The Chronicles of Wolves

Written by Nexion.

Hereby i present you a novel about mind-bending sex, total warfare and epic drama. The original title was Dr. Frankenwolf And The Mutant Maze Monster and is soon to be followed (whenever i find a typewriter) by The Bride of Wolfenstein. The following events are based on a true story, or so i heard.

A couple of times i have been curious about how a timeline for modding could look like and what it should include. Some sort of community by the year spotlight?! You get to hear how epic mods came and went, how several community cornerstones, including DHW, were born from flame wars and some other bits everyone already forgot. I was writing all this from time to time when i had a moment. For now I'm gonna roll quickly over the years as a starting point. Maybe one day this could be turned into a full book with nice graphs, dry statistics, crazy photos of authors and screenshots. Pretty sure each year could be turned into some fleshed-out articles with in-depth detail but who the hell got the time for this.

Click here to donate money for Atina to dress up in a sexy teacher outfit and present all of this in a documentary Youtube video.

No warranty for mistakes, inaccuracies and hurt feelings. I tried to write it to some degree entertaining and fair but good stories also need drama and spice.
If anyone has trivia, info or a mod to add, either shoot or go push a wall. I might or might not fix it. This text may not be processed with ai in any way. Next up, making a pseudo-shock-doc drama movie about this and then of course a Wolf3D mod based on the movie.

Let us begin with a crude overview:

1992-1994 The original base games and early editors
1995-1996 The big (paid) Mac menu - WolfAddict and Laz take over
1997 The void 1998-2001 The path to BW2 and SOD2 - Wolf Resurrection by Yahoo, code magic and Floedit
2002-2005 The age of DHW, EoD, WSJ and the birth of Chaos and WDC
2006-2009 The Post-EoD TC community - Haven and Wiki1 incoming
2010 The Sonderkommando Totenkopf meltdown.
2011-2017 The Team Raycast Reign.
2016- The ECWolf front attacks.
2018- The Discord era - New-old flame wars, Mac revival and Wiki3

1992

The tale begins with games becoming steadily more complex and the graphics more realistic. First a glance at the landscape into which Wolf3D is born.

Sega Genesis is on a Sonic roll and about to get Sonic 2 and Streets of Rage 2.
Super Nintendo has Contra 3 and waits for Super Mario Kart and Street Fighter II.
The Amiga tries to keep up with Jim Power in Mutant Planet and Agony.
MS-DOS gets to enjoy Indiana Jones, Alone in the Dark and Ultima Underworld.

A gang of edgy hoodlums in their twenties, who happened to have founded a indie development team just months before in 1991, known as id Software, release Wolfenstein 3D in VGA only mode. First as the shareware version on May 5, which also happens to be Adrian Carmack's birthday. Then in June the full version follows.
It's fast maze racing with 256-colors pixel blast processing. The game is a great success. It's such a hit that many players report motion sickness from the fast speed and realistic graphics. The beginning of the end (for the Amiga and its clunky 16 to 32 color modes). You want EGA games and 16 colors? Begone heretic! The Wolf is here to devour innocent souls.

The game is so popular that fans start to hack into the files to create editors for more content. id Software, being ex-game-hackers themselves, embrace it and keep the modding aspect on mind for their next game. id Software also hosts some of the early mods on their ftp server. Apogee, the publisher, is less amused and cries about lost sales and wants people to not mod the shareware version at all.

The first editors, WolfEdit and MapEdit, turn the game inside out and reform the PC modding landscape. Amiga 500 had a striving homebrew indie community by this time but DOS not so much. Steps that would affect Doom's development down the road. WolfEdit is THE graphic tool until 1999 and the base for any vswapped mod. Too bad it has a memory flaw which often wouldn't allow to use the entire canvas (4096 bytes) for a sprite.

Some early gore and porn patches that have been always a part of any modded game and made it far and wide on BBS. One of the porn patches prevents the release of Wolf3D version 1.3. The porn mod masquerades? (perhaps just a FILE_ID.DIZ note) as said version. Joe Siegler reports this to Apogee which decides to skip said version and makes id jump straight to 1.4 for a patch. This also leads to Joe Siegler joining Apogee as a beta tester.

In the second half of the year Schroedinger's Arcade, Wolf VR and Cybertag, get released only god knows where.

On September 18, Spear of Destiny follows Wolf3D mere months later and shows the trend towards a more gloomy doomy direction and Adrian's quest for gore.

Selected mods:

Wolfenstein Meets Pacman
Nat_w3D

1993

People become impatient about Doom's and Blake Stone's delay. Blake Stone, made by ex-Softdiskers, gets late visual upgrades such as shading and floor textures thanks to Doom's and Shadowcaster's early development phase, which gives (some) licensed Wolf engine games floor and ceiling textures. Raven Software leaves the Amiga behind to join the DOS market with an evolved engine for Shadowcaster (August).

Tom Hall splits with id Software in August over Doom, joins Apogee and plans to make Wolf3D: Part II. Perhaps he took the floor texture and some other code snippets with him.

Only in December of the year Blake Stone steps in to push the engine limits. Doom comes out a week later and casts immediately a shadow over it that would last for all eternity. Without Wolf3D there wouldn't have been Doom and the whole FPS could have evolved quite a bit different.

Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are popular on BBS and during the early internet days. The original Beat'em ups are red hot at the time. I think there aren't too many mods that can beat the download numbers of Mortal Kombat Wolf.

Selected mods:

Street Fighter
AReyeP's first addon (Private release)
Wolf3D: Mortal Kombat Edition
Enigma's Nightmare
Temporary Insanity (Pushed the map designs)
ALIENwolf (Early scifi theme)
Xmas Wolf (A Christmas classic for years)

1994

Corridor 7 (March) and Operation Bodycount (September) come and go quickly in the shadow of Doom and Heretic and despite their new themes, multiplayer and many other new features are still heavily doubted to this day.

The Spear Mission Packs (aka Lost Episodes) show up but to no fanfare thanks to being mere swaps. Shunned to a degree, their legacy remains as an asset source of many modders.

In the later half of the year you get to witness the often admired MAC version of Wolf3D (September) and the famously crippled SNES version. At the end of the year the MAC's WolfEdit fan editor would start a MAC mod boom. Doug Ingram's Mac Wolf database site opens in December for users to upload their levels.

Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades (Wolfmaster), a megapack of "815 user levels" is an attempt by Apogee to squeeze the most out of it. Along comes the never-ending curse of the CREATOR RNG tool.

Hellraiser is supposedly teased at an electronics event but remains to be seen.
Blake Stone 2 (October) is a promising sequel but takes again too long and is a lost cause against Doom II in the same month.
In the meantime ROTT evolved into its own thing and dies a slow death from the overly long development.

Selected mods:

Barneystein 3D (Hot topic including Beavis & Butthead)
Mega Wolf (Early scifi theme with fun ideas)
The Renovation (The beginning of the BJ Rowan saga)
Operation Overkill
CIGWolf (Private release. Base for WolfenDoom later)
The Doom patch (The first of many Wolfendoom)

1995

Super Noah's 3D Ark smuggles itself sometime between 1994 onto the SNES and 1995 onto the PC. Gone is the dream of hellraising and instead you count sheep. The game is ever since a figurehead for religious games and cheap internet jokes.

Finally in February Rise of the Triad makes it's way to the full release. Despite some popularity (110.000+ copies sold at some point. Less than Wolf3D), it's a little too late. Tons of crazy features and fun multiplayer can't beat Doom's legacy (Millions of players) and superior technology. The Original Spec concept would haunt fans for the next 30 years.

As for modding the DOS side is sinking while the MAC territory is blooming. Laz begins his show and WolfAddict forms. The grass is always greener on the other side.

A big landmark appears. In July the source code of Wolf3D (DOS) is released for free but the ancient homo sapiens moddus tribe has no clue what to do with it. There is no fan-made Wolf3D Part 2 on the horizon. Instead it's laid to rest on some ftp server. A buried dream in the waiting.

In September the rest of the world gets to experience the first Playstation.

1995 isn't a great year for mods and a lot of them are small MAC mapsets hosted on an early website dedicated to Wolf3D user levels. Despite the source release it's a decline of DOS mods and the rise of fancy WolfAddict shovelware.

Selected mods:

Breakthrough (MAC)
Revolution Preview (BJ Rowan's The Renovation 2)
Halten Sie! (MAC)
Bar Room Blitz

1996

WolfAddict makes money of your hobby long before you even thought about it. It goes straight into a dramatic meltdown a few months later over. Bruce Ryder's obsession with Doomenstein leads to the first Wolf-mod cease and desist note by Interplay though they supposedly allow them to still sell mods as long as they aren't standalone. Later on Bruce's private drama nukes Wolf-Addict off the world map.

In February id Software releases QTest and in June the shareware of Quake. The nine inch nail in the coffin for any 2.5D shooter. Along with Daikatana it's one of the last remnants inspired by id's Dungeons and Dragons sessions. John Romero quits id Software soon after.

In July a demo of WolfEdit 2.0 (MAC) is released, giving people a taste for new graphic options.

At this point it's pretty much a MAC or rather THE Laz show. Laz puts a charm on fans for years to come with his fancy hires designs. Part of the charm was the mystery to DOS players of no option to play them. No emulators for a long time. Astrostein is a landmark of early total conversions and sci-fi themed mods.

Selected mods:

Amnesia (MAC - Astrostein 0)
Astrostein Trilogy (MAC)
Hitler's Graveyard (MAC)
Breakthrough 2 (MAC)
Barneystein 3D (MAC)
Escape from Totenhaus (MAC)
Doomenstein (MAC)

1997

The dark ages. DOS and MAC are in a deep coma. WolfAddict is no more and Laz has other plans. No Dome or any wolves in sight.

On the PC Quake 2 is romping and stomping while the N64 takes off with Goldeneye.

AOL Hell must have been a banger in the AOL community zones if it was released at the time.

Selected mods:

Macinstein 3D (MAC, was anyone aware of it?)
Hallowein 3D
New30

1998

3 to 4 years after Wolf3D went into hibernation, some necromancers decided to dig out the source code (3 years old by the time) and summon new life into the rotting corpse of DOS-Wolfus. A necromancy spell gone right.

The earliest mods to make code and hex changes but even without this the quality levels start to increase compared to the years before. Chokage is the first and comes with a good dose of twisted humor and would stick in the minds of many for years to come.

The MAC scene in the meantime starts to hibernate.

User-made homepages hosted by Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, slowly start to pop up. The age of the Webwolf has begun. A very slow-loading dial-up Wolf. A time of tiny screenshots, thumbnails, gifs and no videos.

Mr. Lowe's WOLF 3D Page and Herc's Chokage Page fade into existence. The Wolf3D Yahoo Fanclub, founded by Dave and Nate, opens up in September and soon gathers hundreds of members.

Selected mods:

Wolfbel 1
Assassinate Hitler
Chokage
The Six Depths of Terrorism
Wolfbel 2

1999

Before the Dinosaurs existed, when everything on the internet was still on wired dial-up, or it might have been 1999, the legendary mod of epic proportions, Kurt vs. The Masters gets announced to the world. A mod so legendary the universe couldn't handle it and hence it was removed from existence.

An early version of FloEdit is released and makes way for a new world of partial and total conversions. For the first time one can change the VGAGRAPH which results in mods having new title screens and statusbars. Also sounds can be replaced easily and makes FloEdit the ultimate tool for mods. New, cool looking mods start to rapidly follow and coding becomes a trendy topic full of secrecy to rage and rave about.

The editor is followed by the MegaDemo which shows a few new cool tricks, such as shading for the first time.

BJ Rowan's Bunker is established and hooks people on the news and map design. On the other side Nate's site is popular as well and gets a hundred thousand clicks over the year.

In early October John Romero joins the Yahoo Club and people gush all over it.

The highly anticipated and much celebrated Project Totengräber comes out at the end of October.

Weeks later it's followed by Beyond Wolfenstein II SE which pushed the limits and can be seen as an archetype for high-caliber mega TCs, such as Spear Resurrection.
Very revolutionary and popular at this point of time. The mod kicked off the rocket launcher and outdoor craze in mods that would last for a couple of years. Adam Archbold is trying to copy Nate, his mods and website a little too hard. Such is the life of rockstars.

Operation: Buzz Bomb is another mod clinging to BWSE2's coattail which turns it into a nuke and people explode angrily over it.

Wasserstein is in the works but it would take another 20 years for more than a private beta release.

In late 1999 The Wolf3D Mansion by Kenny Riley serves as one of the news pages for upcoming mods. It lasts about 2 years with some breaks.

In December WolfEdit 2.0 (MAC) is released to the public, giving everyone (not just WolfAddict) excessive options.

Mods that were highly anticipated. Minor by today's standards they all pushed the design and features forward. Rocket launchers and armor items were discovered. Floors got repainted. Episodes became seamless.

A year that revived Wolf3D modding and lifted it to new heights.

Selected mods:

Conflict in the Fatherland
Schabbs 2000
Beyond Wolfenstein
Demon Warrior (MAC)
Operation Panzerschiff
Project Totengräber Phase 1
MegaDemo
Beyond Wolfenstein II SE

2000

Western Wall I crosses from demo and beta to final and is praised, especially the truck.

At end of January Yahoo deletes the Fan Club due to TerminX (Duke4.net, EDuke32) trolling with porn and reporting it. Now go and sue the Duke community for damages 25 years later. It leaves members sour and creates a bump road. The new fan club established right after doesn't reach the same heights in popularity. Cliques and factions became more intense which leads to more flame wars. The year is generally plagued by bitching (argues with Kurt F. and Brent), website issues and doomsday talk of Wolf3D being over.

The source code of MAC Wolf is released but no one does anything with it for another 20 years.

RTCW is also announced at the end of January and makes waves.

Bucksnort and Harry Mass Sr release mods left and right.

Project Triad, announced by Hamez sometime in 1999, is supposedly still in production and has features such as: Russian theme, stationary gun, fullscreen mode, light effect and a motorcycle.
Western Wall II is announced and features a train (wall) but that's the end of the line.
Nate announces the next big thing on the horizon, Spetsnaz: Wrath of Khan. A TC with a soviet theme, land mines, friendly ai, mission briefings and more.

The anticipated Tekkoudan by the Panzerschiff author, dla_one, is released into the wild but unfortunately in an early state. It shows huge potential to be a revolutionary TC with a brand-new theme. The only catch is to wait for the full release.

In November AReyeP joins the community with WolfenDoom while MCS comes around the corner with his own mod, Wolfenstein Collection.

The Wolf3D Mansion and Brian's homepage keep users up to date with news.

Selected mods:

Western Wall I
Dungeon Quest Part I (MAC)
Tekkoudan
WolfenDoom
Project Totengräber Phase 2
The Final Solution 2.0

2001

In January Crumbling Dream is announced as mega community effort but vanishes only to resurface in 2024.

At the start of the year Beyond Wolfenstein is still glowing hot and the most downloaded mod in history. Having gathered more than 425.000 (+ 35.000 BW1) downloads it attracts id Software's attention a few months ahead of the release of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. On February 2 one cease and desist letter is enough and a few of Nate's mods have to be removed. Once a triumphant mod it would be blacklisted for many years after and become a forgotten relic buried on abandonware sites.

The community is in shambles. Modders drop their mods (Biokrieg), scream in anger and run in fear. The upcoming Spear Resurrection removes the SOD2 title and reference as a precaution. Moments of graveyard silence and confusion if modding could continue or if it's Armageddon. All doom and gloom. Well, the timeline obviously continued or you wouldn't be reading this.

The new Fanclub bemoans the lack of good mods and original content. Brothertank, MCS and AReyeP are tired of "kiddies fighting" and decide to open the DHW Yahoo Fan Club on March 3 as an alternative to the more rowdy offtopic gang of the Wolf3D Club. Worth noting that DHW is an offshoot of Real Wolfers, one of the few Wolf3D message boards outside of Yahoo at the time, where a number of early users could already be found. In return it spawns more clubs as a popularity contest.

February 27, 2001 due to RTCW 3D Realms posts ROTT: Original Spec which would be important for future mods

The Wolf3D Vault 1.0 is launched into the cyberspace. It runs for a while under Barry before changing hands to Ryerson and fades just as quickly.

NewWolf gets released and in April the hot new tools IMFtools lets you finally get to hear new music (often broken sounding midis that get screwed up in the conversion) in mods. Sorcerers Wrath, The Final Solution, Spear Resurrection being some of the first.

Tekkoudan crawls towards a beta phase in May but gets dropped hard when dla_one (Ben) joins the Navy and hands over the project to Nate.

In the shadow of the disaster Clubey and a few more MAC users step up their game and release a handful of cool mods.

9/11 happens followed by John Bucksnort passing away days later.

In October Chaos Software comes in with Operation Zusammenkunft's new features, shading and fullscreen mode.

In November id Software puts Return to Castle Wolfenstein onto the shelves to big fanfare and to the joy of many fans. The hottest Wolf product in and for a long time and breathes new life into the series (and turns all the mods grey and gritty).

Spear Resurrection is released just days later and becomes the hottest thing since Pokemon, pardon BW2SE. The next era is on the horizon.

On December 29, the year concludes with the opening of the Wolfenstein Dome (created by Brian and Tris) and bundles all the news and mods of the community for many years to come.

Selected mods:

Wolf Hour
Project Verdammt
The Sorcerer's Wrath
Episode Four
Spear Resurrection
In the Wolves' Lair (MAC)
Siberian Offensive (MAC)

2002

10 years of Wolf3D. Mods start to branch out into different themes and grow in quality. WSJ enters the floor and dishes out mods which everyone prays to to this day. On the dark side of Wolf3D Ian Brown hands out MAC mods that kind of reflect WSJ's style.

The Original Fan Club and its members start to fizzle out over the course of the year.
The Dome forum comes along but only bridges the moment to the DieHard forum.
ModDB comes alive but it would take few more months for Wolf3D mods to appear.

Selected mods:

Rising Evil
Project Weltuntergang
Chemical Warfare
Countdown to Disaster
The Fear of Magic II (New fantasy theme)
Haunted House (Zombie horror theme)
The Armoury (MAC)
The Spear of Longinus (MAC)
Castle Totenkopf (WSJ's first release)
The Thing (The one and only emojis)
Hitler's Chalet (MAC)
Project Eisenritter
Afrika Korps Assault (MAC)
Beyond Mutantstein Special Edition

2003

DHW moves away from Yahoo and opens the forum gates in March. The days of the wild bunch are numbered under the new sheriff Brothertank. Mind you, DHW was more edgy and wild back in its first years and can't be compared to the sleepy tame 2010s. More codes, mods and info are flowing.

Kreml 3D is announced but you know where this tale has gone.

After more than 3 years FloEdit finally gets to 2.0 in July. Soon to be followed by the first public version of WDC in September.

The latter half of the year sees the first steps of Monkee's Image World (still an Angelfire page). An early resource pool for many mods in the years to follow.
The DHWTC project is also launched but would need a couple of years.

Chaos Software delivers between 2002 and 2005 several code tutorials that are still highly in use today - Directional Sprites, Rain/Snow/Moon, 128x128, Shading.

DarkOne of NewWolf releases the floor and ceiling texture tutorial which leaves a big footprint as well.

Selected mods:

Die, Himmler, Die! (MAC)
The Golden Episodes
Projekt Zerstorer (MAC, Laz' final mod)
Dungeon Cephalis v0.51 (Evil gloomy theme)
Weapons of Vengeance (For a demo it spawned a lot of sequels)
Gotterdammerung
Area 51 (Scifi-Blake-theme)
TexZK's Story (Early outdoor rain)
The Final Assault
Assault on Castle Totenhammer (Uniform disguise anyone?)
Halls of Stonehenge (Blood but in Wolf3D)
Acktung!
Batman: Wrath of Mr. Freeze

2004

After 10 years and to no fanfare the Mac scene fizzles out for good. Total heat death.

One of the most busy years for mods. DHW gets its first collab release, Map Making Mania Melee.

ChaosEdit's first public release. Say hello to many new mods and goodbye to FloEdit.

The and only Thomas enters fray and bangs everyone's head at the door. 2003 to 2005 brings a lot newcomers to the table such as Metalor, Dunkelschwamm, MadWolf, Sporb2000, Jackal, ChiefRebelAngel, Dr.Chainsaw. RichterBelmont12 (Kyo), Mega Mario Bros (email from the big guy) and Sandy being more infamous amongst the new generation. Some people, such as Nate or Tris, phase out or would return many years later. Architect joins the party being all rowdy with his IceWolf project.

Monster Bash 3D and Helvete are announced and highly anticipated mods never to be released. After years of flames and teasing Kurt vs Master evaporates along with the Master.

Ian Franken launches Wolf-Bytes - A promising Wolf3D Newsletter covering mods and more but unfortunately is defunct after only 3 issues.

Due to bans and the Brazilian Carmack initiative the alternative (and somewhat successful) Wolf Planet forum gets established by the Mario Bros.

Everyone waits impatiently for the follow up to Spear Resurrection, End of Destiny, to be released in December. Plenty of speculation. An incredibly hot topic before and after the release. One of the all-time greats that rose to fame and has inspired many (also to copy the formula). Speaking of copies, WSJ imitations start to grow quickly in numbers as well.

Selected mods:

The Anticipation
The Alliance of Powers (Ack & Arielus team up)
Projekt Vertilgung v.1.4
Sensenmann (Horror on a new level)
Dead World Rising 2
Coming of the Storm (WSJ at his best?)
The Untold Story (Grotesque and savage)
Operation: Letzterschutz (Hailed a classic for many years)
Dead Reckoning (More horror)
Operation: Mutant Strike
End of Destiny

2005

The year starts with Conner94 (War Storm mod) getting ban-hammered for being too young. As a response another forum (with little success), called Wolf94, is born.

Wolf4GW pushes DOS mods to new limits but gets overshadowed fast. Big TCs would either get cancelled or be moved to Wolf4SDL.

2 years, plenty bans and deleted users later, DHW very slowly calms down but still no comparison to the calm 2010s. Anyone remembers the avatar size limit and the email requirement to register?

The new Mod in a week attempt struggles hard to be done in a week.
Two years after its announcement the highly anticipated mega DOS TC, Trench Warfare, blows everyone's mind with its graphics prowess and features.
Kyo (RichterBelmont12), an unstoppable force, unleashes a dozen Spear of Dreams and Lost World mods over the next 2 years. Drama, meltdowns and confusion follow.

Operation God Hand, Spear Doomsday, Super Blitzkrieg and Operation Supernatural march slowly towards their graves.

Selected mods:

Operation Mutant Strike 2
Invasion of the Cartoons
Double Trouble (Rising Evil 2)
Operation Todpfad
Mutant Blobs from Uranus (B-movie scifi romp)
Gex's Spear Levels Pack
Trench Warfare
Switch17 (Code hackery switch up)

2006

Another attempt at a mod in a week spawns Drawn and Quartered on paper.

The year marks the arrival of Ronwolf, Dean, Doomjedi and a few others. Dean starts his blog which would become quite the feature but at this point of time it covers mostly his own projects.

Orb of Dilaaria, a feature-heavy mega TC with a sword and sorcery theme comes out and casts a spell on everyone.

Wolfenstein Reloaded is a mega TC that serves as some sort of Wolf3D reboot with many additional features.

Amohs Awamuras also hits the early grave. Elsas-Lothringen comes and goes with the wind.

Selected mods:

MedEvil (Majikal fantasy theme)
Revival of Memories (Brian, MCS and Tris under one hood)
Drawn and Quartered
Sewer Town
6.25
Crash Bandicoot
Orb of Dilaaria
Wolfenstein Reloaded
The False Spear

2007

The year begins with All This & Wolf3D and its legendary Level 69 which gets MrWolfForever to write a poem about it.

Dark_wizzie drives Brothertank insane and gets the boot. Only logical conclusion? Make another forum of course. The Wolf3D Haven is born in March, 4 years after DHW was established. A very successful alternative to DHW. Less strict and more reminiscent of the early 2003-2004 wilderness. It would keep up and even overshadow DHW in activity in its most prominent years (about 2008-2016). DHW suffers from registration issues for a long time. For many years it would require an email-address by your internet provider and would block common email providers (hotmail,...).

Wolfenstein3D fan (Picnic) is high on spam and abuses a moderator bug on Haven to ban people.

Andy starts to port the MAC version to DOS and the people left in the garden Eden can finally touch the magical apple for the first time.

Doomjedi unleashes a lot controversies with Femstein (btw. made together with WLHack) and the Sonderkommando announcement but slowly gathers a super group of a team in the process. Now for the daring question, why was Hotel Pornostein withheld from the Dome but not Femstein?

Jpb joins and begins his never-ending crusade of preaching the miracles of godmode, unrelated canon crossovers, inane discussions and the Rise of the Triad HUST. Don't engage and run while you can.

A Doll's House, a complex puzzle-heavy TC inside a mansion and the evolution of Poet's puzzle essence, would be reworked into one of the few standalone games a couple of years later.

Northern Darkness, headbangs itself into existence with an odd over-the-top heavy metal theme. It rolls around as the first fully fledged standalone indie game (before the big nu-indie game wave) and even rocks a release trailer on Youtube, yet to zero notice inside the community. Move on folks, nothing to see here.

Youtube (founded in 2005) slowly takes over the video platforms online. Anyone remembers Google Video? It even had a handful mod gameplay videos in late 2008. The age of mod trailers and playthroughs is upon us. At this point in time Youtube videos still have a maximum runtime limit of 10 minutes.

The first Wolf3D mod wiki, Wolfsource, is founded in late 2007 by Zombie. Everyone loves it. Taken over by spam and lack of maintenance it would fully vanish in early 2012, leaving a data hole and disgruntled editors. Disgruntled enough to not pick up the second coming of the wiki (DHW Wikia) in 2014.

At the end of the year Klooni becomes a massive cloning trial at giving birth to Doom within the Wolf3D engine. A sight to behold and one of the Wonders of the Wolf World.

Selected mods:

All This & Wolf 3D
Spear Revisited
Castle Hasselhoff (Long delayed comedy)
Mac-enstein First Encounter
Doom: Legions of Hell (Klooni but not Klooni)
Femstein
Hitler's Ark (Comedy deluxe)
A Doll's House
Operation: Wintersturm (WLHack's snugly cold mod)
Mac-enstein Second Encounter
Desperate Measures E1 (BJ Rowan's return)
Map of the Month June 07
Map of the Month July 07 (Involved 15 people)
Northern Darkness
Map of the Month August 07
Guns & Glory
Trilogy Revisited++ (The Way serpens Did It)
Map of the Month September 07
Map of the Month October
Escape From Castle Holle
Klooni

2008

Ripper hands out Wolf4SDL to kick-start a new era of mods and vanishes for good not long after. Many modders hold back and would stick to DOS for a while.

The Haven grows quickly and leaves some of the childish spam behind. Many people join and several community sets are brought to life. It becomes the welcoming place for everyone in the same way DHW started out. The cycle continues.

Players get to suffer my colorless eyesore, Planet Nexion, but no one does because Havoc's Absence, a mega hyper sci-fi Total Conversion, comes out a day earlier and is the new star on the shining horizon. It looks vibrant and has tons of space for features. Don't miss out on that. Planet N instead gets bashed in a review by Zombie/Dethwish for being so horrible. As a conclusion i jumped in front of a train and you have been reading the words of a ghost all this time.

Selected mods:

Weltgericht
Map of the Month February 2008
The Bitter End
Castle Grom
Resistant
Absence
Planet Nexion
Team Aardwolf Mapset (Haven and Aardwolf forum project)
Ghosts (The original, A Doll's House collab)

2009

I torture a newbie, called Jayngo, with code and he tortures me with questions in return. The result? Plenty of mayhem in Haven's chatbox throughout the year and the release of the Umbrella Beginnings mod, a beloved classic.

March 2009 brought a Wolf3D port to the iPhone personally engineered by John Carmack himself. It's based on the Wolf3D Redux port and features an option to load custom maps. id Software even had MapEdit instructions on their website. Raven Software completes the work on Wolfenstein (2009) while Activision publishes it to zero fanfare in the middle of August. Good game but it brings no wave of enthusiasm or newcomers to modding and fails to revitalize the series.

MadWolf and Richter (Kyo) keep improving with each mod.

And to this day you see some people shed tears over a murder victim. The murder of the unreleased mod with the title Lair of the Mantis.

Selected mods:

Wolfenstein: Umbrella Beginnings
Deadly Sleep (Brian and Arielus team up)
NovoWOlf
Project X (Where are the vampires?)
The Lost Relic

2010

Atina joins Haven and jpb drives everyone mad with his talk about robots. The Haven is going overdrive and becomes a madhouse party zone for the next 2 or so years. Joy, new mod ideas, newcomers and silly chats at night. A cornerstone of the community but still shunned by some DHW veterans. DHW on the other is starting to fall asleep.

Castle Totenkopf is remade in SDL and 1 of the 3 mods which is forever burned into the minds of everyone. Everyone yaps about it to this day, even your dog. If you don't know it then what are you even doing here?

Balames87 opens up his Youtube channel with an attempt at NES game videos but eventually switches to Wolf3D related content.

Over the course of the late months of the year Dean's blog transforms into a growing outlet for mod related articles, interviews, news and reviews.

The Titanic hits the iceberg at the end of the year. The massive monster mod Sonder and its 2 sequels, which had been in development since 2007, get cancelled over a violence-glorifying trailer that causes outrage in the worldwide media. The biggest shitstorm after several sleepy years. A community topic as persistent and healthy as forever chemicals.

Selected mods:

The Third Reich Episode 1
Spear of Destiny Reloaded (imagine SOD Rebooted)
Acktung! 2
Super Haven Mapset (Haven collab)
Castle Totenkopf SDL
Operation: End Endemic (Umbrella Beginnings 2)
Krankenstein II
DOOM: Legions Revisited

2011

Sonder is secretly released in the underground but only to the chosen people.

DeathTrigger lets you look up and down while a truck runs you over. Isn't that fun?
Soon after Unsung creeps around the corner and steals the show with it's fancy visuals and WW1 theme.
At the same time HWE, a new map editor, is handed out as an alternative to WDC and Chaos.

The saga of DHWTC, having begun in 2003, is finally coming to an end and hasn't just been a long-lasting fever dream. It's a massive collaboration of the DHW community and involved 27 people over all those years. Once and never again.

Spear Resurrection celebrates it's 10th birthday with a port and new maps.

Halloween gets all spooky with the splendid HalloWolf.

Selected mods:

DieHard Wolfers SDL Mapset
Life on the Streets Episode 1
DeathTrigger
Unsung (The only WW1 themed mod?)
Frayed: Fiend Edition
DieHard Wolfers TC
16x16 (Tiny cute maps)
Operation: Mutant Strike 3
Spear Resurrection: 10th Anniversary Edition
HalloWolf

2012

Having burned through several mappers and coders over the years Batman vs Bane, made together with the newcomer Linuxwolf, is a new beginning for Team Raycast and a big team effort. It is followed months later by Sonder getting censored and reworked into Operation Eisenfaust: Origins for a public release. Several members of Team Raycast become moderators on DHW down the road and take over the reigns.

DHW has become tame and soft at this point.

RTCW3D makes a few people shake their heads.

ECWolf is a thing now and merges a heavy dose of zDoom into the unholy mix from here on.

Selected mods:

DieHard Wolfers Spear Mapset
Stealth
Time to Kill
Desperate Measures E2
Batman vs Bane
Operation Eisenfaust: Origins
The Black House (spooky)
Hundenberg
Beyond Mutantstein SE - AE (Involved 19 people)

2013

The final year for the Dome news under Brian (Schabbs) before the keys are handed over to Stathmk.
The Haven forum slowly crumbles under Brian's leave as well.

Selected mods:

Bound
Federal Cases: Tara Carmichael (urban TC)
Ipank7000's Mapset: SoD Edition
Map of the Month November 2013

2014

Andy tries to fix up the missing Dome news with his Ersatz news topic on DHW.

Rollercoaster Ride comes in the wake of the Flappy Bird craze and is presumably inspired by it. Not unlike the self-moving part in Chris' Weird33 mod from 2003.

In May Bethesda chokes out the anticipated Wolfenstein: The New Order to some fanfare but the game stays largely irrelevant for the Wolf3D community and splits hardcore fans. To no surprise, jpb is of course all over the lore and you get to hear about it, if you want or not.

Gary returns after years to dish out 128x128 maps in the Schabbs 2000 prequel, Leiche Soldat.

The black screen simulation Witching Hour is horror on the next level but everyone is unable to see the forest for the trees.

Eisenfaust Legacy is the new darling in the spotlight and the result of the a new core team at Team Raycast.

Selected mods:

Trilogy: iLOW3D
Treasure Hunt
Resident Evil Unleashed
Map of the Month 2014 Q1
Rollercoaster Ride
Leiche Soldat
Map of the Month 2014 Q2
WolfDX
Get Lost!!
Witching Hour
Coffee Break Episode 1
Operation Eisenfaust: Legacy

2015

In January Parafriction aka Tris returns after ~10 years and plans to resurrect the Wolf3D Dome through his new Wolf Front news site.

Andy disappears and no one knows why and where to, leaving vacuum of news and ports behind.

Wolf3DGuy and OMJ are let loose onto the scene. The mighty OMJ shovels out a dozen mods and drives everyone insane for the next years. Communication is futile - no one speaks his language, not even any local Hungarian.

Selected mods:

The Lost Missions
Batman: No Man's Land
Life on the Streets Episode 2
Sokobanned (Sokoban puzzles in 3D)
DieHard Wolfers Lost Episodes Mapset
Guns and Glory: The Story Retold
Operation: Serpent (ECWolf's early mega TC)

2016

Dunkelschwamm releases Trump Tower 3D as a take on Trump running for president. Not the first political joke mod but times have changed, drama ensues and the mod is withdrawn quickly.

ECWolf receives Executor's new episode for Coffee Break and the continued ports of classic mods by AstroCreep. It slowly leads to an endless whining and port-beginning by random players. A doomed plague is sweeping over the land of the wolves.

Over the year OMJ versus The Mario Bros. & Stathmk goes nuclear over plagiarization and in November results in a ban of OMJ from the Haven forum.

Green Arrow is a technical marvel which splits the fans with its theme and gameplay. The last mega TC before Team Raycast would turn into a remaster studio and struggle to find new mappers.

Selected mods:

SoD Extreme II
Passage to Höllenteufel
Coffee Break Episode 2 (The holy grail of Doom players)
Brutal Death Dealer of Annihilation 3D
Green Arrow

2017

In January DHW goes Discord. It is small in capacity but it melts away in merely a year under the widespread madness and religious banter inflicted by jpb.
February sees OMJ being banned from DHW. The ridiculous code cracker's spam is on a break for now.

Around April Barry performs dark rituals to resurrect the Wolf3D Vault site to serve as a mod hub while the Dome is afk. Business as usual. It doesn't last very long but the site would remain online.

In October Bethesda unleashes Wolfenstein II : The New Colossus but makes even less of a wave than the first part.

It is clearly a cursed year because Nep, also known as Reddimus, graces the community with his presence and the incredible skills of setting computers on fire.

Beyond the Grave is the latest and greatest mega TC with a bloody gothic theme. Gunslingers and ghouls, what's not to love there?

Selected mods:

Atomprojekt (Loved and hated)
Hitler at the Ninth Gate (Gary's latest)
Map of the Month 2017
Beyond the Grave

2018

Shadow Ragers is announced with a trailer but instantly vaporizes into a disappointment and a limited demo release.

Doomjedi versus Atina goes nuclear over Dunkelschwamm's Spriters-Resource sheets.

The temporary discord servers that form after the JPB fallout vaporize just as quickly. Jpb as a discord admin? What could go wrong. Madness as far as the mouse pointer can reach. The world is about to go nuclear. Must be the sun or is there something in the water?

Selected mods:

SoD Extreme EE
DHW Mapping League 1
Down
Kurlandfront
Frantic Passages
Operation: Gral (Aeons later, the final incarnation of TGOEL)

2019

With a delay the era of Discord chats kicks off. The temporary 2018 servers bite the bullet. Zombie/Dethwish returns to the scene to set up the one server to rule them all and creates, with the help of others, Wolf3D.net, a website replacement for the Wolf3D Dome. The Wolfsource Discord is born and bursts with energy, activity, creativity and hot flame wars. Old members are necromancied. More and more people come together and make new and old connections.
Jpb gets banished from DHW and Discord in the process but stays around on his server (current status of 2026).

The sleepy forum hibernation period seems to be over. It is the most busy it has been in years. Several projects originate from this. Even John Romero joins but Zombie kicks him and others months later due to inactivity.
All kind of parties are bundled into one server:
Oldschool die hards, ECWolf followers, drifters (Jpb [between kicks], OMJ, etc.), Balames & Russianstorm's YT club, GZWolfenDoomers and nu-Order-Wolfenstein fanatics.

Needless to say over time more and more tensions arise between all the parties in this multicultural wolfblood mix.
Balames and Russianstorm get their own discord server to entertain their Youtube fan club or so the rumors say. Atina, Chris and Astro cause regular havoc while Zombie, as admin, takes the side of Astro. ECWolfers+Doomers often clash with the Die Hards in fiercy battles. Damn, this 1993 game called Doom is indeed evil.

Dean's Wolfenstein blog, maintained largely by Ronwolf in the recent years and tried to fill the void of the Dome to some degree, slowly fizzles out over 2018 and 2019. Surpassed by Wolfsource the site leaves a gaping hole for mod related articles.

In April the WL6 wiki is shaped and slowly becomes the most complete mod-related wiki as of this date. The third time is the charm.

In July Bethesda's Wolfenstein: Youngblood comes and goes like a droplet in the rain.

LZWolf - a fork of ECWolf with specific modders on mind is published by Linuxwolf. It's aimed at modders who would usually require fancy programmers to do mega projects

On the final day of the year serpens posts the 'Map reuse and theft' topic on DHW and summons the Armageddon.

Selected mods:

Project X Insurrection (Kyo's latest and greatest)
The Golden Parrot (Arr, year of the pirate)
Nitemare: Hugos Revenge
The Tracey Simpsons Show
Stranded
Operation: Nazi Slayer
DHW Totengräber Map Set (Took years but the discord task force wrapped it up)

2020

The year begins with Wolfsource (about 100 members at the time) having a top-tier nuclear fallout due to differences between Zombie, his little helpers+moderators and several factions. The server splits with several people either getting banned or leaving to form alternatives. Familiar history, right? Not unlike many forum wars in the now long forgotten (Kurt vs Master) times. Perhaps it's a sign written in the stars, that if John Romero joins, the place is cursed to die months later (see also Yahoo Club). Everyone is on fire or half-radioactive.

Wolfsource starts to stumble so hard it becomes a mere fraction of its former self. Activity and fun slowly disappear. It would never recover from this and remain undead.

The new Discord server, Fugitives, flourishes with the same energy, creativity and wild party zone attitude. The wiki librarians move their books to the new place and continue with the building process. Plenty projects find their roots in this. One of the projects, Wolf4SDL2 by KS-Presto, pushes the old port to new heights. MacenWolf starts off with the plan to finally unearth all the mystical MAC mods that are hidden beneath buried servers.

OMJ quits for good to join the Sonic fandom.

TryHard Wolfers release a weekly magazine featuring comics and mod related content throughout the year. The magazine would get up to 64 volumes before fizzling out.

At some point something called Corona needs heavy debugging.

ReflectionKeen/ReflectionHLE adds support for Wolf3D + SOD and is a chocolate port worth one's salt.

Selected mods:

Unwanted Mission Pack
BJ's Destiny
Size Matters (Tiny maps make a return)
The Mind of Evil
Operation Wasserstein II (Series returns after 20 years)
Operation: Artemis
LZWolf First Ever Open Invite Mapset
Wack-O-Ween
Wolfemdom (A pinch of erotic)
Untergang (The most horrible maps ever)

2021

Wolf4SDL2 is continued in various flavors and lays the groundwork for new possibilities but development slows down after some time and KS-Presto's sudden internet exit.

Linuxwolf's Rampant causes a rampant mess on release.

MAC modding returns after a hiatus of 17 years. Nexus and Oktoberbloodfest are real gems and show new possibilities. Two of the best MacWolf ever had.

Selected mods:

Wolfenstein 3D The Way ID Did
Gerolf's 2021 SDM Mapset
Der cHase (Race for candy)
Spaced Out! (Thomas goes to space)
Final TFS (But is it the final final?)
Being John Blazkowicz
Testament
Oktoberbloodfest (MAC)
Wack-O-Ween 2 (Happy pumpkin TC)
Nexus (MAC)
Discipline
Find the Secret Passage (MAC)

2022

DDWolf, a fork of Wolf4SDL2, by DemolitionDerby is another sequel to Wolf4SDL and offers a handful quality of life changes.

MacenWolf receives a small game jame.

March comes and wolf3d-net's (Wolfsource) rrehaul turns it into an user-driven self-serving moddb lite that is forever stuck in beta.

Wolf3D celebrates its 30th anniversary with the release of WolfGuy's Definitive Anniversary Edition and Oldfartenstein the Shareware Edition, a community effort.

WLEdit, another multi-purpose editor in the vein of ChaosEdit, enters the room and offers a feature galore.

In the meantime the world tumbles into a political mess with not Kreml 3D but Kremlin 3D.

Selected mods:

Wolfemdom Nightmares (What a sexy island)
Dietrich Must Die
Wolf3D Anniversary Edition aka Definitive Edition aka WL9
Oldfartenstein Shareware
The Dying Embers
MackENWOLF (ack meets Mac)
Return To Danger: Revamped!
Shima

2023

Barry is missing in action and the Wolf3D Vault site is toast. MCS takes it over and has been updating it with news, mods and other features ever since.

July 2023 saw the Ludicrous Remaster of Rise of the Triad by Nightdive Studios after nu-3D Realms, Destructive Creations and nu-Apogee struggled to get it out since the 2020 announcement. 3 years for a remaster. Longer than the development of the original.

WolfensteinCGA ports the game to CGA and gives finally everyone the opportunity to play with 96% less colors after several EGA projects over the years have failed.

In March LZWolf is discontinued. A port to free the coder from his shackles only to be shackled by it even harder.

Oldfartenstein concludes the story with 30 colorful levels and fun features. It involved 12 people in the end.
Speedmapping Mania 2023 Event forces the community to do maps in under 3 hours.
Disillusion of the artist shows how far plain vswap trickery can get you.
The Golden Parrot gets a sequel, all pirates and advanced adventure aspects included. The ship sails on.

Selected mods:

Office Hours
Searing Heat
Oldfartenstein WL30
Crude III: Season of the Bitch
Des Mannes bester Freund
The Nexperiment
The Golden Parrot: Against All Flags
Disillusion of the Artist

2024

The year brings a lot collaborations to the table. Many of them through Discord. [Censored] is the most the experimental of the bunch. RTDIFG on the other hand is a smooth take on the Spear Mission Packs (Lost episodes) and involves 12 people.

July 2024 - after 12+ years DHW decides that it is finally time for new moderator blood and new plans. Time to wake and shake it up.

Crumbling Dream a vast team community effort (11 people) and last seen in 2001, resurfaces and is released on the final days of the year.

Selected mods:

Not So Gretel
Project Liftwaffe
Return to Danger - IDeas FormGenerations
Forsaken
[Censored]
Icons of Chaos (A 3D editor too)
Sensenmann 2 (A sequel 20 years late[r])
Medal of Honor: Midnight Assault (Started in 2007)
Crumbling Dream

2025

The year starts with the releases of the mine-sweeper mod Trench Wallfare and a heavy (Rising) rumbling Thunder TC. Both showcases of creative gameplay.

Two new MacWolf ports are born and, for whatever unholy reasons, Creator RNG maps make a return in this day and age.
After 7 years on hiatus the DHW Map of the Month contest is resurrected and rebranded.

Monkee's Image World decides to kick the bucket over server host changes and disappears for several months (It's back - March 2026).

In the meantime Wolf3D.net Discord (Wolfsource) dies the absolute heat death. 700 members and 0 signs of life. The deserted land of what was once a multicultural temple. Quo vadis, lupus?

10 years later, The Front, the spiritual sequel to the Wolf3D Dome, is still being worked on by Tris and should be open for business in the next 10 years. Thomas lends a hand and never gets it back.

Selected mods:

Trench Wallfare
Rising Thunder
DHW MMC Spring 2025
DHW MMC Summer 2025
The Fall of Angkar
Rustic Charm

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