Rise of the Triad

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 different 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. (High-risk United Nations Task-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 Wolfenstein 3D engine, it was supposed to compete with Doom. Despite being the first game to include true level-over-level support, Doom's non-orthogonal, height-difference maps gained far more publicity. Rise of the Triad was originally intended to be a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D (initially with the formal title of Wolfenstein 3D Part II: Rise of the Triad ^*, but this idea was dropped early on. Some influences from this part of the development can still be seen, though. Appearances of the MP40 in the game seems to suggest that it took place during or after World War Two, as when the events of Wolfenstein 3D occurred. 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.

The Bazooka fires a single missile straight ahead.
The Heatseeker fires a single heat-seeking rocket.
The Drunk Missile fires five missiles simultaneously in five different directions; the missiles heat-seek individually.
The Flamewall is nearly impossible to escape from. When the missile fired and hits the ground it sends a wall of flame in one direction; any player which it catches not wearing an Asbestos Vest is instantly incinerated. If the missile hits a wall or player, it just results in a weak explosion. This is how one of the numerous end-of-level bonuses in single-player is obtained.
The Firebomb's rocket explodes on impact, sending a twenty-foot-wide explosion outward in four directions. If a player has an asbestos suit to protect them they can use it to rocket jump.
The Split Missile sends out two rockets locked together, until the player releases the fire button, at which point they split up and heat-seek individually.

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 invulnerability 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 Incredible Power) 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. There is also one other bonus, called the "Bonus Bonus", which is supposed to be very hard to obtain and requires that the player receive every single bonus that can be given in the game. 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 stereotypical 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:

Name	Description
Normal	Standard deathmatch. Players compete for the most kills.
Score More	The same as normal, but rewarding more difficult kills. Killing with bullet weapons scores more than killing with missile weapons. Killing an airborne player scores more killing than one on the ground. Landing on another player and crushing them scores the most.
Collector	Players compete to collect as many triad symbols as possible. No weapons.
Scavenger	The same as Collector, but with weapons.
Hunter	One random player is chosen as "prey", and has no weapons. The other players (the hunters) must kill them for points. After a certain time, another player becomes prey, the previous prey becoming a hunter.
Tag	Based on the children's game. A random player is "it". They must tag another player by running up to them and pressing their use key to score a point. This player then becomes "it".
Eluder	Players must tag Eluders, which are moving triad symbols.
Deluder	Similar to Eluder, but the Eluders must be destroyed for points.
Capture the Triad	Essentially the same rules as Capture the Flag (for FPS games), with triad symbols in place of flags. It is probably the first computer or video game incarnation of CTF.

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 Tom Hall, the lead designer. Other members of DIP were: William Scarboro, Jim Dose, Mark Dochtermann, Steve Hornback, Chuck Jones, and Susan Singer. Rise of the Triad was the only game released by DIP. A second game that was planned, Prey, 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 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 ^*.

Cut elements

Several planned elements were cut from the game. One well-known example included alternate versions of certain enemies, like Low Guards, Strike Force soldiers, and Overpatrols, which had female versions as well as the male versions, which had to be cut. Most of the voices for the female guards are on the registered CD version as a bonus.

Most of the alternate guards had to be cut due to technical limitations at the time. Originally the game was going to load both sets of guards into memory, then determine randomly which to place at each appropriate point. This had the side effect of making memory requirements much higher than normal for the time, so in order to conserve performance, the alternate versions of the enemies were removed.

Other cuts survived, like the ROTT Reject Level Pack (stages that were cut), some artwork (some can be found on the CD), and several other resources.

External links

Rise of the Triad | Rise of the Triad

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