It is especially noteworthy for having directly led to the development and publication of Doom just a year after its release. The WAD format used in Doom was intended to resolve these problems: identifying resources by lump names allows considerable simplification of the engine by not having to maintain different index lists for different versions of the game, and it also makes modding much easier by allowing all data to be placed in a single file whose content can override that from the main game file without having to replace it.Īt the time of its release, Wolfenstein 3D was seen as a revolutionary new product, and is regarded by many to be the grandfather of all FPS games, as it popularized the genre tremendously.
Playing a mod involves replacing the relevant data files by the modded ones.ĭespite these hurdles, a Wolfenstein modding scene emerged fairly quickly, and because of them many mods had to be essentially stand-alone games that did not require the player to actually own the games before they can play them, a practice to which id Software naturally objected. This design has two consequences: it is not possible to replace only one part of the resources from one data file, all the other resources need to be included as well and in addition each version of the game needs its own executable. Each data blob is referenced in the executable by its hardcoded index position, rather than by a lump name and since different versions of the game have different amounts of game data, the offsets change for each version.
The file names are hardcoded, but the extension varies depending on the game - WL1 for the shareware, W元 for the registered game, WL6 for the full game with the added "nocturnal missions", SDM for the Spear of Destiny demo, and SOD for the full Spear of Destiny game. The game data is spread across four files ( AUDIOT, GAMEMAPS, VGAGRAPH, and VSWAP) with four additional files ( AUDIOHED, VGADICT, VGAHEAD, and MAPHEAD) containing metadata such as offset positions, size, and compression dictionary allowing to actually retrieve the game data. Like the Doom engine, the Wolfenstein 3D engine was also used for several other games Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, Blake Stone: Planet Strike, Corridor 7: Alien Invasion, Operation Bodycount, and Super 3D Noah's Ark, which enhance the engine with numerous features, some similar to those id Software added to Doom such as textured planes, distance shading, teleporters and switches.
Much of the source code for Wolfenstein 3D was later reused in Apogee's Rise of the Triad, released in 1995. While walls are textured, horizontal planes forming the floor and ceiling are shaded with flat colors. The engine is a fairly simple textbook raycaster, using maps composed of tiles, which only allow 90-degree angles between walls.
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