Wolfenstein 3D, the self-appointed “grandfather of First Person Shooters” was recently retooled and ported to the iPhone and iPod Touch. There is little point in dedicating an entire post to the game, as my feelings on the affair can be summed up rather succinctly: Wolf3D is still a classic, and you should buy it if you love gaming.
That said, the most interesting aspect of the game’s release is creator and id Software programming guru John Carmack’s post mortem designer’s notes on the conception, birth and creation of the tiny project. It even has its fair share of absolute hilarity:
The developers came back and said it would take two months and exceed their budget.
Rather than having a big confrontation over the issue, I told them to just send the project to me and I would do it myself. Cass Everitt had been doing some personal work on the iPhone, so he helped me get everything set up for local iPhone development here, which is a lot more tortuous than you would expect from an Apple product. As usual, my off the cuff estimate of “Two days!” was optimistic, but I did get it done in four, and the game is definitely more pleasant at 8x the frame rate.
And I had fun doing it.
It’s a wildly interesting read that gets a bit heavy on thd jargon at points, but is still a great view into the mind of one of the world’s greatest programmers.
Those interested can read the notes here.
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