ETTiNGRiNDER's Witchaven Shrine

This section contains all the info I gathered about the games Witchaven and Witchaven II from Capstone Software.

In a nutshell, these games used an FPS-style engine, but focused on melee combat with a variety of medieval weapons. They were built upon Ken Silverman's BUILD engine, and have the basic features thereof, including bridges that can be walked over/under and overlapping sectors; these were limited and not entirely true 3D, but closer to it than what Doom was capable of. However, some of the more advanced effects seen in later BUILD games like Duke Nukem 3D are absent. They did, however, contain some neat features such as traps firing from the walls, an inventory system for potions and spells, and experience points.

These games are often compared to Raven Software's Heretic and Hexen, but aside from being first person action games with dark fantasy themes, and occasional cross-pollination of ideas, the similarities are IMO not so great. Comparitively, Witchaven and Witchaven II have a more gritty, digitized-photo-based visual style, and more emphasis on melee combat. Gameplay focuses somewhat more on navigating hazardous environments laden with traps as opposed to Heretic's Doomish formula or Hexen's observational puzzles. Witchaven and Witchaven II also include an experience leveling system, which would not appear in the Heretic/Hexen series until Hexen II.

These games are notorious for their many bugs. Thanks to Les Bird's source code release, I've been able to try my hand at fixing some of them with the EGwhaven project.