2013/08: Rise Of The Triad (PC) - Zerker

[JonLeung]

Rise Of The Triad

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Zerker's Rise Of The Triad (PC) maps.

As part of the High-risk United Nations Taskforce (HUNT), you must stop a deranged cult leader from killing millions of innocent civilians.  Ludicrous gibs ensue.

An early first-person shooter, not long after the debuts of Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom, Rise Of The Triad differentiated itself from the burgeoning PC FPS genre with its over-the-top weapons (the Firebomb, the "Excalibat"), power-ups (God Mode, Dog Mode), and obstacles (flame walls, trampolines).  Blowing an enemy to bits with one of the many missile weapons may result in the aformentioned "ludicrous gibs".  It's a ridiculous shooter, and fun because of it.  (Oh, and the soundtrack.  "Goin' Down The Fast Way", anyone?)

Rise Of The Triad consists of The Hunt Begins, Dark War and Extreme Rise Of The Triad.  Zerker has mapped all these, plus the "Comm-bat" and downloadable areas as well, for a total of 176 maps.  Using an isometric perspective, the maps are quite impressive, but of course very large - in both area (most are multiple thousands of pixels in both width and height) and filesize (with the largest at 41.6 megabytes).  So much so, that the 2.35 gigabytes that these maps take up is actually a considerable fraction of all of VGMaps.com's content itself!

So to acknowledge the effort put into putting together the largest map set featured on VGMaps, Zerker's Rise Of The Triad (PC) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for August 2013.

[Will]

I heard this game was supposed to be a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D before ID Software split with Apogee. The unlimited bullet weapons are quite handy. There are many missile and rocket weapons and no actual target sniping. I never thought I'd see a game with a natural non-cheat God Mode. Good show Zerker.

[Peardian]

Very impressive maps, even if they get a bit confusing to look at. But alas, that's what happens when mapping 3D worlds in 2D.

[JonLeung]

Here's an interesting tidbit...this took almost exactly two weeks - non-stop - to run entirely through PNGGauntlet.  If I recall it was very close to two weeks, probably no more than a few hours off the mark.