Wolf 3d game in 2019

[geo]

I played through Wolfenstein 3D to come up with a list of features that a Wolf 3D clone could include while still maintaining its flat terrain.

 

Dedicated strafe keys (duh)

 

More bosses to break up the monotony:

 - I'm talking like floor 1-8A has the level, floor 1-8B has the boss. Not each and every level, but three per episode would help.

 

Map, because the game is just a cluster of doors:

 - Find a map of the entire floor.

 - Hard difficulties don't get a map or just make a toggle for those too pure for a map.

 

Lighting effects:

 - Flickers, light switches, you can't see enemies, they can't see you until gunfire.

 - Too many dark rooms might break the flow of gameplay, perhaps a dark level with lit up arrows that leads you to a generator that will restore electricity?

 

Hazards:

 - Barbed-wire fences: You can shoot through and they can shoot through, but going through will hurt whatever touches it. That includes splash damage pushing you into it.

 - Ooze puddles: Stamped on the ground rather than a terrain shift to make an actual pool or step down.

 - Radio activate pools: That will hurt you if you're in the room. Imagine scan hit damage from a pool as long as there was no wall blocking it. Enemies and players can take damage. Used for secrets or luring traps.

 

Destruction

 - Exploding barrels, ooze barrels that leave ooze on the floor to damage whatever steps in it. Radioactive barrels that when destroyed ruin the room.

 - Pillars for cover where both you and the enemy can shoot them enough so they crumble and then you don't have cover. It would be better for big enemies or bigger gunfights. Most of the time everything would be dead in an instant anyway.

 

Laser trip wires

 - Trip wires with explosives, trip wires that summon enemies or open doors with an alarm.

 - It would be tough without a jump, plus the logic of can't I just step over it? make a wall of trip wires that need to be disabled with a switch.

 

Less doors

 - Wow some rooms had 8 doors, some had 4 doors that went to the same location on the same wall. I suppose this was to get different angles to fight enemies in a room.

 

More keys and methods to open doors

 - Wall switches. Yellow keys that open treasure vaults.

 

Turrets

 - Auto turrets that will shred you, so you need to disable them from behind or something. I would say a grenade, but that might not feel Wolfenstein enough.

 

Simple Switch Puzzles:

 - One switch opens one door while closing another.

 - Another switch can move a wall from point A to point B which can provide a player with cover from laser trip wires or big enemies.

 

Pivot on point

 - It seemed like turning around would pivot me on the left or right rather than the central point.

 

Enemy movement

 - It felt like a lot of enemies were just standing there until they spot you. While that's a good idea for some enemies, what about having enemies have free movement to walk around while still tethered to their post? This would add to replay value. Perhaps pacing back and forth? Others can still stay at their post dedicated to looking forward.

 - Enemies calling for more enemies? Enemies that come running when they hear gun shots? Enemies that hunker down ready for you to turn the corner once they hear you?

 - Unarmed enemies who then run to a wall or chest to grab a gun. Enemies that run out of ammo that run to get more. This would be good for a room full of unarmed enemies.

 - Dogs don't have to see or hear you, they can smell you. Perhaps door traps where all the kennels open up when you walk over a trigger.

Enemy variety

 - Snipers. You see a red target on your HUD to know you're targeted and they peel off big amounts of health if you don't strafe around enough. Even then, maybe you just need to get closer without getting shot.

 - Shotgunners. The further away you are, the safer. Close range shotgun blast pushes the player back.

 - Blitzers. Dudes that run straight for you and knife you. They would be helpful with trip wires as they'd set off the trap, while others would be smart enough to avoid it.

 - Kenneler. Spawns attack dogs until you kill him. If the spawn attack looks ugly, have him spawn them when the player isn't looking at him.

 - Commander. Spawns soldiers until you kill him.

 - Miner. Sees you, and runs away while laying mines. In time he probably blows up via his own mines.

 - Cowards. Back to the unarmed soldiers, if there's no gun nearby, they run away to others.

 - Cyborgs can't be killed, but you need an EMP or lock them in a room to escape, but that gets away from the shooting gallery aspect of Wolf 3D.

 - Mines... but why would Nazi's have mines in their own bases? Anyway... you see them, you have a second to get out of range once you hear them arm.

 - Shielders... have shields that you cannot shoot through. Anything behind them is under cover and they push forward with a shotgun. If you're near them they'll turn toward you.

 

Objectives (might not feel Wolfenstein):

 - Defend X against waves of enemies. This X can also be on a track and move room to room through giant doors that open.

 - Attack and destroy Y while waves of enemies flood in.

 - Find an explosives room and place 3 bombs at strategic locations before you find the exit and detonate it. - Kill X amount of enemies in a survival, defeat all enemies in the floor, collect X amount of treasure: might feel cheaper than the previous objectives, but other games do it.

 - Timed floors. Get out, because the Nazis are flooding the floor with radiation to kill everything.

 - Bonus floors. Just random floors to collect as much treasure as you can and get out before the timer ends.

 - Gimmicky objective levels could be non boss sectors for 1-7B, 2-3B.

 - For anything with wave flooding, enemies would need to spawn in where the player isn't looking. For immersion, I'd recommend walls obscuring doorways. These walls would also let foes pathfind around them. So 3 doors with 3 walls could lead to 6 paths of enemies.

Edited March 19, 2019 by geo

[Noiser]

This is a nice list geo, I would like to play something like that. I really think this kind of game could benefit from more hazards and enemies with different attacks or combat skills.
 

16 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

It doesn't matter how many cool gimmicks a Wolf-3D clone has, the level design will always be a letdown and the biggest bottleneck. The levels will always be just mazes. 

While mazes are an integral part of Wolf3D level design, the best maps are the ones that can make recognizable rooms instead of just mazes, including long corridors, big halls, different shapes, small rooms with some remarkable theme (like an office or a computer station), etc. Things that help the player with orientation. While I agree this may be not enough, automap is probably the final answer to this problem. You can also try some good wolf3D mods if you want better examples.
 

Quote

One simply cannot make levels like those in Eviternity or Ancient Aliens on a Wolf-3d clone.

WTF o_o

Ok, this one is the weirdest argument so far. It's funny how you guys want Wolf3D games to be like Doom to the point of mention these mods that don't have anything to do with them. Btw, even being a big fan of ROTT, I can barely recognize it as an wolf-clone since it looks pretty much like the latter (despite the engine).

 

It's the same thing if I tell that Doom needs room-over-room, bridges or slopes to be "good". Or maybe some Brutal Doom features like reloading. If you like Doom the way it is, you probably will disagree. Wolf3D maps have his own rules and gameplay mechanics - that you may like or not. The simplicity can be an atractive for some people, and be enough to be fun, while I understand why it may not be the case for everyone.

Edited March 18, 2019 by Noiser

[VGA]

On 3/15/2019 at 1:54 PM, Thedoctor989 said:

so people dislike wolf 3d now or is it because everyone started remaking Clones of it?

Wolf3D is such a simple game, it hasn't aged well. There isn't enough depth for interesting combat and enemies. And the architecture is orthogonal with no height variation or lighting changes. Yuck!

[ReaperAA]

14 hours ago, Noiser said:

Ok, this one is the weirdest argument so far. It's funny how you guys want Wolf3D games to be like Doom to the point of mention these mods that don't have anything to do with them.

 

Okay maybe my choice of words were not the best so will try to explain again below.

 

14 hours ago, Noiser said:

It's the same thing if I tell that Doom needs room-over-room, bridges or slopes to be "good". Or maybe some Brutal Doom features like reloading. If you like Doom the way it is, you probably will disagree.

 

While room-over-room and slopes can add more to a map, the maps in doom can be awesome even without them. But one can only do so much with Wolf-3d type levels. At the very best, one can add various props/items, adjust different lighting levels and add flickering to make the rooms seem realistic. That can work for a few levels but this too can get boring without a shift of theme every few levels. And even this doesn't solve the biggest issue. The issue of the lack of height variation.

 

Devs behind ROTT knew that lack of height variation would make things boring which is exactly the reason why they added bounce pads and floating platforms to try to mitigate the issue. Lack of height variation means that most of the time combat is just.... samey (i.e taking potshots and hide when enemy tries to fire). In Doom, player has to worry about flying enemies, dealing with enemies which are firing from a higher position, make use of a higher platform and so on.

[Thedoctor989]

so from my reading, i can see that there are 2 spectrum's, the ones who think that WOLF3d isn't good due to limitations (heights,orthogonal and various other reasons). 

and the ones who enjoy it's simplicity and it's basic theme of just having fun and shooting some Nazi's.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Thedoctor989

[Jayextee]

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I think "Wolf3D-style games can't be good because limitations" is an attitude that shows a complete lack of imagination and understanding of how game mechanics can add spice to, and revaitalise, almost any concept if executed well enough. Off the top of my head Shadow of the Wool Ball managed to use some scripting and things to make the formula more enjoyable than the stock enemies/doors/pushwalls recipe we're used to.

How about, for example, playing around with projectile types and wide spaces for a 'semi-slaughter' experience? Scripting and textures (and probably pushwalls) to introduce logic puzzles? Et cetera, et cetera.

But no. Apparently they can never be good because MUH HEIGHT VARIATION.

[ReaperAA]

28 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

But no. Apparently they can never be good because MUH HEIGHT VARIATION.

 

Not saying something good can't come out of a Wolf-3D clone. But it would require some out-of-the-box level of thinking which most devs cannot do. Why limit urself when u cannot deliver (as evidenced by a lot of uninspiring Wolf-3D clones).

[Jayextee]

5 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

Why limit urself 

 

Sometimes creativity within those limits, and how solutions to problems that arise within them are entirely the point, not just making a game that "delivers". The clones aren't really 'evidence' of that per se, but do nonetheless reek of developers seeking to earn some money for very little effort.

But, limitations. They can and will foster creativity in art. You've asked this to a man making a platform game using monochrome hand-drawn art for exactly such a reason. ;)

[VGA]

1 hour ago, Jayextee said:

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I think "Wolf3D-style games can't be good because limitations" is an attitude that shows a complete lack of imagination and understanding of how game mechanics can add spice to, and revaitalise, almost any concept if executed well enough. Off the top of my head Shadow of the Wool Ball managed to use some scripting and things to make the formula more enjoyable than the stock enemies/doors/pushwalls recipe we're used to.

How about, for example, playing around with projectile types and wide spaces for a 'semi-slaughter' experience? Scripting and textures (and probably pushwalls) to introduce logic puzzles? Et cetera, et cetera.

But no. Apparently they can never be good because MUH HEIGHT VARIATION.

There are limitations ... and then there's Wolf3D. I have played a gazillion of Doom mapsets created within some limits. And they are memorable.

 

I have finished all the official Wolf episodes amd can't remember any real differences between them except textures.

[ReaperAA]

17 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

You've asked this to a man making a platform game using monochrome hand-drawn art for exactly such a reason. ;)

 

What is this game u speak of

[SaladBadger]

I can safely say I have zero doubt that tile-based FPS games can be interesting, but I just don't feel most of the current crop of these games do a good job. Shadow of the Wool Ball is definitely a nice example of something that works pretty well.

[Jayextee]

Whilst I think of it, I also thought Gun Godz was certainly worthy of note. I found it a lot of fun (until the final boss), and liked the general 'feel' of the gunplay and stuff; even if it did nothing revolutionary per se.

[Thedoctor989]

i think detail is a big thing, if the maps are just random barren wastelands of corridors and nonsensical garbage then the game isn't very good, but if you make those barren halls have decorations which resemble a basic theme then you can make some pretty memorable things with this method. 

[4everDoomed]

3 hours ago, Thedoctor989 said:

.... 

and the ones who enjoy it's simplicity and it's basic theme of just having fun and shooting some Nazi's.

 

That's it.

Wolf 3D is old. It's dumb. It's crazy. It's funny. 

I still play it today, at least every few years, and I'll probably play it in 2040. If you grew up with those games you feel a special connection to them.

But I'd also be interested in a proper remake of Wolf 3D with stairs, lifts, teleporters and other stuff like mentioned before. Why not? 

 

By the way,- I recently played the SNES version of Wolf 3D. I never knew the differences. What a crappy version. Censored in any way, graphics that makes your eyes bleed, rats for dogs. etc...

 

Spoiler

 

 

That version is a triple strike.... you're OUT !  XD

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Noiser]

13 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

While room-over-room and slopes can add more to a map, the maps in doom can be awesome even without them. But one can only do so much with Wolf-3d type levels.

That's the thing. For me Wolf3D can be awesome even without height variation, the same way you think about Doom. At the same time, Quake players (or modern players in general) may disagree with you since "true 3D" can add another level of complexity for his maps. It's very subjective. There's a lot of cool things you can do with "Wolf3D' limitations, but you have to like the style to begin with. 

 

Quote

Devs behind ROTT knew that lack of height variation would make things boring which is exactly the reason why they added bounce pads and floating platforms to try to mitigate the issue.

Idk. I think it was more like, they had to do it to compete with Doom, which is totally understandable due to the context of the time. Look how Strife for example, despite being a GREAT game, was unsuccessful because Quake and Build engine was on top at 1996. Media with new technology will always be the norm, but today this "race" doesn't exist anymore, all these games are now under the "retro" umbrella and people can make whatever they like if it's good enough.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Noiser