![]() As a possible enhancement, Warner had designed a hi-res character generator to allow 70 columns of upper and lowercase text to be displayed on the graphics screen. One of their non-entertainment products was a word processing program called Super-Text, which as a text-based program was limited to the 40-column resolution inherent to the Apple II and II Plus. ![]() ![]() Hi-resolution graphics had been part of games produced by MUSE software from the very beginning. This improved the tapes so much that MUSE advertised them as “Super-Load” cassettes. This studio had developed techniques of enhancing the audio signal for MUSE’s data cassettes by running it through a graphic equalizer. At about the same time, the company had been able to improve the production of their software cassettes by making use of Flight 3, a professional recording studio. It was very low quality, since the speaker on the Apple II could produce 1-bit sound (clicked “on” or “off”), but the results were intelligible. First, MUSE released a program called The Voice, which allowed the recording and playback of sound on an Apple II. In the area of sound, two significant things happened. Several key events occurred in the early 1980’s that had an impact on what was to come later. As the technology advanced, they moved on to disk-based and assembly language programs. Founded in 1978 by Silas Warner and Ed Zaron, they got their start by selling software on cassette tape for the Integer BASIC-only Apple II. One of the pioneering Apple II companies that provided games for the platform was MUSE Software. And if you started with your Apple II in the early 1980’s, you had some great games on which to spend your time. This is especially the case for those who were introduced to a computer while they were in school, and “grew up” with it. ![]() They may have been simplistic, stupid, or even annoying by your standards of today, but they were special to you, because you spent hours and hours playing them and learning about your computer, sometimes by hacking them. The games you play when you first learn how to use a computer are sometimes the ones that stay with you the longest. The first looks at Castle Wolfenstein, the game that inspired it all the second deals with the PC development of Wolfenstein 3D on the PC the third with the Apple IIGS development and the fourth with comments about the game itself. The story will be presented in four major parts. Consider it a sidebar off of the last column. Previously you have heard bits and pieces of the tale but you’ve never heard the entire story before now. This time, the information I can share is gathered from sources other than the Lamp publications, so I will be indeed “illuminating” the Lamp. Instead, I want to focus on the story of Wolfenstein 3D, which has been mentioned several times in this series so far. We are going to diverge this month from our regularly scheduled review of The Lamp! for 1999. This story appeared in the January 2004 issue, and is here represented for your enjoyment.) DER FUEHRER’S FACE – Wolfenstein 3D (I originally wrote this article as part of my series, “Illuminating The Lamp” for The Lamp! online newsletter. The Long Strange Saga of Wolfenstein 3D On The Apple IIGS
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