Good evening, YouTubers.
Growing up during the 1980s and 90s, I had the opportunity to use several different computer
models, such as the Apple II, Apple Macintosh and the IBM PS/2.
Growing up, I was fortunate to have had a PC desktop at home, the kind that ran two
different sizes of floppy disks.
Yes, kids, two different sizes.
It also ran a brand new operating system called Windows 3.1.
Wow.
With its actual lock, it was state of the art.
While this home computer was mainly used for business, I was allowed to mess around with
it, learning this new Windows operating system and even MS-DOS.
We also installed a handful of PC games on it at the time, one of which appeared very
different from other games of the era.
This game had you play as if you were actually looking at what the character could see, and
in an almost 3D world.
Well, 3D for 1993.
This game was called Wolfenstein 3D.
And while its first person view is commonplace today, it was a new experience when I double
clicked on that icon for the first time.
What I didn't realize at the time was how its developers, id Software, were changing
the industry on a fundamental level.
What were they doing and how were they doing it?
For that answer we have to first go back to 1981 and the original Wolfenstein game.
Simply titled Castle Wolfenstein.
Castle Wolfenstein was released for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS
in September of 1981 by Muse Software.
Silas Warner wrote the World War II-era action game.
The plot revolves around you starting out as a Private and eventually ending up with
the rank of Field Marshal.
Your objective is to escape Castle Wolfenstein, which is under heavy Nazi guard.
You do get a gun, however, ammunition is limited.
Grenades are also available.
Guards will actually freeze and put their hands up if you just point a gun at them.
You can use this opportunity to frisk them and possibly find useful items, such as more
ammunition, keys, and bulletproof vests.
You can actually find and wear a uniform that will hide your identity to most of the enemies.
To complete the game, the player has to go through sixty different rooms spread out across
five different floors of the castle.
By summer of 1982, Castle Wolfenstein sold more than 20,000 units.
At the time of its release, it received fair reviews.
The game was successful enough that Muse released a sequel in 1984 called Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.
That game's plot mirrors that of the real life July 20, 1944 conspiracy plot of either
pirate-looking Nazis or Nazi-looking pirates trying to assassinate Adolf Hitler by placing
a suitcase hiding a bomb near him during a meeting.
During the late 1980s and going into the 90s, these games were largely forgotten about.
That is until a group of young software developers decided to break out on their own.
Throughout the 1980s, computer graphics were notorious for being slow and lagging.
This made, obviously, for poor gameplay.
John Carmack was a developer working at Softdisk at the time and was determined to solve this
issue.
Softdisk was a monthly publishing company located out of Shreveport, Louisiana.
Carmack developed something eventually called adaptive tile refresh.
At this time, whenever computers displayed graphics on a screen, it used its hardware
to recreate the various images whenever the images moved on screen, essentially creating
fresh images every time.
This method took up a certain amount of memory and processor power.
Carmack came up with the ability for EGA hardware to track the graphical elements instead of
the computer redrawing them in every frame.
A quick note, IBM began using their first graphics cards in 1981.
The original graphics cards that supported color only supported, at best, four colors
from a sixteen color palette.
At minimum, the card would only support two colors on the screen at any given time.
The introduction in 1984 of the Enhanced Graphics Adapter, also known simply as EGA, made CGA
cards irrelevant.
Even though the release of both the Multi-Color Graphics Array and of the Video Graphics Array
in 1987 made EGA a dinosaur in the computer world, many people were still using EGA into
the early 90s.
Compared to CGA, EGA had the advantage of buffering the screen wider than the screen
itself, which allowed for smoother playback.
Also, the area being buffered was offset by one pixel increments.
Plus, the memory used by EGA cards left enough room for the same card to render tiles and
sprites.
Carmack took advantage of these features by creating an image that buffered 64 pixels
wider and taller than the screen.
This allowed for one extra row and column of tiles in the buffer just off the screen.
Using this technique allows the image on screen to scroll from one side to another much more
smoothly than before.
The smoothness is attributed to the double buffering Carmack added to the code that allows
for a sprite to be drawn with one buffer and shown with the other.
This is done through the EGA hardware in the card.
The game that Carmack tested this new technique on would be a PC conversion of Super Mario 3.
He also used fellow developers Tom Hall, Jay Wilbur, and Lane Roathe to assist on the project.
When Carmack converted Super Mario 3, there had been no PC versions of the game.
Today, Adobe Flash makes playing any vintage video game easy.
But in 1990, the hardware and software weren't really up for the job.
Or least that's what people thought until Carmack presented his PC adaptation of the
game.
And honestly, what you see right now is the actual game Carmack adapted.
Carmack deliberately replaced the Mario character with that of John Romero's Dangerous Dave
character.
Carmack actually called his game "Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement."
Romero had joined Softdisk in March of 1989, originally working in their special projects
division.
But, by the time Carmack had shown him the Super Mario adaptation on September 28, 1990,
Romero had just started a PC division at Softdisk two months prior called PCRcade.
PCRcade eventually got a name change and is now known as Gamer's Edge.
After playing the game and seeing just how smooth the game ran, Romero loved it.
They reportedly approached Nintendo with this technology, but Nintendo reportedly turned
them, citing that they had no interest in entering the PC market.
Around this same time, Romero began receiving numerous fan letters from what he soon determined
was the same person.
That person was Scott Miller, a programmer at Apogee Software who was actually trying
to contact Romero with the idea of teaming up to produce a game.
The series of fan letters was a ruse implemented because both companies were protective of
their programmers and didn't want other companies fishing for the talented ones.
But it wasn't just a game Miller wanted to do.
He wanted to develop episodes of a game series that people could purchase.
His business proposal was kind of like a carrot on a stick.
The first game you get is free.
The rest you pay for.
It was a unique idea for video games.
But could it work?
The business model for home gaming consoles consists of selling the proprietary hardware
"at cost" and making a profit off the numerous games they sold.
But PC gaming was different.
These games were playable on numerous computer systems, most of which were not built just
for gaming.
Software companies didn't control the hardware, either.
They were at the mercy of companies like IBM, Compaq, and Apple.
Certain it could work, Romero, Carmack, Wilbur, and Adrian Carmack, no relation, spent the
next three months developing the first game for their own company, using Softdisk's
computers to complete it.
Since the team wasn't doing this as Softdisk employees, they needed a name for themselves.
They settled on Ideas from the Deep.
This first game would be about Commander Keen, a child genius attempting to retrieve the
stolen parts of his spaceship from the cities of Mars.
On December 14, 1990, Apogee released Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons as a trilogy,
with the first game offered up free to the public.
Before the game's release, Apogee was only raking in about $7,000 dollars a month.
Within the first two weeks of its release, Apogee grossed $30,000 dollars in sales from
the additional two Commander Keen games alone.
By June of 1991, Apogee had sold $400,000 dollars worth of Commander Keen games.
The success gave the development team more than enough confidence to quit Softdisk and
create games on their own.
When Softdisk owner Al Vekovius discussed the fact the team had used Softdisk's computers
to develop their own games, the Carmack team didn't deny the allegations.
After some negotiations, they agreed to create a series a games for Softdisk's subscription
service, Gamer's Edge.
The deal was for one game every two months.
After breaking out on their own, they decided to make a minor change to their company name.
ID Software went on to rave reviews throughout the year.
They immediately began developing more games, starting with four more Commander Keen games.
But the id team wasn't done renovating gaming.
In fact, little did anyone know they were just getting started.
And what they were about to do in the coming year would revolutionize gaming, in a way
where its effects are still felt today.
Soon after leaving Softdisk and making id Software a full time gig, John Carmack began
experimenting with the idea of a fast 3D game engine that would also be smooth during gameplay.
Throughout the years of making video games, many developers were forced to resort to creating
the hardware necessary for developing their own games.
Atari used to custom build the circuit boards used in each of their titles.
It wasn't until the advent of microprocessors in the 1970s that attributed to the boom of
video games in the 1980s.
By the early 1990s, 3D game design was at the point in development where arcades had
been two decades earlier.
3D game design required custom built engines catered to the developers themselves.
Many people realized that 3D was the direction game design was heading, but it wasn't cheap,
or easy.
Throughout 1991, Carmack began experimenting with various 3D game engines.
He knew all too well that PC's at that time were limited in power, so developing an engine
that could produce a smooth looking game with the limited power provided was a challenge.
Carmack determined using a ray casting method would be his best approach.
Wait a minute.
Are we going to be discussing rudimentary geometric functions here?
Oh man. You know how I feel about this kind of math.
(COPELAND LAUGHS)
Ray casting simply uses the geometric algorithm
of ray tracing.
Ray tracing involves the rendering technique that produces an image by tracing the path
of light as pixels in an image plane.
The results simulate the effects it encounters with various virtual objects.
Ray tracing is capable of realistically simulating various optical effects that include reflection
and refraction.
Ray casting is different because compared to ray tracing, it never recursively traces
secondary rays, only primary ones.
What makes the images appear 3D is because the computer is using an algorithm that measures
the color of the light of the object without recursively tracing any additional rays that
sample the radiance incident on the point the ray hit.
Because it's not measuring any secondary rays of the object, there's no way it can accurately
render any reflections or refractions of that object.
But the game engine can fake these elements anyway, it just does it separately.
Just six weeks after starting development of this new game engine, Carmack was ready
to put it to use.
In April of 1991, id released Hovertank 3D.
This vehicular combat game takes place during a nuclear war, where the player controls Brick
Sledge, a mercenary hired to rescue various people from cities under threat of nuclear
attack.
The enemies you encounter are either mutated people, armed guards, fellow hovertanks, or
other strange creatures.
By the Fall of 1991, most of the id team had relocated to Madison, Wisconsin to set up
their new offices there.
Upon Carmack improving the game engine over another six week period, the id team released
Catacomb 3D in November of that year.
While this particular game was the second sequel to the series of Catacomb games, this
edition was the first that utilized the new game engine.
Upon its release, Scott Miller began really insisting the id team use this new engine
for a shareware game; combining the technology of fast 3D gameplay with the business model
of offering one free game in a series of other games.
By November, the id team had almost completed the second trilogy of Commander Keen games,
not to mention their contract with Softdisk was wrapping up.
At this time, they decided to coordinate what id's next big project would be.
The obvious thought was to continue Commander Keen with a third trilogy, which made sense.
I mean, why mess with a good thing?
John Romero suggested using the new game engine for a remake of the classic game, Castle Wolfenstein.
The idea intrigued them, as they all had fond memories of the game.
Plus, the idea of going through a maze with this new engine seemed like a perfect fit.
There was, however, one obvious problem.
Copyright.
Their first thought was they wouldn't be able to use the actual Wolfenstein brand because
of trademark issues with Muse Software.
But what the team soon discovered was Muse was no longer in business and the trademark
for the game had actually lapsed.
At this moment, it must of felt like fate was knocking at their door.
id had evolved into a successful game developer with an innovative business model of shareware
software, a new, custom built game engine that rendered 3D objects.
Plus, the trademark for releasing a sequel to one of their favorite classic games was
theirs for the taking.
Plus, their distributor, Apogee, gave them an advance of $100,000 after hearing about
the new Wolfenstein idea.
And the cherry on top was that id's probationary president, Mark Rein, had been successful
at securing distribution rights to FormGen, which distributed titles to retail stores.
It seemed like it was now or never to begin Wolfenstein 3D.
John Romero and Tom Hall designed the initial gameplay.
Hall designed levels where the player would have to search for hidden rooms filled with
ammo, health, and gold.
Romero basically wanted the premise to be the player shooting Nazis, adding blood unlike
any other game at the time had seen.
Carmack modified the new game engine to be able to add doors, as well as decor.
While much of the original Muse release of Castle Wolfenstein was used, one element not
added was the ability to loot the Nazi soldiers for items the player could use.
Romero reportedly said the reason for this was that it slowed the gameplay down.
Some of the level layout and design appears to have been inspired by Pac-Man; to a degree
that a hidden Pac-Man level was added to the game.
Bobby Prince, the composer and sound designer for the team's Commander Keen games, created
the music and sound effects to the game.
After development began, the id team actually moved their offices across country, again.
This time to Mesquite, Texas; just a stone's throw to Apogee.
id also increased their staff for the project, adding former Softdisk coworker Kevin Cloud
as an assistant artist.
Apogee was so pleased with how the Wolfenstein project was going, that Scott Miller increased
id's royalty rate to 50%.
Plus, he arranged for Apogee to fulfill id's contractual obligations with Softdisk by having
his company produce and deliver id's next expected title to them.
Miller reportedly did this so the id team could focus completely on the Wolfenstein
project.
This actually gave the id team the time and resources to create a level of the game every
day.
The initial plan was to release a trilogy of games, each with ten levels; with the first
one being free, of course.
But because of their progress, it was ultimately decided to create six episodes.
Around this same time, id's probationary president, Mark Rein,
was let go and Jay Wilbur was brought back to replace him.
While it appeared things were going great for id, FormGen, the retail distributor for
the game, expressed concern over the violence in the game.
Remember, at this point, there was still no official rating system in place for video
games.
In an act of defiance against FormGen, the id team not only didn't tone down the violence,
but they added numerous aspects of "shock content."
Corpses, hanging skeletons, blood and gore on the walls, were all added.
Not to mention adding the song "Horst-Wessel-Lied," which was the actual anthem the Nazis used
during their reign in Germany.
POLICE OFFICER: Bums won their court case, so they're marching today.
JAKE BLUES: What bums?
POLICE OFFICER: The fucking Nazi party.
ELWOOD BLUES: Illinois Nazis.
JAKE BLUES: I hate Illinois Nazis.
Other additions included a Death Cam that would show a replay of each episode's final
boss.
And because "why not?" was surely asked, screams and cries spoken in German were also
added.
On May 5, 1992, the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D was released.
In the six month process it took to complete the game, the final cost to produce it was
only $25,000, just a quarter of what Apogee advanced, plus the monthly salaries of $750.
The second trilogy that was released not long after was the add-on pack, The Nocturnal Missions.
With a little over $25,000 invested in the total project, the id team had realistic expectations
for the game's success.
In their minds, a royalty check from Apogee for twice the $25,000 investment would be
hailed a success for them.
id's first royalty check didn't end up being twice the investment, but instead quadruple it.
By the end of 1992, Wolfenstein 3D had become the biggest shareware product of the year.
1993 added more success for all parties involved.
Wolfenstein 3D ended up receiving positive reviews and winning various awards from the
gaming industry.
Throughout 1993 and 94, various mission packs and add-on's were released by Apogee and
FormGen.
On September 18, 1992, FormGen released through retails, Spear of Destiny.
This retail version was twice as large as the Apogee versions released through shareware.
In 1993, Apogee published an add-on pack that included 815 fan-made levels, along with a
map editor, allowing new players to create their own levels for the game.
Something to note is this idea of allowing players to create their own levels at home
was a new concept to people.
This gave regular people, many of whom were either still in school or had no formal programming
training, the opportunity to use the creative tools necessary to design video games like
this themselves.
This novel idea would plant the seed for who and what the next generation of game developers
would be and what they would do.
While it was technologically innovative with its use of 3D graphics, the elephant in the
room for critics was the excessive use of violence and gore.
A Super NES port toned down the blood and gore quite a bit.
VINCENT: Good game, good game.
MOSELLE: What you got in there?
VINCENT: In here?
VINCENT: Doom.
BEARDED NERD: id Software would go on to create two other first-person shooters, Doom and Quake.
Both were arguably even more successful than their flagship, Wolfenstein.
While wrapping up development of Wolfenstein's
prequel, Spear of Destiny, John Carmack began work on id's next big release.
Taking influence from films such as Aliens and Evil Dead, Carmack wanted a game that
took what made Wolfenstein 3D so great and bring it to the next level.
Tom Hall began creating a detailed storyline and multiple characters with deep personalities
and traits.
Despite his hard work with this new project, the rest of the team, led mainly by Carmack,
chose to keep everything simple.
HUDSON: Well, that's great.
That's just fucking great, man.
Now what the fuck are we supposed to do?
We're in some real pretty shit now, man!
HICKS: Are you finished?
HUDSON: That's it, man.
Game over, man.
Game over!
What the fuck are we gonna do now?!
What are we gonna do?!
In August of 1993, Hall left id to join Apogee.
While there, Hall worked on the Duke Nukem series, starting with the second game of the
series.
Hall left Apogee in 1996 and teamed up with former id founder John Romero to form Ion
Storm.
One thing to take into account is during the mid and late 90s, there was a huge "dot-com
bubble" that was growing.
During the peak of this time, software companies would routinely spend extravagant amounts
on their offices.
But when it burst, like all bubbles do, Ion Storm was just one of many companies that
probably regretted leasing out expensive penthouses and the lavish spending on their employees.
WOMAN: "Hi, welcome to Ion Storm."
BEARDED NERD: It's great when companies want to reward their workers with gifts and luxuries, but when
those luxuries come at the expense of closing the company down, like Ion Storm did in 2005,
then all their effort is for not.
Before both Hall and Romero left in 2001, no doubt one of Romero's biggest regrets
was using this ad to promote their latest game, Daikatana.
Without any context or background, it's just John Romero telling you he's
going to make you his bitch and that you can suck it.
Personally not offensive to me, but I can definitely see why that kind of advertising is not everyone's
cup of tea.
In context, it was referring to Romano's trash talking during game play.
In a 2010 interview with Gamesauce magazine, Romero apologized for the decade-old ad.
After leaving Ion Storm, Romero and Hall shifted their focus to mobile games with a new company,
Monkeystone Games.
However, both Hall and Romero ended up taking jobs at Midway Games just two years later
and Monkeystone officially closed its doors in early 2005.
Kevin Cloud continued working at id Software until Zenimax Media purchased the company
in June of 2009.
During his time there, he worked as an artist for other game franchises, such as Quake and
Doom.
Adrian Carmack continued working at id until 2005.
There's conflicting reports about the nature of his departure, but ultimately id Software
ended up in a lawsuit with Carmack, who claimed he was fired as an attempt to force him to
sell his share of the company for considerably less than its actual worth.
Over a decade later, he and John Romero would team up again to develop a new video game
titled, Blackroom.
That game is still in development, as of the time of this video's release.
Starting in 2001, newer Wolfenstein games have been developed.
Gray Matter Interactive and Activision developed and released Return to Castle Wolfenstein
in 2001, followed by 2003's Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
Fountainhead Entertainment and EA Mobile were behind 2008's Wolfenstein RPG, but unlike
with the previous two, id's John Carmack returned as this edition's sole programmer.
id Software teamed up with Raven Software and Endrant Studios to produce 2009's Wolfenstein.
This edition was released by Activision Blizzard.
Five years later, Wolfenstein: The New Order would expand the Wolfenstein world with an
alternative history involving the Germans winning World War II.
This game is set is 1960 under this new alternate history.
MachineGames developed this version, with Bethesda Softworks publishing it.
In 2015, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood was developed and published by MachineGames and Bethesda again.
And in October of 2017, Bethesda released the latest edition, titled Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.
What impact did Wolfenstein 3D and id Software have on the gaming market?
At the time of its release in 1992, Wolfenstein was just added to a laundry list of violent
video games that would eventually cause the current rating system.
But the biggest legacy id Software left was its move to license their 3D engine, which
they dubbed id Tech.
This move was not only unprecedented, but it also opened the floodgates for creativity
and opportunity for other game developers.
Currently, developers still have to purchase a license for either the 5th or 6th generation
of the engine, but the previous three generations of game engines, as well as source code for
Wolfenstein, is available free to the public to use.
This open source philosophy that id embraced has proven to be a winning formula for them.
On that same note, they've also been supportive of Linux-based games.
In a prior video, I might have poked fun at Linux a little.
BEARDED NERD: Before Microsoft and Apple became the two dominant operating systems used by
the world today, sorry Linux, you're awesome, but kids don't beg their parents to buy a
computer that runs Linux.
So software was only compatible with whichever system it was written for.
Which is technically still the case, but at least now there's only Apple and Microsoft;
sorry Linux, you can go back to your Chromebook now.
I actually have nothing against Linux.
The average computer user has probably never even heard of Linux.
Linux is basically an open source operating system.
The reason the average consumer has probably never heard of it is because it's mainly used
in servers and larger supercomputers.
Only about 2% of desktop users operate Linux.
But it is also widely used in other devices, such as Chrome laptops and digital recording
devices.
So, Linux is used in quite a few devices we all use regularly, but when it comes to our
personal computers, it's mostly catered to those running servers and other users who
just prefer its efficiency.
Because it's not used but in 2% of desktop computers, most software companies don't even
develop programs for it.
But id was different.
They made the conscious decision to provide programs for this open source operating system.
Another thing to take into account is they literally created the first-person shooter
genre that is prevalent in today's gaming industry.
Not to mention their decision to license out their game engine to other developers not
only made them more money by itself, but it also gave rise to creativity for both professional
game makers and amateur ones, many still of school age.
The story of id Software is one where all the right people got together at the right time.
Now, decades later, those same people aren't necessarily still working together, but for
a short while, it was the right mixture of talent all in one place.
That, on top of the risky business model of giving away a free game, proves that you don't
need a lot of people to create a great game.
You just needed the right people.
That is it for this episode of the Bearded Nerd: After Dark.
Click the thumbs up if you liked the video and be sure to subscribe to keep up with future videos.
See you next time.
ELWOOD BLUES: Illinois Nazis.
JAKE BLUES: I hate Illinois Nazis.
HEAD NAZI: Heil Hitler!
GROUP OF NAZIS: Heil Hitler!
(ENGINE REVS)
HEAD NAZI: Stand hut!
(ENGINE REVS LOUDER)
(GROUP SCREAMS)
(APPLAUSES)
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