ECWolf is a source port for Wolfenstein 3D developed by Blzut3. It is made to increase the ease of creating and playing mods, as well as create an engine that plays all games built on the engine.
It also provides some quality of life improvements including modern control schemes and screen resolutions.
There are two versions available to download from the main ECWolf website; the stable version (Windows 32bit and 64bit, Mac, Linux, Android) and the development version (Windows 32bit and 64bit).
While the stable version is all that is needed to run the commercial games (Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny and Super 3D Noah's Ark), many mods made since 2016 rely on features that are not present in it. If you plan on playing mods with ECWolf, it's suggested you download the latest development version to ensure they are playable.
ECWolf currently supports the following games, all of which can be run from within one installation of the engine:
Wolfenstein 3D (Full and shareware versions)
Spear of Destiny (Full, demo and Mission Packs)
Support for other games is in development. These may or may not include:
MacWolf (Wolfenstein 3D for Macintosh)
Some support for features from Blake Stone, MacWolf and Rise of the Triad is present in the ccurrent development builds of ECWolf.
ECWolf will run on the following systems, though in some cases you may be required to compile your own version from the source code.
Windows
Mac OS X
Linux
Android
It has also been ported to a variety of different platforms unofficially.
ECWolf provides modern quality of life improvements including:
Dedicated WASD control schemes
Widescreen resolution support
It also has special support built in for modding, with it's own special scripting language (Called DECORATE) and ability to “soft mod”, where mod files are made without modifying the original files in the games.
ECWolf automatically checks your computer for a Steam or GOG.com copy of the retail games. Otherwise, it will look for your game files within your ECWolf folder.
While ECWolf adapts code and ideas created for zDoom, it is actually built on the Wolf4SDL engine and can only play games built on the Wolf3D engine.
ECWolf saves your games to C:\Users\USERNAME\Saved Games\ECWolf
Replace USERNAME with the name of your Windows account.
Unfortunately, no. Savegame files from vanilla Wolfenstein 3D are incompatible with ECWolf.
Navigate to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\ECWolf and delete the ecwolf.cfg file.
Replace USERNAME with the name of your Windows account.
Short answer; no.
ECWolf and by extension LZWolf are both heavily modified off of the Wolf4SDL engine. As such, other games that heavily modify the source code will usually have features that cannot be correctly mimicked in ECWolf or LZWolf.
However, ECWolf can run mods for Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny and Super 3D Noah's Ark, as long as they do not require their own custom exe (Such as map packs, sprite replacements, etc).
To do so, do not remove the files from the zip file they came in. Instead, add a blank file called ECWOLF.WL6 (Swap WL6 for the extension of the game the mod is based on) to the zip file. Doing so will make ECWolf treat the zip file like a PK3 when dragged and dropped over the exe.