Project Wolfgeist

Project: Wolfgeist
Title screen
Author(s)	Possum Trot
Release Date	February 2, 2005
Base Game	Registered Wolfenstein
Sourceport	DOS, SDL
Features
Type	Mod
Code Changes	Yes
Maps	37
New Graphics	Yes
Files Included	All
Awards

Project: Wolfgeist is a mod for registered Wolfenstein, made by Possum Trot. It was released on February 2, 2005. It featured coding by Kyle Albert, and featured seamless levels, 4 keys, textured floors and ceilings, animated objects, extra enemies, new weapons and other high-scale coding.

Graphics were borrowed from Totengraeber, mods by WSJ, 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.

Possum had the habit of adding as many people from the Wolfenstein 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.

In late 2004, the release of End of Destiny was all the rage, and coders like Kyle were left confused with Possum's long, rambling sentences in broken English about how a mod should be constructed, with references to obscure mods and levels from original Wolfenstein 3D.

On the other hand, Kyle taught Possum the basics of backup (which he only learned to master six months later) the concept of naming maps, and to take the leap from using MapEdit 4.2 and WolfEdit to MapEdit 8.4 and ChaosEdit. He also taught Possum about floor codes, of which he had only poor knowledge.

Kyle was one year younger than Possum, then 14, and this intimidated Possum in a way that he felt the mapping had to be sublime all the way through. Unfortunately, other ideas for mods got in the way, and come early January 2005, interest had slipped away from Project: Wolfgeist. The level design suffered from a heavy presence of enemies and lack of sufficient ammo or health pickups, making playback difficult.

Possum was overwhelmed with the sudden possibilities a mod could offer, with a brand new weapon, a new enemy, countless new objects, some of which were animated, and numerous new wall patches. The mod suffered from a proper sense of streamlining; it plays more as a showcase of all the things that have been added to the code.

Furthermore, even though textured floors and ceilings were implemented, each ten levels had the same setup. This created a repetitive pattern that made the mod seem samey most of the way through. As Possum often stipulated that his mods should have 60 levels, the goal was pursued until finally throwing in the towel after a particularly disastrous boss level (level 36). Apologies were made to Kyle Albert, the mod was released and quickly forgotten, and interest instead moved on to Secrets of Offenbach.

Level 37 was taken from The Final Solution and featured its opening level. As no sprites were edited from the original map, it featured toilets as chairs together with the standard tables, making for a bizarre decoration, of which Brian Lowe took particular note.

It 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.

This proved too much work, however, and the SDL port simply followed the original February 2005 release by Kyle Albert, who in 2013 provided his source code to Andy.

External links

• Download Project: Wolfgeist (DOS) at The Wolfenstein 3D Dome (archived)
• Download Project: Wolfgeist (SDL) at The Wolfenstein 3D Vault
• Thread at DieHard Wolfers
• News at the Dome: MAY/JUN 2013 JAN/FEB 2005 NOV/DEC 2004