The Man Who Made Wolfenstein (polygon.com) 19
theodp writes: Over at Polygon, games journalist Colin Campbell remembers the late Silas Warner in The Man Who Made Wolfenstein. Before Doom, there was Warner's Castle Wolfenstein (1981) and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein (1984), which counted id Software's legendary John Carmack and John Romero as fans. After completing his degree in Physics at Indiana University, Warner found work at IU installing a new system called PLATO, which he used to fork John Daleske's Empire (1973), which is sometimes credited as being the first multiplayer shooting game. Ultima creator Richard Garriott called Warner's Escape (1978) a major inspiration that "changed my life." Warner's Robotwar (manual, pdf) also did double-duty as a stealth learn-to-program tutorial. Sadly, Warner was plagued with bad health and passed away at age 54 without receiving the proper credit or rewards he was due.
Great guy (Score:5, Interesting)
He gave a interesting talk you can listen to here: https://www.kansasfest.org/201... [kansasfest.org]
Fascinating look at the early days.
Nazis (Score:3)
Where's the swastika banner guy when an appropriate article comes along?
Re:Nazis (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Busy celebrating Chanukah.
Probably not - there is no shortage of genuine anti-semites, trolls, or people with various personality or emotional disorders on Slashdot that would delight in engaging in such an outrage. Example? [slashdot.org]
Religious Jews already have enough people that hate them for no good reason without having to invent them. It would be like someone taking a 5 liter bucket of water and dumping it into the sea out of fear that the sea will dry up if they don't add another 5 liters to it.
A new CNN poll reveals that one in four Eu [nytimes.com]
Re: Nazis (Score:2)
I hope they didnâ(TM)t ban him/her I am confident he or she wasnâ(TM)t an actual Nazi. Often was one of the funnier trolls.
Good article (Score:2)
This guy sounds like someone who deserves more credit and should have a place in the lore of the games and technology industry. Makes me wonder how man other guys and gals like him are out there who likewise deserve more credit.
Great games (Score:2)
Re: Great games (Score:2)
Was a pretty shitty game from a graphics perspective even for 81. The Apple II was a piece of shit from a graphics and sound perspective. The Atari 800 port could have been so much more due to accelerated graphics hardware, a massive color Pallette, hardware sprites, faster CPU and far better sound but they instead chose to basically do a direct port from Apple II and it sucked. Really taking advantage of ANTIC/GTIA and POKEY could have made the game so much better. Same for Lode Runner and Choplifter.
Re: (Score:2)
> color Pallette
Palette [google.com], not Pallette.
> The Apple II was a piece of shit from a graphics
Because you could come up with a better design to cram 6 colors at 280x192 resolution into 8K, right? /s
You are completely ignorant of the cost of RAM back in the late 70's. People had standardized on 16 KB, 32 KB, and 48 KB back then as RAM was fucking expensive. Not the GB that we take for granted today.
A naive implementation of 280*192 = 53,760 pixels * Log2(6) = 138,967 bits / 8 bits/pixel = 17,370 bytes / 10
Re: Great games (Score:2)
Gee, people managed great games on the Atari 800 in 48K. And many great games in 8/16K that also ran on the 400.
All of those games that were mentioned were indeed written on the Apple II and it shows when shitty ports by lazy developers were made to other machines. Machines that ran the shitty ports faster than the originals on the Apple II.
See, I was actually around in those days. And I know Wolf3D was a PC game, one that was later also ported to the Apple IIgs and Atari ST. And the ports were done wel
Re: Great games (Score:2)
I will concede that the Apple IIgs was cool as hell though. It never was given a fighting chance.
Re: (Score:2)
While the Apple ][ was pretty limited, it was kind of amazing the stuff people came out with for it given those limits.
The problem with the Atari was probably the fractured nature of the platform. The 400 was basically a glorified video game console, and the 800 was more of a real computer, although the 800 was limited in its expandability due to RF shielding and no expansion slots on the motherboard.
What the Apple had going for it was superb and detailed documentation and the network effects for developer
Re: (Score:1)
Documentation so superb it came with a full motherboard schematic. Haven't seen that much elsewhere..
Re: (Score:2)
Robotwar was magnificent. (Score:2)
I was a Freshman/Sophomore in high school when my friends and I played Robotwar. My God that game was magnificent. Programming robots that compete against robots your friends had programmed. It solidified my love of programming.
Re: (Score:2)