Catacomb 3-D Creators Share How They Made Predecessor of DOOM & Quake
The first texture-mapped first-person shooter didn't bring a lot of money but became the start of something important.
DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein are id Software's most popular games, which revolutionized gamedev, but it's Catacomb 3-D that housed the studio's many firsts and paved the way for the iconic titles.
In a new video on John Romero's YouTube channel, the developers recall how they created the first texture-mapped first-person shooter back in 1991.
"Through firsthand stories and hard technical truths, the team retraces the moment flat mazes became real spaces, laying the foundation for the FPS genre just before Wolfenstein 3D changed everything."
id Software
Catacomb 3-D was the most complex game id Software had made at the time, with John Carmack implementing texture mapping on the walls, "wrapping" 2D textures around the 3D objects.
"I had that book [Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics] with the texture-mapped cube on the front, and I kind of felt that was where the future was going," Carmack remembers.
But that was not the only novelty in the game: the studio was also the first to show the character's health as an image that changed the more damage you took, eventually turning the protagonist into a skeleton.
Gamedev back then was not as advanced as it is now, obviously, so the lead artist, Adrian Carmack, had to come up with some unusual solutions. He didn't have animation software, so he made characters move by spamming the undo-redo buttons.
id Software
Catacomb 3-D was also the first first-person 3D game to support a mouse – something pretty redundant in games at the time.
Together with the decision to make the player look through the character's eyes and not from behind their shoulder, 3D made the shooter very immersive and encouraged id to think this was the future, despite Catacomb 3-D bringing them only $5,000, while their 2D Commander Keen provided much, much more.
"One of my more cherished memories of Catacomb was Adrian almost falling out of the seat when he turned around right in the face of a troll," John Carmack recalls. "This is where we could tell we're starting to get it. This is the future of gaming. This kind of visceral feel, rather than looking at the little sprites moving around on the screen and maybe getting tense. It was that sense of shock. I think that was the first moment that locked into my mind that we were really on to something in this new genre and style of play."
id Software
"It just automatically sucked you in visually," Adrian added. "You couldn't help it. It's just that's what your eyes and your mind did. They sucked you in. So, you're just trying to look behind walls, doors."
This experiment was the predecessor of id's most impactful games: Wolfenstein 3D, the grandfather of first-person shooters, and DOOM and Quake later.
The studio was a pioneer in many gamedev aspects, and if you want to learn more about its work, check out Romero's YouTube channel and consider getting his book.
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