Catacomb 3D

Catacomb 3D (also known as Catacomb 3-D: A New Dimension, Catacomb 3-D: The Descent, and Catacombs 3) is a first-person shooter created by id Software and published by Softdisk in November 1991. The game has a dark fantasy setting. The player takes control of the high wizard Petton Everhail, descending into the catacombs of the Towne Cemetery to defeat the evil lich Nemesis and rescue his friend Grelminar. Id Software introduced several new concepts in Catacomb 3D, such as rendering walls with texture-mapping and showing the player's hand in the 3D view. Such concepts were further improved and extended in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.

Development
The origin of Catacomb 3D is Catacomb by John Carmack for the PC and Apple II. This was a 2D game utilizing a third-person view from above, released in 1989-1990. It was followed up with Catacomb II, which used the same game engine with new levels. The first release of Catacomb 3D was called Catacomb 3-D: A New Dimension, but it was later re-released as Catacomb 3-D: The Descent, as well as Catacombs 3 for a re-release as commercially packaged software (the earlier versions had been released by other means such as disk magazines and downloads). The game creators were John Carmack, John Romero, Jason Blochowiak (programmers), Tom Hall (creative director), Adrian Carmack (artist), and Robert Prince (musician).

Similarities with Doom engine games

 * The player's health can be restored by collecting small blue potions, which resemble the health bonus in Doom.
 * The player has to collect red, yellow, blue and green keys to open doors with a matching color.
 * Level 9, Access Floor, connects in a nonlinear fashion to several other levels, similar to the hub maps in Hexen.
 * Level 14 is named The Warrens, while E3M9 of Doom is named Warrens.
 * Level 19, Halls of Blood, is set in a hellish environment with demons.
 * Uses the same pseudorandom number generator as found in the Doom source code.