''Catacomb'' is a 2-D top-down

third-person shooter Third-person shooter (TPS) is a subgenre of 3D shooter games in which the gameplay consists primarily of shooting. It is closely related to first-person shooters, but with the player character visible on-screen during play. While 2D shoot 'em ...

created, developed, and published by

Softdisk Softdisk was a software and Internet company based in Shreveport, Louisiana. Founded in 1981, its original products were disk magazines (which they termed "magazettes", for "magazine on diskette"). It was affiliated and partly owned by paper mag ...

. It was originally created for the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

, and later

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

to the PC. It should not be confused with '' The Catacomb'', which is the second game in the series (originally named ''Catacomb II'', but later renamed). It supports EGA and CGA graphics. All the ''Catacomb'' titles, including the ''

Catacomb 3D ''Catacomb 3-D'' (also known as ''Catacomb 3-D: A New Dimension'', ''Catacomb 3-D: The Descent'', and ''Catacombs 3'') is a first-person shooter video game, the third in the '' Catacomb'' series, the first of which to feature 3D computer graphics ...

'' games, are now distributed legally by

Flat Rock Software Softdisk was a software and Internet company based in Shreveport, Louisiana. Founded in 1981, its original products were disk magazines (which they termed "magazettes", for "magazine on diskette"). It was affiliated and partly owned by paper ma ...

through their own web store and via

GOG.com GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through it ...

. The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

to the game was released by Flat Rock in June 2014 under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later in a manner similar those done by

id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and ar ...

and partners.Early id Software game engines open-sourced
by Gareth Halfacree on bit-tech.net (9 June 2014)

Gameplay

In the game the player assumes the role of the magician Petton Everhail, who is contacted by Terexin, High Wizard of the Kieralon, who tells how the Kieralon Empire has fallen and how the player must travel to the Kieralon Palace to collect and split his treasures. ''Catacomb'' consists of fifteen levels in the Apple II version, ten levels in the PC demo disk promoting Gamer's Edge, and 30 levels in the full PC version (''The Catacomb'', aka ''Catacomb II''). To progress to the next level the player must step through a magic teleportation mirror. These mirrors are usually behind a locked door, requiring a key to advance. There are four different attacks: Fireball, Super Fireball, Bolt (powerful strike in one direction), Nuke (powerful strike in all four directions). The Fireball and Super Fireball attacks can be cast an infinite number of times. The Bolt and Nuke consume a scroll each time they are cast. The player starts the game with three Bolt scrolls and two Nuke scrolls. Additional scrolls are scattered through the levels. There are five different enemies:

Goblin A goblin is a small, grotesque, monstrous creature that appears in the folklore of multiple European cultures. First attested in stories from the Middle Ages, they are ascribed conflicting abilities, temperaments, and appearances depending on t ...

Skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of an animal. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is the stable outer shell of an organism, the endoskeleton, which forms the support structure inside ...

Ogre An ogre ( feminine: ogress) is a legendary monster depicted as a large, hideous, man-like being that eats ordinary human beings, especially infants and children. Ogres frequently feature in mythology, folklore, and fiction throughout the wor ...

Gargoyle In architecture, and specifically Gothic architecture, a gargoyle () is a carved or formed grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing it from running down masonry walls ...

and

Dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...

References

External links

*
Catacomb source code
on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

CatacombSDL source portCatacomb Wiki
{{Softdisk 1990 video games Apple II games DOS games Top-down video games Video games developed in the United States Commercial video games with freely available source code Open-source video games Softdisk

Gameplay

See also

References

External links