Wolf Overkill is a mod for registered Wolfenstein, made by Thomas Weiling in collaboration with Havoc and numerous contributions from Wolf Skevos-Jones. It was released in an early state as an unfinished showcase project on April 24, 2012.
As such, it should not count as a proper mod, as it cannot be finished (the mod crashes after finishing level 60); more as a preview of an unfinished mod.
Genesis
In the wake of Endlösung, Thomas took a sabbatical from Wolfenstein modding and came back two months later with a new desire to make a classic-themed mod. Unlike the two previous mods he had made, this time he aimed for a mod that served all purposes; interesting mapping, interesting coding, new music, sounds and graphics and a lot of it.
From the offset, Havoc had enabled many of these coding features, which included shading, fog, missile launcher, multiple keys, a motorbike (complete with sounds), animated objects and various other artifacts, including a drug artifact that caused the status bar to act like a cash register, ceiling colors to change with each passing second and playing an Ogg Vorbis file, which featured Elton John's cover of the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.
The chainsaw from DOOM was also implemented, meant to be used in a bonus level taking place in a dark forest.
As Thomas used (and continues to use) MapEdit, the mapping was made in two separate GAMEMAPS files, which were supposed to be merged together once all work had been finished.
Wolf Overkill: 2009 version
In its initial stages, the mod was supposed to contain 90 levels similar to Blake Stone. As time went by, the goal of 100 levels was set, with 90 levels being standard levels and the remaining 10 being secret levels. Further ideas were toyed with including 120 levels and even 150 levels, featuring all content, sprites and textures from original Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, but these ideas were pursued (though never realized) in a late 2009/early 2010 project dubbed Wolf Overdrive (not to be confused with the actual Wolf Overdrive which was released in 2015).
The first map was finished on August 8, 2009. Over the course of the next four months, Thomas would finish the bulk of the original levels for the mod, totaling 93 levels come December 2009. Many levels were made quickly in succession; levels 37 through 41 were all made in the same day, setting an all-time personal record for Thomas.
While all this was going on, an old, shelved mod of Thomas', NovoWolf, had been salvaged and was readied for release. This was quite well received, though straying from the usual classic-themed mold, incorporating many Lost Episodes-styled graphics and sounds.
Eager to improve his mapping skills, yet prove to the community that it was possible for him to release a mod which included new weapons, new enemies, textured floors and ceilings and other state-of-the-art coding changes, the mod was pretty much finished, with 97 levels finished come Christmas 2009. However, after reevaluating the obviously rushed mapping, the mod was put on hold. Thomas and Havoc turned their attention to the aforementioned Wolf Overdrive set, which saw 12 levels finished. These levels were all deleted in a huff circa March 2010, wishing to wipe the slate clean and start all over in terms of mapping design and general approach.
Wolf Overkill: 2010 version
Starting all over with a full realization and general idea of what most levels would look like once the third plane had been enabled, probable weather effects, multiple textured floors and ceilings and other extras had been added, Thomas begun his new mapping work for the project in April 2010. This time, more sacrifices were made, no longer relying on typical 3/5-squared hallways and standardized placement of guards and objects, instead taking more risks all the while going for a more realistic design.
As the mod was designed to contain many different parts, a la Totengraeber including an old castle environment, a new castle environment, an abandoned castle environment, two large laboratory sections, outdoor sections and a number of bonus levels, some of which featured bizarre coding changes, level design was pretty well laid out and all that was needed was patience and time. For the first time in a long while, Thomas took it easy on the mapping, opting not to open MapEdit at all when not feeling inspired, instead of winging it, resulting in a tedious, predictable gameplay as evidenced in the 2009 Overkill version.
Havoc had also prepared a new sound engine which saw all sounds and music featured in separate folders rather than the VSWAP and AUDIOT; these were to include high-quality wave files and MIDI files.
A lot of time passed, and most of 2010 was spent making levels, with each part being made in different stages. As with All This & Wolf 3D, coding for the laboratory sections had not been fully yet implemented - these included switch operated doors and pushwalls, Tesla coils, exploding nuclear barrels and a radiation suit, and as such, only the castle levels were made. Nevertheless, by August 2010 roughly 60 levels had already been made.
Progress then slowed due to Thomas partaking in the DieHard Wolfers' SDL Map Set. By January 2011, 87 levels had been finished, with the final standard level, level 90 being finished sometime during this period, featuring a showdown with Hitler in the Führerbunker. In the spring of 2011, 99 levels were finished with only the aforementioned drug level missing. This was toyed with in its early stages, featuring an effect similar to a bad LSD trip, where the player loses all control and is not sure how much health and ammo there is left. Other bonus levels, including a large bathroom facility which included exploding toilets, was also to be featured. Another secret level featured only dogs and another one took place in Hell, battling Hitler's dismembered ghost with a chainsaw. These levels were made more for their shock value than out of fitting in with the remainder of the set; the Hell level in particular featured a general design not up to par and was reattempted two or three times.
Around this time in early 2011, Thomas decided on renaming the project Wolfenstein: The Last Howl in a stupor. This was not well received, particularly by Dean, who otherwise had been a kind and generous support to anything related to the project and Thomas' mapping in general.
Final stages and panic
For most of mid-2011 there was little to no activity within modding for Thomas, as he was going through some personal problems. This is evidenced by a haphazard undertaking of obscuring all of his posts on the DieHard Wolfers message board, for which he had made an enormous amount of posts. An early stab at a classic map set was attempted in June 2011, and seven levels were finished, though these were also wiped in another wipe-the-slate-clean fit. Further casualties included some of the levels made for Wolf Overkill, which in the late summer of 2011 saw some remakes in the laboratory areas.
For many months, there was no activity on the Overkill project, as Thomas had to collect a goal set at the beginning of inciting the 2010 version: All 100 levels had to have unique music, mostly culled from MIDI files featuring classical music or minimalist compositions suitable for gameplay. Furthermore, an enormous amount of textured floors and ceilings had to be either found or made - most likely by Wolf Skevos-Jones who had also contributed close to one hundred sounds and a fair amount of graphics - but as this never got off the ground, Thomas got frustrated in having to sit on this mod for such a long time.
In the meantime, work had begun on a small mod meant to be a short, fun type of mod in contrast to the 100-level long and feature-heavy Wolf Overkill. The name of the mod was 10 New Ones, and this was released in October 2011, being Thomas' first release in nearly two years. Work was also begun on a Totengraeber-inspired mod, Time to Kill, in addition to a map set for Spear of Destiny. All of these projects were undertaken to take away the attention from the Overkill project which had simply gotten out of hand.
Having slightly fallen out with Havoc due to his own impatience, Thomas tried to contact Wolf Skevos-Jones in the hope that he would save the project, making a long list of demands for the missing textures and music to be finished ready for release in May 2012 in connection with Wolfenstein 3D's twentieth anniversary. After not receiving any e-mails from either Wolf Skevos-Jones or Havoc for more than a month, busy with Time to Kill, Thomas' patience with project soured enormously, and after a long consideration similar to a grieving process, he completely deleted the project, all finished levels, graphics, sounds, music chunks and various other items related to the project by his own hand sometime in March 2012.
Regret and embarrassment
Regretting his decision roughly one month on, Thomas got a hold of Havoc and told him what had occurred. Havoc still had all his coding intact and the most recent Overkill EXE still had all the features needed. As such, frustration was only expressed on behalf of Thomas, as it was deemed extremely foolish to thwart more than two years of work. Out of distress and eager to prove that something had indeed happened during the past many years, which should have exposed a more intricate and code-heavy side to his modding, Thomas put out the latest backup version of the project which had survived - the 2009 version - in April 2012 to mixed reception. The mapping that was featured was below par, by Thomas' own standards, compared to some of the levels that had been made in 2010 and 2011.
Losses
Over the course of the two and a half years Wolf Overkill had been in the works, 203 levels had been made - including those for the failed Wolf Overdrive project, out of which only less than half survived. 60 levels appeared in the 2012 release, and some of the better levels from 2010 and 2011 were salvaged and inserted into Time to Kill. But the bulk of the work, including some of the more extravagant laboratory levels, were completely wiped, never again to resurface.
Aftermath
Thomas initially viewed Time to Kill as a more streamlined version of Wolf Overkill, though it quickly became clear that the many extravagant features could have been the base of a larger-scale mod otherwise rarely attempted by the author. Some months would pass before the effect of deleting two years of work would sink in.
Sometime in late 2012 after freewheeling through his first actual map set, Thomas tired completely of the process of making mods and maps. It took a long while to fully commit to mapping again, seeing himself as being completely tapped out after the Wolf Overkill debacle. It would take more than two years before Thomas again released a project for which some enthusiasm was shown, which was to become Victory of Faith. In his many e-mails with Andy Nonymous (who did the coding for that mod) around this time, Thomas could not help but keep expressing grief and regret over the loss of the many months of work, borne out of frustration and pure ignorance.
Surviving May 2010 incarnation & probable future
Sometime in 2016, after reconnecting with Havoc, Thomas received all of Havoc's files related to the project, which included a small number of maps made in April and May 2010. 14 surviving levels were included, with levels 1, 10, 12, 13 and 14 being unique levels to the set, never having been released in any form. Levels 9 & 11 had already been included in Time to Kill. The remaining levels were retouched 2009 Overkill maps, though a number of these levels were virtually nonidentical in many places, with a lot of the clutter and repetitive patterns removed. The fact that some of these levels had not been released was only discovered by Thomas in May 2021 after revisiting the files.
Havoc also still had numerous sounds and graphics otherwise thought long lost lying around, including 50 original guard sounds and death screams, voiced by Wolf Skevos-Jones. All the coding made for the project still remains and is intact.
In the spring of 2019, Thomas and Havoc again discussed a possible revamp of the project, but with far fewer levels than the original intention, as 100 levels would most likely prove an unpopular and unnecessary long gameplay. Though Thomas had sent a number of ideas and made clear that this could be the final, once-and-for-all attempt to get the project properly finished, this idea was never reciprocated.
In May 2021, after teaming up with AlumiuN for a number of years, it was decided to properly finish off Wolf Overkill complete with all the original features but without the extravagant outdoor effects and textured floors and ceilings. Using the May 2010 revision as the base, the mod is expected out sometime in 2021, more than a decade after its initial inception.