''Hovertank 3D'', also known under a variety of other names (''Hovertank'' or ''Hovertank One''), is a

vehicular combat game Vehicular combat games (also known as just vehicular combat or car combat) are a sub-genre of vehicle simulation video games where the primary objectives of gameplay include vehicles armed with weapons attempting to destroy vehicles controlle ...

developed 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: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...

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 ...

in April 1991.

Plot

''Hovertank 3D'' is set during a nuclear war. In ''Hovertank 3D'', the player controls Brick Sledge, a

mercenary A mercenary, sometimes also known as a soldier of fortune or hired gun, is a private individual, particularly a soldier, that joins a military conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any ...

hired by an unknown organization (referred to by the game as the "UFA") to rescue people from cities under the threat of nuclear attack (largely political activists or scientists), both by the government and by large corporations. However, the cities are also full of mutated humans, strange creatures and enemy hovertanks.

Gameplay

The player must drive a hovertank through the levels and try to find the people Brick is supposed to rescue. There are many enemies in the levels, who are hunting down the people as well as the player. The player can keep track of both people and enemies in the radar box at the bottom of the screen. There is a timer that counts how long until the nuke is dropped. Once all the living people are collected a yellow teleporter appears somewhere in the level, and the player must find it to win. The player receives their fee, based on the number of people safely rescued, and how fast the operation was completed. All damage to the hovertank is repaired at the end of the level.

Development

John Carmack's research in the game's engine took six weeks, two weeks longer than any id engine before it. The engine written for this game was expanded upon with

texture mapping Texture mapping is a method for mapping a texture on a computer-generated graphic. Texture here can be high frequency detail, surface texture, or color. History The original technique was pioneered by Edwin Catmull in 1974. Texture mappi ...

to make '' Catacomb 3-D'', and then later still with

raycasting Ray casting is the methodological basis for 3D CAD/CAM solid modeling and image rendering. It is essentially the same as ray tracing for computer graphics where virtual light rays are "cast" or "traced" on their path from the focal point of a came ...

for ''

Wolfenstein 3D ''Wolfenstein 3D'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game '' Castle Wolfe ...

''. Following the engine's completion, the id staff decided on the nuclear war theme and developed the game.

Adrian Carmack Adrian Carmack (born May 5, 1969) is an American video game artist and one of four co-founders of id Software, along with Tom Hall, John Romero, and John Carmack (no relation). The founders met while working at Softdisks ''Gamer's Edge'' divi ...

enjoyed drawing the monsters and other ghoulish touches. The credits are John Carmack and

John Romero John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Secon ...

as programmers,

Tom Hall Tom Hall is an American game designer best known for his work with id Software on titles such as '' Doom'' and ''Commander Keen''. Career Hall attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he earned a B.S. in Computer Science. In 1987 ...

game design Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...

er and Adrian Carmack as

video game artist Game art design is a subset of game development involving the process of creating the artistic aspects for video games. Video game art design begins in the pre-production phase of creating a video game. Video game artists are Visual arts, visua ...

. 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 w ...

to the game, owned by Flat Rock Software, was released in June 2014 under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later in a manner similar those done by id and partners.

Reception

''Hovertank 3D'' is a landmark 3D game. Other 3D titles at the time, such as

flight simulator A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes. It includes replicating the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they rea ...

s and other games (such as '' Alpha Waves'') that had more detailed environments, were noticeably slower. A similar engine was used by '' MIDI Maze'' for the Atari ST in 1987 and '' Wayout'' for the Atari 8-bit family from 1982.

Notes

References

External links

id's look back at ''Hovertank 3D''
* {{Softdisk 1991 video games DOS games DOS-only games Vehicular combat games First-person shooters North America-exclusive video games Science fiction video games Wolfenstein 3D engine games Id Software games Apocalyptic video games Video games about nuclear war and weapons Commercial video games with freely available source code Tank simulation video games Video games developed in the United States Video games with 2.5D graphics Sprite-based first-person shooters