When it came to gaming, my Grandad probably had the biggest impact on me as a kid.

I remember being very young and making a trip to his house with my parents and very young brother, only to be blown away by what would now be a fairly "meh" sort of a game compared to nowadays, but I enjoyed thoroughly as one of the first I ever got to play.

My Grandad was someone who was amazed and entertained by technology, in particular video games.
As an aside, I remember him buying Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion when it came out. While he was no longer in a place physically to play more action-oriented titles, he experienced enjoyment at simply being given the chance to explore a huge 3D open world in first person. It was novel for him seeing what games were capable of. I don't think he ever got to experience VR as we currently are, but I'm sure that would have blown him away if he did.

In the early 90s, I remember my Grandad utilized an operating system that is unusual by todays standards; it featured a 3x3 grid of tiles on a plain background, each tile being used to run a program. A user could navigate multiple pages, each with it’s own set of nine programs. I have no idea what OS it was, but he had many programs and games including, of course:

I was introduced to Wolfenstein 3D by my Grandad’s copy of the shareware version of the game. While he also eventually included other games in his collection including Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold and Ken’s Labyrinth, I was attracted to Wolf3D’s art style, and the straightforward gameplay (Move through levels and kill Nazis), and would play the first episode of the game many times. Of course, being a child I wasn’t very skillful, and had to keep to the lower difficulties.

Grandad and I enjoyed the game enough that eventually he purchased the full six-episode game, though he didn’t tell me. I recall coming to visit, and simply discovering upon running the game that all the other e…

It's now been a year since the new, creator-oriented Wolf3D.net went live, and I am delighted with where we are now.

When Wolfsource (Now Wolf3D.net) first started in 2019, it started with an aim to provide a platform for fans of Wolfenstein 3D and other Wolf3D games to chat and find Wolf3D content. Providing a News Website and a stable Discord, Wolf3D.net filled a hole that had been present for several years, and was well received.

While it served it's purpose, there were things that were desired out of the website that were extremely limited, or did not work. The redesign started in May of 2020, building a new website from the ground up with a rapid shift in form.

Instead of a basic Blog website, the new build would shift focus to community-generated content. The basics were still to be there; Community News, Game Catalogue, Guides, etc. But Wolf3D.net was to be built as a self-publishing platform as well, where users could upload their own games and resources for others to use.

Building from the ground up meant things could be tailor made to account for the quirks of the community (fan-made ports, mods of mods, source ports, and different Wolf3D games) that have emerged over the past decades, an important point to move closer towards the website's goal.

The new website's launch and continued development was been fairly positive, though work has continued since the relaunch, adding new sections to the website and refining the tools for users to be able to share their content.

In late 2022, community suggestions on Discord lead to the updating of the website theme *further* (With asset help from Aurora), to try and offer a more user-friendly and readable experience.

The appearance of the website underwent a massive change to a more readable format, though the content and goals remain the same. Wolf3D.net is still being built on the belief that all aspects of the Wolf3D community are awesome and deserving of attention, whether they be the recent addition of multiplayer to ECWolf 1.4, the porting efforts of MacenWolf, or simply the classic map pack.

While those beliefs have drawn some vocal detractors over the years, Wolf3D.net remains commited to trying to connect users with all the tools they need to…

Also known as -Helvete- or simply Helvete, Castle Helvete was to be an ambitious game by ChiefRebelAngel that teetered on the edge of completion before as is often the case, real life obligations intervene.

Originally announced in July of 2004, ChiefRebelAngel came in strong for his first game announcement, showing off his artistic skills in an unofficial sequel story to Wolfenstein 3D, taking place after the third episode of the game, "Die, Führer, Die!".

His initial proof of concept and progress shots were well received thanks to all the unique art present, made by ChiefRebelAngel himself. However, his ambitions for Helvete exceeded the typical mapset with sprite changes, with plans to implement many extra features including extra enemies, floors and ceilings, sky effects, additional weapons, and more.

Reaching out to the community in the early days of development, fellow DieHard Wolfers member Sentenced joined the project as a programmer to help add features and expand the array of textures and objects available, as well as implement a lot of major features into the game.

While they were a team, the two suffered from working "blind"; ChiefRebelAngel would email with things that he desired to see in the game engine, which Sentenced would work on while Chief continued creating and refining the art. However, neither actually sent their efforts to each other, leaving much of it to faith and hoping that things will fit together in the end.

A couple of months into that relationship, Sentenced allegedly reported his departure from Wolfenstein 3D modding, leaving Helvete without not just a programmer, but as he and ChiefRebelAngel never exchanged the product of their work with each other, the game was also without an engine.
Luckily this didn't slow things down too much though, with offers by other coders to adapt their engines for the game coming in almost immediately. One of these included BrotherTank offering the use of his upcoming project Wolfenstein Plus for the game.

After some time, TexZK was announced as joining development on the 21st of October 2004, offering the use of his modified Wolf3D engine he had dubbed WFF (Wolf Fully Featured).

This engine was built with the idea that TexZK would use WFF as a base for all of his future games. It included features and changes put forward as tutorials on the message board by other members such as Ripper and Adam Biser as well as his own adaptions and ideas. Among these were things like his own interpretation of ingame messages, stamina bars and weapon firing…

On the cusp of the millenium, something new and innovative in the world of Wolf3D would come in the form of FloEdit, a new editor developed and released by Florian Stohr in the final months of 1999.

The map display in FloEdit appears almost exactly like MapEdit, presenting an easy-to-understand layout for users familiar with mapping. While familiar in many ways, FloEdit proved unique from previous editors in two significant ways.

Firstly, unlike most other editors, this was one of the first to be created for Windows instead of DOS, which would prove beneficial as Microsoft slowly distanced itself from MSDOS. By virtue, this also meant the program was placed in a window instead of running as a fullscreen application, meaning a user could also utilize other programs alongside FloEdit easily.

Second and perhaps more importantly were the program's editing capabilities. Rather than be confined to working with just one element of the game (Such as the way WolfEdit is a program specific to the game's art), FloEdit presented itself as an Editing Suite.
While it was only compatible with Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny (The other Wolf3D games would still require MapEdit for projects), the program was capable of editing the sounds and sprites of the game in addition to the maps, all from within one program!
This comprehensiveness set FloEdit apart from the editors of prior years, as users could work on their projects with the convenience of not having to switch between multiple separate (DOS!) editors.

For these reasons and many other quality-of-life features (Such as the ability to edit "map definitions" from within the editor), the early 2000s saw FloEdit catapult to being one of the most worked with editors in the Wolf3D community.

The program saw continued development for a few years with a few patches coming out over the years leading to the release of FloEdit 2.0 in 2003. This new version fixed some bugs from earlier versions alongside adding even more editing capabilities. Now modders could even change demos, EndArt text, and fonts!

Being capable o…

LZWolf is a fork of the ECWolf source port developed by Linuxwolf, laying the groundwork for additional modding capabilities, so budding designers can make ambitious and creative projects with relative ease.

This is a selection of five games built on the LZWolf engine that utilize these features in interesting and prominent ways.

These projects are only the tip of the iceberg. Both ECWolf and LZWolf are capable of a lot and there are many games worthy of attention created on them.

If you feel inspired, it's easy to get into creating games on the engines yourself! You can get started with Dunkelschwamm's Mapping for ECWolf videos, and visit the Wolf3D.net Discord to talk not just LZWolf and ECWolf, but all things Wolf3D related!

1. Souteed

Souteed is just 5 levels long, but was the first release on LZWolf to properly utilize LZWolf's "Factions" feature. Factions gives the game designer the option to assign enemies and the player to teams, creating an alliances and enemies system as well as the additional feature of enemies killing each other.
Fimbul utilizes this feature to create a short narrative that is up to the player to discover, and it's a fun one.

2. LZWolf First Ever Open Invite Mapset

A compilation of submissions from new and old modders alike, this community project organized by Dunkelschwamm and AstroCreep is a mash up of various ideas and concepts, backed up by some interesting uses of LZWolf's scripting capabilities.
Every level provides a different experience, and accessed through a single interestingly detailed and exploration-rewarding central level.

3. Operation: Wasserstein II

This is a large and atmospheric…

ECWolf is a source port for the Wolf3D engine that has grown in popularity in recent years, in part due to it's accessibility and it's modding-specific features.

With each milestone update to the engine, Blzut3 (The developer) tries to bring something new to the project, whether it be compatibility with a commercial Wolf3D title (Such as Super 3D Noah's Ark with v1.3) or something else major.
After many years, Blzut3 has announced that version 1.4 of ECWolf is right around the corner, and is set to become the first instance of network-based co-op multiplayer for Wolfenstein 3D!

For this significant release, Blzut3 was willing to take some time to answer a few questions regarding the update, other source ports, and Wolf3D in general.

Q: It’s been a long journey for ECWolf, with its first release all the way back in 2012. Ten years on, has your vision and goals for the project changed over that time?

A: Been a little longer than 10 years actually since the project started in 2008.

At the time I was just annoyed that the working source port of the time, Wolf4SDL, didn't have mixer controls. So in some ways the entire project is scope creep, but ever since I decided to expand it into a ZDoom style port for the Wolf3D engine my goals have remained the same. Saving for some slight shifting of priorities when Wisdom Tree was accommodating of the reverse engineering efforts of Super 3-D Noah's Ark.

Q: It's interesting to hear it wasn't always inspired by ZDoom. What inspired you to make that progression?

A: Honestly at this point I don't really remember what the trigger point for transitioning from a light fork of Wolf4SDL to doing a ZDoom style port. Probably one of: Linux not being well supported by the community, trying to fix some user experience things led naturally to copying in ZDoom code and things grew from there, trying to support Wolf3D and Spear of Destiny in a single binary for convenience, or maybe was helping Executor/Woolie Wool with coding for his Wolfenstein Sextilogy mod and wanted to make that easier.

I of course was a ZDoom contributor at the time so naturally things were going to go that way given enough time. I do remember things accelerated a bit after Ripper disappeared.

Q: With the upcoming release, ECWolf 1.4 is the first instance of co-op multiplayer over LAN for Wolfenstein 3D. So on that note, congratu…

Since the month of the shareware release of the game, Wolfenstein 3D Map Editors have been developed for level designers to create their own experiences in the game.

Initial public offerings of Map Editor were limited both in options and feature-sets. As time went on though, more people have thrown their hat in the ring, contributing new approaches and ideas in attempts to improve the design experience. Now, anyone wanting to design levels in the Wofl3D engine have a wide range of choices for how they want to go about it.

This is a small series of articles that will attempt to explain the storied history of map editing programs in the Wolf3D community.

The beginning (TEd5)

When id Software was first coming together and the company was developing it's first games, John Romero created the map editing tool they'd need to work with games like Commander Keen, called TEd.

Though originally made for platforming games, TEd turned out to be a perfect choice for working with their first person engines as well, with TEd5 capable of creating the maps using a top-down tile view instead.

John Romero asserts that TEd5 ended up being used as the level design tool in over thirty games (From BioMenace to games like Corridor 7), and proved versatile enough to even be used in creating Rise of the Triad levels!

It was a powerful tool, and if a person is able to get the it running (as Chris Chokan of DieHard Wolfers did), it is a viable editor for people's projects. However, this was the tool of the professionals and would not be publicly available when the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D was released.

Read more about TEd in this 2017 Gamasutra interview with John Romero.

MapEdit (v2.0-v4.1)

It's pretty well known that the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D was released in 1992 on the 5th of May. It did not take long for the curious to start trying to open and access the data in the game files.

MapEdit's start to life relied on the work of Paul Hosken, who almost immediately following the release of the game created a program that could print out images of the maps (A great help to people who would get stuck!). It had turned out that for those with the knowledge, the tile-based design system was actually easy to translate and understand.
The code that would allow Hoske…

Finding a way to implement complicated features in mods without editing the source code has been a consistant goal over the years for many. Of the most popular of these has been the DECORATE scripting language used in the ECWolf and LZWolf source ports, which has enabled designers to create experiences such as Operation: Wasserstein II.

While the philosophy doesn't change, each attempt has generally had its own approach to the matter. The source port WinWolf3D looked to use Visual Basic, and was to provide a "growing" scripting language as well. Then there was Wolf17, a special editor that created additional game files holding gameplay variables, allowing designers to tweak things like player health for their game.

Going back even further to mid-late 2003, BrotherTank of the DieHard Wolfers Message Board revealed he was working on a special project...

Wolfenstein Plus

Wolfenstein Plus (Which at various times was also referred to as "Wolfenstein ME" and "Wolfenstein Revisited" due to naming conflicts) was to be for people who wanted to create complex mods, but didn't want to learn programming. As long as you were willing to edit a map, you would have a whole world of customization ahead of you.

Even after DOOM was released, people still loved Wolfenstein 3D. This was obviously not just seen in the presence of an active modding community, but also in the further related releases other companies would put forward, such as Formgen's "Mission Packs" for Spear of Destiny which were released in the middle of 1994.

A few months later Apogee would release it's own unofficial add-on for Wolfenstein 3D, titled Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades. This release, along with the hefty claim of 815 included levels, also claimed it provided means for unlimited levels thanks to an included program called Wolf Creator.

Wolf Creator is a simple random level generator developed for DOS by Alan Hemphill (with assistance from Chris New) under the name "Infinite Carnage". It is capable of creating a new set of 60 levels for Wolfenstein 3D with some basic input from the end user.

The program offers both a difficulty setting and more in-depth tuning of levels using a simple interface, in DOS. To create a new full set of levels for the game, all you had to do was tweak some scrollbars, and hit the Create Levels button to get started. Oh, and of course you needed a copy of the full version of Wolfenstein 3D.

 

It is all very easy, and the concept is solid; the ability to create whole new Wolf3D experiences for yourself at the click of a button.

However, it has its flaws.

Limitations

While the idea of randomly generated levels sounded great, the core of Wolf Creator maps weren't without their flaws.

The levels that come out of Wolf Creator were reasonably random according to the elements specified, but contained enough similarities that not only were they recognizable as Wolf Creator Levels, but were seen as very unimaginative and repetitive by a lot of people.

For example, the first level of each episode will quite often start with the player looking to a landscape blocked by objects, with a pool of ammo, a chaingun and an extra life in the room with you.

Generated Maps also make liberal of boss enemies; particularly Hans, Gretel…

A long term goal he had been slowly working on, Ian Franken started Wolf-Bytes in 2004 as a newsletter to share an assortment of Wolf3D related articles:

• Featured Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny mods selected every month.
• Cool Wolf3D websites complete with reviews.
• Stories from the Wolf3D community about their love for the game.
• Retrosceptives on other classic FPS titles
• Great source code tutorials presented in an easy to follow fashion.

The initiative sourced material from interested members of the DieHard Wolfers community, edited together into a newsletter format and emailed to anyone subscribed.

Many people expressed interest in contributing following the launch. This lead to articles from several prominent message board members including Ian himself, Dugtrio17, Xarkon, and Hair Machine.

After some delays, three issues were published for the newsletter in a monthly format from September to November of 2004. As time progressed, improvements were made including the addition of HTML in the third issue to help readers navigate.

However, when it came time for the fourth issue, there were further delays. What was to be a delay of a few days turned out to be several months, when instead of publishing an issue, Ian announced major structural changes to Wolf-Bytes at the start of February 2005.

Mostly dropping the connotations of a newsletter, Wolf-Bytes was to be published to a new website as an "online webzine type-thing", to use the technical term. It's unknown whether this was to still be a monthly release of issues, or if content would be published like a blog with new interviews and reviews added as they became ready.

This announcement of things to come was the last major update, with Ian later reporting that other priorities were causing delays to Wolf-Bytes, but he would be returning to it when possible.

Just months later in April though, Ian would take a step back from all things Wolf3D, including his work on Wolf-Bytes and moderation duties on DieHard Wolfers. He cites a few reasons, including not enjoying being "tied down" with commitments like moderating the forums.

Ian would all but disappear from the community as time went on, with his last visit to the message boards being 2014. While Wolf-Bytes didn't last long, it was well-received, and still provides a fun read and snapshot of a time since past.

Text versions of all three released issues are included below. Unfortunately, the intact HTML version of Issue #3 has not been located.

It's also unknown if a copy of Issue #4 exists, which i…

In December of 2021, a veteran of that community named "Dermuda" released "Dermuda's Mac Wolf3D Archive", a collection of hundreds of games created by members of the Mac Community.

The Macintosh Computer saw it's own versions of Wolfenstein 3D released in 1994, in the form of Wolfenstein 3D: The Second Encounter and Wolfenstein 3D: The Third Encounter, with a demo version appropriately titled Wolfenstein 3D: The First Encounter.

Much like the PC version, a community of modders was spawned almost immediately upon the game's release, creating and distributing their own levels to enjoy. This community continues today, with new releases still coming out for the Mac versions of the game (An example being Oktoberbloodfest, the demo of which came out just last year).

Dermuda's collection has been in the works for years, and contains all sorts of projects from over the past two decades, from creators both unknown and prominent (Such as Laz Rojas and Clubey).
The collection also contains spreadsheets listing known information about the included projects, as well as a list of missing games that are suspected to be out there.

Using the archive requires either an old Macintosh computer, or a program that can emulate Mac OS 8.1 such as Basilisk II, but it is well worth it to see the plethora of games that were created.

While the archive has been released, Dermuda hasn't stopped work on it. In fact, they are still searching for designers and collectors who may have projects to add to the archive, updating it as notable releases are obtained.

If you are/were a designer of Mac Wolf3D levels, and still own copies of games/scenarios, Dermuda would very much like to get in contact either through the email address included in the download's documentation, or through Macintosh Garden. Spread the word!

thejosh was a member of the modding community that made quite an impact with the release of their first game Trench Warfare in late 2005. That game utilized many features either rarely or never before appearing in other Wolf3D projects and some great visuals to accompany them. The game received much praise, and is still pointed to as an example of one of the better quality games released on DOS.
However that turned out to be nothing compared to what they revealed in June of 2009 with the announcement of their at-the-time new project, Lair of the Mantis.

The visuals in the screenshots, as well as a (now lost) YouTube trailer showing it all in action, were impressive and for many the game shot up to the tops of their wishlists.

The project was built on Wolf4SDL, but so heavily modified and with so many detailed high resolution (128x128) graphics, the game looked to many as if it had to have been built on something more advanced.

Lair of the Mantis had reportedly been in development since January 2008, and  the following list of features were slated to be included in the game. (This list is based on information announced by thejosh on various platforms, and what can be garnered from available screenshots)

• HUD elements - From what is visible on the player HUD in screenshots we can spot some features such as the implementation of secondary items (such as what could be an adrenaline shot) and a slick mini-map. There's also armor, but it's uncertain whether it functioned as additional health, or a damage reducer.
• Fifteen weapons - All the weapons are revamped or replaced, with additions like the Flamethrower, and interestingly the knife is replaced with fists that have an alternative power-attack ability along with the normal attack. The archived version of the Lair of the Mantis website lists eight weapons, but the last update regarding the game reported it had increased to fifteen.
• Unique attacks - In addition to the alternat…

C-Dogs SDL is a port of a top-down shooter originally developed for DOS.

Over the years of it's development, Cong Xu has added a number of features and extras on top of the original, and with the "full" release of the port came one of the coolest of all; compatibility with Wolfenstein 3D.

If you own a copy of Wolfenstein 3D or Spear of Destiny on either Steam or GOG, C-Dogs SDL will automatically add the games as full campaigns within it. The campaigns use the datafiles of whichever game you run to generate the content; using special Wolfenstein-themed graphics and characters to recreate the experience.

The shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D will also generate a campaign to play, though it will naturally only span 10 levels instead of the full 60.

It's a fun way to re-experience the games and because of the way it handles files, many mapsets for Wolf3D will actually work with it, providing even more C-Dogs SDL content by default!

As the developers of Wolfenstein 3D have always been a talkative and passionate group of individuals, a lot of cool historic information has been revealed about the game over the years.

As it turns out, the game was originally going to be an EGA release, and have a lot more elements of gameplay inspired by Castle Wolfenstein, including “looking under rugs for items”, “bulletproof vests”, and “dragging dead soldiers”, among other stealth features.
These were all ultimately scrapped in favour of faster paced gameplay, and the EGA version of the game was cancelled just one month into development, in favour of a focus on the VGA version.

Despite the early scrapping, elements of the EGA version from those early stages have emerged over the years. John Romero himself has a few times over the years spoken about it, in a post in 2001 and again in a tweet in 2014.

Thanks to a passionate Corridor 7 fan and Corridor 7 developer Les Bird a couple of years ago, Wolf3D.net was gifted with files that included more unreleased in-development sprites, including more EGA artwork, and other cut content (Including alternate boss colours).

While many of the spritesheets are of items that appeared in the final game, this article has a .zip folder with a collection of the more historically interesting cut content. It's fun to think what could have been, had those original visions for the game came to be.

Wolfenstein 3D and it's modding scene came into being at a time when wikis full of indepth information weren't readily available to people. Instead, Wolf3D fans circulated a document called The Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny FAQ, and a long and constantly revised text file full of information collected and shared with the community.

Contained within the various versions of this FAQ is a treasure-trove of information, theories and ideas from a time when we didn’t have the engine’s source code to just breakdown and understand mechanics.

In 2005, Les Bird -former programmer of Capstone Software- was kind enough to release the source code and design documents for a never-finished sequel to Corridor 7 to mega-fan and DieHard Wolfers community member Mishran who in turn shared it with the public on his fanpage.

Interestingly, the sequel sees a shift to the Build engine instead of id-tech. The playable prototype uses a lot of placeholder sprites from DOOM, and serves as an interesting slice of history and "what could have been".

Out of all the games released on the Wolf3D engine, Rise of the Triad: Dark War is probably the furthest removed from Wolfenstein in appearance and features. However, that wasn't always the case.

In 2014(?), 3DRealms uncovered the original design specs for the game, which portray it's original intention as a direct sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, declaring Hitler a mere puppet to even greater world powers!

The company has shared this information on their legacy website, complete with modern annotations and concept sprites. If you're interested in the history of these games, it's definitely worth a read.

How do you allow a person to modify normally hardcoded features without having to edit the source code itself?

A DieHard Wolfers member by the name of Dugtrio17 attempted to answer this all the way back in 2005 with a project called Wolf17.

Using a special editor, Wolf17 gave designers access to several variables within the game:

• Weapon frames, and the amount of damage each weapon does.
• Maximum health and ammo and how much ammo the player starts with.
• Most aspects of enemies (health, damage, speed, kill score, etc)

When options were edited using the program, a GAME.WL6 file was created with the new or changed information. A special variation of the Wolf3D.exe was included, which was specially designed to read this new file and react to it's changes.
Should the new file not exist yet, the Wolf17.exe (as it is named in the project) will just play Wolfenstein 3D or the mod project at default settings.

The editable features are fairly simple in the grand scheme of Wolf3D modding nowadays, but many mods are made that only need these entry-level changes.

Initial plans for the project were for it to be open source, with modification and hex editing being actively encouraged. There were also plans to eventually expand the list of editable features, but unfortunately as Dugtrio17’s goals with the project took him in other directions, Wolf17 unfortunately got sidelined and shelved.

Shortly after this project, the Wolf4GW and Wolf4SDL ports of the Wolf3D engine were released. With their advancements, a lot of modders switched over, sadly leaving a lot of ideas on DOS behind. However, the philosophies of the project still hold up today, as seen in things like ECWolf and MacenWolf that incorporate a level of scripting over the game, without the need to further edit the source code.

Thanks to the archiving efforts of people like Nexion, Wolf17's source code still exists, and if you fancy a project, you could try porting Wolf17 to Wolf4SDL, or try adding more features to it!

Wolf17 is still available for download, requiring the base game files to run. So you could even make your own Wolf17 mod, if you're looking for something niche.