Doom , a first-person shooter game by id Software , was released in December 1993 and is considered one of the most significant and influential video games in history. Development began in November 1992, with programmers John Carmack and John Romero , artists Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud , and designer Tom Hall . Late in development, Hall was replaced by Sandy Petersen and programmer Dave Taylor joined. The music and sound effects were created by Bobby Prince .
230-432: The Doom concept was proposed in late 1992, after the release of Wolfenstein 3D and its sequel Spear of Destiny . John Carmack was working on an improved 3D game engine from those games, and the team wanted to have their next game take advantage of his designs. Several ideas were proposed, including a new game in their Commander Keen series, but John proposed a game about using technology to fight demons inspired by
460-520: A virtual reality arcade game. The 1994 Acorn Archimedes port was done in UK by programmer Eddie Edwards and published by Powerslave Software. By 1994, a port for the Sega Mega Drive was under development by Imagineer , who intended to release it by September, but it was cancelled due to technical problems. The 1994 Classic Mac OS version of the game had three releases: The First Encounter ,
690-512: A western frontier town. It featured a makeshift construction from cargo containers, broken filming equipment, and beer crates. The alien nest scene was one of the earliest filmed; Weaver's participation was delayed by three weeks because of production issues on her previous film Half Moon Street (1986), and the scene was one of the few not involving her. The Acton Power Station location was filled with decaying asbestos and three weeks were spent having it professionally cleaned, during which time
920-560: A 42-page film treatment for Alien II —written in three days—based on Giler and Hill's suggestion of "Ripley and soldiers". The studio had a mixed reaction, one executive calling it a constant stream of horror without character development. Negotiations to sell the sequel rights to Rambo 's developers Mario Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna failed and the project stalled again. By July 1984, Lawrence Gordon had replaced Wizan. With few projects in development, Gordon looked at sequels to Fox's existing properties and came across
1150-473: A Death Cam that would show a replay of the death of the final boss of an episode. The team also added " Horst-Wessel-Lied ", the anthem of the Nazi Party , to the opening screen. John Carmack, meanwhile, added in walls that moved when triggered to hide secret areas, a feature that Hall had been pushing for months but which Carmack had objected to for technical reasons. Hall also added in cheat codes, and wrote
1380-551: A High District Frankfurt Court case evaluating the Nazi imagery within Wolfenstein 3D determined that video games did not fall under this allowance. The court ruled that because video games drew younger audiences, "this could lead to them growing up with these symbols and insignias and thereby becoming used to them, which again could make them more vulnerable for ideological manipulation by national socialist ideas". Up through 2018,
1610-409: A back story for the game. The team did a month of playtesting in the final stage of the game's development. In the early morning of May 5, 1992, the first episode of the shareware game was completed and uploaded by Apogee and id to bulletin board systems . The other episodes were completed a few weeks later. The total development time had been around half a year, with a cost of around US$ 25,000 to cover
1840-406: A backstory for the character, in which he was trained on simulators. Henn found it hard to act afraid of the aliens (since she was fond of the actors in the suits) and imagined a dog was chasing her. Other cast members spent time with Henn between scenes, including Weaver and Paxton (who would color or craft things with her). Biehn said he and Paxton spent much of their free time together. Despite
2070-524: A battle with Adolf Hitler in a robotic suit equipped with four chain guns . The Nocturnal Missions form a prequel storyline dealing with German plans for chemical warfare . "A Dark Secret" deals with the initial pursuit through a weapons research facility of the scientist responsible for developing the weaponry. "Trail of the Madman" takes place in Castle Erlangen , where Blazkowicz's goal
2300-445: A body harness, was used to show more of the tail moving through Bishop, and Henriksen was levered upward as if he was being lifted by the tail. To complete the effect, a dummy of Bishop was constructed with a spring-loaded mechanism that forcibly separated his upper and lower body, as if the queen had ripped him in half. Once separated, Henriksen's upper body was below the set and a fake torso attached up to his shoulders. The android blood
2530-628: A book. After the multiplayer component was coded, the development team began playing four-player multiplayer games matches, which Romero termed " deathmatch "; he proposed adding a cooperative multiplayer mode as well. Cloud named the act of killing other players " fragging ". According to Romero, the deathmatch mode was inspired by fighting games . The team frequently played Street Fighter II , Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting during breaks, while developing elaborate rules involving trash-talk and smashing furniture or equipment. Romero later stated that "you could say that Japanese fighting games fueled
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#17327878976222760-559: A cameo appearance as Ripley's elderly daughter Amanda. The success of Alien (1979) led to immediate discussions of a sequel, but the production company Brandywine Productions struggled to convince 20th Century Fox to make it. Studio president Alan Ladd Jr. was supportive of the project but left Fox to found the Ladd Company , and his replacement, Norman Levy, was concerned about the cost of producing an Alien II . Brandywine co-founder David Giler said Levy believed
2990-515: A combination of a praying mantis and Tyrannosaurus rex influenced by the alien warrior design. Cameron said dinosaur influences were unintentional as he considered them "boring"; his goal was to extrapolate on Giger's warrior designs to create a large and powerful creature that was also swift and overtly female, describing it as "hideous and beautiful at the same time, like a black widow spider". The queen has elongated, large forelimbs, with smaller secondary ones underneath, but Winston redesigned
3220-589: A demonstration of the look he was trying for, and that photograph was the one used by Punchatz. Electronic Arts 's Deluxe Paint II was used in the creation of the sprites. Like they had for Wolfenstein 3D , id hired Bobby Prince to create the music and sound effects. Romero directed Prince to make the music in techno and metal styles; many of the songs were directly inspired by songs from popular metal bands such as Alice in Chains and Pantera . Prince felt that more ambient music would work better, especially given
3450-471: A derelict ship on the exomoon LV-426, now the site of a terraforming colony. After contact is lost with the colony, Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke and Colonial Marine Lieutenant Gorman ask Ripley to accompany them to investigate. Still traumatized by her alien encounter, she agrees on the condition that they exterminate the creatures. Ripley is introduced to the Colonial Marines on
3680-468: A designer, he was becoming seen in the company as the most important source of ideas; the company considered taking out key person insurance on Carmack but no one else. Hall spent the next few weeks reworking the Doom Bible to work with Carmack's technological ideas, while the rest of the team planned how they could implement them. His adjusted vision for the plot had the player character assigned to
3910-415: A feature from Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss , a role-playing game in development by Blue Sky Productions . Ultima Underworld was planned to display texture-mapped 3D graphics without Hovertank ' s restrictions of flat walls and simple lighting. Deciding that he could add texture mapping without sacrificing the engine's speed or greatly increasing the system requirements as Underworld
4140-465: A financial loss despite its earnings of over $ 100 million against a $ 9–$ 11 million budget. Brandywine's lawsuit was settled by early 1983, the result being that Fox would finance the development of Alien II , but was not required to distribute the film. Levy's eventual replacement, Joe Wizan , was receptive to a sequel, and although other executives remained noncommittal, Giler's development executive, Larry Wilson, began looking for
4370-474: A game about using technology to fight demons, inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons campaigns the team played, combining the styles of Evil Dead II and Aliens . The concept originally had a working title of "Green and Pissed", which was also the name of a concept Hall had proposed prior to Wolfenstein , but Carmack soon named the proposed game after a line in the film The Color of Money : "'What's in
4600-456: A hub system of maps, and monorails later appeared in later Doom or id games. Work continued, and a demo was shown to Computer Gaming World in early 1993, who raved about it. John Carmack and Romero, however, disliked Hall's military base-inspired level design. Romero especially felt that while John Carmack had originally asked for realistic levels as they would make the engine run quickly, that Hall's level designs were uninspiring. He felt that
4830-408: A knife, a pistol, and eight bullets. The player begins each episode with four lives and can gain more by finding extra-life tokens or by earning enough points. Points are scored by killing enemies or collecting treasures scattered throughout the levels. Points can also be scored by killing all enemies in a level, collecting all treasure, finding all secret areas, or completing a level under a par time;
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#17327878976225060-411: A large military base on an alien planet, Tei Tenga. At the start of the game, as the first of four player character soldiers, named Buddy, played cards with the others, scientists on the base accidentally open a portal to Hell, through which demons poured through, killing the other soldiers. He envisioned a six episode structure with a storyline involving traveling to Hell and back through the gates which
5290-406: A large sphere with antennae, but Cameron wanted it to be flatter; the full craft had to pass the camera, and a sphere would not work with the aspect ratio . Mead designed the craft as a commercial freighter carrying a military unit. Its exterior was designed with a row of loading doors, a crane, and large gun fixtures to defend against threats. Mirrors were used as a cost-cutting measure to increase
5520-400: A laser cutting Ripley free from her hypersleep chamber. According to Henriksen, Paxton was unaware he would be involved in the knife-trick scene until it was filmed; Henriksen nicked Paxton's finger during the reshoot. Some of the early establishing scenes were filmed near the end of principal photography to capture the bond that had developed between cast and characters. Some improvisation
5750-439: A learning experience. They were essential for moving larger parts of the queen puppet, including the head, and a foot pedal in the body could hydraulically move the tail up and down. Shane Mahan took several weeks to sculpt the head by sight, based on a maquette ; computer technology to scale up the model's design did not yet exist. Two heads were built: a lightweight, fragile one; and another that could survive some damage. Each
5980-445: A low-budget, independent horror film, and the studio was reluctant to grant his request. His credibility was elevated following the surprise financial and critical success of The Terminator in late 1984, and Gordon gave him the job. Cameron's associates tried to persuade him to reject the offer, believing anything good about the film would be attributed to Alien director Ridley Scott and anything negative to Cameron. Scott said he
6210-433: A method of publishing, leading to a wave of other shareware first-person shooters. The game's high revenue compared to prior, smaller 2D titles led Apogee as well as others in the shareware games industry to move towards larger, 3D titles built by larger development teams. During development, id approached Sierra Entertainment , then one of the biggest companies in the industry and employer of several of their idols, with
6440-419: A month, Wolfenstein 3D averaged $ 200,000 per month for the first year and a half. The game sold 250,000 copies by 1995 and grossed $ 2.5 million in revenue. Wolfenstein 3D won the 1992 Best Arcade game award from Compute! , the 1992 Most Innovative Game and Best Action Game awards from VideoGames & Computer Entertainment , the 1992 Reader's Choice — Action/Arcade Game award from Game Bytes ,
6670-416: A power-loader suit. Because of his low expectations for The Terminator , Cameron had spent much of his free time during its production developing and trying out ideas for Alien II . This script was better received by Fox executives and Gordon, but Cameron also wanted to direct the project. Cameron was a relatively new director, his only directing credit being Piranha II: The Spawning (1982),
6900-575: A problem. He began to spend less time working in the office, and in response John Carmack proposed that he be fired from id. Romero initially resisted, as it would mean that Hall would not receive any proceeds, but in July he and the other founders of id fired Hall, who went to work for Apogee. Hall was replaced in September, ten weeks before Doom was released, by game designer Sandy Petersen , despite misgivings over his relatively high age of 37 compared to
7130-425: A racing game, before working on an enhanced version of the Wolfenstein engine to be licensed to Raven Software for their game ShadowCaster . For this engine, he developed several enhancements to the Wolfenstein engine, including sloped floors, textures on the floors and ceilings in addition to the walls, and fading visibility over a distance. The resulting engine was much slower than the Wolfenstein one, but
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7360-567: A rudimentary 3D game engine that used animated 2D sprites for enemies. Id Software then used the engine for the April 1991 Softdisk game Hovertank 3D , in which the player drives a tank through a plane of colored walls and shoots nuclear monsters. In the fall of 1991, after the team—sans Wilbur—had relocated to Madison, Wisconsin , and he had largely finished the engine work for Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy , Carmack decided to implement
7590-411: A scriptwriter by mid-1983. Wilson came across the script for the in-development science fiction film, The Terminator (1984), written by James Cameron . With Cameron's collaborative scriptwriting efforts alongside Sylvester Stallone on Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Wilson was convinced to show the script for The Terminator to Giler, Hill, and Carroll. In November 1983, Cameron submitted
7820-443: A sequel would be a "disaster". Fox executives believed Alien ' s success was a fluke, and that it had not generated enough profit or audience interest to warrant a sequel. Box-office returns for horror films were also declining. Progress was further slowed when Giler and Brandywine co-founders Walter Hill and Gordon Carroll sued Fox for unpaid profits from Alien . Using Hollywood accounting methods, Fox had declared Alien
8050-597: A sequel. On an approximately $ 18.5 million budget, Aliens began principal photography in September 1985 and concluded in January 1986. The film's development was tumultuous and rife with conflicts between Cameron and the British crew at Pinewood Studios . The difficult shoot affected the composer, James Horner , who was given little time to record the music. Aliens was released on July 18, 1986, to critical acclaim. Reviewers praised its action, but some criticized
8280-554: A shareware release; The Second Encounter , with 30 exclusive levels; and The Third Encounter , with all 60 levels from the DOS version. An Atari Lynx version of the game was offered earlier by Atari for id, but work on the port was never started, save for a few images. A 3DO version was released in October 1995. The Apple IIGS port was started in Fall 1994 by Vitesse with Heineman as
8510-437: A single plane , producing Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3-D as prototypes. After a design session prompted the company to shift from the family-friendly Keen to a more violent theme, programmer John Romero suggested remaking the 1981 stealth shooter Castle Wolfenstein as a fast-paced action game. He and designer Tom Hall designed the game, built on Carmack's engine, to be fast and violent, unlike other computer games on
8740-534: A single game. In 1993 Apogee also published the Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades pack, which included 815 fan-made levels called "WolfMaster", along with a map editor titled "MapEdit" and a random level generator named "Wolf Creator". A retail Wolfenstein episode double the length of the Apogee episodes, Spear of Destiny , was released through FormGen on September 18, 1992. FormGen later published two mission packs titled "Return to Danger" and "Ultimate Challenge", each
8970-416: A spring that caused it to snap back and forth. Winston added arms to the chestburster alien form (since the adult form had arms), explaining how it could drag itself out of a host's chest. Two chestburster puppets were used: a reinforced one, and an articulated one for movement. A puppeteer punched the former through a fabricated latex-foam chest; the scene took several takes to film because it could not pierce
9200-410: A story at all: "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie; it's expected to be there, but it's not that important." Rather than a deep story, John Carmack wanted to focus on the technological innovations, dropping the levels and episodes of Wolfenstein in favor of a fast, continuous world. Hall disliked the idea, but Romero sided with Carmack. Although John Carmack was the lead programmer rather than
9430-420: A third Keen trilogy, recognized that Carmack's programming focus had shifted from the 2D side-scrolling platform game series to 3D action games. After an initial proposal by Hall of a sci-fi project, "It's Green and Pissed", Romero suggested a 3D remake of the 1981 Castle Wolfenstein . The team was interested in the idea, as Romero, Hall, and John Carmack all had fond memories of the original title and felt
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9660-588: A wide release in the United States (U.S.) and Canada on July 18, 1986. During its opening weekend, the film earned $ 10.1 million from 1,437 theaters—an average of $ 6,995 per theater. It was the weekend's number-one film, ahead of the martial-arts drama The Karate Kid Part II ($ 5.6 million in its fifth weekend) and the black comedy Ruthless People ($ 4.5 million in its fourth weekend). Based on its opening-five-day total ($ 13.4 million), Aliens exceeded Fox's expectations and
9890-455: Is a first-person shooter presented with rudimentary 3D graphics . The game is broken up into levels , each of which is a flat plane divided into areas and rooms by a grid-based pattern of walls and doors, all of equal height. Each level is themed after Nazi bunkers and buildings. To finish a level, the player must traverse through the area to reach an elevator. Levels—ten in the original episodes—are grouped together into named episodes, with
10120-410: Is divided into two sets of three episodes: "Escape from Castle Wolfenstein", "Operation: Eisenfaust", and "Die, Führer, Die!" serve as the primary trilogy, with a second trilogy titled The Nocturnal Missions including "A Dark Secret", "Trail of the Madman", and "Confrontation". The protagonist is William "B.J." Blazkowicz , an American spy of Polish descent , and the game follows his efforts to destroy
10350-477: Is suddenly cut, and aliens attack through the ceiling. In the ensuing firefight, the aliens kill Burke, subdue Hudson, and injure Hicks; the cornered Gorman and Vasquez sacrifice themselves to avoid capture. Newt is separated from Ripley and taken by the creatures. Ripley brings Hicks to Bishop in the second dropship, but she refuses to abandon Newt and arms herself before descending into the processing station hive alone to rescue her. During their escape, they encounter
10580-594: Is the sequel to the 1979 science fiction horror film Alien , and the second film in the Alien franchise . Set in the far future, it stars Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley , the sole survivor of an alien attack on her ship. When communications are lost with a human colony on the moon where her crew first encountered the alien creatures, Ripley agrees to return to the site with a unit of Colonial Marines to investigate. Michael Biehn , Paul Reiser , Lance Henriksen , and Carrie Henn are featured in supporting roles. Despite
10810-581: Is to find the maps and plans for the chemical war. The story ends in "Confrontation", which is set in Castle Offenbach as he confronts the Nazi general behind the chemical warfare initiative. An additional episode, titled Spear of Destiny , was released as a retail game by FormGen . It follows Blazkowicz on a different prequel mission, trying to recapture the Spear of Destiny from the Nazis after it
11040-424: The Dungeons & Dragons campaigns the team played. The initial months of development were spent building prototypes, while Hall created the Doom Bible , a design document for his vision of the game and its story; after id released a grandiose press release touting features that the team had not yet begun working on, the Doom Bible was rejected in favor of a plotless game with no design document at all. Over
11270-532: The Alien II treatment; he said he was surprised that no one had pursued it. Production of The Terminator was delayed for nine months because Arnold Schwarzenegger was contractually obligated to film Conan the Destroyer (1984). Cameron used the time to develop his treatment, expanding it to ninety pages. He drew ideas from "Mother", one of his story concepts about an alien on a space station involving
11500-526: The Doom world was still a variation on a flat plane, in that two traversable areas could not be on top of each other, it could have walls and floors at any angle or height, allowing greater level design variety. The fading visibility in ShadowCaster was improved by adjusting the color palette by distance, darkening far surfaces and creating a grimmer, more realistic appearance. This concept was also used for
11730-550: The Game Boy Advance (2002), Xbox Live Arcade , and PlayStation Network . These ports' sound, graphics, and levels sometimes differ from the original. Many of the ports include only the Apogee episodes, but the iOS port includes Spear of Destiny , and a 2007 Steam release for PC, macOS, and Linux includes all of the FormGen episodes. Bethesda Softworks , whose parent company bought id Software in 2009, celebrated
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#173278789762211960-453: The highest-grossing films of 1986 worldwide. Aliens is now considered among the greatest films of the 1980s , and among the best science fiction, action, and sequel films ever made, arguably equal to or better than Alien . It is credited with expanding the franchise's scope with additions to the series' backstory and factions such as the Colonial Marines. It inspired a variety of merchandise, including video games, comic books and toys. It
12190-571: The 1993 Best Action/Arcade Game, Best Entertainment Software, and People's Choice awards at the Shareware Industry Awards , the 1993 Best Action Game award from Computer Gaming World , and a Codie award from the Software Publishers Association for Best Action/Arcade Game. It was the first shareware title to win a Codie, and id (with six employees) became the smallest company to ever receive
12420-399: The 20th anniversary of Wolfenstein 3D ' s release by producing a free-to-play browser-based version of the game in 2012, though the website was removed a few years later. Id had no clear expectations for Wolfenstein ' s commercial reception, but hoped that it would make around US$ 60,000 in its first month; the first royalty check from Apogee was instead for US$ 100,000. The game
12650-495: The British Special Air Service (SAS). Vietnam War veteran Al Matthews (Apone) helped to train the actors, teaching them how to handle firearms properly because their blanks were still hazardous. Before he left, Remar accidentally shot a hole through the set of Frank Oz 's Little Shop of Horrors on an adjacent stage. The training was intended to help the marine cast develop camaraderie and treat
12880-770: The Deep developed the three-part video game Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons , the first game in the Commander Keen series. The group, who worked at Softdisk in Shreveport, Louisiana , developing games for the Gamer's Edge video game subscription service and disk magazine , was composed of programmers John Romero and John Carmack , designer Tom Hall , artist Adrian Carmack , and manager Jay Wilbur. After
13110-643: The Germany software ratings board, the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) refused to rate any game that included inappropriate symbols and imagery, effectively banning the game for sale within the country. By May 2018, a new court ruling was made in response to a parody web browser game, in which the Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed there were no breaches of the law in the game's content. Following this,
13340-482: The Marines, killing or capturing many of them. When the inexperienced Gorman panics, Ripley assumes command, takes control of their armored personnel carrier , and rams the nest to rescue Corporal Dwayne Hicks and Privates Hudson and Vasquez. Hicks orders the dropship to recover the survivors, but a stowaway alien kills the pilots, causing the dropship to crash into the station. Almost out of ammunition and resources,
13570-616: The Nazi regime. In "Escape", Blazkowicz has been captured while trying to find the plans for Operation Eisenfaust (Iron Fist) and imprisoned in Castle Wolfenstein, from which he must escape. "Operation: Eisenfaust" follows his discovery and thwarting of the Nazi plan to create an army of undead mutants in Castle Hollehammer, while in "Die, Führer, Die!" he infiltrates a bunker under the Reichstag , culminating in
13800-469: The Pinewood crew walked out in the middle of the day. Cameron called Fox for advice and was determined to move the production out of England until Hurd convinced him otherwise. The situation was tumultuous because the number of films simultaneously in production meant the crew could not be easily replaced. Cameron and Hurd gathered the crew to discuss their grievances; Cameron explained the importance of
14030-534: The Super NES version a good conversion that retained the good music, huge levels, and overall fun of the original game and dismissed the censoring in the version as inconsequential. In 1995, Total! ranked the game 84th on their "Top 100 SNES Games" list. Electronic Gaming Monthly rated the Jaguar version similarly to the Super NES version, commenting that the graphics and audio were superior to other versions of
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#173278789762214260-612: The Triad: Wolfenstein 3D Part II , designed by Tom Hall using the Wolfenstein 3D engine, but during development the game was changed into a stand-alone title with an enhanced engine, Rise of the Triad . Additionally, Softdisk produced Catacomb Abyss using the prototype Wolfenstein 3D engine from Catacomb 3-D as part of the Catacomb Adventure Series trilogy of sequels. Although Wolfenstein 3D
14490-428: The actors' heads, and carefully blended into the larger set. After Remar was replaced, Cameron wanted to reshoot the scene, but the miniature had been destroyed; he was able to edit the scene to conceal Remar. The marines' smart guns weighed 65 to 70 pounds (29 to 32 kg), and were constructed from German MG 42 machine guns attached to a steadicam and augmented with motorcycle parts. Since getting in and out of
14720-487: The alien hive brightly (counter to Cameron's request), and was eventually replaced with Adrian Biddle . First assistant director Derek Cracknell also ignored Cameron's requests. Gale described the situation: "[Cameron] would ask him to set up a shot one way and [Cracknell] would say, 'Oh no no no, I know what you want,' ... Then he'd do it wrong and the whole set would have to be broken down." The situation deteriorated until Cameron and Hurd fired Cracknell and
14950-404: The alien hive was fabricated in clay spawning hundreds of fiberglass and vacuum-formed castings that were installed at the station over a further three weeks. Cameron wanted to vertically pan as the marines entered the hive, but disguising the area above the marines would be time-intensive. A hanging miniature, about 12-foot (3.7 m) square, was made from plywood and styrofoam, hung just above
15180-504: The alien queen surrounded by dozens of eggs, and when one begins to open, Ripley uses her weapons to destroy them all and the queen's ovipositor . Pursued by the enraged queen, Ripley and Newt join Bishop and Hicks on the dropship and escape moments before the station explodes, consuming the colony in a nuclear blast. Aboard the Sulaco , the group is ambushed by the queen, who stowed away in
15410-525: The artists sculpted models of some of the enemies out of clay, and took pictures of them in stop motion from five to eight different angles so that they could be rotated realistically in-game; the images were then digitized and converted to 2D characters with a program written by John Carmack. Adrian Carmack made clay models for the player character, the Cyberdemon and the Baron of Hell, before deciding that
15640-545: The award. Wolfenstein 3D was noted as one of the top games of the year at the 1993 Game Developers Conference . Wolfenstein 3D was well received by reviewers upon its release. Chris Lombardi of Computer Gaming World praised the "sparse [but] gorgeous", "frighteningly realistic", and "extremely violent" graphics, as well as the immersive sound and music. Noting the violence, he warned "those sensitive to such things to stay home". Lombardi concluded that Wolfenstein 3D , alongside Ultima Underworld released two months prior,
15870-567: The ban was reversed by the German government in August, having determined that the Wolfenstein 3D decision was outdated since the USK now included age ratings alongside other content warnings, and that video games should be considered as art under the social adequacy allowance. In November 2019, Wolfenstein 3D was formally struck from the "Index", the list of games banned from sale in Germany. After
16100-494: The best arcade games ever created for PC", highly praised the graphics and sound, and said that the "fast-paced action" could keep players enthralled for weeks if they were not concerned about the violence. Sandy Petersen , in the first "Eye of the Monitor" column, claimed that "there is nothing else quite like Wolfenstein " and that it had "evolved almost beyond recognition" from the original 1981 game. He enthusiastically praised
16330-512: The bosses and the title screen. Carmack programmed "the core" of the game's engine in a month; he added a few features to the Wolfenstein 3D engine from Catacomb 3-D , including support for doors and decorative non-wall objects, but primarily focused on making the game run smoother and faster with higher-resolution graphics. The game was programmed chiefly in ANSI C , with its scaling and ray casting routines written in assembly . The graphics for
16560-408: The boxy, flat levels were too similar to Wolfenstein ' s design, and did not show off everything the engine could do. He began to create his own, more abstract levels, beginning with a curving staircase into a large open area in what became the second level of the final game, which the rest of the team felt was much better. Hall was upset with the reception to his designs and how little impact he
16790-518: The case?' / 'In here? Doom.'" The team agreed to pursue the Doom concept, and development began in November 1992. The initial development team was composed of five people: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, artists Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud , and designer Tom Hall. They moved offices to a dark office building, which they named "Suite 666", and drew inspiration from the noises coming from
17020-646: The cast; Fox did not want Weaver to return because they expected her to demand a high salary. Cameron and Hurd were insistent Weaver return as the solo star; Fox refused, saying they would damage the studio's negotiating power with Weaver's agent. Cameron and Hurd again left the project, marrying and going on a honeymoon. When they returned, the Aliens project was ready to move forward. Cameron credited Gordon with Aliens ' being greenlit . Weaver rejected initial offers to return and despite being interested after reading Cameron's script, she had to be convinced Aliens
17250-489: The character would annoy audiences until he realized he was comic relief for the tense scenes. Henriksen was concerned about portraying Bishop after other recent successful portrayals of android characters, such as Ian Holm in Alien and Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner (1982). He played Bishop as an innocent child who pities the short-lived humans. He suggested wearing distinctive contact lenses to convey when Bishop
17480-454: The clothing. A deleted scene in Alien established a life cycle for the alien creatures in which a lifeform would be cocooned and transformed into an egg that birthed a facehugger. Inspired by a beehive -like hierarchy, Cameron believed the vast field of eggs on the derelict alien craft would come from a much larger creature, the queen, with the other alien creatures serving as her drones. Winston described Cameron's initial queen design as
17710-437: The colonists beneath the fusion-powered atmosphere processing station and heads to their location, descending into corridors covered in alien secretions. At the station's center, the Marines find opened eggs and dead facehuggers alongside the cocooned colonists, now serving as incubators for the creatures' offspring. The Marines kill an infant alien after it bursts from a colonist's chest, rousing several adult aliens who ambush
17940-403: The colony, apart from the main entrance used by the marines, was constructed in scale miniature form. The set was about 80-foot (24 m) long to accommodate the sixth-scale APC replica. The set was so large it had to be laid out diagonally across the stage, and forced perspective was used to add in buildings that would otherwise not fit. Cobb used a stylized design for the colony, resembling
18170-514: The colony. He volunteers to travel to the colony transmitter and remotely pilot the Sulaco 's remaining dropship to the surface. After falling asleep in the medical laboratory, Ripley and Newt awaken to find themselves trapped with the two released facehuggers. Ripley triggers a fire alarm to alert the Marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. She accuses Burke of releasing the facehuggers to implant her and Newt with alien embryos, allowing him to smuggle them through Earth's quarantine. The power
18400-576: The company estimated that one million shareware copies were distributed worldwide. Over 20 percent of its sales were from outside of the US, despite the lack of any marketing or non-English description and despite the game being banned from sale in Germany due to its inclusion of Nazi symbols by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons in 1994, and again in 1997 for Spear of Destiny . Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu reviewed
18630-436: The company out to Mesquite, Texas , near where Apogee was located. Scott Miller of Apogee was pleased to have his star developers nearby, and agreed to not only increase their royalty rate to 50 percent, but have Apogee create their next game for Softdisk, ScubaVenture , so that id could focus on Wolfenstein . The game was intended to be released using Apogee's shareware model of splitting it into three episodes and releasing
18860-404: The contractor hired for the port had made no progress. Taylor, along with programming other features, added cheat codes ; some, such as "idspispopd", were based on ideas their fans had come up with while eagerly awaiting the game that the team found amusing. By late 1993, Doom was nearing completion and player anticipation was high, spurred on by a leaked press demo. John Carmack began to work on
19090-402: The controls as overly sensitive. He concluded that the game, then over three years old, "still packs a punch as a first-person shooter". Wolfenstein 3D won GamePro ' s Best 3DO Game of 1995 award, beating the acclaimed The Need for Speed and D . Maximum , on the other hand, while stating that the 3DO port was better than the original and as good as the Jaguar version, felt that it
19320-572: The creative impulse to create deathmatch in our shooters". Doom was programmed largely in the ANSI C language, with a few elements in assembly language , on NeXT computers running the NeXTSTEP operating system. The data, including level designs and graphics files, is stored in WAD files, short for "Where's All the Data?". This allows for any part of the design to be changed without needing to adjust
19550-425: The crew. The situation was exacerbated by Cameron's hands-on approach, often modifying setups such as lighting himself to fit his vision without involving the unionized crew. The crew was dismissive of Cameron for his relative inexperience, thinking he had not done enough to earn such a prominent position, and that Hurd had her job only because she was his partner. Cinematographer Dick Bush insisted on lighting
19780-471: The deal rather than solely accepting payment in Sierra stock as a measure of Williams's seriousness. Williams refused, which id interpreted to mean that Williams did not truly recognize the potential of Wolfenstein 3D and the company, and the deal fell through, causing id to decide to remain an independent company for the foreseeable future. By the end of 1993 just before the release of their next game, Doom ,
20010-477: The demons used, and the destruction of the planet, for which the players would be sent to jail. Buddy was named after Hall's character in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign run by John Carmack that had featured a demonic invasion. Hall was forced to rework the Doom Bible again in December, however, after John Carmack and the rest of the team had decided that they were unable to create a single, seamless world with
20240-416: The dentist's office next door. They also cut ties with Apogee Software , who had given them the initial advance money for creating their first game, Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons , and through which they had published the shareware versions of their games to date. While they had a good personal relationship with owner Scott Miller , they felt that they were outgrowing the publisher. Cloud, who
20470-414: The difficulties, Fox was satisfied with the daily footage , and principal photography concluded in January 1986, on time and on budget. Post-production began in late April 1986. Several scenes were removed from Aliens ' theatrical release, including Ripley learning about her daughter's death and a cocooned Burke begging her for death. Fox and Hurd suggested removing a long opening scene detailing
20700-596: The dropship's landing gear. The queen tears Bishop in half and advances on Newt, but Ripley fights the creature with an exosuit cargo loader and expels it through an airlock into space while the damaged Bishop keeps Newt safe. Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop then enter hypersleep for their return trip to Earth. The Colonial Marine cast includes privates Vasquez ( Jenette Goldstein ), Drake ( Mark Rolston ), Spunkmeyer ( Daniel Kash ), Crowe ( Tip Tipping ), and Wierzbowski ( Trevor Steedman ), and corporals Dietrich (Cynthia Dale Scott) and Ferro ( Colette Hiller ). In addition to
20930-428: The engine code. Carmack had been impressed by the modifications made by fans of Wolfenstein 3D , and wanted to support that with an easily swappable file structure, and released the map editor online. Romero and Carmack spent the early stage of development focusing on engine features instead of the game concept. Wolfenstein had required levels to be a flat plane, with walls at the same height and at right angles; while
21160-443: The film, there were only 12 alien suits: simple black leotards covered in molded foam were used for faster-moving shots, and detailed models with articulated upper bodies and mouths for closeups. When the aliens were shot and destroyed, puppets were hung up and detonated. The aliens' acidic blood was a combination of titanium tetrachloride , cyclohexylamine , acetic acid and yellow dye. The facehugger design remained faithful to
21390-627: The film. Unused portions of Horner's Aliens score were repurposed for Die Hard (1988). Development of the special effects for Aliens began in May 1985, with John Richardson supervising a 40-person team at Stan Winston Studio . L.A. Effects Group created miniatures and optical effects. Cameron lacked contacts at the more established special effects studios and avoided using them because he believed his hands-on approach would not be welcomed. He also did not rehire many Alien crew members because he did not want to be restricted by their loyalties to
21620-490: The film. The only mandate was that they be laceless so one could easily slide off of Weaver's foot during the finale. H. R. Giger , who designed the alien creature, was reportedly disappointed that he could not be involved in Aliens . According to Hurd, Giger was contractually obligated to Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) and Fox was not allowed to negotiate with him. Giger was replaced by special-effects creator Stan Winston . Cameron also contributed to designs but
21850-502: The final level focusing on a boss fight with a particularly difficult enemy. While traversing the levels, the player must fight Nazi guards and soldiers, dogs, and other enemies while managing supplies of ammunition and health . The player can find weapons and ammunition placed in the levels or can collect them from dead enemies; weapons include a knife, a pistol, a submachine gun, and a rapid-fire chain gun . The player can also find keys that allow them to pass through locked doors. While
22080-436: The first film. Those who returned were often given a higher status (such as Crispian Sallis , Alien focus puller and Aliens set decorator). Cameron had enjoyed returning artist Ron Cobb 's work on Alien , and conceptual artist Syd Mead was recruited because Cameron was a fan of his work on films such as 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984). Mead designed the Sulaco , the marines' spaceship. He conceived it as
22310-423: The first for free, with ten levels per episode. The level maps were designed in 2D using a custom-made program called Tile Editor (TEd), which had been used for the entire Keen series as well as several other games. Upon finding out that the team was able to create a level in a single day using the program, Miller convinced them to instead develop six episodes, which could be sold in different-sized packs. Around
22540-429: The first half of 1993, Carmack worked on improving the graphics engine. After Romero's level designs started to cause engine problems, he researched and began to use binary space partitioning to quickly select the portion of a level that the player could see at any given time. In March 1993, the team stopped work on Doom to spend three weeks building a Super Nintendo Entertainment System port of Wolfenstein 3D , after
22770-481: The first network that they planned to upload the game to—the University of Wisconsin–Parkside FTP network—that even after the network administrator increased the number of connections while on the phone with Wilbur, id was unable to connect, forcing them to kick all other users off to allow id to upload the game. When the upload finished thirty minutes later, 10,000 people attempted to download it at once, crashing
23000-413: The floor that activated a gear inside it, causing the appendages to move as it was pulled along. Several rubber facehuggers were made to be thrown or blown up. Manipulating the facehugger inside a water tank was also difficult as the tank had to be watertight, limiting the use of control cables. A method was developed that required fewer cables to move the facehugger around the tank; the tail was fitted with
23230-486: The game five months after release, describing it as: "View from the character's point of view: It's a real shooter. The game is easy to play, and it runs well ... This is the only game of its type." The Apogee episodes' sales vastly exceeded the shareware game sales record set by the developer's earlier Commander Keen series and provided id with a much higher profit margin than the sales of its retail counterpart; where Commander Keen games were bringing Apogee around $ 10,000
23460-523: The game to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) for a US$ 100,000 advance. The team was busy with the development of Doom , plus their work on Spear of Destiny , and ignored the project for seven or eight months, finally hiring Rebecca Heineman to do the work. She made no progress on the port, however, and the id team members instead spent three weeks frantically learning how to make SNES games and creating
23690-507: The game were planned to be in 16 color EGA , but were changed to 256 color VGA four months before release, which also enabled the game to have higher resolutions. Romero in turn worked on building a game with the engine, removing elements of the initial design, like looting enemy bodies, that he felt interrupted the flow of fast gameplay. The sprites for the enemies and objects were hand drawn at eight different angles by Adrian Carmack using Electronic Arts 's Deluxe Paint II . Initially
23920-423: The game's levels to find an elevator to the next level or kill a final boss , fighting Nazi soldiers, dogs, and other enemies with a knife and a variety of guns. Wolfenstein 3D was the second major independent release by id Software, after the Commander Keen series of episodes. In mid-1991, programmer John Carmack experimented with making a fast 3D game engine by restricting the gameplay and viewpoint to
24150-601: The game's release, id Software licensed the engine to other developers, like the Commander Keen engine before it, as part of a series of engine licensing deals that id has made throughout its history; games using the Wolfenstein 3D engine or derivatives of it include Blake Stone , the Capstone Software games Corridor 7 and Operation Body Count , as well as Super 3D Noah's Ark . Apogee intended to produce an expansion pack in 1993 titled Rise of
24380-411: The game, but criticizing the faster movement of the player character as making it less fun to play. A GamePro review of the Jaguar port was highly complimentary, saying Wolfenstein 3D "set a new standard for PC gaming" and that the Jaguar version was the best to date, and better than the original due to its increased graphics and sound capabilities. A Next Generation review of the Jaguar version
24610-449: The gameplay and aesthetics. Romero wanted the goal to be "to mow down Nazis", with the suspense of storming a Nazi bunker full of SS soldiers and Hitler himself, as well as dogs, blood "like you never see in games", and straightforward, lethal weapons. He also composed the general storyline for the game. Hall designed the levels while also adding collectible objects in the form of treasure and food for health items. He also did sketches for
24840-429: The gameplay would be fast and simple, for Romero believed that due to the novelty of a 3D game and control scheme, players would not be receptive to more complicated, slow gameplay. He felt the game would occupy a unique place in the industry, which was then dominated by slower simulation and strategy games. Adrian and John Carmack were excited by the prospect, while Hall felt that it was enjoyable enough, and that since he
25070-563: The genre's popularity. Immediately following its release, most of the team began work on a set of new Wolfenstein episodes, Spear of Destiny . As the episodes used the same game engine as the original game, id co-founder and lead programmer John Carmack instead focused on technology research for the company's next game, just as he had experimented with creating a 3D game engine prior to the development of Wolfenstein 3D . Between May and Spear of Destiny ' s release in September 1992, he created several experimental engines, including one for
25300-480: The genre, as well as showcasing the viability of the shareware publishing model at the time. FormGen developed an additional two episodes for the game, while Apogee released a pack of over 800 fan-created levels. Id Software never returned to the series, but did license the engine to numerous other titles before releasing the source code for free in 1995, and multiple other games in the Wolfenstein series have been developed by other companies since 2001. Wolfenstein 3D
25530-530: The genre. More modern reviews include one for the Xbox 360 port in 2009 by Ryan McCaffrey of Official Xbox Magazine , who heavily criticized it for non-existent enemy AI and bad level design and found it notably inferior to Doom , and one that same year by Daemon Hatfield of IGN , who gave the PlayStation Network release of the game a warm reception, saying that while it was "dated and flawed", it
25760-478: The goal of seeing if they could make a deal with the company. After viewing Commander Keen and an early version of Wolfenstein 3D , CEO Ken Williams offered to buy id Software for US$ 2.5 million and turn it into an in-house development studio. The team was excited by the deal, but had felt there was a large culture clash between the two companies during their visit to Sierra and were hesitant to accept; Romero proposed asking for US$ 100,000 in cash up front as part of
25990-591: The guns sound exciting. Prince took some inspiration from his days as a platoon soldier in the US Army. With the aid of a 16-bit sampler keyboard and cassette recorder, he composed realistic sounds from a shooting range in addition to Foley sounds. The development team along with Scott Miller did the voicing for the enemies. Some of the enemy shouts were based on the original Castle Wolfenstein game. As development continued, id Software hired their former Softdisk liaison Kevin Cloud as an assistant artist, and moved
26220-440: The hardware limitations of the time on what sounds he could produce, and produced numerous tracks in both styles in the hopes of convincing Romero; Romero, however, still liked the metal tracks and added both styles. Prince did not make music for specific levels; most of the music was composed before the levels they were eventually assigned to were completed. Instead, Romero assigned each track to each level late in development. Unlike
26450-477: The hardware limitations of the time, which contradicted much of the new document. At the start of 1993, id put out a press release by Hall, touting Buddy's story about fighting off demons while "knee-deep in the dead", trying to eliminate the demons and find out what caused them to appear. The press release proclaimed the new game features that John Carmack had created, as well as other features, including multiplayer gaming features, that had not yet been started on by
26680-400: The heat generated in the barrel. A cast was made of Henn's upper body and her stunt double's legs to construct a lightweight dummy for Weaver to hold when carrying a gun; Henn's weight plus a gun would have been too heavy. Goldstein had never handled a gun, and held her weapon incorrectly in closeups, so Hurd stood in for her. The flamethrowers were functional. The art department had covered
26910-421: The horror of Alien with the action of The Terminator . According to Hill, Cameron said if the first film could be compared to a haunted attraction , Aliens should be like a roller coaster . Cameron believed in having a strong female heroine to distinguish his films from typical Hollywood action fare and wrote the script with a picture of Weaver on his desk. He referred to The Terminator , and how he removed
27140-485: The idea of doing a retail Wolfenstein project to FormGen , which had published id's December 1991 Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter , overcoming the publisher's concerns over Wolfenstein ' s proposed content. This put id in the unique position of selling simultaneously to the shareware and retail markets. The project officially began on December 15, 1991. Romero and Hall designed
27370-420: The idea. Additionally, after completing an episode the player is given a three-letter code in addition to their total score and time. This code was intended to be a verification code as part of a high-score contest, but the sudden prevalence of editor programs resulted in the cancellation of the contest without ever being formally announced. Imagineer bought the rights for the game, and commissioned id to port
27600-516: The initial developer, with later graphics assistance by Ninjaforce Entertainment, but due to licensing problems with id it was not released until February 1998. An open source iOS port programmed by John Carmack himself was released in 2009. An unofficial port for the Game Boy Color was made in 2016. An Android port titled Wolfenstein 3D Touch (later renamed ECWolf ) was released and published by Beloko Games. Other releases include
27830-405: The intensity of some scenes. Weaver's performance garnered consistent praise along with those of Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein . The film received several awards and nominations, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Weaver at a time when the science-fiction genre was generally overlooked. It earned $ 131.1–183.3 million during its theatrical run, making it one of
28060-404: The legs by adding a double joint to make it more inhuman. Cameron and Winston worked on several concepts to vivify the queen, including large puppets, miniatures, and costumes with several people inside. A frame was built large enough to hold two people, covered in black polythene bags, and hung on a crane. The prototype was a success, and Cameron wrote the alien-queen scene. The final alien queen
28290-407: The level he had played it "a thousand times". The first level, made by Romero, was the last created, intended to show off the new elements of the engine. The ending screen of each level, like in Wolfenstein 3D , displays a "par time" for the level, as set by Romero. In late 1993, a month before release, John Carmack began to add multiplayer to the game, first teaching himself computer networking from
28520-415: The levels are presented in a 3D perspective, the enemies and objects are instead 2D sprites presented from several set viewing angles, a technique sometimes referred to as 2.5D graphics. The player's health is represented by a percentage starting at 100, which is diminished when they are shot or attacked by enemies. If the player's health falls to zero, they lose one life and start the level over with
28750-624: The lighting system: rather than calculating how light traveled from light sources to surfaces using ray tracing , the engine calculates the "light level" of a section of a level, which can be as small as a single stair step, based on its distance from light sources. It then darkens the color palette of that section's surface textures accordingly. Romero used the map editing tool he developed to build grandiose areas with these new possibilities, and came up with new ways to use Carmack's lighting engine such as strobe lights. He also programmed engine features such as switches and movable stairs and platforms. In
28980-613: The lives of the colonists, Newt's family discovering the derelict alien ship, and her father being attacked by a facehugger, because it ruined the pacing and sense of mystery. Two scenes with James Remar as Hicks (shown from the back) were used in the film. Ray Lovejoy was responsible for editing the final two hours, 17 minutes cut of Aliens . Fox wanted the film to be under two hours so it could be shown more times per day in theaters, increasing its revenue potential. Fox production president Scott Rudin flew to England to ask Cameron and Hurd if they could cut another 12 minutes, but Cameron
29210-471: The lower cost of filming in England. Filming was difficult as Cameron, a Canadian, had little familiarity with British film-industry traditions such as tea breaks , which interrupted production for up to an hour each weekday, and was frustrated at losing hours of filming every week. In his book The Making of Aliens , J. W. Rinzler described Cameron as aggressive and certain of what he wanted, which irked
29440-653: The main cast, Aliens features Paul Maxwell as Van Leuwen (a member of the board reviewing Ripley's competence) and Barbara Coles as the cocooned colonist killed when an alien bursts from her chest. Carl Toop and Eddie Powell portray alien warriors. Some scenes removed from Aliens ' s theatrical version were restored in subsequent releases. Additional credits for these scenes include Newt's father, Russ Jorden ( Jay Benedict ), and her mother Anne (Holly de Jong). Henn's brother, Christopher, plays her brother Timmy, Mac McDonald portrays colony administrator Al Simpson, and Weaver's mother, Elizabeth Inglis , makes
29670-635: The map editing tools id Software used with the games. The source code for the original Wolfenstein 3D engine was released by id in 1995; when making the 2009 iOS port, Carmack used some of the enhancements to the engine made by fans after its release. The game's technical achievements also led to numerous imitators such as Ken's Labyrinth , Nitemare 3D , The Terminator: Rampage , Terminal Terror and The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki , among others. Although id Software did not develop another Wolfenstein game, as their development focus shifted to Doom shortly after release, and has never returned to
29900-421: The maps with the promise of being able to buy himself a brand new car. The team was going to include some anti-fascist references and Nazi atrocities, but left them out to avoid controversies. They ensured that the presentation of the game created the atmosphere that they wanted, adding violent animations by Adrian Carmack for enemies being shot and music and sound effects by Keen composer Bobby Prince to make
30130-431: The market at the time. Wolfenstein 3D features artwork by Adrian Carmack and sound effects and music by Bobby Prince . The game was released through Apogee in two sets of three episodes under the shareware model, in which the first episode is released for free to drive interest in paying for the rest. An additional episode, Spear of Destiny , was released as a stand-alone retail title through FormGen. Wolfenstein 3D
30360-414: The market towards first-person shooters. It has also been credited with confirming shareware distribution as a serious and profitable business strategy at the time; VideoGames & Computer Entertainment claimed in September 1992 that the game "justified the existence of shareware", and in July 1993 Computer Gaming World claimed that it "almost single-handedly" demonstrated the viability of shareware as
30590-400: The maze-like shooter gameplay fit well with Carmack's 3D game engine, while Adrian Carmack was interested in moving away from the child-friendly art style of Keen into something more violent. Encouraged by the reception to his idea, Romero expounded on it by proposing a "loud" and "cool" fast action game where the player could shoot soldiers before dragging and looting their bodies. The core of
30820-493: The model for the player character's arm holding a gun, and Adrian's snakeskin boots and wounded knee for in-game textures. Romero was the body model used for cover; while trying to work with a male model to get a reference photograph for Don Ivan Punchatz to work from, Romero became frustrated while trying to convey to him how to pose as if "the Marine was going to be attacked by an infinite amount of demons". Romero posed shirtless as
31050-430: The multiplayer component; within two weeks he had two computers playing the same game over the internal office network. Adrian Carmack was the lead artist for Doom , with Kevin Cloud as an additional artist. Additionally, Don Ivan Punchatz was hired to create the package art and logo, and his son Gregor Punchatz created some of the monsters. Doom was the style of game that Adrian Carmack had wanted to create since id
31280-419: The music, the sound effects for the enemies and weapons were created by Prince for specific purposes; Prince designed them based on short descriptions or concept art of a monster or weapon, and then adjusted the sound effects to match the completed animations. The sound effects for the monsters were created from animal noises, and Prince designed all the sound effects to be distinct on the limited sound hardware of
31510-417: The next six months, Hall designed levels based on real military bases, Romero built features, and artists Adrian Carmack and Cloud created textures and demons based on clay models they built. Hall's level designs, however, were deemed uninteresting and Romero began designing his own levels; Hall, increasingly frustrated with his limited influence, was fired in July. He was replaced by Petersen in September, and
31740-577: The normal protective forces from Sarah Connor so she had to fend for herself. Cameron had also always wanted to make a film about space infantry . The final script was well received, but Fox executives (including chairman Barry Diller ) were concerned about the budget. Fox estimated the cost as close to $ 35 million, but Hurd said it would be closer to $ 15.5 million. Diller offered $ 12 million, prompting Cameron and Hurd to quit. Gordon negotiated with Diller until he relented, and Cameron and Hurd returned. In April 1985, conflict turned to
31970-504: The number of sleeping pods and add a power loader. Cobb designed the dropship, the armored personnel carrier (APC), and exteriors of the colony and its vehicles. The Sulaco ' s dropship was designed to be life-size, for use on the Sulaco set, but a smaller replica was used for some shots. The APC was a disguised pushback tug for a Boeing 747 . The derelict alien spacecraft used in Aliens had been in historian Bob Burns III 's driveway since its appearance in Alien . Most of
32200-521: The number-one film of its third weekend with a gross of $ 7.1 million, ahead of the debuts of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives ($ 6.8 million) and the Howard the Duck ($ 5.1 million). The film fell to third place in its fifth weekend with a gross of $ 4.30 million, behind the debuts of The Fly ($ 7 million) and ' Armed and Dangerous ($ 4.33 million). Aliens
32430-413: The original Alien design, but the overall appearance was made to appear more organic, and its eight legs were made more finger-like, enhancing the detail on the knuckles and adding fingernails. Unlike in Alien , which only involved one substantial jumping scene, the facehugger models used in Aliens featured full articulation for their tongue, legs, and tail, allowing for more action set pieces. The tail
32660-458: The original Apogee release, both of which were cancelled. A pushable wall maze led to a sign reading "Call Apogee and say Aardwolf " ("Snapity" in beta versions); it was intended that the first person to find the sign and carry out its instructions would win a prize (consisting of US$ 1,000 or a line of Apogee games for life), but the quick creation of level editors and cheat programs for the game soon after release led id and Apogee to give up on
32890-407: The other actors (Weaver, Reiser, and Hope) as outsiders. Biehn's late casting caused him to miss the training, and he said he regretted being unable to customize his armor like the other actors (since he inherited Remar's). Cameron created a distinct backstory for each marine and instructed the actors to read Starship Troopers so they would understand the space marine archetype. Vasquez
33120-540: The other early-20s employees and his religious background. Petersen later recalled that John Carmack and Romero wanted to hire other artists instead, but Cloud and Adrian disagreed, saying that a designer was required to help build a cohesive gameplay experience. They relented and Petersen was hired. The team also added a third programmer, Dave Taylor . Romero directed Petersen to revise Hall's levels with as many changes as he saw fit in order to meet his guidelines for what made for interesting levels. Petersen and Romero designed
33350-409: The planned US$ 40 price—he decided to leverage the shareware market as much as possible, buying only a single ad in any gaming magazine. Instead, he reached out directly to software retailers, offering them copies of the first Doom episode for free, allowing them to charge any price for it, in order to spur customer interest in buying the full game directly from id. Doom ' s original release date
33580-426: The player's completion ratio and speed is displayed when a level is completed. Secret areas containing treasure, health refills, or ammunition can be found in hidden rooms revealed by activating certain wall tiles that slide back when triggered. The original version of the game allows the player to save their progress at any point, though in many of its ports the player can only save between levels. Wolfenstein 3D
33810-560: The port by March 1993. This version was written in C and compiled in the 65816 assembly language, making use of binary space partitioning rather than raycasting in order to give it speed. Carmack had to resize existing images to fit the SNES resolution. Nintendo insisted on censoring the game in accordance with their policies; this included first making all blood green and then finally removing it, removing Nazi imagery and German voice clips, and replacing enemy dogs with giant rats. The port
34040-402: The port's graphics and quality to what he later claimed was four times more detail than the DOS version. He also removed the changes that Nintendo had insisted on. The game itself, however, had to be slowed down to work properly on the console. Wolfenstein 3D has also been ported to numerous other platforms. In 1993, Alternate Worlds Technology licensed Wolfenstein 3D and converted it into
34270-420: The possible surfaces the computer needed to display, creating game levels with walls designed only on a flat grid rather than with arbitrary shapes or angles. He also took the unusual approach of creating the displayed graphics through ray casting , in which only the surfaces visible to the player were calculated rather than the entire area surrounding the player. After six weeks of development, Carmack had created
34500-560: The problems of keeping the clay consistent under lighting while moving the models through animations was too great. Later, he had practical effects specialist Gregor Punchatz build a latex and metal sculpture of the Spider Mastermind. Punchatz got the materials from hardware and hobby stores and used what he called "rubber band and chewing gum effects". The weapons were toys, with parts combined from different toys to make more guns. They scanned themselves as well, using Cloud's arm as
34730-440: The production, and that any member of the crew who could not support it should volunteer to be replaced. The crew agreed to support Cameron if he supported their scheduled working hours. The relationship between filmmakers and crew remained cool; when filming concluded at Pinewood, Cameron told the crew: "This has been a long and difficult shoot, fraught by many problems ... but the one thing that kept me going, through it all,
34960-459: The project. His design was a science fiction horror concept wherein scientists on the Moon open a portal from which aliens emerge. Over a series of levels the player discovers that the aliens are demons; Hell also steadily infects the level design as the atmosphere becomes darker and more terrifying. While Romero initially liked the idea, John Carmack not only disliked it but dismissed the idea of having
35190-454: The public continuously throughout development on the nascent internet. Id began receiving calls from people interested in the game or angry that it had missed its planned release date, as anticipation built over the year. At midnight on Friday, December 10, 1993, after working for 30 straight hours testing the game, the team uploaded the first episode to the internet, letting interested players distribute it for them. So many users were connected to
35420-402: The queen and power loader was extensively choreographed, as Weaver risked serious injury battling a large, unwieldy animatronic. The camera was sometimes moved to simulate subjects moving faster. The scene of the queen running at Ripley was one of the more difficult shots; the wires and rods had to be concealed, since they could not be removed in post-production. Miniatures were used for parts of
35650-418: The release of the game in December through shareware publisher Apogee Software , the team planned to quit Softdisk and start their own company. When their boss, Softdisk owner Al Vekovius, confronted them on both their plans and their use of company resources to develop the game—the team had created it on their work computers, both in the office after hours and by taking the computers to John Carmack's house on
35880-407: The rest of the levels for Doom , with different aims: the team felt that Petersen's designs were more technically interesting and varied, while Romero's were more aesthetically interesting. Romero's level design process was to build a level or part of a level, starting at the beginning, then play through it and iterate on the design, so that by the time he was satisfied with the flow and playability of
36110-431: The same length as Spear of Destiny , in May 1994, and later that year published Spear of Destiny and the two mission packs together as the Spear of Destiny Super CD Package . Id released the original six Apogee episodes as a retail title through GT Software in 1993 and produced a collection of both the Apogee and FormGen episodes released through Activision in 1998. There were two intended promotions associated with
36340-678: The same time, the team changed members and structure: id fired probationary president Mark Rein and brought back Jay Wilbur, who had stayed in Shreveport, to be both their CEO and business team; Bobby Prince moved into the office temporarily to record sound effects, while Adrian Carmack moved out of the office to get away from the noise. As the game neared completion, FormGen contacted id with concerns over its violence and shock content. In response, id increased these aspects; Adrian Carmack added skeletons, corpses, and bloody wall details, and Hall and Romero added screams and cries in German, along with
36570-402: The scene with go motion , a version of stop motion with motion blur added. The 1986 summer film season began in mid-May. The season had been starting earlier each year as studios attempted to beat each other with their biggest films. Fifty-five films were scheduled for release between May and September, including the action drama Top Gun and the comedic Sweet Liberty , but the season
36800-437: The score up, using pieces where he believed they fit best, and inserted pieces of Jerry Goldsmith 's Alien score and hired unknown composers to fill gaps. The director said in a later interview he thought the music was good, but did not fit the scenes he had filmed. Horner's "alien sting " sound was initially used only once, during the scene with the cocooned woman, as Cameron disliked it, but he eventually used it throughout
37030-477: The series, multiple Wolfenstein titles have been produced by other companies, sometimes using game engines developed by id. The first of these newer Wolfenstein games was Return to Castle Wolfenstein in 2001, a reboot of the series, and the most recent titles are the 2019 games Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot . Aliens (film) Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action film written and directed by James Cameron . It
37260-457: The sets in an unspecified substance to artificially age them; the flamethrowers vaporized it, causing fire and heavy smoke. Goldstein struggled to breathe and, since improvisation was encouraged, Paxton thought she was acting until he also became breathless. The nuclear explosion of the colony in the finale was created by shining a light bulb through cotton. Reebok designer Taun Le was commissioned to design custom sneakers for Weaver to wear in
37490-418: The sets were left in place until Tim Burton redressed the sets into interiors for Axis Chemicals during the filming of his 1989 film Batman . While filming the dropship descent from the Sulaco , shaking collapsed the set roof onto the cast and crew. Most of the cast were unharmed, but a large piece of debris hit Cameron in the head. Because of the tight budget, Hurd made Cameron pay for an early scene of
37720-513: The shareware episodes. Formgen's Spear of Destiny mission packs "Return to Danger" and "Ultimate Challenge" were reviewed by Paul Hyman of Computer Gaming World , who praised the updated graphical details and sound, as well as the smooth gameplay, but noted its overall dated graphics and lack of gameplay changes from the original game. The early ports of the game also received high reviews, though their sales have been described as "dismal". The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly called
37950-461: The smart-gun rig was difficult, the actors kept them on when not filming. The pulse rifle was made from a Thompson submachine gun and a Franchi SPAS-12 pump-action shotgun in a futuristic shell. Weaver was opposed to weapons in general, but Cameron explained weapons were secondary to the core narrative of Ripley bonding with and protecting Newt. Weaver found using the weapons strange and difficult, due to their weight and her concern about pulling
38180-491: The spaceship Sulaco but is distrustful of their android , Bishop , because the android aboard the Nostromo had betrayed its crew to protect the alien on company orders. A dropship delivers the expedition to the surface of LV-426, where they find the battle-ravaged colony and two live alien facehuggers in containment tanks, but no bodies or colonists, except for a traumatized young girl nicknamed Newt. The team locates
38410-403: The speed and gameplay, calling it "a fun game with lots of action" and "a fun, fairly mindless romp", though he did note that at higher difficulty settings or later levels it became extremely hard. The Spear of Destiny retail episode was also rated highly by Computer Gaming World ' s Bryan A. Walker, who praised the added enemy types, though he noted that it was essentially the same game as
38640-475: The studio , minus the theaters' share, was $ 42.5 million. Box office figures outside the U.S. and Canada are inconsistent and not available for all 1986 films. According to the box-office tracking websites Box Office Mojo and the Numbers , Aliens earned from $ 45.9 million to $ 98.1 million. This gives Aliens a worldwide gross of $ 131.1 million to $ 183.3 million, making it
38870-423: The success of Alien , its sequel took years to develop due to lawsuits, a lack of enthusiasm from 20th Century Fox , and repeated management changes. Although relatively inexperienced, Cameron was hired to write a story for Aliens in 1983 on the strength of his scripts for The Terminator (1984) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). The project stalled again until new Fox executive Lawrence Gordon pursued
39100-519: The success of Wolfenstein were interested in pursuing more games of that type. Additionally, the other two co-founders of id were not interested in creating another Keen game: John Romero , the designer of Wolfenstein , was not interested in doing another "cutesy" game, and lead artist Adrian Carmack preferred to create art in a darker style than the Keen games. John Carmack soon lost interest in Keen idea as well, instead coming up with his own concept:
39330-584: The success of Wolfenstein 3D led id to receive multiple calls every month from investment companies looking to make id a publicly-traded company, which were all turned down. In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Wolfenstein 3D the 97th-best computer game ever released. The game is also recognized as the principal cause for Germany banning video games that contain certain types of symbols and imagery from extremist groups like Nazis under its Strafgesetzbuch section 86a up through 2018. Section 86a had "social adequacy" allowances for works of art, but in 1998,
39560-418: The survivors barricade themselves inside the colony. Ripley discovers that Burke ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship containing the alien eggs, intending to profit by recovering them for biological weapon research. Before she can expose him, Bishop informs the group that the dropship crash damaged the power plant's cooling system, and the plant will soon overheat and explode, destroying
39790-432: The team did not feel that they needed a design document at all, as they had not created one for prior games; the Doom Bible was discarded altogether. Several ideas were retained, including starting off in a military base, as well as some locations, items, and monsters, but the story was dropped and most of the design was removed as the team felt it emphasized realism over entertaining gameplay. Some elements, such as weapons,
40020-463: The team had an external artist who assisted him and created animated wall textures, but the team felt that the quality was poor and did not use it in the game. The level design, by Romero and Hall, due to the grid-based level design, took some inspiration from Pac-Man , and paid homage with a hidden Pac-Man level. Romero later said in 2017 that making the levels was uninteresting compared to those from Commander Keen and had to prompt Hall to finish
40250-527: The team or even designed. The company told Computer Gaming World that Doom would be " Wolfenstein times a million!" Early versions were built to match the Doom Bible ; a "pre-alpha" version of the first level included the other characters at a table and movable rolling chairs based on ones at the id office. Initial versions also retained " arcade " elements present in Wolfenstein 3D , like score points and score items, but those were removed early in development as they felt unrealistic and not in keeping with
40480-453: The team to make another game in the Commander Keen series; the team had created seven episodes in the series in 1990–91 as their first games, but the planned third set of episodes had been dropped in favor of Wolfenstein 3D . While Carmack was initially interested in the idea, the rest of the team was not. They collectively felt that the platforming gameplay of the series was a poor fit for Carmack's fast-paced 3D engines, and especially after
40710-413: The team was able to purchase the trademark around mid-April 1992 for US$ 5,000. Thus they were free to use the name Wolfenstein 3D . The game concept met with immediate approval from Scott Miller of Apogee, who considered id Software his star developer, and he guaranteed id a US$ 100,000 payment on the project. Mark Rein , who had been brought on a few months prior as id's probationary president, also sold
40940-408: The team worked increasingly long hours until the game was completed in December 1993. Doom was self-published by id on December 10, 1993, and immediately downloaded by thousands of players. In May 1992, id Software released Wolfenstein 3D . It is often referred to as the "grandfather" of first-person shooters , setting expectations for fast-paced action and new technology, and greatly increased
41170-475: The team's rent and US$ 750 per month salaries, plus around US$ 6,500 for the computer John Carmack used to develop the engine and the US$ 5,000 to get the Wolfenstein trademark. The following summer, most of the id Software team developed Spear of Destiny . The single-episode game was a prequel to Wolfenstein 3D and used the same engine, but added new audio, graphics, and enemies. It was created in two months, and
41400-478: The time, even when many sound effects were playing at once. Id Software planned to self-publish the game for DOS -based computers and set up a distribution system leading up to the release. Jay Wilbur, who had been brought on as CEO and sole member of the business team, planned the marketing and distribution of Doom . He felt that the mainstream press was uninterested, and as id would make the most money off of copies they sold directly to customers—up to 85 percent of
41630-403: The tone. Other elements, such as a complex user interface, an inventory system, a secondary shield protection, and lives were modified and slowly removed over the course of development. Soon, however, the Doom Bible as a whole was rejected: Romero wanted a game even "more brutal and fast" than Wolfenstein , which did not leave room for the character-driven plot Hall had created. Additionally,
41860-493: The university's network. Within hours, other university networks were banning Doom multiplayer games, as a rush of players overwhelmed their systems. While Doom was in development, five pre-release versions were given names or numbers and shown to testers or the press. Wolfenstein 3D Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen . Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS , it
42090-454: The weekends—the team made no secret of their intentions. After a few weeks of negotiation, the team agreed to produce a series of games for Gamer's Edge , one every two months. Ideas from the Deep, now formally established as id Software , used some of these to prototype ideas for their own games. Adrian Carmack used them to push his preferred, dark art style, while John Carmack began to experiment with 3D computer graphics , which until then
42320-421: The wrong trigger. Automated sentry guns were also constructed for Aliens , although they do not appear in the theatrical cut. Real machine guns were positioned atop remote-controlled hydraulic tripods that allowed them to pivot horizontally or vertically. The guns were capable of firing up to 600 wooden-blank rounds per minute that were shattered into small splinters by baffles in the muzzle and incinerated by
42550-568: Was "required playing for any first-person shooter fan". Wolfenstein 3D has been called the "grandfather of 3D shooters", specifically first-person shooters, because it established the fast-paced action and technical prowess commonly expected in the genre and greatly increased the genre's popularity. It has also been called "the Citizen Kane of shooters". Although some prior computer shooting-based games existed, they were generally scrolling shooters , while Wolfenstein 3D helped move
42780-464: Was "the first game technologically capable of creating a sufficient element of disbelief–suspension to emotionally immerse the player in a threatening environment", stating that they knew of no other game that could "evoke such intense psychological responses from its players". Wolfenstein twice received 5 out of 5 stars in Dragon in 1993; Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser termed it "definitely one of
43010-534: Was Daniel Kash's (Spunkmeyer) debut film role. He offered Cameron his coat if he got the part and also auditioned for Hudson. The actors stayed at the Holiday Inn in Langley, Berkshire , during filming. Paxton described the actors' time outside work positively: "God, we had the best time ... We all hung very hard together. That's where I first met [Henriksen], who I fell in love with. [Matthews] ...
43240-422: Was Goldstein's first feature-film role. She credited her physique to spending hours at the gym while unemployed, gaining 10 pounds (4.5 kg) at Cameron's request. Goldstein wore dark contact lenses and underwent an hour of makeup to cover her freckles and darken her white skin to portray a " Chicano " character; she studied Mexican-American gang interviews to develop her demeanor and accent. Ricco Ross (Frost)
43470-478: Was a 14-foot (4.3 m) puppet made of lightweight polyurethane foam. Two people sat inside to control the arms; the legs were controlled by rods connected at the ankles, and a separate person whipped the tail around with fishing line. The head was manipulated with a combination of servomotors and hydraulics controlled by up to four people. The effect was hidden by lighting, steam, slime, and smoke. The Stan Winston Studio had not used hydraulics and considered them
43700-414: Was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made . It garnered numerous awards and sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995. It has been termed the "grandfather of 3D shooters", and is widely regarded as having helped popularize the first-person shooter genre and establishing the standard of fast-paced action and technical prowess for many subsequent games in
43930-542: Was a really good spirit to have around, with a great voice. And all these hilarious British characters, like [Steedman], the stuntman, who used to grab my bicep and go, 'Blimey, more meat on a cat's cock! ' " Principal photography began in September 1985, on a 75-day schedule, and an $ 18.5 million budget, not including film prints and marketing. Filming took place mainly at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire near London , because of its large sets and
44160-436: Was alerted to danger, but Cameron believed they would make the character appear more frightening than the aliens. Biehn, Paxton, and Henriksen had worked with Cameron on The Terminator . Aliens was Reiser's first major theatrical role, following small parts in films like Beverly Hills Cop (1984). The Colonial Marines cast features a mix of British and American actors who underwent three weeks of intensive training with
44390-401: Was also lengthened about 6 in (15 cm) to give it more functions such as a whip-like action. Nine operators were required for the fully articulated facehugger; other less-detailed variants were used for simple actions such as scurrying across the floor. The design team struggled with making it scuttle believably while moving the appendages; they eventually developing a control wire along
44620-454: Was anticipated to become the summer's top film, surpassing The Karate Kid Part II , Back to School , and Top Gun . The Los Angeles Times reported long lines to see Aliens , even on weekday afternoons. The film retained the number-one position in its second weekend with an additional gross of $ 8.6 million, ahead of the debuting Heartburn ($ 5.8 million) and The Karate Kid Part II ($ 5 million). Aliens remained
44850-414: Was articulated with hydraulics and cables to control the queen's mouth and lips. To create the effect of the queen piercing Bishop's chest with her tail, Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis constructed a chestplate for Henriksen with a rubber segment of the queen's tail flattened against it. The tail was pulled forward by wire, apparently exploding through Bishop's torso. A rigid piece of tail, attached to
45080-465: Was at school in Lakenheath , England, and though she lacked acting experience, Cameron said she had a "great face and expressive eyes". Stephen Lang auditioned for the role of Hicks, but James Remar secured the role on the recommendation of Hill, his close friend. Remar left shortly into filming, ostensibly due to urgent family matters or creative differences with Cameron, but he later admitted he
45310-739: Was booked to begin scoring The Name of the Rose (1986) shortly afterwards. Horner recorded the score at Abbey Road Studios with the London Symphony Orchestra . His schedule was so tight that the music for the climactic battle between Ripley and the queen was written overnight. Cameron first heard the score while it was being recorded by the orchestra and did not like it, but it was too late to make changes. Brad Fiedel 's synth-inspired tracks for The Terminator had allowed changes to be made quickly based on feedback, but Cameron had no experience managing orchestral music. Cameron cut
45540-434: Was cast as Hudson before Cameron and Hurd decided to take the character in a different direction. Cynthia Dale Scott (Dietrich) was an aspiring singer when she was cast. Colette Hiller (Ferro) was upset she had to cut her hair short for the role because she was getting married shortly afterward, and made the filmmakers buy her a long, blonde wig. Trevor Steedman (Wierzbowski) was a stuntman rather than an actor, and Aliens
45770-455: Was committed to Full Metal Jacket (1987), whose filming schedule overlapped for a week with Aliens ' . Although Cameron offered to let Ross join the filming later, Ross was concerned that Stanley Kubrick 's projects often overran, and opted for Aliens instead. Rolston misled the filmmakers to get his part; he had finished filming Revolution (1985), and implied he was its most prominent actor after Al Pacino . William Hope (Gorman)
46000-568: Was concerned further cuts would make it nonsensical, and Rudin relented. James Horner met Cameron early in their careers, when they worked for director Roger Corman . Aliens was Horner and Cameron's first collaboration; Horner called it a "nightmare". He arrived in London to compose, expecting a six-week schedule. There was nothing for him to score, as Cameron was still filming and editing, and Horner had only three weeks to compose. The producers were unwilling to give him any more time, and he
46230-407: Was deemed acceptable for an adventure game like ShadowCaster . Following the release of Spear of Destiny and the completion of the ShadowCaster engine, id Software discussed what their next game would be. They wanted to create another 3D game using Carmack's new engine as a starting point, but were largely tired of Wolfenstein . Lead designer Tom Hall was especially weary of it, and pushed for
46460-496: Was doing, Carmack enhanced the engine over six weeks from Hovertank 3D for another Softdisk game, the November 1991 Catacomb 3-D . Upon seeing it, Scott Miller of Apogee began to push the team to make a 3D shareware action game. In November 1991, with the second Commander Keen trilogy of episodes nearing completion and their contractual obligations to Softdisk almost finished, id Software sat down to plan out their next major game. Designer Tom Hall, who initially wanted to do
46690-465: Was encouraged. Weaver discussed tweaks to her character with Cameron on set, believing she understood how Ripley would act. Her line "Get away from her, you bitch!" had to be filmed in one take due to the tight schedule remaining, and the actress thought she had messed it up. Paxton believed he was not good at improvisation and discussed ideas with Cameron before filming. Hudson's signature line "Game over, man; game over!" originated from Paxton developing
46920-467: Was fired after being arrested for drug possession. Hurd hired Michael Biehn the following Friday. Paxton credited his casting as Hudson to a chance encounter with Cameron at Los Angeles International Airport , during which he mentioned he would be interested in a role. Fox supported Paxton's casting because of positive feedback for his performance in Weird Science (1985). Paxton was worried
47150-529: Was followed by two sequels: Alien 3 (1992) and Alien Resurrection (1997) and a prequel film, Alien: Romulus (2024). Ellen Ripley has been in stasis for 57 years aboard an escape shuttle after destroying her ship, the Nostromo , to escape an alien creature that slaughtered the rest of the crew. She is rescued and debriefed by her employers at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who are skeptical of her claim about alien eggs in
47380-412: Was founded, one with a dark style and demons. He and Cloud designed the monsters to be "nightmarish", and developed a new technique for animating them. The intent was to have graphics that were realistic and dark as opposed to staged or rendered, so a mixed media approach was taken to the artwork. Unlike Wolfenstein , where Carmack had drawn every frame of animation for the Nazi enemy sprites , for Doom
47610-401: Was having as the lead designer; Romero has since claimed that Hall was also still uninterested in the Doom concept at all. Hall was also upset with how much he was having to fight with John Carmack in order to get what he saw as obvious gameplay improvements, such as flying enemies. The other developers, however, felt that Hall was not in sync with the team's vision for the game and was becoming
47840-530: Was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein , and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. In Wolfenstein 3D , the player assumes the role of Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis. The player traverses each of
48070-404: Was involved in id's business dealings, pushed for id to take over shareware publishing duties themselves after investigating and finding that Apogee was unable to reliably handle the volume of customers buying id's games through Apogee. He convinced the others that the increased sales revenue would make up for the problems of handling their own publishing. The two companies parted amicably, and Doom
48300-482: Was largely the purview of flight simulation games such as Wing Commander (1990) or wireframe 3D in games on mainframe computers . Carmack found that this was largely due to the limitations of personal computers of the time, which had difficulty displaying a fast action game in 3D due to the number of surfaces it needed to calculate, but felt that the increasing computational power of PCs meant that it may be possible. During 1991, he experimented with limiting
48530-494: Was less enthusiastic, terming it good but not up to the standards of newer games. Its review of the Macintosh version of the game was also mild, stating that "there isn't a staggering amount of freshness here, but the action is fast, deadly, and (surprise) addictive". Major Mike of GamePro commended the 3DO version's complete absence of pixelation , fast scaling, "rousing" music, and high quality sound effects, but criticized
48760-426: Was milk, and after several days of filming, it was sour and foul-smelling. John Richardson designed the mechanical power loader exosuit, with input from Mead. As with the queen, a prototype was built out of wood and polythene bags stuffed with newspaper to see how the movement would work. The finished design was so cumbersome that stuntman John Lees, in a black skinsuit, operated it from behind. The battle between
48990-457: Was never offered the chance to direct the sequel, possibly because he was difficult to work with on the original. The title Aliens reportedly came from Cameron writing "Alien" on a whiteboard during a pitch meeting and adding a "$ " suffix. Cameron also wanted his collaborative partner and girlfriend, Gale Anne Hurd , to serve as the producer, but Fox did not take the request seriously, believing she could not stand up to Cameron, who believed she
49220-671: Was not as concerned with the warrior aliens because they were on screen only briefly. In redesigning the alien warriors, Cameron remained faithful to Giger's work while building on it. Conscious that the creatures would be seen by audiences as people in costumes, he enhanced the designs by extending their arms and often filmed them hung from wires or from atypical positions to make them appear more inhuman. The aliens were played by dancers and stuntmen in lightweight costumes that allowed them to move quickly. Several 8-foot (2.4 m) mannequins were used for aliens that were contorted into inhuman poses. Although hordes of alien creatures appear to be in
49450-519: Was not being made exclusively for financial reasons. Weaver received a $ 1 million (equivalent to $ 2.78 million in 2023) salary and a percentage of the box-office profits, the highest salary of her career at the time. Negotiations were so lengthy that Cameron and Hurd told Schwarzenegger's agent they intended to write Ripley out of the movie (knowing Weaver's agent would be told); terms were reached shortly afterward. Cameron wanted an unknown actor to portray Newt. Agents scouted Henn while she
49680-469: Was not designed to be editable or modified, players developed character and level editors to create original alterations to the game's content. John Carmack and Romero, who had played numerous mods of other games, were delighted, and overrode any concerns about copyright issues by the others. The modding efforts of Wolfenstein players led id Software to explicitly design later titles like Doom and Quake to be easily modifiable by players, even including
49910-671: Was not expected to break financial records due to fewer sequels, anticipated blockbusters , and films by Steven Spielberg or starring popular comedians that had dominated the earlier half of the decade. Some industry experts also blamed the burgeoning home-video market, which had grown from 7 million rentals in 1983 to 58 million by 1985. Films expected to do well were aimed at younger audiences and featured comedy or horror, such as Back to School , Ferris Bueller's Day Off , and SpaceCamp . Some films targeted at adults were also seen as potential successes, including Legal Eagles , Ruthless People , and Cobra . Aliens
50140-575: Was one of the top ten highest-grossing films for 11 weeks. By the end of its theatrical run, Aliens had grossed about $ 85.1 million. This figure made it the year's seventh highest-grossing film , behind Back to School ($ 91.3 million), science-fiction film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ($ 109.6 million), The Karate Kid Part II ($ 115.1 million), war film Platoon (138.5 million), action comedy Crocodile Dundee ($ 174.8 million) and Top Gun ($ 176.8 million). Aliens ' box-office returns to
50370-528: Was published commercially by FormGen in September 1992. The publisher was concerned that the material would be controversial due to holy relics associated with World War II, but Romero felt it was similar to the Indiana Jones films. Instead of working on the game, John Carmack experimented with a new graphics engine that was licensed for ShadowCaster and became the basis of the engine for id's next game, Doom (1993). The first episode
50600-441: Was released as shareware for free distribution by Apogee and the whole original trilogy of episodes made available for purchase on May 5 as Wolfenstein 3D , though the purchased episodes were not actually shipped to customers until a few weeks later. The second trilogy that Miller had convinced id to create was released soon after as an add-on pack titled The Nocturnal Missions . Players were able to buy each trilogy separately or as
50830-588: Was released in Japan on February 10, 1994, under the name Wolfenstein 3D: The Claw of Eisenfaust before being released in North America and Europe later that year. Using the source code of the SNES port, on a whim John Carmack later converted the game to run on the Atari Jaguar . Atari Corporation approved the conversion for publication and Carmack spent three weeks, assisted by Dave Taylor , improving
51060-404: Was seen by industry professionals as a potential sleeper hit based on positive industry word-of-mouth during filming, enthusiastic industry screenings, and favorable pre-release reviews. The film's success was considered dependent on its ability to attract audiences outside the young males and blue-collar workers typical for the genre. The tagline was, "This time, it's war". Aliens began
51290-589: Was selling at a rate of 4,000 copies a month by mail order. PC Zone quoted a shareware distributor as saying Wolfenstein 3D was the top shareware seller of 1992. By the end of 1993, sales of the Apogee episodes of Wolfenstein 3D as well as Spear of Destiny had reached over 100,000 units each, with the Apogee game still selling strongly by the end of the year as its reach spread without newer retail titles to compete with it for shelf space. By mid-1994 150,000 shareware copies were registered and id Software had sold another 150,000 retail copies of Spear of Destiny ;
51520-432: Was set to be self-published. Early in development, rifts in the team began to appear. Hall, who despite having wanted to develop a different game remained the lead designer and creative director for the company, did not want Doom to have the same lack of plot as Wolfenstein 3D . At the end of November he delivered a design document , which he named the Doom Bible , that described the plot, backstory, and design goals for
51750-567: Was so aged compared to recent releases like Hexen: Beyond Heretic and the PlayStation version of Doom that a new port was pointless, with the game now "somewhat tiresome and very, very repetitive". A reviewer for Next Generation asserted that Wolfenstein 3D was "still as addictive as it ever was" but essentially agreed with Maximum , contending that anyone interested in first-person shooters would have either already played it on another platform or "moved on" to more advanced games in
51980-485: Was stolen from Versailles . FormGen later developed two sequel episodes, "Return to Danger" and "Ultimate Challenge", each of which feature Blazkowicz as he fights through another Nazi base to recover the Spear of Destiny after it has been stolen again as part of a plot to build a nuclear weapon or summon demons . In October–December 1990, a team of employees from programming studio Softdisk calling themselves Ideas from
52210-507: Was the certain knowledge that one day I would drive out the gate of Pinewood and never come back, and that you sorry bastards would still be here". He described most of the crew as "lazy, insolent, and arrogant". Paxton called the crew's work impeccable, but their attitude more relaxed than the American crews to which he was accustomed. The power plant and alien nest were filmed in the decommissioned Acton Lane Power Station in London, and
52440-504: Was the company's designer that they could return to his ideas at a later date. Initially the team believed that they would be unable to use the Wolfenstein name due to trademark issues, and came up with multiple possible titles. They contacted Castle Wolfenstein developer Silas Warner , but learned that Muse Software had shut down in 1986, with all rights to Wolfenstein sold. The rights last belonged to someone in Michigan , and
52670-494: Was the only person who would. Hurd had several industry associates contact Fox executives to convince them she was a legitimate producer. Cameron turned in the finished script in February 1985, hours before a Hollywood writer's strike . Cameron recalled the audience reactions while seeing Alien in the theater and believed it would be difficult to recreate the emotion and novelty of the original. He and Hurd agreed to combine
52900-459: Was the third quarter of 1993, which the team did not meet. By December 1993, the team was working non-stop, with several employees sleeping at the office; programmer Dave Taylor claimed that the work gave him such a rush that he would pass out from the intensity. Id only gave a single press preview, to Computer Gaming World in June, to a glowing response, but had also released development updates to
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