Rise of the Triad: Dark War (shortened to RotT ) is a first person shooter computer game, first released on December 21 1994 by Apogee Software (later known as 3D Realms). The particular team involved referred to themselves as the Developers of Incredible Power . The shareware version, which contained separate levels from the full version, was called Rise of the Triad: The HUNT begins .

=Story=

The plot involves a team of specialists, part of a top secret group called HUNT (High-risk United Nations Task-force), sent to an island to investigate cult activity. Their boat is destroyed by a patrol, and the team soon learns that the cult is systematically destroying nearby Los Angeles. The team then has to fight their way into the monastery on the island, and eventually put a stop to the cult.

=Features=

==Engine==

The game featured vertical dimensions, enhanced weaponry, trampolines and more. The level design was characterized by very high, straight walls, outdoor areas, and digitized Sprite (computer graphics)-based enemies. Some enemies in some levels were randomised, randomly picked from the other types of actors used in the levels.

Although Rise of the Triad was based on (a highly enhanced version of) the Wolfenstein 3D engine, it was supposed to compete with Doom . It did its best, but Doom went down in history for non-orthagonal, height-difference maps. It was actually originally intended to be a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, but this idea was dropped early on. Some influences from this part of the development can still be seen, though.

==Weapons==

The weapon system was ahead of its time in complexity, brutality, and realism. Players could carry one or two pistols, and a machine gun (each of which had infinite ammunition). Players could also carry only one of several different missile weapons, considered a realistic limitation. If players picked up another missile weapon, they dropped the first. The players could also drop the missile weapons manually. Like the earlier game System Shock, these dropped weapons retained the exact amount of ammunition they had left in them. *The Bazooka fires a single missile straight ahead. *The Heatseeker fires a single heat-seeking rocket. *The Drunk Missile fires five missiles simultaneously in five different directions; the missiles heat-seek individually. *The Flamewall is nearly impossible to escape from. When the missile fired from it hits the ground, it sends a wall of flame in one direction, and any player whom it catches not wearing an Asbestos Vest is instantly incinerated. If the missile hits the wall or a player, it just makes a weak explosion. This is how one of the numerous end-of-level bonuses in single-player is obtained. *The Firebomb s rocket explodes on impact, sending a twenty-foot-wide explosion outward in four directions. If a player has an asbestos suit to protect them, they can use it to rocket jump. *The Split Missile sends out two rockets locked together, until the player releases the fire button, at which point they split up and heat-seek individually.

In addition, players could wield a magic baseball bat (the Excalibat ), enter a literal God mode for a short time (complete with invulnerability and the Godfire homing instant-kill weapon), or in a dyslexic gag, enter Dog Mode, in which they were shorter (although the player also gained invulnerablity in this mode), and bit enemies. Dog Mode also allowed the use of the devastating BarkBlast.

==Miscellaneous==

A few other features were noteworthy, such as bullet weapons that left marks on walls, digitally-captured Apogee employees serving as the enemies, and player-character height, health, speed and accuracy differences — there were five different player characters in the registered version, ranging from the slow and steady Doug Wendt to the lightweight and deadly Lorelei Ni. (The fifth player character, in quite possibly the oldest joke ever, and perhaps a The Simpsons reference, was named Ian Paul Freeley. ) Some of the character names come directly (or with some small change) from the original design document for Doom. The game also introduced jump pads in the form of the aforementioned trampolines to the genre, an idea later used in the Unreal Tournament and Quake series.

Another unusual feature, and one that probably harkens back to Apogee s first two Duke Nukem games, are the end of level bonuses. Depending on player actions, they could receive various bonuses at the end of each level. These were awarded for various achievements, such as picking up all the missile weapons, using all the healing items, or ending the level with only a shred of health. At the end of the game there were two special bonuses. The DIP bonus was awarded for finding all three hidden DIP balls in the game. The genocide bonus was awarded for killing/destroying every one of a particular type of enemy in the game. The bonus is received once for each enemy type which had been completely annihilated.

Rise of the Triad is somewhat well known for its one of its most unrealistic features, Gibs. Gibs, short for giblets, rained down from the sky whenever an enemy exploded. These included chunks of charred flesh, and eyeballs. A Ludicrous Gibs mode could be activated via a cheat, propelling the carnage to new heights. This was a gamer favorite, and was later featured in 3D Realms next first person shooter, Duke Nukem 3D . The Quake series cemented the use of gibs as the remains of exploded characters, as opposed to characters merely shot to death. ( Doom introduced the idea, with separate explosion death corpses for the zombies and the imp; Rise of the Triad brought it to fruition.)

==Multiplayer==

The multiplayer mode was notable for the time, allowing up to eleven players simultaneously. Each could have separate uniform colours, but team members shared colours. There were nine multiplayer modes, some of which did not necessarily involve players shooting each other. These modes were:

There were also many options that could be set for a multiplayer game, allowing a level of customisation similar to many later games. These included player attributes, and whether or not things like health, missile weapons or traps were spawned in levels.

=Source release=

The source code to Rise of the Triad was released under the GNU General Public License on 20th of December 2002 and the first port to Linux was done on the 22nd of December, making it one of the quickest source ports ever.

=External links=