| Rise Of The Triad |
Article Index for Rise Of |
Website Links For Rise |
Information AboutRise Of The Triad |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT RISE OF THE TRIAD | |
| 1995 video games | |
| apogee games | |
| mac os games | |
| dos games | |
| first-person shooters | |
| gp2x games | |
| linux games | |
| windows games | |
''Rise of the Triad: Dark War'' (shortened to '''''ROTT''''') is a First-person Shooter Video Game , first released on December 21 1994 by Apogee Software (later known as 3D Realms ). The particular team involved referred to themselves as the "The Developers of Incredible Power". The shareware version, which contained separate levels from the full version, was called '''''Rise of the Triad: The HUNT begins'''''. STORY The plot involves a team of specialists, part of a top secret group called H.U.N.T. ('''H'''igh-risk '''U'''nited '''N'''ations '''T'''ask-force), sent to an island to investigate cult activity. Their boat is destroyed by a patrol, and the team soon learns that the cult is systematically destroying nearby Los Angeles. The team then has to fight their way into the monastery on the island, and eventually put a stop to the cult. FEATURES Engine The game features vertical dimensions, enhanced weaponry, trampolines and more. The level design is characterized by very high, straight walls, outdoor areas, and digitized Sprite -based enemies. Some enemies in some levels are randomised, randomly picked from the other types of 'actors' used in the levels. In some rooms, the game uses primitive light sourcing, with torches and lights that can be shot out, dimming the room. Although ''Rise of the Triad'' is based on (a highly enhanced version of) the '' in the game seems to suggest that it took place during or after World War Two . Wolfenstein 3D Also took place during World war 2. Also, many of the enemies in the game look like soldiers and/or officers of some sort, suggesting they may have been sprites intended for the Wolfenstein sequel. Weapons The weapon system is ahead of many other games of the time in complexity, brutality, and realism. Players can carry one or two pistols, and a machine gun (each of which has infinite ammunition). Players can also carry only one of several different missile weapons, considered a realistic limitation. If players picked up another missile weapon, they dropped the first. The players could also drop the missile weapons manually. Like the earlier game System Shock , these dropped weapons retain the exact amount of ammunition they have left in them.
In addition, players can wield a magic baseball bat (the "Excalibat"), a magical staff (the "Dark Staff"), enter a literal God Mode for a short time (complete with invulnerability and the Godfire homing instant-kill weapon), or in a dyslexic gag, enter Dog Mode, in which they are shorter (although the player also gained invulnerablity in this mode), and bite enemies. Dog Mode also allows the use of the devastating BarkBlast. Miscellaneous A few other features are noteworthy, such as bullet weapons that leave marks on walls, digitally-captured Apogee employees serving as the enemies, and player-character height, health, speed and accuracy differences — there were five different player characters in the registered version, ranging from the slow and steady Doug Wendt to the lightweight and deadly Lorelei Ni. Some of the character names come directly (or with some small change) from the original design document for Doom. The game also introduced jump pads in the form of the aforementioned trampolines to the genre, an idea later used in the '' Unreal Tournament '' and '' Quake '' series. Another unusual feature, and one that probably harkens back to Apogee's '' Duke Nukem '' and '' Duke Nukem II '', are the end of level bonuses. Depending on player actions, they can receive various bonuses at the end of each level. These are awarded for various achievements, such as picking up all the missile weapons, using all the healing items, or ending the level with only a shred of health. At the end of the game there are two special bonuses. The DIP (Developers of '''I'''ncredible '''P'''ower) bonus is awarded for finding all three hidden DIP balls in the game. The genocide bonus is awarded for killing/destroying every one of a particular type of enemy in the game. The bonus is received once for each enemy type which has been completely annihilated. Two rather humorous bonuses included the Democratic and Republican bonuses, of which there were two each. The Republican bonuses were awarded for acquiring all the missile weapons and for destroying all of the plants on the level, a jab at Republican environmental policy. The Democratic bonuses were awarded for not using handguns and for using all of the " Shrooms " powerups on the level. ''Rise of the Triad'' is somewhat well known for one of its most unrealistic features, Gibs . Gibs, short for giblets, rain down from the sky whenever an enemy explodes. These included chunks of charred flesh, and eyeballs. A "Ludicrous Gibs" mode can be activated via a cheat, propelling the carnage to new heights. This was a Gamer favorite, and was later featured in 3D Realms' next first-person shooter, '' Duke Nukem 3D ''. The '' Quake '' series cemented the use of gibs as the remains of exploded characters, as opposed to characters merely shot to death. ('' Doom '' introduced the idea, with separate "explosion death" corpses for the zombies and the imp; ''Rise of the Triad'' brought it to fruition.) Other features that were rather new to the genre at the time are hazards such as poison gas, spinning blades, moving walls, boulders, fire jets and spear racks that projected from the floor and walls. There are also levels that are played during the night, or with weather effects like fog, thunder and lightning. Notably, one type of enemy can snatch missile weapons or armor away from the player if the player gets too close, and can use the stolen weapons. These same enemies sometimes beg for their life if players injured them enough. If left long enough, they appear to die, but get back up and start attacking if the player turns their back. Another type of enemy rolls and tumbles around when the player shoots at them, forcing the player to re-aim. Low Guards, the weakest enemy, sometimes play dead, waiting for the player to get close before becoming active. The game has an Easter Egg related to various holidays. If the system date is set to the dates of the following, the loading screen will be changed.
In each case, a character on the loading screen will be wearing a hat related to the holiday. In addition, on Christmas, a rock rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen is played in the first level. Also, when the player uses an elevator in the level, there is a chance the music will temporarily change to sterotypical Elevator Music . Multiplayer The multiplayer mode is notable for the time the game was released, allowing up to eleven players simultaneously. Each could have separate uniform colours, but team members share colours. There are nine multiplayer modes, some of which do not necessarily involve players shooting each other. These modes are: There are many options that can be set for a multiplayer game, allowing a level of customisation similar to many later games. These include player attributes, and whether or not things like health, missile weapons or traps are spawned in levels. OTHER RELEASES On July 25 1995 , Apogee released a 'Reject Level Pack' as freeware online. During production of the game, many levels were rejected for one reason or another. This pack was a collection of multiplayer maps deemed unsuitable for the original release. Some of these were serious attempts at levels (one even attempted to recreate a popular deathmatch level (1-5) from the videogame Doom ), and some were not (like one where you played inside the popular videogame character Dopefish ). Additionally, the final level of the pack causes the game to crash intentionally, showing the sense of humour of the developers. There was an official retail addon level pack released by Apogee for ''ROTT'' entitled ''Extreme Rise of the Triad'' also released in 1995. The addon was produced by only two developers from the original team, that being Tom Hall & Joe Siegler . Generally the maps produced in this addon were considerably harder than the original game's maps due to tricks that Tom & Joe had learned in the editor since the release of the original. The ''Extreme ROTT'' CD also had several other goodies on it. There were some user made level editors, a random level generator from Apogee, maps, sound files, etc. It didn't sell very well, and had rather short shelf life. However, after the game came off of retail shelves, most of these materials were rendered unavailable. The levels ended up being released as freeware on September 1 2000 . The remaining materials on the ''Extreme ROTT'' CD were released as freeware online as part of a "ROTT Goodies Pack" on February 15 2005 . There were a few other level packs released from Apogee. One was the 'Lasersoft Deluxe Shareware Maps'. They were identical to the released shareware packs, except that a shareware company back then named Lasersoft paid Apogee to design 6 exclusive levels for their shareware release of the game. After this company went out of business, Apogee released these levels in October of 1999. Another was a level called "Wolf3D", which was done by Joe as an exercise to see if he could replicate the level geography from ''Wolfenstein 3D'' in ''Rise of the Triad''. As ''ROTT'' uses the same basic game engine, Joe theorized that it should be possible to do this. The Wolf3D level for ''ROTT'' copied the complete level geography from Episode 1 Level 1 of ''Wolfenstein 3D'', down to the exact placement of characters, doors, secret areas, and artwork. Some of the adjoining levels to this were added, but not completely. The final release from Tom and Joe was the 'Ohio RTC' pack. This is a four level multiplayer pack which was designed for a group in Ohio that was holding a game tournament called 'BloodFest 96'. It took place in February of 1996. After the tournament was over, the pack was released online for everyone. The final level to be released by anyone from the original team was one level done by Joe Siegler entitled 'You & Spray'. Spray was an internal nickname given to the NME boss character by the developers. This was done by Joe as a gag in 1998, mostly as a personal exercise to see if he could remember how to still use the level editor. Joe has said that he initially didn't plan on releasing that, but after mentioning its existence online, he was cajoled into releasing it in November of 2000. All of the levels in this section can be downloaded at the ROTT page on the Apogee website. SOURCE RELEASE The Source Code to ''Rise of the Triad'' was released under the GNU General Public License on 20th of December 2002. DEVELOPERS OF INCREDIBLE POWER The Developers of Incredible Power (DIP) is the team behind ''Rise of the Triad'' (1994). The team's name was created by '', never took off, and the name and parts of the original design were recycled for the more recent game by Human Head Studios . The team was eventually disbanded. Some of the members went to 3D Realms and worked on the bestseller first-person shooter ''Duke Nukem 3D''. Others started their own companies, or left the computer games business. William Scarboro died of an asthma attack in August 2002 {Link without Title} . EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|