本文原作者：Jon Irwin 译者ciel chen

《德军总部3D（Wolfenstein 3D）》发行日期是1992年5月5日，今天正正好是它上市的第25年。该游戏的主管和共同设计者Tom Hall说道：“我们当时是知道这款游戏绝对是与众不同的，但后来还是被人们对它的疯狂热爱吓了一跳。”

他同他在iD software的共同创始人很快地意识到——他们开发的这款游戏火了。但他们当时没办法知道的是B. J. Blazkowicz（游戏的主人公）和以他为视点的游戏叙述究竟能让电子游戏发生多大的变革。

它并不是第一个用第一视角的游戏。在1991年的时候，Softdisk工作室就发行了一款所谓第一款第一视角射击游戏，名叫《Catacombs 3-D》。但是公众并没有对这款游戏很有爱。

因此这款游戏以及其他Softdisk所发行游戏的幕后主要人员——John Carmack、John Romero以及Tom Hall——他们再次做起了相同模式的游戏开发。一改暗黑奇幻充满各种咒语的游戏风格，《Wolfentstein 3D》让玩家扮演的是一个体格健硕动作灵活的英雄人物，玩家要操作他带着致命的弹射武器在廊道间急速穿梭，给纳粹分子应有的惩罚。

半个世纪过去了，如今FPS（第一人称射击游戏）已经成为了游戏产业里的一块屹立不倒的基石，开发者们以此为基础创造了大量热销游戏——有《战地》系列游戏、《使命召唤》和有原创游戏《守望先锋》、恐怖向游戏《极度恐慌》、浸入式体验游戏比如《网络奇兵》和《生化奇兵》系列作、还有像《地铁2033》的生存向游戏、甚至还有带古怪的个人表情的游戏如Andy Sum制作的《GAME OF THE YEAR 420BLAZEIT》。Hall说：“是我们的激情得以让我们成为“第一个吃螃蟹的人”，这确实是我们难得的机会——给世界带来了全新的游戏类型——这种事不常发生。因此我很荣幸能和团队一起定义了FPS这个游戏类型的基本概念。”

Hall后来又继续共创了ION Storm和Monkeystone工作室，还设计了《毁灭战士（DOOM）》和《龙霸三合会（Rise of the Triad）》、《星际之门（Anachronox）》还有PlayFirst的《DASH》游戏。我们此次请他跟我们分享了一些他在《Wolfenstein 3D》开发工作过程中吸取一些沿用至今的设计经验。对于他会从“枪”开始给我们陈列设计经验要点的清单时我们丝毫不感到惊讶。

握紧你的“枪”

hidden secrets（from gamasutra.com）

这个看上去简单的射击手藏着非常多的秘密。

“设计的法则——坚守一些你觉得至关重要的东西。而我是为‘密道’而坚守奋战。”Hall如是说道，他指的“密道”是游戏设置在走廊的一些隐秘通道——它们看上去像坚固的门墙，而实际是可以打开通往新的地方的。

“在一款游戏里，你不会希望这个游戏让你一直做出同样的操作而让自己产生疲惫感的，”Hall说道。他是这样描述《Wolfenstein 3D》的主游戏循环的——“射击守卫、拿走战利品、拿到钥匙、开门、射击守卫、拿走战利品、拿到钥匙、开门……”他说曾经有一名开发者John Carmack质疑过假门是不是真的有必要，而Hall则为“假门”据理力争，结果证明这些“假门”让游戏更加出彩有趣了。

是的，密道为整个游戏的氛围添加了一份神秘感，并且为进一步作战提供了转折点。他补充道：“游戏是需要’10%的内容’来让你感受多种不同的游戏体验。”他还举例《魔兽世界（world of warcraft）》中的职业选择系统和《荒野之息（Breath of the Wild）》中的烹饪系统，这些都是用来作为附加的游戏内容来打破游戏主旋律的千篇一律。

“密道的添加是隐藏秘密的经典方式，它有跟门一样的控制功能，所以这个办法是行得通的。”Hall这样说道。“它给人一种玩家中作为‘探险者’ （Bartle所总结的四种玩家类型中的一种）的探索冲动。它让Carmack引擎稍显的不那么优雅了，不过却让游戏好玩了许多。”
Hall解释道：“Carmack善于优化并且办事速度快，能很快找到做事的技巧来把事情办得比原来更快更好。他精心的制作了一个优雅高效的渲染程序。而这个‘密道’会降低这种优雅程度、硬生生在这个一切看上去都很合适美好的游戏里添加了个‘kludge’（混搭拼凑的内容），但这却在游戏的趣味性方面却真的超级有必要。”

《Wolfenstein 3D》尽管跟老游戏比起来得到了天堂般的自由视觉体验，但是它有自己的局限性——天花板和地板都只是挂着一个有色的平面在表面上，这也还好；但是这让一切事物只能局限在同一个层面上，想让玩家有什么惊喜都很难做到，所以不得不做出一些狡猾的设计了。在可行走通过的角落里或者可以射击的目标设置柱子，所以敌人就可以吓到你，从此以后你就会开始妄想柱子后面是不是总有什么人准备要攻击你，即使那里实际一个人也没有!

【Hall有意思的边注:“离题一下，我想说个悲伤的故事——《Wolfenstein》原来很早的时候是有动画墙纹理的。然后事情是这样的：我们当时要在短得疯狂的时间内做出最酷的FPS游戏，然后我们有个外驻的艺术家帮我们做美工，但美工的效果不太好（有个火炬没画好），所以我们分道扬镳了。接着，我们就完全忘记启用动画墙了。本来那些墙壁可以增添氛围用来做更有趣的事……好吧，总之就是我们本来应该有很多要做的事结果我们完全忘记了。（好气）”】

拥抱局限性

Wolfenstein 3D（from gamasutra.com）

《Wolfenstein 3D》游戏第一节的第5层地图

Carmack、Hall以及John Romero趁胜追击，把在《Wolfenstein 3D》上的成功延续在其精神续作《DOOM》上。尽管仍旧是快节奏行动，翻天的暴力内容和简练的幽默感游戏，但进步的科技让游戏环境更加开放和灵活。而在《WOLF 3D》只能把注意力集中赋予简单走位更多变化的保持玩家在游戏中的活力。

他说：“在《DOOM》之前的游戏作品中，那些3D场景都比较粗糙，就让人感觉好像被束缚在瓷砖网格里了一样：在一堆方形墙壁或者不是墙壁的场景里走来走去。所以我们就要把创造力发挥在解决这些局限性上。”如今，一名设计者已经可以随心所欲地高效创作出或抽象或写实的环境了；根据所需要达到的目标来做出选择就好了。不过在1992年，你能做的只有那么多。

“在《Hovertank one》中【他们《catacomb 3d》的前作】，我们的墙壁是纯色的没做什么纹理。所以我就放上了绿色东西然后想,‘好了，这个层面上的话那是棵树——努力解决局限性是很了不起了！不过有时候它也可以很愚蠢》……”

从电影的角度去思考游戏

first-person games（from gamasutra.com）

第一视觉游戏的出现不仅仅意味着玩家的视角改变了，而且开发者的视角也要改变了。

“我认为我们的3D射击游戏真正是从《Hovertank》开始的，它是第一款符合我想象的三维活动空间游戏，所以在这款游戏里很多东西都是我从电影的角度想到的——这是对你所在做的游戏的一种全新不同的思考方式。”

“在给游戏做3D效果之前，你可能会做个有点小难度的迷宫或者做个熟悉建筑物模型的布局设计，不过现在既然有了3D效果，你就有了可以添加的具体图像来让房间变得不同。无论是设计者和玩家从此都能在视觉和听觉感受到主角当下正在经历的体验。”

我们在当下（2017年）能玩到的第一视角游戏（FPS）是积累了20多年FPS最佳实践的假设和比喻的积淀结晶。而当我们回望1992年，那时什么针对FPS的规范和标准范例都没有。

“所以就要问了——这类游戏能给人什么不同的感觉？要如何把这类游戏的独特和与众不同传达给玩家？游戏是如何开始的（就像电影的开头），过程是如何流动与进展，最后又是怎样结束的？我有什么新方法把东西藏到意想不到的地方吗？你可以开始不用再那么抽象而去创造真正意义上的‘地点’和情节发展了。每个等级都是全新不同的体验——而这也只不过是你如今所期盼的FPS最迷你版的开端。”

在《Wolfenstein 3D》的开发中，科技构建与设计指导齐头并进，Hall这样说道：“如果觉得还是不够精致，就来跟这些了不起的新‘玩具’玩一玩好了。”

工具要用最好的…..不然就自己造

John Romero（from gamasutra.com）

John Romero在为iD工作室开发节省人力的关卡设计工具

“在当今，你可以通过教学视频、文章、书籍或者一些课程来学习任何你想学习的编程语言和平台。但如果回到90年代早期，能用的工具和资源真的很原始。那时候，你得把一个个你想要内容代码汇编起来。所以通常我们得开发自己的开发工具。”

几十年前在还没有Unity和Unreal的时候，Hall和他有名的iD共创伙伴John Romero和John Carmack一起开发编程工具。“Romero做的TED5确实是非常了不起的地形编辑器，它参与了我们大概37款游戏的开发制作。”Hall如此说，并且《Wolfenstein 3D》就是其中的一款。

用你自己开发的工具来做游戏的一点好处就是你清楚地知道你的游戏能做和不能做哪些事情——不过它是需要花费时间、精力和金钱的。尽管如今有了捷径为游戏创作增添新彩，使得当下的一些开发者有了先行一步的优势，然而我们要知道，这些增添的机遇都是有一定的代价的。

“如今做游戏变得越发简单了——编译器优化代码现在已经相当先进了，不过有一点不好的就是现在游戏量大得跟海啸似的。因此游戏做起来是简单了，但是想让人注意到也就相对困难多了。”

Hall一直以来都倡议要把他的技艺教给年轻的编程者，目前为止，他诉诸过Kickstart来众筹一款名叫《Worlds of Wander》的游戏制作软件。（没能成功。）不过他至少因此在其他相似的项目上看到了这款游戏制作软件的印记。

“《超级玛丽制造(Super Mario Maker)》就是一款类似《Worlds of Wander》的游戏，使用的是任天堂的IP。它真的是一款很棒的游戏和工具，它所达到的效果和我所想做的事情不谋而合，甚至连‘自我设定主题’生成新的图形界面这个概念都与我契合了；还有连它转换（主题）的方法都跟我想的一样！”

然而那种激情、那种怪胎般的执着、那样长时间的坚持以及想从多方面试图推动边界打开新世界大门的努力，都是开发者应该要具备的品质。不过Hall还说：“要是当时我们有这种信息量大的书籍和这样好用的开发工具就好了。”不过这样就会让你会好奇如今的预建引擎和各种先进的开发程序对当时《Wolfenstein 3D》带来巨大变革的能力会不会有什么不利的影响。

保持对游戏的热爱

Do not burn out（from gamasutra.com）

25年过去了，Hall回首过去，想到当时那种创造新经典新游戏类型的疯狂感受到了曾经自己的天真。不过随着年龄的增长，看待事物的角度也不再一样了。

“我们当时对《Wolfenstein》的开发时间管理处在‘一个礼拜做7天，一天14-18小时’的模式，相比那种疯狂，我更中意现在相对平衡合理的时间安排。”Hall说道。

现在Hall是PlayFirst Studio的高级创作设计师，他最新的作品集中最新迭代的《Diner Dash》受人尊敬，然而相比在iD Software那时的鼎盛时期相比就差得远了；不过那种要把B.J. Blazkowicz这个角色深入到数以百万计的玩家心中的激情依旧存在，只是他把这种激情投入到了他白天工作以外的其他追求上了而已。

“那种年轻时为了纯粹对游戏的热爱而制作游戏的时光是在太美好了。如今我依旧怀着对游戏的爱，只是我现在还有了热爱的生活要顾虑了。”

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game.

He and the co-founders at iD Software quickly realized that they had a hit on their hands. What they couldn’t have known then was how much B. J. Blazkowicz and his subjective POV would revolutionize video games.

It wasn’t the first game to use a first-person perspective. In 1991, Softdisk released what has been called the original first-person shooter, a wizards-and-warlocks dungeon crawler called Catacombs 3-D. But the game didn’t click with the public.

So the main people behind that game, and dozens of other Softdisk releases–John Carmack, John Romero, and Tom Hall– reworked the formula. Instead of dark fantasy and spells, Wolfenstein 3D cast players as a beefy action hero racing through corridors with a deadly projectile weapon in hand, giving the Nazi’s what-for.

A quarter-century later, the FPS is a cornerstone of the games industry. The genre is a foundation upon which developers create massive sales juggernauts like the Battlefield and Call of Duty and Overwatch franchises, horror games like FEAR, immersive experiences like the System Shock and Bioshock series, survival games like Metro 2033, and even quirky personal expressions like Andy Sum’s GAME OF THE YEAR 420BLAZEIT.

“Since we made games out of passion and were so geeky-early, that gave us a leg up, a rare opportunity to make a new genre come to life,” says Hall. “That doesn’t happen very often, and I’m honored to have come up with the fundamentals of what an FPS is with the team.”

Hall went on to co-found ION Storm and Monkeystone, and designed titles like DOOM, Rise of the Triad, Anachronox, and PlayFirst’s DASH games. We asked him to tell us about some design lessons he learned while working on Wolfenstein 3D that he still uses today. He began his list, not surprisingly, with guns.

1. Stick to your guns

This seemingly simple shooter was full of hidden secrets.

“Design-wise, if something is critical, stick to your guns. I fought for pushwalls,” Hall says, referring to the secret parts of the corridors in the game that appear to be solid wall but can be opened, leading to new areas.

“Adding pushwalls made Carmack’s engine slightly less elegant, but it made the game way more fun.”

“In a game, you don’t want activity fatigue, where you get bored doing the same thing all the time,” Hall says. He describes the main gameplay loop of Wolfenstein 3D as “shoot guards, loot, get key, open door, shoot guards, loot, get key, open door…” He says that programmer John Carmack questioned the need for fake doors, but he argued for it, and the end result made for a more surprising, compelling game.

The pushwalls added secrets to the environment, and added a twist to the propulsive combat. ”There needed to be that ‘10% thing’ that you can do for a variety of experience,” he adds. He describes the professions in World of Warcraft or cooking in Breath of the Wild as examples of side activities that help break up the sameyness of the main gameplay.

“Adding pushwalls was a classic way to hide secrets, using the exact same controls as doors, so it made sense,” he says. “It gave you that rush of discovery that Bartle’s Explorers crave. It made Carmack’s engine slightly less elegant, but it made the game way more fun.”

“Carmack shines at optimizing and making things fast, and figuring out tricks to do more and do it faster than would be straightforwardly possible,” explains Hall. “He had crafted an elegant and efficient renderer. This would make it less elegant, plopping what was essentially a special case kludge in the middle of all that nice, clean code. But it was super-necessary for fun.”

Wolfenstein 3D was a paradise of creative visual freedom compared to the old games, but it had its limitations. Things on the ceiling were just hanging from a flat colored surface, same for the floor. But it was okay. But since everything was on one level, it was rather difficult to surprise the player, so the design had to be tricksy. Alcoves with walk-throughable or shoot-throughable objects, so enemies could surprise you, and from then on, make you paranoid, even if they weren’t there!

[FASCINATING SIDE NOTE FROM HALL: "Off-topic, one sad story was this -- Wolfenstein actually had animating wall textures. From early on. The scene is this: we were making a cool FPS in a crazy short time. We had an outside artist helping on art, and the art wasn't turning out very good. A flickering torch wasn't well done. We parted ways. And then, WE FORGOT TO USE ANIMATING WALLS. At all. They could have really added to the atmosphere and been used for interesting things.... but, well, we had so much to do and simply forgot."]

2. Embrace limitations

Map of Episode 1 Floor 5 of Wolfenstein 3D

Carmack, Hall, and John Romero would go on to build off of Wolfenstein 3D’s success with the spiritual successor DOOM. Though the fast action, over-the-top violence and pithy humor remained, advancing technology allowed for more open, flexible environments. With Wolf 3D, Hall had to focus on making simple locations feel more alive.

“What little you could achieve had to be effective in saying a lot.”

“Before DOOM, these 3D spaces were more primitive, as they were limited to a tile grid: a bunch of square walls or not-walls. So your creativity is trying to work within those constraints,” he says. Today a designer can effectively create an environment as abstract or realistic as they want; the choice is one of intent. But in 1992, you could only do so much. So what little you could achieve had to be effective in saying a lot.

“In Hovertank One [their predecessor to Catacomb 3D], there were no textures, just solid-colored walls. So I placed a green one and thought, ‘Well, in this level, that’s a tree,’” he says. “Working with constraints is amazing! But it can also get silly…”

3. Think cinematically

The advent of first-person games shifted not only the player’s perspective, but that of the creators as well.

“Our 3D shooters, starting with Hovertank, were the first I imagined as real three-dimensional active spaces, so a lot of things would come to me sort of cinematically,” says Hall. “It was a new, different way of thinking about what you were making.”

“How does this feel different than other levels? What is this space like, how can I convey its uniqueness? How does it begin, how does it flow and progress, how does it come to a close?”

“Before the games got textured 3D, you would make a clever maze, or do a layout similar to a familiar architecture shape,” he adds. “But now that it was textured, and you could have detailed sprites to make rooms feel different. It became more of a true first-person experience, a visual and sonic experience that as both a designer and a player, you were the authoring protagonist of.”

The first-person games we play in 2017 have accumulated two decades worth of tropes and assumptions of what best practices are. But back in 1992, there were no rules. There were no obvious answers.

“So you start asking questions,” Hall says. “How does this feel different than other levels? What is this space like, how can I convey its uniqueness? How does it open (like the start of a movie), how does it flow and progress, how does it come to a close? What new way can I sneakily hide stuff in unexpected areas? You could begin to be less abstract and really create a sense of place, of progression. A unique experience in every level. It was the tiniest start of what you expect today.”

The technology built and the design authored during Wolfenstein 3D’s development, Hall says, “challenged you with these amazing, if primitive, new toys to play with.”

4. Use the best tools…or make them

John Romero made a labor-saving level design tool for iD

“Nowadays, you can learn any language and any platform by checking out the hundreds of available tutorial videos, articles, and books,” Hall says, “or the dozens of available classes. But tools and resources were much more primitive back in the early 1990s. Back then, you had to Assembly-code the stuff you wanted to blaze. And often, you’d roll your own tools.”

Decades before Unity or Unreal, Hall had his famous iD co-founders, John Romero and John Carmack to craft tools. “Romero did make a pretty amazing one, TED 5, the tile editor. [We] used that for like thirty-seven games,” he says. Wolfenstein 3D was one of them.

The benefit of rolling your own tools is that you become intimately familiar with what your game can and can’t do. But it took time. And energy. And money. Today’s shortcuts have allowed many more into the garden of game creation. Current developers have a head start in some ways. But with that added opportunity comes a price.

“Games are easier to make now, but it’s harder to get your stuff noticed.”

“Now it is much easier to make your game,” Hall says. “Compilers optimize code fairly well now. But the downside is that there is a tsunami of games. They are easier to make, but it’s harder to get your stuff noticed. Conversely, if you have the particular sickness that compels you to make games, there are a lot more game jobs now.”

Hall has been a proponent of helping teach young coders his craft, going so far as to Kickstart game-creation software named Worlds of Wander. (It didn’t succeed.) But he sees its stamp on other similar projects.

“Super Mario Maker is like a simpler Worlds of Wander, applied to Nintendo’s IP,” Hall says. “It’s an amazing game and tool. And pretty much precisely what I wanted to do, even down to the concept of auto-theming to a new graphics set. Even the way it changes [themes] — with a wave across the tiles!”

But the passion, the geekiness, the long hours, and the attempt to push the edge in various ways always has to be there. Though Hall says “it would have been great to have informative books and amazing tools back then,” you wonder if today’s pre-built engines and asset libraries hamper the ability to revolutionize the way Wolfenstein 3D did.

5. Don’t burn out

Twenty-five years on, Hall looks back fondly on the madness that birthed a classic and, indeed, an entire genre. But with age comes a change in perspective.

“I still have that love of making games, but I also have a life.”

“Our time management making Wolfenstein was ‘Work on the game for 14-18 hours, seven days a week,’” Hall says. “I like the balance I have now better.”

Hall is now senior creative designer at PlayFirst Studio. His latest projects, among them the latest iterations of the venerable Diner Dash series, may seem a far cry from the gory frantic envelope pushing action of iD Software’s heyday. But the same passion that helped introduce B.J. Blazkowicz to millions of players persists. It just gets funneled into other pursuits beyond his dayjob.

“Those were amazing times to be young and making games for the love of it,” Hall says. “I still have that love. But I also have a life.”（source：gamasutra.com）