Wolfenstein 3D goes open-source for iPhone
John Carmack rolls his sleeves up and ports his classic
If a job needs doing, do it yourself - especially if you can do it sixteen times quicker than anybody else in your field. That appears to be the mantra of id Software's John Carmack, who's just ported Wolfenstein 3D to the iPhone in a matter of days.
That's the original PC first-person-shooter, we should make clear, rather than the modern-day Wolfenstein RPG which EA Mobile will release for iPhone later this year.
Anyway, having successfully ported the game to iPhone with tweaks to take advantage of the handset's features, Carmack has decided to make his source code freely available via the id website.
There's a 5,000-word development diary accompanying the files which makes fascinating reading (if you can understand half of it). And Carmack clearly enjoyed the experience:
"The game is definitely simplistic by modern standards, but it still has its moments," he writes. "Getting the drop on a brown shirt just as he is pulling his pistol from the holster. Making an SS do the "twitchy dance" with your machine gun. Rounding a corner and unloading your weapon on ... a potted plant. Simplistic plays well on the iPhone."
Presumably the version released on id's website works with jailbroken iPhones, but it's anyone's guess if id (or, indeed, EA Mobile) will release it officially on the App Store.
