Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A Linear Shooter: Wolfenstein 1-D

By Jim Rossignol on January 24th, 2011 at 9:14 pm.


Just because something can be made doesn’t mean you should make it. That said, Wolfenstein 1-D is surprisingly good. Is this the true essence of gaming? (Thanks to everyone who sent this in.)

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66 Comments »

  1. 24/01/2011 at 21:16 Dreamhacker says:

    Heh, a fake 2D game! Don’t see those every day. :)

  2. 24/01/2011 at 21:17 Pani says:

    Nice, $35 sent! Although I’m still waiting for Wolfenstein 4-D.

    • 24/01/2011 at 21:23 Navagon says:

      A fully real time Wolfenstein where the guards have shifts, need to eat and sleep and write home to their families about the next visit home they’re doomed never to make thanks to your escape and subsequent rampage?

    • 25/01/2011 at 09:43 simonh says:

      Whenever 4D is brought up, why does someone always assume that the fourth dimension must be time? What we clearly want is Wolfenstein with four SPATIAL dimensions (like Miegakure).

  3. 24/01/2011 at 21:19 Lewie Procter says:

    Nice, but I wish it supported resolutions higher than 640×1.

    I’d probably upgrade my monitor if I’d be able to play this in 1920×1.

  4. 24/01/2011 at 21:21 Navagon says:

    I shoot all my bullets. :<

  5. 24/01/2011 at 21:24 Ross Mills says:

    This is…

    Actually not all that bad!

    Slightly hard to tell the difference between the green/blue, so I shot a lot of doors, but otherwise fun!

  6. 24/01/2011 at 21:27 liquidsoap89 says:

    Graphics could be better… This IS the 21st century!

  7. 24/01/2011 at 21:29 BooleanBob says:

    I’m glad we’re all too classy here to mention that this isn’t truly 1d, the engine just pulls some clever tricks to give you that impression.

    Oh damnit

  8. 24/01/2011 at 21:36 lethu says:

    Any chances they implement the more up-to-date 2D in the near future?

  9. 24/01/2011 at 21:41 zak canard says:

    Game of the year. Now all we need is a ZX Spectrum conversion and I’ll be a very happy chap.

  10. 24/01/2011 at 21:46 stahlwerk says:

    This is oddly relaxing after working on 3d graphics related stuff all day.

    Edit for an honest question: is this only one level or did I skip something by chance?

  11. 24/01/2011 at 22:14 Oak says:

    Meh. Basically just Flatland with guns.

  12. 24/01/2011 at 22:25 Inglourious Badger says:

    1D, maybe, but it’s still less linear than Cod:Blops.

    ZING! That’s right, I went there

    • 24/01/2011 at 22:26 Inglourious Badger says:

      Also, am I really the first time/space pedant to point out it’s not actually 1D, it’s 2D?

      1 pixel high, by lots of pixels wide = 2D

    • 24/01/2011 at 22:28 Berzee says:

      You aren’t the first, see above people mentioning that they WON’T mention it because they’re too classy.

    • 24/01/2011 at 22:29 Inglourious Badger says:

      Damn, outclassed again. Sorry all

    • 24/01/2011 at 22:37 stahlwerk says:

      it is 1-d, or at the very least a degenerate case of 2-d (it being displayed in an oriented fashion on a 2-d screen). By your reasoning you could even call it 3-d, since the line is also one level deep.

      </pedantry>

    • 24/01/2011 at 22:48 BAReFOOt says:

      @Inglourious Badger:
      This is the same stupid pseudo-argument that is used, every time someone is using a representation of a 1D space on our 2D screens. The original space still has only 1 dimension. Otherwise you could move up and down (or in and out). Also 1px height can still be called 1-dimensional, since the pixel is only the quantization. Same as a elementary particle can be called bigger than 1 Planck-length. Yet it still is a point object with no size.

      By your logic, Crysis is a 2D game, since what you see is 2D…
      It’s called a projection! Which is a form of representation.

      BTW: I’d like to see a 1D projection of a 2D projection of a 3D Crysis that is still playable. ;))

    • 24/01/2011 at 23:02 Inglourious Badger says:

      Hmmm, yeah, you’re right. It only has one dimension.

      In response, and to make up for my invalid pedantry, I’ve made this version: Wolfenstein 0D. Enjoy!

    • 24/01/2011 at 23:25 gwathdring says:

      Wolfenstein 0-d could actually be rather interesting. A one pixel rhythm games has a modicum of potential. Of course, that’s also how you would do a 1-d first person shooter. A single, color shifting pixel.

    • 25/01/2011 at 03:14 PoLLeNSKi says:

      Is time not a dimension? Thus making this 2d, streetfighter 3d and quake 4d?
      /smart arse mode

    • 25/01/2011 at 05:06 bill says:

      Time AND Relative Dimension In Space. Therefore clearly time is not a relative dimension.

  13. 24/01/2011 at 22:27 Initialised says:

    I’m getting like 1000000 fps

  14. 24/01/2011 at 22:36 Teddy Leach says:

    It needs multiple endings, multiplayer, and achievements.

  15. 24/01/2011 at 22:38 BathroomCitizen says:

    oooh man

    I’m really, really bad at this game!
    Eh, off for some Quake 1love then.

  16. 24/01/2011 at 22:45 Risingson says:

    Now, this reminded me that the music in Wolfenstein 3D was wonderful.

  17. 24/01/2011 at 23:01 Ricc says:

    Mein Leben!

    It’s almost like they are heaving an existential crisis during the last second of their life. Good old Wolfenstein.

    • 25/01/2011 at 04:24 Sarkhan Lol says:

      And then O’Hare and I, not much more than kids actually, went into an undefended barn there in the springtime countryside. We wanted something to eat, anything to eat. But we found a wounded and obviously dying captain of the notoriously heartless Nazi Schutzstaffel, the SS, in a haymow instead. He might easily, until very recently, have been in charge of tormenting and planning the extinction of some of the death camp survivors not far away.

      Like all members of the SS, and like all death camp survivors as well, this captain presumably had a serial number tattooed on his arm. Want to talk about postwar irony? There was a lot of that.

      He asked O’Hare and me to go away. He would soon be dead, and said he looked forward to being such. As we prepared to depart, not feeling much about him one way or the other, he cleared his throat, signaling that he had something more to say after all. This was the last-words business again. If he had any, who but us could hear them?

      “I have just wasted the past ten years of my life,” he said.

  18. 24/01/2011 at 23:25 GHudston says:

    Reminds me of Final Fantasy XIII.

  19. 25/01/2011 at 00:06 Rikard Peterson says:

    That was more fun than I expected it to be.

  20. 25/01/2011 at 01:02 frenz0rz says:

    Surely the future of gaming!

  21. 25/01/2011 at 03:15 Brumisator says:

    Sure, this is a funny idea, but I’ve played actual 1D games that had interesting gameplay, Except for the pun, wolf1D has very little redeeming value.

  22. 25/01/2011 at 07:39 killmachine says:

    i actually had a lot of fun playing it. i would have played more than one level but, you know, 1d, one level. its sort of a statement i guess.

    “mein leben”… awsome^^

  23. 25/01/2011 at 08:11 Oozo says:

    All well and good – but tell me: Is it censored in Germany?
    (Don’t know how the law is for depictions of swastikas, when they are in 1D…)

  24. 25/01/2011 at 08:38 Marar Patrunjica says:

    Could have been better optimized…

  25. 25/01/2011 at 09:26 starclaws says:

    Can’t change guns. Can’t knife people. Pulls have a limit travel distance when they shouldn’t in Wolfenstein.

  26. 25/01/2011 at 09:47 Thecreeperskg says:

    That’s why I love RPS. Screw the articles, the comments alone are enough to make my day!!

  27. 25/01/2011 at 11:29 Sarlix says:

    Why can’t I kick open doors??

  28. 25/01/2011 at 12:12 Nero says:

    Yeah I bit too linear for my taste.

  29. 25/01/2011 at 15:18 nuh uh no way says:

    what is this “mein leben” crap you guys are on about?!

    i always thought they yelled “JOE NAMATH”

  30. 25/01/2011 at 19:14 OJ287 says:

    Spoiler: The secret area is behind Hitler’s portrait

  31. 25/01/2011 at 22:02 Phydaux says:

    Wow, those old sounds and music really take me back. Achtung!

  32. 29/08/2012 at 20:31 andrea270872 says:

    Hi,
    it seems to me that 1 dimensional games are still considered an impossibility. There are very few playable 1D games, so I tried to make some prototypes to explore the potential of the genre.
    I’m a researcher in e-learning and I would like to invite whoever is interested in the topic to try some of my games:
    http://www.create.aau.dk/av/?page_id=16
    at my official page.

    I would very much like to get some feedback and comments about the idea of having actual 1D games.
    Thanks for the great work you do in this website, presenting games and hosting discussions.
    Sincerely,
    Andrea

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