''Hovertank One'', also known under a variety of other names (''Hovertank'' or ''Hovertank 3D''), is a vehicular combat game 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 computer program, 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 ...

in April 1991.

Plot

''Hovertank One'' is set during a nuclear war. In ''Hovertank One'', the player controls Brick Sledge, a mercenary 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, but the cities are also full of

mutated In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA replication, DNA or viral rep ...

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 John D. Carmack II (born August 21, 1970) is an American computer programmer and video game developer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its 1990s games ''Commander Keen'', ''Wolfenstein 3D'', ''Do ...

'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 term used in computer graphics to describe how 2D images are projected onto 3D models. The most common variant is the UV unwrap, which can be described as an inverse paper cutout, where the surfaces of a 3D model are cut ap ...

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

Wolfenstein 3D ''Wolfenstein 3D'' is a 1992 first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen for DOS. It was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game '' Castle Wolfenstein'', and is the third installment ...

''. Following the engine's completion, the id staff decided on the nuclear war theme and developed the game. Adrian Carmack enjoyed drawing the monsters and other ghoulish touches. The credits are John Carmack and

John Romero Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is an American video game developer. He co-founded id Software and designed their early games, including ''Wolfenstein 3D'' (1992), ''Doom (1993 video game), Doom'' (1993), ''Doom II'' (1994), ''Hexen ...

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

Tom Hall Tom Hall (born September 2, 1964) is an American video game designer best known for his work with id Software on titles such as '' Doom'', '' Wolfenstein 3D'' and ''Commander Keen''. He has also been the co-founder of Ion Storm, together wit ...

game design Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems, rules, and gameplay of a game. Game design processes apply to board games, card games, dice games, casino games, role-playing games, sports, Wargame (video games), war ga ...

er and Adrian Carmack as video game artist. The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

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

Reception

''Hovertank One'' 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 Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

in 1987, as well as '' Wayout'' for the

Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...

from 1982 and ''The Eidolon'' from 1985 for the Atari 8-bit.

Notes

References

External links

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