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Hovertank One,[1] also known under a variety of other names (Hovertank orHovertank 3D[4][a]), is avehicular combat game developed byid Software and published bySoftdisk in April 1991.
Hovertank One is set during a nuclear war. InHovertank One, the player controls Brick Sledge, a mercenary hired by an unknown organization (referred to by the game as the "UFA") to rescue people from cities under the threat of nuclear attack (largely political activists or scientists), both by the government and by large corporations, but the cities are also full ofmutated humans, strange creatures and enemy hovertanks.
The player must drive a hovertank through the levels and try to find the people Brick is supposed to rescue. There are many enemies in the levels, who are hunting down the people as well as the player. The player can keep track of both people and enemies in the radar box at the bottom of the screen. There is a timer that counts how long until the nuke is dropped. Once all the living people are collected a yellow teleporter appears somewhere in the level, and the player must find it to win. The player receives their fee, based on the number of people safely rescued, and how fast the operation was completed. All damage to the hovertank is repaired at the end of the level.
John Carmack's research in the game's engine took six weeks, two weeks longer than any id engine before it. The engine written for this game was expanded upon withtexture mapping to makeCatacomb 3-D, and then laterWolfenstein 3D. Following the engine's completion, the id staff decided on the nuclear war theme and developed the game.Adrian Carmack enjoyed drawing the monsters and other ghoulish touches.[5] The credits are John Carmack andJohn Romero asprogrammers,Tom Hall asgame designer and Adrian Carmack asvideo game artist.
Thesource code to the game, owned byFlat Rock Software, was released in June 2014 underGNU GPL-2.0-or-later in a manner similarthose done by id and partners.[6]
Hovertank One is a landmark 3D game. Other 3D titles at the time, such asflight simulators and other games (such asAlpha Waves) that had more detailed environments, were noticeably slower.[5] A similar engine was used byMIDI Maze for theAtari ST in 1987, as well asWayout for theApple II from 1982 andThe Eidolon from 1985 for theAtari 8-bit.
Hovertank was the first fast-action, first-person shooter for the computer. Id had invented a genre.
