Heretic is a dark fantasy first-person shooter video game released in December 1994. It was developed by Raven Software and published by id Software through GT Interactive.
id Software LLC is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack.
Quake is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. The first game in the Quake series, it was originally released for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and Linux in 1996, followed by Mac OS and Sega Saturn in 1997 and Nintendo 64 in 1998.
Rise of the Triad: Dark War is a first-person shooter video game, developed and published by Apogee Software in 1995. The player can choose to play as one of five different characters, each bearing unique attributes such as speed and endurance. The game's story follows these five characters who have been sent to investigate a deadly cult, and soon become aware of a deadly plot to destroy a nearby city. A remake was designed by Interceptor Entertainment and released by Apogee Games in 2013. The shareware version of the game is titled Rise of the Triad: The HUNT Begins.
A source port is a software project based on the source code of a game engine that allows the game to be played on operating systems or computing platforms with which the game was not originally compatible.
The Tapwave Zodiac is a mobile entertainment console and personal digital assistant. Tapwave announced the system in May 2003 and began shipping in October of that same year. The Zodiac was designed to be a high-performance mobile entertainment system centered on video games, music, photos, and video for 18- to 34-year-old gamers and technology enthusiasts. By running an enhanced version of the Palm Operating System (5.2T), Zodiac also provided access to Palm's personal information management software and many other applications from the Palm developer community. The company was based in Mountain View, California.
Hugo's House of Horrors is a parser-based adventure game designed by independent software developer David P. Gray and published as shareware in 1990. The game follows the character Hugo as he searches for his girlfriend Penelope in a haunted house. To progress through the game, the player uses items and interacts with the environment to solve puzzles and access more rooms in the house. The gameplay was inspired by Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. Hugo's House of Horrors was praised for its environment and atmosphere, but was criticized for its plot and visual design. It was followed by two sequels: Hugo II, Whodunit? and Hugo III, Jungle of Doom!, and a spin-off first-person shooter game, Nitemare 3D.
DOSBox is a free and open-source emulator which runs software for MS-DOS compatible disk operating systems—primarily video games. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games is widespread, with it being used in commercial re-releases of those games as well.
Doom WAD is the default format of package files for the video game Doom and its sequel Doom II: Hell on Earth, that contain sprites, levels, and game data. WAD stands for Where's All the Data?. Immediately after its release in 1993, Doom attracted a sizeable following of players who created their own mods for WAD files—packages containing new levels or graphics—and played a vital part in spawning the mod-making culture which is now commonplace for first-person shooter games. Thousands of WADs have been created for Doom, ranging from single custom levels to full original games; most of these can be freely downloaded over the Internet. Several WADs have also been released commercially, and for some people the WAD-making hobby became a gateway to a professional career as a level designer.
A first-person shooter engine is a video game engine specialized for simulating 3D environments for use in a first-person shooter video game. First-person refers to the view where the players see the world from the eyes of their characters. Shooter refers to games which revolve primarily around wielding firearms and killing other entities in the game world, either non-player characters or other players.
Xargon: The Mystery of the Blue Builders is a video game trilogy produced by Epic MegaGames for DOS. The game is a side-scrolling platform game. The main character, Malvineous Havershim, must journey through strange landscapes as he seeks to destroy the evil Xargon.
Transylvania was the name of a trilogy of computer games released for several home computers of the 1980s. The games were graphic adventure games created by Antonio Antiochia and produced by Penguin Software/Polarware.
The Quake II engine is a game engine developed by id Software for use in their 1997 first-person shooter Quake II. It is the successor to the Quake engine. Since its release, the Quake II engine has been licensed for use in several other games.
Bio Menace is a 1993 game developed and published by Apogee Software for MS-DOS. A 2D multidirectional scrolling platform game, it was built on a licensed version of id Software's Commander Keen game engine. Apart from the engine and music, all in-game content was created by the game's designer, Jim Norwood. In 2014, the game was re-released on Steam, and in 2015 on GOG.com with support for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux.
id Tech is a series of separate game engines designed and developed by id Software. Prior to the presentation of the id Tech 5-based game Rage in 2011, the engines lacked official designation and as such were simply referred to as the Doom and Quake engines, from the name of the main game series the engines had been developed for. "id Tech" has been released as free software under the GNU General Public License. id Tech versions 0 to 3 were released under GPL-2.0-or-later. id Tech versions 3.5 to 4.5 were released under GPL-3.0-or-later. id Tech 5 to 7 are proprietary, with id Tech 7 currently being the latest utilized engine.
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
Pie in the Sky is a 2.5D and 3D first-person shooter engine most popular in the mid-to-late 1990s by Pie in the Sky Software, also known as Power 3D and the 3D Game Creation or 3D Game Creation System engine. The engine was used in two games by the company as well as many other independent games and amateur projects after it was turned into a commercial game creator, largely because it minimized the amount of computer programming knowledge needed to make 3D games in its editing tools, making it suitable even for beginners with no game-design experience.
Game-Maker is an MS-DOS-based suite of game design tools, accompanied by demonstration games, produced between 1991 and 1995 by the Amherst, New Hampshire based Recreational Software Designs and sold through direct mail in the US by KD Software. Game-Maker also was sold under various names by licensed distributors in the UK, Korea, and other territories including Captain GameMaker and Create Your Own Games With GameMaker!. Game-Maker is notable as one of the first complete game design packages for DOS-based PCs, for its fully mouse-driven graphical interface, and for its early support for VGA graphics, Sound Blaster sound, and full-screen four-way scrolling.
