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The Hunt Begins

Old News

(01/15/04) - Thanks to Joe Siegler, the "Where Are They Now?" page has updates.

(01/07/03) - One last update (again): the Source Code to ROTT has been released. Here's the Readme file, here's the download for the source code, and here's the official discussion forum.

Today we're doing something I bet most everyone out there thought we'd never do. No, it's not Duke Nukem Forever, but something some folks on the net have been asking us to do for ages. Today we're releasing the source code to Rise of the Triad! The source is being released under the GPL license, and we still retain copyright on the game (plus we still sell Rise of the Triad), but folks have been asking for something like this for a long time, and here it is.

We are dedicating the release of the Rise of the Triad Source code to our late friend and Rise of the Triad programmer William Scarboro, who died tragically back in early August of 2002. I'm sure if he were still with us, William would be happy to see this out there, and see what folks might do with the code.

(10/27/02) - Probably should have done this two years ago, but this page is closed and will no longer be updated.

One last bit of news from Joe Siegler:

Well, I have a bit of sad news to report, so I'll just get right to it. Former Apogee/3D Realms programmer William Scarboro has died. He died of an asthma attack on Friday August 9th, and his funeral was today (08/19/02).

William was born March 2, 1971 in El Paso, TX. He was a graduate of Texas A&M with a degree in Computer Science. He came to work here back in 1993, and was the first programmer we hired back then when we started doing in house development. He was mainly known for his work on Rise of the Triad where he worked on actor code, weapon stuff, and the gibs. In fact, William was responsible for the old /EKG gib cheat in ROTT.

For me personally, it sucks because William was a good friend. He hasn't worked here in many years, and he was someone I still kept in touch with semi regularly after he left. He was someone who shared my views on music, and entertainment - and was the kind of person who could set off both of us laughing just by looking at each other - didn't have to say anything.

Sad news - and definitely put a damper on all of my thoughts now. :(

I'll finish with something that the two of us used to share a lot of laughs over. "Uh... 27" - See ya later "Da Hur".

(9/01/00) - Huzzah! 3DRealms has released all the levels from Extreme ROTT, ROTT's discontinued mission pack, as freeware. Here's the scoop from 3DR:

ROTT fans rejoice! You have some new levels to play!

But first, a little trip down memory lane.. Back in late 1994, we released the shareware of Rise of the Triad. The full version shipped in February of 1995, and most people thought that was the end of the game. Later in 1995, we released a relatively unknown add-on pack to ROTT called "Extreme Rise of the Triad". Extreme ROTT had some more utilities than the original CD had, it had some fan created things, and had 42 all new levels that did not appear in the original Rise of the Triad game. The add-on was discontinued shortly afterwards, and the materials have been unavailable since then.

However, we now present for registered Rise of the Triad fans the additional level data that was on the Extreme Rise of the Triad CD. This small RTL file, when used with the full version of Rise of the Triad will give you 42 all new levels to play. This add-on was created by Tom Hall (now of Ion Storm) and Joe Siegler (our webmaster). These new levels include some tricks not thought of during the original game development, and are generally regarded as some of the best level design ever come up with for Rise of the Triad.

So what are you waiting for? Go download!

(5/20/00) -Only seven months since my last update! Yay! Anyways, here's what's new: the Gallery has been updated with some new information (thanks Steve Quarrella), pretty much everybody in the Where are they now? section has been updated (Thanks Joe Siegler and Lee Jackson), and I fixed some broken links. Also, ROTT celebrated the fifth anniversary of its 1.0 Shareware release on December 21st. Happy Birthday ROTT, five months late!

The ROTT in Hell article needs to be updated and probably rewritten (I wrote that when I was 17, for crying out loud) and I've got some new information to add to the site thanks to some forum threads. And the site's design is crap since I originally made it with Netscape Gold 3.0 (UGH!), so it needs to be redesigned. I'll get around to it eventually, give me another year or so. :)

(10/21/99) - 3DRealms released six new levels (3 single-player, 3 Comm-bat) for ROTT today, all the work of Tom Hall and done for a little known shareware release that I've never heard of. You can download the new levels here

(4/6/99) - Whoa, can't believe I haven't updated yet this year. Added some new pics to the Fun section (the remains of NME and the "I'm Free" pic... thanks Dopefish!), updated the Where section a little bit, updated the Links with Joe's Maximum-Carnage ROTT archive site (a must visit), and archived the news for the first time.

Also, little historical tidbit I discovered awhile back: some characters in ROTT were originally intended to be in Doom! Here's a page from the Doom Bible. Hmmm... do those names look familar? For those of you that don't know, Tom Hall worked at id (he's the man responsible for Commander Keen) and did some design work for Doom before moving on to ROTT. Since id wasn't using some of Tom's ideas for Doom, he just incorporated them into ROTT. Cool.

(11/13/98) - Updated some links, changed the hosted button to reflect ClassicGaming's new design.

This site was created in Netscape Gold 3.0. What was I thinking? Hopefully I'll get around to converting this site someday...

(8/29/98) - Thanks to Dan Moore for letting me know that Tim Wilson's ROTT Page is gone. Updated the links sections with notices and changes...

Somebody wanted to know the system requirements for ROTT. Here they are: 386DX/40 or better, 4MB of RAM, VGA card, and 20MB of HD space.

Does anybody know how to contact the guys from Maximum-Carnage? Let me know if you do...

(7/21/98) - I noticed the logo looked like crap with my new monitor (which is much brighter), so I redid the logo using my pathetic artistic skills. Also, updated the Downloads page because Maximum Carnage's ROTT level archive has been deleted. It might return, but I'm not sure if it will. Doh. I also updated the banner code on some more pages.

A guy named Equiprawn passes along this tip: "I have discovered a way of changing the spread of the Excalibat. If you turn left while it is firing, it spreads the baseballs out more, and if you turn right, it sets them closer together. Having autorun on effects this process even more." Hmmm... did not know that.

(6/16/98) - Massive update! Ok, not really... but I did add a ROTT Desktop theme to the Downloads page (thanks: Brant Wynn).

I was thinking of doing a ROTT Comm-Bat page... with information on the different modes, tips and tricks, etc. Would anybody be interested in that? 

A few people have mailed me on ROTT being ported to Win95, playing ROTT on the Internet, or asking 3D Realms to release the source code. Well, the ROTT source code has been lost... nobody really knows what happened to it... so that's probably never going to happen. Doh.

(5/02/98) - Not much of an update... just fixed a few links and made it a little easier to find out how to kill El Oscuro (it's on page 2 of the ROTT in Hell Article).

(2/25/98) - Added the brand spankin' new ROTT Dopefish patch to the Downloads section. This requires version 1.3 of registered ROTT (see the Downloads section if you need a patch to upgrade) and replaces Triads with 3D Dopefish in multiplayer games :)

(2/01/98) - Added a cheat code I missed (\BUM). Thanks Mike Jacobi.

(1/23/98) - Added a CG Hosted Button to the bottom of the page. Also, check out Ritualistic for the latest news on the company most of the ROTT guys ended up at. And hey, check out 3DPortal too for the latest 3DRealms news. :)

Trying to dig up some more ROTT info. Got any reviews from magazines? Anything? Drop me a line.

(12/19/97) - Updated the "Where are they now?" section with some information on Tim Neveu, Gregor Punchatz, and Nolan Martin (Thanks to Tom Hall).

(12/16/97) - Launched the Site. Woo Hoo!

Also, a few weeks back, the ROTT expansion pack, ROTT Extreme was discontinued. It will not be released as freeware for the time being :(

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All Stuff © 1997 Fragmaster. Rise of the Triad is a Copyright of 3DRealms\Apogee and is used with permission.