This one? This one’s personal.

I’ve idolized id Software ever since I was a kid. I still remember sneaking the Wolf3D disk home and secretly installing it on my parents’ computer. They’d leave for work first thing in the morning, and for the next hour or so all you’d hear echoing through the house was “Achtung!”

What made Wolfenstein 3D special to me was that it was one of the first times I realized that people made games. The credits were right there: John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, and Tom Hall. (Wait—aren’t these the same names I saw on Commander Keen!?) From that moment on, making games was all I ever wanted to do.

Before I start any new project, I listen to Masters of Doom or Doom Guy (or both). Hearing about the focus and drive of the original id team still fires me up. They weren’t just talented—they knew what they wanted and went for it.

For this project, I wanted to pay tribute to that spirit in a way that felt unexpected: by taking their original design and art and using them verbatim in a new game. I’ve played with a few ideas in the past, but this one stuck. What if we took Wolf3D and turned it into an isometric shooter? Move the camera, adjust the controls, add mouse aiming—and see what happens.

As it turns out, John Romero and Tom Hall’s original design still holds up, even from a completely different perspective. I figured I’d have to tweak movement speeds, enemy AI, maybe switch from hit-scan to projectiles—but nope. It all just works.

What didn’t surprise me, however, was that the art translated beautifully. (I’ve always thought Adrian was the unsung hero of the original team. Sure, the games played well and ran fast, but Adrian made them look good.) My first high was getting the original assets extracted and rendering. My second—and one I’ll never forget—was seeing the textures mapped in Godot and being able to scroll through the levels from an isometric view. It was the coolest thing ever.

The process was surreal. I’d never built anything quite this data-driven before. Once I ported everything out of the code and into resource files, it all came to life. I went from having zero working enemies to all of them working in a single pass. Each one uses the same logic routines, but their stats, reactions, and attacks are all defined by data. Once that’s set, they just go. Since the shareware version only has four enemies, it didn’t take long before empty maps turned into living, dangerous spaces—teeming with life in an afternoon.

Then I hit a funny realization: there’s no player avatar. Why would there be? It’s a first-person game—you never see your character. I found a placeholder sprite on an old (but still active!) Wolf3D modding site, where a modder named Mason built a makeshift BJ out of a guard. It works for now, but I’d love to replace it with a proper one.**

If you’re wondering just how gifted the original team was… The original Wolf3D ran on a 286. Mine, built in Godot with C#, needs a system hundreds of times more powerful. Their game fit on a floppy disk; mine wouldn’t fit on most hard drives from 1992. Wolf3D was written from scratch in C—and it’s still a masterclass in optimization.

So, what’s to come?

• I’d like to get the enemies from the remaining episodes in—especially the Officer and the Mutant. Once they’re added, you’ll be able to play through about 95% of the remaining episodes.
• I also need to implement saving and loading. I figured those could wait since there’s already a lives system, and the game plays more like an arcade title, so saving and loading weren’t strictly necessary.
• Mods are another focus. I’m 99% sure they’ll already work, since I’m using the original data structures—but I want to be sure. I’d love to support mods in the same way Doom does.
• I’d also love to add support for Spear of Destiny, but we’ll see.

I think that’s all. I want to thank John, John, Adrian, and Tom for creating a game that’s as inspiring today as it was 33 years ago, and I hope this project helps people see it from a new perspective—literally.

** If you—or anyone you know—would be interested in helping create a proper BJ sprite for this project, I’d be thrilled. It’s the one missing piece.