Rise of the Triad (1994)

Rise of the Triad is a ludicrous, gory shooter released by Apogee and developed by Apogee's Developers of Incredible Power.

Cinematic Engine
In the game's source code release, many in-game cinematic code files exist, but mostly unused. Rather, everything "cinematic" is scripted in basic text files.

Jukebox/Sound Test


During the game, enter either DIPSTICK or \ECC. Then, enter \LEE or MAESTRO to reach the game's jukebox.

Version 1.0 (Shareware)


The initial, buggy v1.0 shareware release of Rise of the Triad was released Christmas 1994, and had content later dropped from the game.
 * Apogee mentions this is an early build of the game via a text screen when the game is first loaded.
 * Apogee wanted to have some form of the game out by Christmas 1994, but it had some rough bugs at first
 * The Apogee Fanfare (FANFARE2.MID) doesn't work if the music card is set to Adlib, just plays a horrible droning tone. It plays normally otherwise.
 * The title screen music is different (uses CCCOOL.MID by Lee Jackson, later replaced by RISE.MID by Bobby Prince).
 * Credits is a static image as opposed to the scrolling credits seen from v1.2 onward.
 * Menus are headed with a small font label indicating which menu you are on (e.g., "Main Menu").
 * When the player walked around, you could hear footsteps.
 * Upon exit, none of the exit messages play appropriate sounds (like for the heart monitor exit message, no flatline is heard).
 * While a v1.1 is mentioned, it seems to never have been released, jumping to v1.2 on the next release.

Walking Sound 1



Walking Sound 2



Version 1.2 (Shareware and Registered)

 * No more ANSI text screen at game startup.
 * Apogee Fanfare works as expected.
 * No more footstep sounds when you're walking around.
 * The menu labels in small font were removed.
 * The credits are no longer a static image pasted on a black background, and seem to be generated by the game itself.

Version 1.3 (Shareware and Registered)
Version 1.3 introduces different timbres (instruments) for the FM Synthesizers such as Adlib and Sound Blaster 16, most likely from using the Duke Nukem 3D version of the Apogee Sound System. Most MIDIs sound radically different when played through the FM synthesizers now

Level Select
Type /GTL or GOTO during the game for the level select menu.

Warp-Only Levels
The game has several warp-only levels in both the shareware and registered versions of the game. Aside cheat codes, there's no way to access these levels normally.



Shareware

 * Too Tall - a joke level of sorts
 * Play Room

Registered

 * Dead in Two Seconds - a very difficult level, as the name implies
 * The Vomitorium - a level with very psychedelic wall textures and huge heights
 * This Causes an Error! - a joke level where an automatic pushwall exists the bounds of a level. It displays a sketch of a block escaping the level before exiting the game with a text error message about the pushwall exiting the level

Monochrome Monitor Debug
The game has code for debugging on a second monochrome monitor and typing in "rott ?" does show "MONO" is supposed to enable this debugging. However, it appears to have been disabled, as entering "rott mono" doesn't seem to display anything on the second monitor. This seems to have been removed in the ROTT Source Code release.

Easter Easter Egg


Rise of the Triad has many Easter eggs relating to holidays in the form of certain days triggering the loading screen to have, but one of them is an oddity. Each holiday (Christmas, July 4th, Cinco De Mayo, and Halloween) is on a fixed holiday, but Easter is based on lunar/solar cycles and is not fixed, and thus the only sure day the loading screen will show Lorelei Ni wearing the Easter Bunny ears will be the day Easter fell in 1995: April 16, 1995.

Unused Alternate Enemies
A planned feature was to have alternate versions of the various enemies, including female Overpatrol, Low Guards and Strike Teams, and alternate Lightning Guards, High Guards, and Hellfire Monks. These were cut because of memory concerns according to the official FAQ, it would require twice times the memory, and in 1994 standards it would be really high (about 8MB of memory).

Still, one frame of the enemies cut from the game remained and were mentioned towards the end of the credits/cast roll.

From Left to Right: Female Strike Team, Female Low Guard, Female Overpatrol, Alternate Lightning Guard, Alternate High Guard, and Alternate Hellfire Monk