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GDC (Game Developers Conference) is the world's largest game developer conference. At GDC 2022 in San Francisco, USA, March 21-25 (local time), the latest technologies and game production stories were discussed. This article will take you through the birth of Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D, a game developed by id Software in 1992 that pioneered the FPS genre.
The speaker is Johann Romero, co-founder of id Software and one of the six production members of Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D. It is reported that this is the first time that John Romero has talked about the details of the development of that year. At this conference, he unveiled for the first time the opportunity for the development of this game, the changes in the development environment, and how to get inspiration from the original "Wehrmacht Headquarters" and then the whole process of developing "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D".
In addition to the content that fans of "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D" will be interested in, the Q&A session after the conference also talked about details such as level design, optimization and polishing, and attitudes towards game production, hoping that readers who do not know much about this game can also patiently read the full text.
January 1992: Development begins, identifying the importance of the core of the game
Development of Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D began in January 1992, but Romero recalls earlier events. In 1991, in the second half of the previous year, id Software developed and made public as many as five games, including the Commander Keane series and Catacomb 3D.
▲The horizontal version of the "Commander Keane" series and the foundation work of "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D" "Catacomb 3D"
At the beginning of the year, the development of Commander Keane 7 is about to start, and the production of the prototype is also in progress. However, on the night of the demo, Mr. Romero complained that "I don't want to make Commander Keane anymore", and the development members agreed. When Romero proposed to recreate a 3D game like Catacomb 3D, Creative Director Tom sensed the developers' fatigue and came up with his own ideas.
During the discussion, Mr. Romero suggested that "why not make a new version of Muse Software's 1981 Wehrmacht Headquarters?". All the members, including Tom, enjoyed the work, so the offer was immediately accepted.
▲ Muse Software's original "Castle Wolfenstein", "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D" greatly retained the setting of World War II as the background and from prison
In mid-January, development of Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D was based on the engine of Catacomb 3D. At that time, the mainstream color output was still 16-bit, so Adrian, who was in charge of graphics development, began to produce 16-bit color screens and character sprites. 2D characters need to depict the action piece by piece, and because the game is developed, it is necessary to draw animation patterns in the front, back, left and right directions, which is a huge amount of work.
Realizing the huge amount of work, the production team turned to Jim Norwood, the developer of APPOGE Software, which later sold WEHR 3D, for help. In this way, with the cooperation of Adrian and Norwood, the work of making the genie diagram continued, but the work using the 16-bit color still needed some time.
▲ Developed 16-bit color title screens and characters that were produced at the time. The title screen at the time of the announcement did not appear at the conference, but the picture composition is almost the same, and interested readers can search for and compare it on their own
At that time, APPOGE Software had not yet released a 3D game, and the founder Scott Miller was very happy to learn about "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D" over the phone, but just before he hung up the phone, he left a sentence "Don't do 16-bit color images, make 256-bit color instead."
When members learned of this major change, programmer John Carmack replied after a brief silence that "the code would be cleaner and faster." Adrian said he would handle all the transitions from 16-bit to 256-bit colors by himself, and Norwood, who helped make the sprites, returned to his game development.
▲ The three primary colors of light, red, green and blue, each have 256 different shades of color, and the combination of colors exceeds 16 million
Despite the unexpected changes, the development process didn't have particularly big trouble. The first thing to decide is the level (stage) composition. In the published Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D, 10 levels were prepared for each chapter, but the number of 10 levels per chapter was determined from the beginning. Romero said that at first, it was intended to release a shareware (*1) chapter, followed by two chapters that required a fee.
* 1 Shareware: Software with restrictions such as expiration dates, after which restrictions can be lifted by paying a fee to the creator
The developers who started working on the level were Romero and Carmack, who were using a tool called TED5 and Carmack was using a similar 2D matrix, so Romero modified TED5 to make it a tool for developing Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D. The tool has two layers, background and foreground, the background is the wall, and the foreground is set with people, props, and passages.
▲The development screen at that time. The different colors of each room are related to the "sound zone" that appears later
▲ Level 1 of the shareware chapter developed by Tom, who was later in charge of the level. The color of the sound area has not been added at this time
▲At that time, the resolution was 320×200, which was different from today's cloud mud
In terms of design, in addition to making icons showing enemies, props, walls, and doors, Tom also designed the original cases of enemies (killer dogs, guards, guards, bosses) that appeared in the shareware chapters, and Adrian used these to create genie diagrams based on these. Just designing walking, hitting, shooting, and killing for each enemy is an extremely heavy workload, but beyond that, Adrian seems to have to deal with the materials of props, walls, and weapons himself.
In addition, Mr. Romero said he wanted the game to be eye-catching in terms of sound effects. The audio playback of the Sound Blaster, a sound card that had a place on the market at the time( the ability to play recorded sounds) was extremely helpful in creating character sounds and realistic gun sounds. BGM is made with MIDI, and the sound must be prepared with a MIDI version and a PC speaker version to maintain backward compatibility.
▲ Tom's character design sketch. Hitler appears in Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D, who is drilling into a machine (or wearing a power suit), and it seems that the design in the sketch is the original
▲ A sprite diagram depicting four enemies and walking modes, since this is only the number of walking actions that apply to a character, the overall workload is amazing
Following the character design and audio, the development of gameplay also officially began. The original "Wehrmacht Headquarters" had stealth elements such as hiding corpses to avoid enemy discovery and stealing food and ammunition from warehouses, and the early development of "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D" also restored these elements.
However, if you play repeatedly while incorporating various elements, you will find that the core of the fun of this game is running and shooting, that is, running around and shooting. Stealth elements inherited from the original slow down the game, but instead reduce the core of the game – the appeal of running and shooting.
"When making games, I try to find the fun of the work early, but occasionally when I can't feel the fun from the core part, I have to know how to listen to the sound of the game." 」
According to Mr. Romero, the charm of Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D lies in the feeling of running at great speed and extremely fierce shooting battles. The sound of Gatling's machine gunshots, the sound of enemies aiming at the player, the sound of death after being hit... These are the driving forces that make the game jump.
Since the focus is shifted again to the speed of the game, the design of the game is greatly simplified. Weapons that slow down the game, such as hiding enemy corpses and finding ammunition, became a work focused on gun battles.
February 1992: Advances in game production and the possibility of selling shares
After entering February, the production of the entire game is very smooth, the enemies are guards and stormtroopers, the protagonist's weapons are knives, pistols and machine guns, and the early levels are gradually taking shape. The game sees textures created by Adrian, and the first level looks like a castle prison.
About a month further back, Romero was a big fan of the King's Secret Orders series, released by Sierra Entertainment. When the latest work of "Commander Keane" was completed, he gave the new work to the company, and the other party immediately approached him for business negotiations. Mr. Romero exclaimed in astonishment, "Really fake?" The next week, Mr. Romero went to Sierra.
Madison, Wisconsin, where id Software was at the time, was a cold patch of land, while Oakhurst, California, where Sierra was located, was warm as spring. Perhaps because of the climate bonus, visiting Sierra founded was a wonderful experience. Led by the company's co-founder Ken Williams, Romero met Warren Schwader, who developed the game romero's father loved. Tom and Romero fell to their knees excitedly because he admired Mr. Schwader.
Later, although they were given the opportunity to show the prototype of "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D", Mr. Williams did not seem to be impressed, but instead showed the work that their company was now producing in just about 30 seconds. There is a rising star called the FPS type in front of him, but the indifferent attitude of the other party makes Romero dumbfounded.
Romero recalls a similar reaction a year and a half ago when he showed Softdisk employees a demo version of Dangerous Dave. This work is also the starting point for id Software
Back to business again, not believing that id Software would make about $50,000 a month on sharedware registration services, they showed copies of their passbooks... When Williams learned that Romero was right, he offered to buy a stake in Sierra for $2.5 million.
Mr. Romero, who returned to Madison, was very excited about the sale as it was almost a 4-year profit for their company. But the stock trade also meant that it couldn't be converted into a lot of cash right away, so he said, "Although I would love to join the Sierra family, I hope you can prepare a $100,000 advance payment and a letter of agreement," and the acquisition came to an abrupt end.
After the dust settled on the business negotiations, Romero and his colleagues resumed production of "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D"
By the end of February, the game engine was almost complete, and the game had added German Shepherds in addition to guards, and even set up reconnaissance passes and patrolling enemies to make the game more realistic.
March 1992: Sound zones, pushable walls, and office relocation
An element that has a big impact on gameplay was added in March, which is the range setting known as the "sound area". Romero, while wanting enemies to notice the player who fired the gun, didn't want all enemies in the level to leave the camp immediately.
In the initial level data, only the walls and doors are set on the background layer of the map, and there is no data for the floor part. So they used floor data to set up the sound area to control the area where the enemy could react to the shooting.
With the introduction of the sound area, when the player shoots in the hallway, the enemies in the room will not react, of course, provided that the door is closed. The sound area is not a fixed area, but once the door is opened, the area inside penetrates into the area in front of it, expanding the range where gunshots can be heard.
Because the game also sets the same sound area in the distant room, not only the enemies in the same room will react, sometimes the enemies in the distant room will also notice the gunshot, and the sound of opening the door and the enemy approaching will be heard from a distance, creating a sense of tension in the game.
On the other hand, the fine arts side is facing a huge workload and insufficient manpower. Adrian found it difficult to do all his fine art work, so he turned to Softdisc's artist Kevin Crowder for help. When Tom contacted him, Mr. Claude was enthusiastic and crossed nearly 1,500 kilometers with his wife to come to his aid.
The interview went well, and while Mr Claude was trying to find a house in Madison, Mr. Romero and his colleagues were also looking for an apartment. At that time, Romero and the apartment where they lived were often traded with drugs, and it was not a safe place to stay.
Although the group tried to find an apartment in Madison, when Mr. Romero complained in the middle of the night that he "didn't want to stay in the cold land anymore", the group decided to make their home in Dallas. They signed up for a total of five homes and offices, and id Software will open its own office in Mesquite, Texas, while hiring Romero's former acquaintance, Jay Wilbur. Wilbur and Claude will officially begin work on April 1.
While a series of changes such as moving, the production of the game is also gradually advancing, and the production of enemies and levels, the inclusion of songs produced by Mr. Bobby Prince, and the production of the menu system are all progressing smoothly. However, Romero found some deficiencies in building the level. While the gameplay has become a fluid, fast-paced shooter, it hasn't been added to an important element of the game that has always been in the works, namely, the hidden room.
Previous systems had no way to hide rooms, and creating a "pushable wall" was the best solution. If you press the SPACEBAR toward the wall, the wall moves and the player can continue to push forward. Carmack objected because the code would get messed up, but Romero and his colleagues desperately persuaded him and joined the pushable wall by April.
After implementing the pushable wall, Tom said that he added a secret passage to the current level card. The "P" on the second wall indicates that this is a sign of the pushable wall
April 1992: The finalization of the title of "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D" and the dramatic changes brought about by the marketing
In April, Wilbur will begin one of his most important tasks – identifying the owner of the original Castle Wolfenstein trademark. The members of the development loved the name Wolfenstein and couldn't think of a better name for a long time, but in order to use the name they needed to get a trademark.
Muse Software, which released Castle Wolfenstein in 1981, is based in Maryland, but because the company had long since discontinued the business, Mr. Wilbur had to go there first to look for clues. "Don't forget, this happened before the Internet was born," Mr. Romero adds with a smile.
But Wilbur managed to find the copyright owner, a woman who bought the property of a failed company and owned all of Muse Software's intellectual property. Wilbur bought the trademark for $5,000 and successfully launched the name "Wehrmacht Headquarters" on a sunny day. There was no need to think of a new name, and Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D was born after adding 3D.
By mid-April, all audio must be added to the game. Mr. Prince, who was in charge of the music, worked remotely, but the game still needed sound effects, and after actually watching the game, he grasped the overall feeling, so he invited Mr. Prince and the device to the office.
Although most of the development was done on the second floor of a small office, it seems that the atmosphere between Mr. Tom and Mr. Romero was quite lively during the development. When the engine was complete and the enemy AI was working properly, Mr Carmack said he moved to his apartment in search of peace.
▲ A precious photograph showing Tom's desk at that time
Mr. Prince also came to the office with a high-quality microphone, and all the sounds in the game were recorded with this microphone. Mr. Romero and Mr. Tom were responsible for the voice acting, and Mr. Adrian created a sound effect for the guards. It was funny to think of recording a crazy death sound, Romero recalled with a laugh.
Because Mr. Prince decided to leave the team before the game went live, it was necessary to record all the audio for the three chapters that were expected to be released, even though the game was still in the initial shareware phase.
Toward the end of June, as the game was about to be released, Scott Miller of APPOGE made a phone call. After telling him that the shareware chapter was about to be completed, Miller revealed the idea of uploading and opening the subscription as soon as the shareware chapter was completed. Although he knew that the remaining two chapters had not even begun to be produced, he also knew that once the overall design was completed, the production of the level would be immediately followed. But most importantly, once you start accepting bookings, you have to hurry up and develop the remaining two chapters.
Mr. Miller also has some ideas for marketing. If you can prepare 3 more chapters on top of the currently planned 3 chapters, you can publish a guide book. In this way, Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D will be able to set the following prices.
A "trilogy" with 3 chapters (30 levels) to play: $35
Ability to play "Nocturnal Missions" with 3 additional chapters: $15
A book of guidebooks that details how to play all 60 levels: $10
It's a very stimulating pricing. If you spend $35 on 3 chapters, there's no way you can't double the fun without spending $15. In addition, there was no Internet at that time, and a guide book was essential for 60 levels. When Miller asked if he could produce three more chapters and a guide book in the two months to the end of June, Romero and Tom looked at each other and said, "I think so."
Development will be completed by the end of April. Because Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D had an element of violence like never before, Romero and Tom decided to set a fake rating screen before the title screen. The 1970s film was rated "Need to Watch under the Guidance of Parents: PG-13 Limited", so the game was set to "Include Violent Killing: PC-13 Limited". "We were meant to make a joke, but in retrospect, it was the first self-rated game in history," Romero said.
The first picture is the false rating shown in "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D", and the second is the rating used in the movie
May-June 1992: After the shareware chapter is completed, the crazy level production begins
With Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D just a few days away, Romero was responsible for recording all the data on a floppy disk. But unlike previous works, Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D cannot fit on a floppy disk of 1.44MB. So Romero made a tool to split and place the zip files of the entire game on multiple disks, as well as a tool to consolidate the split data onto the installation target hard drive and extract it.
The program for the split tool took only 6 hours to produce, and Mr. Romero named it ICE (Installation Creation Editor). Next, he spent two more days creating a de-ICE program that integrates ice split files, and is said to have introduced mechanisms to prevent players from accidentally backing out during the installation process. These tools have since been used for many years and seem to have been made available to APPOGE as well.
Then on May 4, the developers, as usual, repeated the test late into the night to confirm that there were no problems with the game and whether the distribution files contained the necessary files such as README. The platform for the sharing software file upload of "Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D" was the Software Creation BBS that all the games uploaded here at that time, and the BBS would notify players of the release of the game with WordArt that year, so that players would notice it.
The file is uploaded at 4 a.m. Romero and his friends were exhausted after high-fives, but they believed the work would change everything. As preparations for mass production of the game progressed, Romero and Tom frantically completed the remaining levels by the end of May.
However, next to their seats were NEEOGEO and Legend of the Hungry Wolf, as well as SFC and Street Fighter 2. Compared to commander Keane in the side-scrolling action game, the level production of Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D is very boring, and staying focused seems like a daunting task. Mr. Romero revealed that if you can't play two fighting games between productions, you can't even move forward. With hard work, they finally completed all the levels up to Chapter 3.
Mr. Romero made a mother dish and gave it to Mr. Miller, but Mr. Miller said that "there are almost no orders for the trilogy". Because Miller's marketing worked, 99 percent of orders were focused on the $60 package of "Trilogy + 3 Additional Chapters + Guidebook." With more than 4,000 orders at the end of May, Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D generated $250,000 in sales in its first month of release, far outperforming the Commander Keane series.
This great success undoubtedly inspired Romero and others, who continued to work all night and produced 3 chapters of the additional chapter Nocturnal Missions. The first thing to start was the Hint Book, which contained drawings for each map and Hints from Tom and Romero. The process of making a guide book was interesting and a highlight of the development.
▲ The Raiders book also seems to contain behind-the-scenes stories about the production process of the title screen
Romero, who was excited to create a tip book, listed the fastest time he ever played a shareware chapter and wrote it on the first page of each level, "So to speak, we have informally started the speed-through challenge in PC games," Romero recalls. In addition, doom was later produced to officially join Speedrun and the game could be recorded and played. It is said that this feature is not available to players, but surprisingly they implemented it in 1990.
Additional chapters and guides were completed, and on June 15, 1992, Mr. Romero, who had completed the test, made a master plate and handed it directly to Mr. Miller. This was the first time he had handed over the master disc directly instead of opting for mail, and in this way, wehrmacht headquarters 3D was officially released, pioneering the FPS genre in the world.
In the end, Romero and his party completed the shareware chapter in 4 months, the remaining 5 chapters were completed in 2 months, and a 6-person company created 6 chapters in 6 months. "The numbers '6, 6, 6' are the focus of the next game, do you understand what I'm talking about?" After saying this, Mr. Romero concluded his speech.
▲ In the later production of Doom, the number "666" and the inverted pentagram were drawn on the spectrum map of the BGM frequency as Easter eggs (hidden elements).
Q&A: Ideas for bleeding graphics, porting, and level design
Next, we will introduce the Q&A session held in the second half of the conference.
| Q: Are you worried that the gore in your video game will cause problems?
A: I'm not worried about anything outside of the company. At that time, we were only doing the games we wanted to play, and we had never seen a game like Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D. The bloodiest game I've ever played was The Bilestoad, released in 1982. However, this is a game for the Apple II and doesn't look real. Although Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D is also cartoonish and does not seem realistic, I have never seen anything so violent and funny.
| Q: How did you come up with the idea of letting players play part of the shareware and then buying subsequent content?
A: Initially allowing players to play parts of the shareware for free, the idea for the subsequent chapters to adopt a landing system was written by Scott Miller. All three previous productions depict chapters in the series, and in Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D, there is a plot at the end of chapter 3 where the player is trapped in a castle and kills Hitler.
I wanted to give the player an idea of how the next story would unfold and what they could experience in chapter 1, and if there was a story ending at the end of Part 3, then surely everyone would want to buy chapter 3. The original level has a boss at the end, and it is most appropriate to set 10 levels in the process of constantly attacking the level. I've done games with 16 levels before, but 10 levels is enough for the game.
I made a game in 1991 in a very short time, so I felt it was perfectly fine to do 30 levels in 1992 without a time limit because I had previous experience.
| Q: Tell us about the process of porting the game to a home console.
A: After the advent of "German Headquarters 3D", i was surprised that a Japanese company called Imagineer offered to release a version of SNES (Super Nintendo System) with an advance of $100,000 and then royalties. I had already handed over the transplant to someone else and was concentrating on Doom, but I knew the transplant hadn't started yet. So I suspended the development of Doom, spent three weeks investigating SNES, changed the bleeding screen to comply with the regulatory restrictions, replaced the dog with a mouse, and completed the transplant version in three weeks... I think it's a decent finish, and it's the only time we've transplanted Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D ourselves.
Doom was ported to Atari Jaguar (*2). But basically we don't do the transplant work ourselves, and once we do, either we enjoy the transplant process or there's an emergency. When I was working on Quake, Midway said they wanted to do Doom 64. Since they had already made the PlayStation version of Doom, I knew they were up to it, so I said to them, "Just do what you want, try doing something interesting with the DOOM IP." As a result, he made a very cool game, even the same character looks more cool, and the light and shadow are equally great.
* 2 Atari Jaguar: Atari's home console released in 1993
Sometimes I feel that the transplant version is not just a copy of the original, but also a good choice to become a unique work. If everything were brand new and different, I would collect them all like a collector. In some cases, you may be able to give birth to your own story. If it makes sense to do so, then it's also possible to add a little more trick to the transplant process. Yet in this day and age, we have to roll out the same thing no matter which hardware we're on (laughs).
| Q: What was the most interesting challenge in developing Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D?
A: It should have been when I tried to get John [Mr. Carmack] to be a pushable wall (laughs). Prior to this, Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D was slightly less innovative than Commander Keane. Commander Keane is full of hidden elements, but Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D is not. Also, because the level is just stacked with bricks, it is boring to work. After I successfully persuaded him to design the pushable wall, I added some secret passages to the map I had made at the time.
There are no technical problems, all difficulties can be solved, and perhaps pushing the wall is the only obstacle encountered. When I found the core of fun, it was necessary to design more fun around the core, so I managed to implement this feature, which was the craziest part of development.
| Q: Please tell me which sprite tool you used at the time.
A: First of all, as a game developer, I need to prevent the number of files from becoming too large. At that time, the area that was restricted when saving each file was larger than it is now, and the greater the number of files, the more capacity was wasted.
So I made a tool called iGrab. All art images are made at 320x200 resolution, while Adrian works at 8x8 pixels. All the data is stored in a huge data file and loaded after specifying the coordinates in the script, from the texture of the walls to everything, I tried to save the whole game in one large file.
Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D is a high-speed game, so wall textures need to be read quickly. Although I put the data in a large file, just like a virtual map, I can locate the data immediately and bring in the uncompressed data. Wall textures aren't compressed for fast loading, so it's easy to mod by opening the VGAGrapg.W 3D file overlay.
Starting with Wehrmacht 3D, I learned that people had done a lot of research on the game in order to make levels in MOD, so I made Doom a completely open format. I'm not trying to expose everyone to the data from Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D, just because it's compressed and stored on multiple disks. All doom content is uncompressed, and the specifications are transparent and public, so that everyone can change it freely.
MODs were also popular in the early 1980s, when there were game production systems like Eamon that were freely available and free to make adventure games. In the '70s, games were often modified as they spread. Prior to the birth of Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D, adventure games were often modified by players because they were easier to get started.
| Q: Please tell us more about your experience in level design. Also, how does the test move forward?
A: There are no stages in level production and testing, and you will play the test immediately after each level is designed. Sometimes I get lost, but that's okay, 3D games themselves were rare at the time, and until Doom came along, it was a game of dividing mazes with right-angled walls. Due to the large size of the map, it is not uncommon to get lost.
In order not to let the player get lost, the design of preserving corpses was chosen in Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D (laughs). If you see a corpse, you know, "I've been here." In addition, I changed the wall design of each area in the level so that players can grasp the progress of the game. First there are blue stones, then brown trees and white stones, and so on. At that time, there were no beginner tutorials in the game, and I had to understand the rules on my own, but I thought the gameplay of Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D was easier to understand than the games of the 1980s. Until then, games are all about killing players, and you can only know the rules if you die a few times before you know them (laughs).
When I was designing the levels, I was thinking about what to do here, where to hide some interesting secrets. Because we had to hurry up and make 60 levels, we would try out each other's levels and comment on whether it was fun. We don't have a QA team, so we're the QA team ourselves. Make, play, and if it's not interesting enough, revise it, that's how we designed the level.
Our company culture is "fix bugs as soon as they are found", at least not in a state where the filling will be exposed immediately. If it's natural to play, it's good, if it doesn't work, improve it immediately and fix the bug.
| Q: Do you have any advice for people who want to develop games in the future?
A: Fix the bug as soon as you find it, that's the most important thing (laughs). Play the game very thoroughly until it collapses. If it crashes, fix it. The sooner you test, the sooner you can fix it. Conversely, if the test is done late, it takes more time to fix it. Don't keep writing code or working for more than 30 minutes, testing every 5 minutes. If there is a problem at this time, it is caused by improper operation in the previous step.
Can you still think of commissioning after a long day of work? It's crazy (laughs). So after a little modification, you should test it immediately, if you think it is interesting, you can continue to do the next work, and if you think it is strange, you can quickly modify it.
| Q: Would you still like to return to indie gaming?
A: I agree. I'm a regular part of Game Jam, and last year I made a really cool game. For me, indie games are the life of the industry and a source of innovation. Everyone in the circle is making games about themselves and their families, or games with certain concepts, and they don't try to jump into games like Call of Duty or Battlefield.
I often play indie games, and sometimes I get new discoveries from them, and that's the beauty of indie games. Regardless of whether it is three or seven or twenty-one, doing it boldly first will always give birth to an attractive pleasure until one day it becomes a natural existence. For example, Minecraft. This work changed everything, but this kind of thing could happen in the future. I also play mainstream big games, but I prefer indie games because it's cool. I also like games that end in a few hours.
| Q: Some countries will ban content related to Nazis, what do you think?
A: I didn't develop with Germany in mind. When I'm in america, I just think about America. And now that I live in Ireland, I don't care too much about America anymore (laughs). And I was only about 24 years old at the time, and I felt like I should sell it to Americans. I didn't know Germany or that they were the largest group of gamers in Europe at the time.
But one day I learned that it was banned from sale in Germany, after all there are many things in Germany that cannot be released publicly, but I also got some interesting discoveries. I received an email from a Vietnam war prisoner with the words "Thank you for the healing of my psychological wounds by German Headquarters 3D" and that the Jewish children were thrilled with revenge, which I did not expect. I didn't even think about the world during development, but many people got a touch from it. It's really cool.
| Q: Has Cyrus Warner, the developer of Castle Wolfenstein, reacted?
A: Yes. Eleven years after the release of the Wehrmacht Headquarters, he launched the Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D and purchased the first color laptop of the time. It is produced in Toshiba and sells for $5,000. I put Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D in it and joined Tom, Carmack, and Rhine at the Apple II Programmers' Conference in Kansas City. Guests are invited to every conference, but the guest in 1992 was Cyrus Warner. Crazy, right? The voice he spoke at the time can still be found online.
Later, when we were meeting in the hall, Cyrus came, and I thought I must talk to him. He was about two meters and five meters tall, but walked with his hands against the wall, probably because of an illness in his legs. While we always have to play with sound effects in our mouths, the moment Cyrus's knee hits the ground, Tom imitates the sound of a gunshot, which is crazy (laughs). Then I talked to him and he said he liked Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D and thought it was cool. I asked him to write his autograph on the newly printed Guide to the Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D, which I later decorated on the company's display cases.
After that, I spent two months making a game called Wehrmacht 3D: Spear of Destiny, a prequel to Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D. In dc comics of the '70s or '80s, Hitler is searching for the Spear of Destiny (the spear that stabbed Jesus) and engages in a fierce battle with Superman and Wonder Woman. Tom did a lot of research and decided that his next work would be based on this. Since then, the Wehrmacht series has had supernatural mysteries that can be said to have laid the groundwork for the future of the series (laughs).
| Q: Please tell us about the secret elements set in the game.
A: There's a limited amount of play in Wehrmacht Headquarters 3D, so whenever I can create a secret passage, I think carefully about what can be done here. The only thing that worked at that time was to move the bricks backwards, so I thought about how to design a secret, how to do a secret secret, and I thought about it a lot.
For example, there is a very obvious mark on the wall, or there is a badge on the wall. However, somewhere on the endless stretch of wood, there is a secret hidden, and even in this secret there is a secret hidden. In this way, secrets can be layered on top of each other. It's also something designers do when they get a new toy. I want to add some ingenuity in some places, which is why when designing secret elements, pay attention to distinguishing them differently.
There's a screen in the beta maze that says "Call APPOGE and say 'Snappity'", and if you can actually find it and call, you'll get the game for free. I originally wanted to do this, but the beta version was copied and the secret was revealed, so I later changed the graphic content to "Call APPOGE and say 'Aardwolf'", which is still in the game.
Translation: SR Cat Willow
Edit: Shiina pear
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