Wolf4SDL
Wolf4SDL is an open-source port of id Software's Wolfenstein 3D to SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer), a cross-platform multimedia library. It was created primarily to allow the game to run on modern systems that no longer natively support DOS.
History
The project was started on October 27th, 2006 by Moritz "Ripper" Kroll, building upon an earlier source port called Wolf4GW — also written by Ripper. It was not the first attempt to bring Wolfenstein 3D to SDL; icculus Wolf had begun a similar effort as far back as 2001. However, Wolf4SDL became the definitive version, with additional contributions from Christoph Mallon and others.
The port was first publicly released in late December 2007. It quickly gained traction in the modding community, opening the door to a new wave of mods and total conversions that would have been difficult or outright impossible to achieve in the original DOS format.
The latest release is version 1.7, published on May 15th, 2011. Active development continued until October 8th, 2011, after which the project stalled. The original website, hosted through Ripper's ISP, went offline after that ISP merged with O2, and the Chaos Software domain was never updated to point to a new location.
What it supports
Wolf4SDL is a source port of both Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, and runs natively on:
- Windows
- Mac OS X
- Linux
Legacy
Wolf4SDL remained widely used for many years and had a lasting impact on the Wolfenstein modding scene. Its most notable successor is ECWolf, which is directly based on Wolf4SDL and remains in active development today. Other ports such as ReflectionHLE have also emerged over time, but Wolf4SDL is widely credited with starting the modern era of Wolfenstein source ports.