Wolfenshine

Wolfenstein 3D rebuilt in modern C#—faithful when you want it, shiny when you don't.

Wolfenshine is a playable, cross-platform reimplementation of the 1992 classic. It reads the maps, artwork, music, and sounds from your own copy of Wolfenstein 3D, then brings them to life through a clean .NET engine written from scratch.

At its heart is an authentic 320×200 software-rendered experience. Press F2 and that same game becomes something new: colored lights spill across rooms, muzzle flashes illuminate enemies, fog gathers in the distance, and bright doorways cast descending shafts into the darkness.

The enhanced renderer builds on that classic foundation without replacing its pixel art. Rooms gain their own atmosphere: lights cast color, treasure glows, enemies move through illumination, and damage changes the character of the whole screen.

Wolfenshine keeps the original-style renderer and enhanced renderer side by side. Switch between them instantly during play; the world, AI, input, and game state never change underneath you.

• Original 320×200 composition presented at the correct 4:3 aspect ratio.
• Original artwork, wall textures, sprites, and screen composition.
• Familiar movement, weapon animation, HUD, menus, pause plaque, and intermission screen.
• A reusable C# software framebuffer with the classic raycast presentation intact.

• True 16:10 gameplay expands the horizontal view without stretching the original artwork; wider monitors use black side bars.
• Colored, directional ceiling lights, chandeliers, lamps, treasure glow, and muzzle flashes.
• Atmospheric doorway shafts that descend from bright rooms into darker ones, illuminate objects, and fade naturally with the viewing direction.
• Focused overhead spotlights draw attention to uncollected weapons, keys, and full-heal pickups.
• Filled wells and puddles project animated ceiling caustics, using an algorithm adapted from a Shadertoy shader.
• Geometry-aware room ambience, doorway light spill, distance shading, and subtle fog.
• Generated wall relief with material-specific specular response.
• Bloom, ambient occlusion, enemy shadows, view bob, weapon sway, and momentum-based movement.
• Dynamic enemy illumination plus directional damage tint and accumulating blood at the screen edges.

The original pixel art remains at the center of the presentation. Enhanced effects respond to it rather than replacing it with a different asset pack.

Hold Tab in enhanced mode and Wolfenshine projects a flowing trail directly onto the floor. Three luminous chevrons cross each tile, bend smoothly around corners, and fade away when the key is released.

The guide follows gameplay rules rather than drawing a straight line through the map. It first leads to the nearest obtainable gold or silver key, allowing ordinary doors while respecting locks. Once no reachable key remains, it continues to the elevator. Unopened secret walls remain secret; moving one can reveal a newly valid route.

Because the trail is part of the rendered world, walls and doors hide what lies beyond them naturally. Each press captures a stable route for the complete glow and fade, while the next press reflects newly collected keys, opened passages, and shifted secret walls.

Wolfenshine includes the game systems that make the renderer worth exploring:

• All 60 maps from the six-episode edition load directly from the original data.
• Guards, officers, SS soldiers, mutants, and dogs see, hear, chase, attack, take damage, animate, and die.
• Four weapons, ammunition, health, treasure, keys, scoring, pickups, and enemy drops.
• Sliding and locked doors, secret pushwalls, elevators, death, respawning, level progression, and end-of-level statistics.
• Difficulty-dependent enemy placement, health, behavior, and incoming damage.
• Spatial digitized and AdLib sound through OpenAL, plus original IMF music rendered through OPL emulation.
• Original title, episode and difficulty selection, HUD, animated face, pause display, and intermission presentation.
• An autonomous attract mode starts after 30 seconds at episode selection and plays through the real input system.

Use W/S to move, A/D to turn, and Q/E to strafe. The original-style arrow controls and Alt-strafing remain available too.

Download the installer for your platform from GitHub Releases:

• Windows: Wolfenshine-<version>-win-x64.exe
• Apple Silicon Mac: Wolfenshine-<version>-osx-arm64.dmg
• Intel Mac: Wolfenshine-<version>-osx-x64.dmg

Wolfenshine needs either the free Wolfenstein 3D shareware data or a legitimate copy of the full six-episode game. It does not distribute id Software's copyrighted game assets. Start the installed app and its setup screen will guide you through adding the free shareware episode.

Install the .NET 8 SDK, then clone the repository and its submodules:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/deanthecoder/Wolfenshine.git
cd Wolfenshine

1. Run Wolfenshine without game data. Its setup screen will appear automatically.
2. Click Download Free Shareware.
3. When w3d-box.zip finishes downloading, drag the unopened ZIP onto the Wolfenshine window.
4. Wolfenshine installs the shareware data and starts immediately.

The shareware edition contains the complete first episode: eight regular levels, its boss level, and its secret level.

When running from a source checkout, you can instead place the unopened ZIP in the repository's Git-ignored data folder before building:

local/game-data/

You can also download w3d-box.zip from DOS Games Archive yourself. Keep its original filename and do not extract it. From the repository root, run:

dotnet run --project Wolfenshine/Wolfenshine.csproj

The build finds the archive automatically. Private game data is never committed to this repository.

To play all six episodes, copy these eight files from a legitimate full-game installation into Wolfenshine's per-user GameData folder:

AUDIOHED.WL6
AUDIOT.WL6
GAMEMAPS.WL6
MAPHEAD.WL6
VGADICT.WL6
VGAGRAPH.WL6
VGAHEAD.WL6
VSWAP.WL6

Restart Wolfenshine after copying the files. When running from a source checkout, you may instead place them in local/game-data/ before building. When both complete editions are available, Wolfenshine prefers the full .WL6 data set.

Wolfenshine supports the original .WL1 shareware and .WL6 full-game data sets.

dotnet run --project Wolfenshine/Wolfenshine.csproj

To clear saved preferences and remove game data installed through Wolfenshine, start it with --reset:

dotnet run --project Wolfenshine/Wolfenshine.csproj -- --reset

Packaged builds use Wolfenshine --reset. The option deliberately removes the current user's Wolfenshine settings and installed GameData; a packaged app then opens its normal setup screen. It does not touch repository-local development files or the development-build fallback.

Because the original game is an unusually good laboratory.

Its compact grid world is understandable enough to rebuild, yet rich enough to explore raycasting, binary formats, sprite projection, game AI, spatial audio, OPL emulation, software rendering, and modern shader effects in one coherent project. C# makes those systems approachable without turning Wolfenshine into a mechanical line-for-line translation of 1990s C.

The result is both a game and a guided tour through how one of PC gaming's foundations works.

id Software's original Wolfenstein 3D source release is an invaluable historical and behavioral reference. Wolfenshine does not contain, compile, or require that C source. Its implementation is independently written in modern C#; we consult the released source to understand original gameplay rules and verify that Wolfenshine behaves similarly.

Debug builds provide a few development conveniences that are omitted from Release builds:

The Shift+C comparison capture keeps its clean source images in the Git-ignored local/screenshots/ directory and overwrites the tracked README comparison image only after both renderer captures succeed.

Licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

Wolfenshine uses NukedOPL3Sharp by Stefan Hueg, a C# port of nukeykt's Nuked-OPL3 emulator, to render the original AdLib sound effects and IMF music. NukedOPL3Sharp is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1; that license applies to the library rather than Wolfenshine's MIT-licensed code.