''Golgotha'' is an unfinished

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

that was being developed by

Crack dot Com Crack dot Com was a computer game development company co-founded by ex-id Software programmer Dave Taylor, and Jonathan Clark. History Crack dot com started from home with a staff of just four people. Their first completed game, which had I ...

prior to shutting down in 1998. The game was to be a

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to pla ...

game, with elements from

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

games. According to Dave Taylor, the game's name came from

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

King Lear ''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane a ...

tragedy, wherein Golgotha was a massive plain and a future battlefield.

Plot

The game plays in the

fictional future A future history is a postulated history of the future and is used by authors of science fiction and other speculative fiction to construct a common background for fiction. Sometimes the author publishes a timeline of events in the history, whi ...

of the year 2048 AD, where a global

nuclear disarmament Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the nucleus of the atom: * Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics * Nuclear space * Nucle ...

and the coincidental murder of a beloved American archaeologist leads to an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the " United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, ...

military incision on

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

. Which, in turn, elicits a

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

an military power play and begins

World War III World War III or the Third World War, often abbreviated as WWIII or WW3, are names given to a hypothetical worldwide large-scale military conflict subsequent to World War I and World War II. The term has been in use since at ...

. The commander of the American force sent to invade Iraq questions his mission. With no suitable answers, he abandons his country and takes his troops on the quest for truth. In the try to recover what really happened at

Golgotha Calvary ( la, Calvariae or ) or Golgotha ( grc-gre, Γολγοθᾶ, ''Golgothâ'') was a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was said to have been crucified according to the canonical Gospels. Since at least the early mediev ...

they discover a supernatural conflict behind a veil of political discord.

History

After the successful release of ''

Abuse Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of a thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other t ...

'' in February 1996, ''Crack dot Com'' began instantly with a new project, called ''Golgotha''. The game was originally meant to be a

game, with elements from

games. This FPS/RTS hybrid should draw inspiration specifically from ''

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (born 1934), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher * ...

'' and ''

Command & Conquer ''Command & Conquer'' (''C&C'') is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game franchise, first developed by Westwood Studios. The first game was one of the earliest of the RTS genre, itself based on Westwood Studios' influential strategy game '' Dune ...

''.

Demo

The last released

demo Demo, usually short for demonstration, may refer to: Music and film * Demo (music), a song typically recorded for reference rather than release * ''Demo'' (Behind Crimson Eyes), a 2004 recording by the band Behind Crimson Eyes * ''Demo'' (Deafhe ...

, version number 5c, was playable in Windows. It supported both

software rendering Software rendering is the process of generating an image from a model by means of computer software. In the context of computer graphics rendering, software rendering refers to a rendering process that is not dependent upon graphics hardware ...

and 3dfx Glide-based 3D cards. The demo included two levels, one based on Switzerland and one based on

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo met ...

. The Switzerland demo level was the more complete one. In addition to this, the demo also had a non-interactive demo level that showed the terrain rendering capabilities of the

graphics engine Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined ...

. In the demo, the gameplay worked in the following fashion. The player controlled a super-

tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful e ...

, which can be driven in first-person mode. In third-person mode, the player is presented with a bird's-eye view of the battlefield, and can command squads of individual units. The object of the level is to secure the enemy base and move any unit capable of taking over enemy bases to the "takeover pad" in the base.

Re-design

In September 1998, around the time the company folded, the gameplay had several issues: Basically, there was no way to control squads any more; grand-scale strategy was limited to choosing path for the produced units to follow. This didn't allow for much variation in gameplay. Also, many AI issues had been left unattended. Though originally inspired by ''

'', the team decided to abandon the traditional RTS format because both the team and budget proved to be ill-suited to solving the problems inherent in an RTS. As they would learn later, pathsolving and routing are famous for bringing RTS teams to their knees and theirs was no exception. Rather than suffer, they decide to pull the kill chain on it and adopt a simpler gameplay mechanic. The removal of squad control in ''Golgotha'' was intentional. Crack Dot Com tossed ''C&C'' as the inspiration and embraced ''

Rescue Raiders ''Rescue Raiders'' is an Apple II scrolling shooter published by Sir-Tech in 1984. It was designed by Arthur Britto and Greg Hale. Gameplay The game is played on a two-dimensional side-scrolling playfield, where two players start at main bases ...

'', changing it from a 1.5D RTS/action hybrid to a 2.5D RTS/action hybrid. In the new version of ''Golgotha'', players controlled a supertank in a very twitchy action game. So squad control was reduced to picking a path, then queuing a rock-paper-scissors-ish sequence of baddies so that players could quickly return to control of their supertank. This change dramatically improved gameplay. Artificial intelligence for the opposing supertank was still wobbly and posed another notoriously challenging problem, but it was a far more tractable problem than the pathsolving/routing problem and a much better fit for the team. However, about the time the team had finally settled on this, they had burned through the cash generated from sales of ''

'', in addition to a little money from

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufact ...

for

3DNow! 3DNow! is a deprecated extension to the x86 instruction set developed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). It adds single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instructions to the base x86 instruction set, enabling it to perform vector processing of flo ...

optimizations and a gracious gift from

Richard Garriott Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux ('' né'' Garriott; born July 4, 1961) is an American video game developer, entrepreneur and private astronaut. Although both his parents were American, he maintains dual British and American citizenship by birth ...

Release into public domain

The unfinished game's assets were released to

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

on October 22, 2000. This included

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

, game data, textures and music, some of which have been recycled into other games. After the release, some volunteers started working on the game code. The development effort was rekindled as ''Golgotha Forever'', headed by Mark O'Hara.The resurrection of Golgotha
on

salon.com ''Salon'' is an American politically progressive/ liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events. Content and coverage ''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, including r ...

(1999) However, the interest later died down.

References

External links

"So long, Crack.com"
- by Jonathan Clark, ''Golgotha'' programmer

(last archived version of the site prior to bankruptcy), through the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...

Golgotha source code
Jonathan Clark's golgotha website (archived through the

)
Interview with Dave Taylor
at the thecomputershow.com
Playing Catch-Up
Crack dot Com's Dave 'DDT' Taylor at

Gamasutra ''Game Developer'', known as ''Gamasutra'' until 2021, is a website founded in 1997 that focuses on aspects of video game development. It is owned and operated by Informa and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine '' Gam ...

(archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Golgotha (Computer Game) Cancelled Linux games Cancelled Windows games Commercial video games with freely available source code Public-domain software with source code