until then!

If you would like, you can express your reasons for voting the way you did via the comments in this post; it would help me shed some extra light on the results.

I know everyone has an experience they can call the “best” and “worst” when it comes to Wolf3D. For something different, I’d like you guys to share with me and everyone who comes and reads this blog, your idea of the best and worse games in the community, as well as why. If you have a spare moment after reading this, drop a comment with your thoughts. Here’s mine:

For best game, I’m going to have to go with Orb Of Dilaaria. Although Lair Of The Mantis could very well become my favourite game when it does come out, right now that honour goes to Adam Biser’s mod. The game has so much in it that it’s one of the few games that without prior knowledge, a new player wouldn’t make the link that it’s just a modified version of Wolfenstein. I play it now and again, and I still haven’t finished it. The levels are so complex it takes ages to explore everything, and I know even once I have finished the game, I’ll have to go back, because of the addition of alternative pathways through the game to increase replay ability. Personally I don’t want to say too much because I’ll eventually want to dedicate a whole article to it, so I’ll have to leave it there. But it’s one of, if not the best Wolf3D game I’ve ever played.

Then we have the other side of the coin, the worst game I’ve ever played. That would have to be one of Kyo Kusanagi/Richter Belmont’s earlier releases, in the form of Resident Evil. While the games he brings out now aren’t as bad, back then, hearing his name attached to a mod spelled certain doom for the game. Resident Evil had stolen graphics, exact copies of maps, and ridiculous extras meant to be taken seriously, but just came off over the top (I think the guns had 600 ammunition or something, which was ridiculous for what was in the game). The game came off bland and uninteresting, and difficult to play without feelings your IQ drop. Once again, I’m going to write a proper post about this in the near future, so I don’t want to go into it too much, but it is by far, the worst Wolfenstein mod I’ve ever played. As a note, no offence is meant to Richter or anything, I just really don’t like this game.

So as I said earlier, this post is about YOU. I’d like to hear you’re opinions of what the best and worst games in the community are, and why.

The plot for the game seems to be a loose variation to part of the story for Return To Castle Wolfenstein; a secret weapons facility has a secret “venom” minigun along with other biological and chemical weapons, and it’s up to BJ to locate it. As happens in a few games (including Trench Warfare), BJ was part of a team that got attacked, and he’s the only survivor.

One of the most entertaining features is also borrowed from Return To Castle Wolfenstein; the game features eleven weapons, which to my knowledge makes it one of the Wolf3D games with the most weapons featured. The weapons are pretty much replicas of those in RTCW, including dual colt pistols, flamethrower, and even a paratrooper rifle. Some of it seems a little excessive, but it’s really fun for changing things up. There’s a range of enemies, including machine gunners, and even a tank, and for the most part, are very prolific.

The landscape is very mazy, with it taking forever to find my way around. The scenery is very much the same in the outer areas, almost turning it into a game of trial and error to find keys and level endings. Luckily, after the first few levels, the gameplay finally takes place indoors…well, underground anyway, making things much easier navigation-wise. So, WSJ puts a little twist on it by including ladders you can climb up and down to extra areas. Definitely a fun little extra, but in the areas where there’s around sixty billion ladders in a room to choose from, it’s downright confusing. Despite all the confusing paths the maps were definitely not boring, with plenty to shoot and find.

It’s a pity that out of all the games Wolf Skevos-Jones made, this had to fail production wise. Of course, that didn’t stop someone else making lower quality sequels to it (we’ll look at those some other time…when I want to cry), but it would still be nice to see this one day finished.

The Plan:

I plan to first construct a machine that allows me to turn movies into reality, and enter them. From there, I’ll enter Back To The Future, and steal the plans for the flux capacitor. Making that, I’ll work it into a guitar hero controller, and use that to go back in time. Finding my way to WSJ’s house, I’ll walk in, and give him a copy of Wolf4SDL, and explain what happens. He makes the full game with no restrictions, the game is done, and eureka! I win at life.
This of course, has the consequences of disrupting the rift in time and space, but it’d be worth it to see a full version of this game.

Great Scott!

You can find the link to the full video here, enjoy.

Monster Bash 3D
25th Oct 2004 – ???
A sequel to the 2D side-scroller Monster Bash, the game was officially announced as in production a little under 5 years ago. As a fan of the original game, I was intrigued at the idea, and some of the features announced sounded ingenious; shooting out a light darkened the nearby area being one interesting example. The game was going to be limited to 3 episodes (to correspond with Monster Bash’s 3 part style), but had an additional extra in the form of an unlockable bonus game.
Those that played the original game (which is available from 3DRealms here), remember it’s unique settings of graveyards and haunted houses, which from the looks of game screenshots were for the most part retained. From screenshots some of the features can also be determined, including a few different lighting effects (wall shadows can be seen in the screenshot to the left, and in night scenes actual lightning flashes occasionally in the sky), and the breakable objects that featured heavily in the original (treasure chests, skulls). Minor gameplay extras, such as bonuses for destroying all the floating skulls and needing to help all the pets escape their cages also appear to be included from the game.

The game opened up a lot of ideas at the time, with talk of MB3D bringing out ideas of a Bio Menace 3D and maybe even a Catacombs 3D remake (of course, neither have been made to my knowledge, as amazing as a Bio Menace remake would be)…however, after a year of no news, it came out that the game was on indefinite hiatus while xgthug took a break from wolfing. Since then, it’s been three years and still nothing has been said about the game. Hopefully this doesn’t mean the end, and we’ll still see this game come out, but it doesn’t look like we’ll be playing Monster Bash 3D anytime soon.

For those interested in reading more of the game, there is a ModDB profile, and a four page thread on DieHard Wolfers. Monster Bash 3D was a great idea and we can only hope to see it complete.

The Grand Theft Auto III mod is a sprite conversion in a vain attempt to make the game like Grand Theft Auto.The enemies are policemen and I guess gangsters, who will attack regardless of whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, by driving up to you, getting out of their car, shooting you, and getting back in (which is the same way you attack apparently). Apparently parked cars are collectable by running over them, you can drive sideways, and running over and killing hookers heals you. You hear that kids, killing hookers is good for you.

There are tonnes of enemies, and if the player isn’t careful, it’s very easy to get swarmed by them, and as the maps are basically a grid (it represents the city, clearly) there’s no where to really hide. The game is only three maps long, so as long as you don’t run out of lives too soon, it’s a fairly quick game to finish.

Possibly the only good thing about the game is how well done the enemies are; they are badly drawn, but well enough that when they drive you see them actually steering. It’s a nice idea but unfortunately the rest of the game is too terrible to really merit being called a game at all. If you don’t want your love for the GTA series to be ruined, don’t try this game. If you don’t care either way, it can be found here.

The program does this through a simple text menu. Users simply go through the menu, selecting options and inputting information wanted (such as ammo maximum, for example). The information inputted goes into a newly created file called “GAME.WL6”, which is then referred to by the Wolf17 executable, and used in game play. The program allows for all sorts of changes, some of which can be viewed in the screenshot above, along with others, altering how weapons behave (speed, explosion, attack type, so on), and even has the ability to add new weapons (allowing up to ten weapons total). As an added feature, Wolf17 can be run without any changes; if no GAME.WL6 file is detected, the game plays exactly like the original Wolfenstein. The program also comes complete with a help file which provides explanations for each feature within the program and what it effects; good for those who don’t know what the definition of a tic is.

Wolf17 is open source, and has been since the beginning of 2005. Unfortunately, the software has been lying stagnant for the better part of that time. Dugtrio17 created a Beta Breakers thread with the open source release, inviting people to find bugs, and improve the code. Future versions were going to include new features, the main of which being “enemy control”. However, unless there are enough people expressing interest in the project, the project will probably remain on the backburner indefinitely.

If you enjoy creating games for Wolfenstein 3D, but aren’t as efficient in programming, or can’t code at all, you really should give this little gem a try. Please, let me know if you make a game using the program, I’m currently unaware of any games that utilize the program, and it would be interesting to see what people could bring out. I would like to see a return of interest to the project.

Download Wolf17
Download Wolf17 Source Code