How do you enter the number code to the transmission room?
I set the 3 number plates to the codes of the clipboards, but nothing happens. (And both doors are locked, even after both codes)

There are three codes on clipboards, one of them works. Use 000 to get back out again. :)

Thanks, it worked.
What a mean puzzle...

That's the easy one. The force field one annoys me greatly (which is why I never come out that way. :D).

Has anyone actually figured out the valve-turning puzzle? I tried for hours before giving up in despair...the only time I cheated, ever. (and in RL you could just blast through the doors I suppose...)

That really annoyed me too. Just go through methodically and check evey combination by looking at the screen near the door into that area. It should say 'Atmospheric Processing'. It'll take a while, but AFAIK there's no other solution. There is a possibility that it's one of the codes in the office on level 4 that aren't used in the level...

Hello
 

Hi,

Dave Faller here (yes, that one).

Apologies to AlumiuN, I changed e-mail provider a while back so I probably never received your e-mail.

Anyway, it's great to see discussions about WoE still going on after all this time (14 years!). Before anyone asks, I don't know how to get through the levels, it has been a long time! Reading through this thread I can't believe how much I had actually forgotten.

About the level editor. It required using two monitors to use, the normal VGA one and a monochrome monitor connected to a Hercules graphics card. The VGA displayed the game as normal, the monochrome had all the editing functions on it (yeah, two monitor systems back then, boy we rocked!). The question is, is the editor in the game that was released? I don't know. The only way to find out is to get hold of a Hercules card and plug it in and see what happens. On a technical note, the Hercules video ram mapped to a different address and IO range than VGA which allowed the two to co-exists, but did mean controlling the card directly.

The game wasn't entirely written in assembler, there was a semi-compiled lisp-like scripting system in there - the compiler created byte codes which were interpreted by the game. These scripts controlled all the game logic. Alas, this compiler no longer exists in my archives. This was the last project I did that involved so much assembler - it just takes too long to write anything in assembler.

My favourite puzzle is definately the three digit combination lock - specifically the code to get out. The code to get in is on one of the clipboards that others have mentioned. The only clue to the combination to get out is given by one of the NPCs, along the lines of "you need a code to get out as well as getting in". Now, if you think about it, to get into the room in the first place, the combination lock must be set to the code required to unlock the entrance, so you needed to make a note of the combination when you entered the room before changing the combination. Of course, most people missed this.

As for the valve-turning puzzle - there is a logic behind how they behave, but don't ask me what it is, I don't recall.

Dave Faller

P.S. Flez and Ian are the same person.

Good to hear from you again, Dave. I didn't think you had shunned me. :) On a side note, does anyone know any emulation software that supports dual-screens and Hercules graphics cards? :D Anyway, that valve-turning puzzle kept me busy for about 5 hours while I turned them all in succession, seeing as I couldn't find any sensible solution and the only sign that it worked was some of the machinery and the screen at the door. 512 combinations later... :D

Also, Ian and Flez are the same person? :hihihi:

Finally, one of my friends asked me yesterday if I wanted to help remake WoE in the Source engine. Knowing him, nothing will come out of it any time soon, but I foresee a remake in the future... :)

EDIT: Actually, can you remember the RSC and LIB file specs? Because if you can, I may be able to wangle an existing Wolfenstein editor to edit WoE. :)

Editors and Remakes
 

Even if I did know the format of the RSC/LIB files, it probably wouldn't really help. The level data was significantly different to Wolf3Ds. Although both games fundamentally used the same system*, a grid based level where each square was either a wall or open space, WoE levels had far more data in them than Wolf3D. For starters, Wolf3D could only have one texture on any wall with the N/S sides brighter than E/W, WoE could have any texture on each face. Also, WoE could have quarter-blocks (columns) and 45 degree walls/doors. There was also ceiling/floor texture and upper wall texture (the bit at the top of the wall when looking at buildings from outside. And there was also temperature, radiation, light and footstep sound information on each block. Levels did take a while to build!

Remaking the game has been something I've always wanted to do. The story was good I think (although underdeveloped in WoE - there was a logical reason the robots had turned) and the game mechanics seemed to work well, there are gameplay elements I've not seen elsewhere (sonar! which I think could be used to 'see' cloaked enemies). However, there have been two main stumbling blocks. The first is time/money, games like this take a long time to make. The second is that I don't know who owns the rights to the game.

Any publishers out there reading this?

Dave

* My first iteration of the rendering engine was visually identical to Wolf3D because I reverse engineered the Wolf3D code using a nifty debugger called SoftIce. I subsequently improved the renderer, fixing the 45 degree error Wolf3D has (position yourself correctly and one pixel wide vertical strip of the wall will appear twice as far away as it should be - yeah, I fixed a John Carmack bug!).

You should have seen me try something similar for the Wolf engine (ignoring footstep sounds). 8 planes (four times the original) does not tend to agree with the 16-bit, limited memory model Wolf engine. Then, of course, there was the fact that WDC, the only editor that actually supported more than 3 planes, had a bug that stopped it from saving anything over about 5 planes. So, yeah, that failed. But it could probably be done, just with a change in the output format. Hence 'wangle'. :)

I knew it had a hidden relationship in there somewhere. :D