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Project Wolfgeist

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Project: Wolfgeist is a mod for registered Wolfenstein, made by Possum Trot. It was released on February 2, 2005.

Genesis[]

Possum had finished Abandon in late November 2004, with Operation: Achtliebe following close behind. Tiring of the latter mod, eventually deciding to end it early and unfinished, a brand new project was undertaken. Possum had the habit of adding as many people from the modding community as he could to his MSN Messenger account. One of these was Kyle Albert. Possum knew of Kyle via the Dome news archives and the unreleased projects Operation: Elimination and Gretel's Castle, which later became Operation: Todpfad. He was likewise an active member on the DieHard Wolfers forum, which Possum had joined in late November 2004.

Mentioning some of his new ideas to Kyle, an EXE was quickly thrown together. As Kyle had already more or less finished Operation: Todpfad, some of its coding features were easily adapted for Project: Wolfgeist - including animated objects, textured floors and ceilings, ammo box, 4 keys, in-game messages, an extra added enemy and a missile launcher. Possum, still only a few months into his modding experience, found it fascinating that coding features of that caliber could be that easily available. Nevertheless, one of Possum's most desired coding changes was the addition of seamless levels.

The mod was announced on December 12, featuring a small list of coding changes and the promise of 60 seamless levels, with the first screenshots following on December 17. More pics were added on the 21st and 29th. These shots depicted a still in-progress status bar that was later replaced with that of The Final Solution v2.0 for final release. Further shots were posted on January 7, 2005. On this date it was also stated that 22 levels had been completed. On January 16, another update was posted with two new screenshots that stated that the coding issues had been fixed (the dog had been replaced with a guard enemy and its newly added standing frames initially were buggy) and that no more coding changes would be featured - all that remained were maps. The final update was posted on January 31, and stated that only 40 levels would be featured and the mod would be finished within a week. This did not quite stick, as only 37 levels were finished and the mod was then released two days later.

Though dissatisfied with the mod, Possum nevertheless learned an awful lot from Kyle during the process. This included making the switch from the limiting and buggy MapEdit 4.2 to MapEdit 8.4 and swapping WolfEdit and FloEdit for ChaosEdit. Kyle also taught Possum the basic principles of floor codes and backup, though particularly the latter would not be a part of Possum's vocabulary until a few months later.

Background[]

One of the reasons why Project: Wolfgeist did not utilize the coding features properly enough was due to Possum's preference. Also, in January 2005, Possum had started playing Chokage 96, Clone Wars and Schabbs 2000 and would align much more with classic-themed aesthetics than heavily coded mods. Furthermore, Possum was also tinkering with the source code himself at the time, albeit more subdued and Hex-based. This was the era of End of Destiny, which had only just been released, and while some members of the community immediately took to the look and the possibilities it offered, there were some who felt that what made Wolfenstein 3D special for them was mainly the original source material. After toying with a few ideas in the laboratory levels of Project: Wolfgeist, Possum felt he had gone as far as he could, and the mod was released in more or less rushed and unfinished form, much as Abandon and Operation: Achtliebe had.

Description[]

The mod features 37 seamless levels. Initially slotted into units with 10 levels each, much inspired by Projekt: Vertilgung, some map designs used a little bit of everything. The aforementioned coding changes such as textured floors and ceilings were put to use, however each 10 levels use the same floor and ceiling texture. This was not due to Kyle's inability; this was upon request from Possum, who only in hindsight found out that the idea made for a very repetitive look and often did not fit the premise of dungeons, castles and laboratories as there were little to no variation in terms of shade.

Graphics and sounds were borrowed from Totengraeber, WSJ mods, Operation: Letzterschutz, Kristallnacht, Halten Sie! and Operation: Panzerschiff. A particularly important influence on the mod was Assault on Castle Totenhammer v0.3 Beta (an old favorite of Possum) and numerous other mods that used textured floors and ceilings. These were not that plentiful in December 2004. Kyle had provided the bulk of the floor and ceiling textures. The music order has also been changed, which was all to the benefit of Kyle and the people who downloaded the mod; it was only in December 2005 that Possum got digitized sounds and music to play properly on his computer.

A level guide was included with the mod, though this was obviously edited after it was decided to go with 37 levels rather than 60. The original level guide has never been located, but it most likely depicted several units designed in the mold of Totengraeber and Projekt: Vertilgung.

Bugs[]

The code seems more or less bug-free though in terms of design, there is oftentimes a lot to be desired with some objects and pushwalls not functioning properly. Furthermore, as Possum started the mod in his then-usual WolfEdit, Kyle taught him to use ChaosEdit instead, resulting in some glitchy frames, particularly the weapons and some of the dying frames (which WolfEdit sometimes could not handle).

Ports[]

The mod was ported to SDL and released on June 25, 2013. Before its release, Thomas and Andy Nonymous had discussed fixing some of the subpar mapping in especially the latter levels, and at one point, Thomas had planned to re-do the mod entirely from scratch, never having been satisfied with any of its designs. As this was quite an inactive period for Thomas, this idea was quickly withdrawn and the SDL port simply followed the original February 2005 release by Kyle Albert, who had provided his source code to Andy.

External links[]

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