The History of Ken Silverman's Build Engine
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- This is a reworked video about the history of Ken Silverman's Build Engine. It's the game engine that was used in first-person shooters like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage.
Ken Silverman about his engine:
advsys.net/ken/build.htm
JonoF's source ports:
www.jonof.id.au/
and the DN3D High Resolution Pack:
hrp.duke4.net/
00:00 Intro
00:18 Can you walk, Ken?
00:59 It's a labyrinth, Ken's Labyrinth
01:39 Epic's version
02:19 Time for a new engine
03:30 John Carmack and the sectors
04:06 Let's add more features
05:41 Apogee and the Build Engine
07:16 What other companies have done with it
08:36 The magic after the source code was released
09:21 Credits - Hry
I remember back at 3D Realms either during the final days of Duke3D development or during the Shadow Warrior development (can't remember which) Ken was boasting that he could make a Wolf3D engine in 30 min from scratch. Someone bet him he couldn't. Ken was able to turn the engine out in 25 minutes. Pretty Cool! I believe that was the last time I saw Ken.
I believe it ken is a prodigy of his time.
WAT, YOU KNEW KEN?
people like Carmack still make 3d engines to this very day , what happened to Ken ?
I was given an update as to what Ken is doing just about a week ago by another Apogee Game programmer, but out of respect for Ken I won't reveal it. All I will say is that he is doing well and in a totally different industry.
According to wikipedia he works in holographic virtual reality
Ken is seriously the most underrated game dev ever.
How?
Ken is not the most underrated game dev ever, you just dont know anything yet
@@examname9477 First off, what is it with the passive-aggressive tone? I do not appreciate it all and I suggest you cease. Second, I made this comment 4 years ago and I have read about a lot more since, and I agree that Ken isn't *the most* underrated game dev but he definitely is one of them.
@@examname9477 John Carmack kinda overshadowed him
@@examname9477 Oh, then what do you know? EA is the best company? Give me proof that he's not. Do you even know what underrated means?
I was born a little too late in '89, but this era of PC game development with passion project engines & 2.5D sprite graphics/level design is truly where my heart dwells.
We still have this sort of vibe with voxel engine development, look up John Lin , or teardown
Whoa, wait one second... Ken Silverman talked to *John Carmack* from *id software* on making his now famouse Build engine, on the subject of the all-important 'sectors' factor?
Three things
1. I wish the gaming community today was more like this.
2. This was just, really caring.
3. Where can I find a record of this conversation???
This is what GDC is all about at its core - gamedevs exchanging ideas. Every year many devs make presentations about what they do and how, going into details. Usually those aren't mentioned in the press because most people do not care about such things.
During early build dev Ken was able to get a hold of John over the phone. Both being mega math geeks they apparently had quite a long conversation, which lead to the discussion of Doom's sector based technique, something John was long past as he was now working on the Quake engine.
Two AI's had a conversation.
What makes you think it's not? Us game devs are all quite available to talk to people in our network on LinkedIn, if you have a legit technical question that you can't just google, MOST devs I know would take a moment to thoughtful write back and be thankful someone took interest.
actually now that I think about it, I once reached out to Ken to clarify some things about his Polyvox engine, as I was trying to make a modern voxel system for the GPU and he sent me a long and detailed reply about his thoughts on the subject.
Comparing the times of that era, The Build was top noch thanks to the unique features. Ken Silverman, a true prodigy. I never felt so satisfyed, happy like in 1997 with Duke Nukem 3D and Build. So great to let us unleash a lot of creativity instead of just consuming a regular software product. Thank you, Mr. Silverman.
I remember the year when Duke 3D and Quake were both released; both huge titles. Quake was definitely a much bigger technological ground-breaker. But I always preferred Duke3D - I thought it was a lot more fun.
Plus - Duke 3D was basically the height of 2D/Sprite based games, whereas Quake represented the beginning of the true 3D era.
However, consider that later Build Engine titles were released in the same year, or even later, as Half Life and you start to realise that engine was showing it's age basically as soon as it was born.
Still though, I had a lot of fun with Duke, , Redneck Rampage, to name a couple - and similar games like RotT.
"I ain't afraid of no quake." -- Duke
My computer at the time could run Doom and Nukem... but I wasn't able to play Quake untill like 5 years later when I got a newer computer.
quake reminds me of that quote, "The first Velvet Underground album sold only 1000 copies, but everyone who bought one started a band." It spawned Team Fortress, Half-life, Counter-Strike (via Navy Seals) etc etc, but the actual game was definitely a case of id's reach exceeding their grasp, atmospheric and impressive, but a lot of brown corridors and slugging through area after area of monotonous water sections.
Haha - yeah, that is a fair metaphor.
On the more literal side - the Quake engine, rather than the game itself, was the real ground breaker. As were the follow-ups (Q2, Q3).
The amount of games that were built on the various quake engines, albeit - significantly updated versions, was outstanding.
But yeah - quake itself was more a tech-demo than a game. At least, from the single-player POV.
It was a huge it in terms of multiplayer - so much so that Q3-Arena was essentially one of (if not THE) first 1st person games to basically focus 100% on online play. IIRC the only "single player" aspect of Quake-3 was that you could play against AI Bots, in a game that was essentially the multiplayer game, but for people with no friends .. uh.. I mean no Internet.
Quake was a benchmark in graphics while Duke 3d was a benchmark in gameplay.
Great video on the Build Engine and Ken Silverman, CuteFloor! His work always had a charm to it which I appreciate a lot. It's a shame that he was largely overshadowed by another programming legend, John Carmack.
Very well made and researched video! I had no idea Ken was so young when he started the engine, let alone when it made its way into some big titles. You don't hear stories like that in the game industry anymore, but back in the 80s and 90s so many now famous names started ever so young, sometimes even rarely over 23 and began sewing the seeds of change in the industry.
Yeah, it was a different era.
The days when one person could and would perform programming miracles.
Even John Carmack says those days are long gone when he was talking about how much time and money it took to create IDtech 5...
How even if elements of it's design turned out to be a bad idea, he couldn't change them because of the work and expense.
Quite unlike the Doom, or even Quake era...
Most games from the early 80's a semi-competent programmer with modern tools could make now in a few hours.
These 90's miracles, can also be recreated fairly easily, though it does take more skill to do it in a reasonable amount of time. (Having said that, if you had to do it on 90's era hardware, you might reach a different conclusion about how easy it is. XD)
But round about 2000 or so it just stopped being practical for a lone developer, or even a small team to really keep up with what the state of the art technology looked like.
Much less being the driving force in creating something entirely new...
I think you still need a few months to repeat stuff from that age, it would take a few hours only if you done it before. Maybe I'm not a competent programmer, quite a possibility.
I guarantee you he had help along the way. Not a messiah but more of a go getter than anything.
@@KuraIthys However, that does not mean you cannot succeed the same way today as a programmer or game developer working alone or in a small team. You are unlikely to invent new breakthrough technology, but you can still make a name for yourself with other efforts such as excellent gameplay innovations and mechanics. This is the second golden age of indie developers. State of the art technology is not necessity for success, it was not back then and it is not today. I'd argue that many if not most of today's best games are created by small teams or individuals utilizing the knowledge and technology of the past.
In a way, Duke3D was already at the time in the same boat. The engine was slightly dated when the game came out, but regardless it managed to compete and even overshadow other more technically advanced games of the time with excellent level design and overall rich gameplay experience.
With "Ion Maiden" coming soon, I am glad I found this well putted together video about this quite famous engine. Very informative, thank you!
Loved duke, was totaly blown away when it came out, at the time playing doom2 this was a huge advance, the levels with different stuff happning, walls blowing up, strip clubs, toilets you can take a leak in, bathrooms, control rooms all this kind of stuff you never seen in a FPS before was amazing at the time, and the multiplayer with trip mines, shrink guns, made this the best multiplayer game too if you could get on a lan , it was like team fortress but back in 1993. It set a new standard for games taking things to another level.
+*mike jones* 1993? Duke Nukem was released in 1996.
Hyper Intelligent Protector of an Overwhelming Alien Incursion John Carmack gave Ken the sectors idea? Awesome. The build engine is truly one of the best game engines ever.
My favorite of these games was Blood.
found the civvie fan
Thanks for posting this Video, as a big retro related group we love those old reports about games and more. Ken Silverman did much for the 3D Ego Shooter Genre within an Engine which was even "better" as the Doom and Doom-2 Engine from ID Software.
Thanks for sharing !
There is no doom 2 engine
It obviously uses the Doom engine, if that's what you mean.
There is only the doom 1 engine
Spider-man (2000), Doom, and Ken's Labyrinth were my first 3 games.
A few years later, my dad had a bunch of other games installed and Blood, Duke3D, turok, tomb raider, etc. were my most played games around that time. Little did I know (I mean, I was in preschool when I discovered most of these) that Ken's labyrinth and Duke3D had shared the same engines.
I was even more awestruck when I found out that I live 20 minutes away from the 3D Realms building, but never got the chance to visit it.
I'm 19 now and I really owe my thanks to Ken Silverman for not only being a HUGE Role model to me with my game development ambitions, but for also giving me such great childhood memories with his kickass engine.
7:02 I love the Uzi sound in Shadow Warrior.
After playing awesome Ion Fury and revisiting old Build Engine classics like Blood or Shadow Warrior I can say that this old engine should be still used to make games. The main advantage is that it has low requirements (it depends how many stuff is displayed on the screen) and makers can focus on making game insteresting instead of making it the most beautiful and photorealistic.
I sometimes wonder how the 3d programming landscape would look if Silverman and Carmack had been collaborators from the start Instead of Carmack leading the way alone with Sweeney re-treading his steps. I feel that such a collaboration may have accelerated advances in computer graphics.
It probably wouldn't have worked out very differently or even better tbh -- "too many cooks in the kitchen". Also, they each have/had extremely different methods for getting their work done. Ken has programmed in a vacuum basically all his life, and his code is often terrible to look at as a result. Carmack values readability and coordination more than Ken, but he's still used to being in charge and would rather own as much of a project as he can handle before delegating tasks. Of them all, Tim Sweeney might be the most committed to management and team-building, but that doesn't mean he would have immediately gelled with them all either. Basically, they're all leaders in their field, and it makes a whole lot more sense for them to delegate to lesser engineers than try to coordinate with a bunch of other guys on their own level.
Carmack made a job offer to Silverman. Silverman was depressed by the achievement of Quake and retired from the engine market. I do wonder what would have happened if Silverman took the offer.
I played Kens Lab as a kid without knowing what influence this guy would have on the market. Its really good to see such a talented guy getting known for his great work.
When I was a little kid I had an irrational hatred of Ken Silverman for his janky graphics and use of his own name/voice in all his games, and I remember making a screensaver of negative ken silverman images. For no real reason, in hindsight.
Youth Fanboyism is always silly. We have all been there!
I feel this
Nice video for an awesome engine, huge respect for Ken Silverman! :)))
Sure, this is the tracklist in order of appearance:
DRUMSNG2.KSM
LABSNG18.KSM
LIVESONG.KSM
MU40PROJ.KDM
DRIFSNG2.KDM
NEATSONG.KDM
QUIKSONG.KDM
FLYSONG.KDM
BLASTONG.KDM
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The beauty of building maps with build and doom engines is the ease of making of decent looking level.
I will always love and appreciate the Build Engine!!!
This was a interesting & enjoyable video.
I've never heard about Ken Silverman, but now after this I've learned his importanse in PC gaming.
Also this video gave me some nostalgic feeling of old school games.
I don't know you but these old games has something that I really enjoy that today's games usually misses.
Personality? Colours? Humour? Imagination?
Boy, that tech demo starting from 4:13 looked AMAZING for the time.
I just realized how many sounds from these are in Ace of Spades / Build and Shoot.
Its on voxlap, ken made voxlap
I remember making custom levels for Duke Nukem. It was awesome!
Man, the history behind this game engine is really interesting! Am I not the only one who wishes that Ken Silverman would teach me how to code an engine like his?
this was pretty awesome, thank you for this. I really liked the first games he made at 17, thats incredible how someone that young could make their own 3d engine.
Uau! Grande história e trajetória profissional.
Wow!! Great history and professional career.
Dont know why but its my favourite engine. Let it bring back to life!
TheElektrohexer rip English
Good news. Check out Ion Maiden on Steam.
One of my fav vids on youtube
what a fucking god, thanks to him, i played all these games using his engine, shaping my childhood!
It's really hard to process the level of raw talent needed to be able to make a Wolf 3D clone at 16-17 in 1992
Ken actually made a successor to the build engine called build 2 that's free to download from his website, its actually cool
I came here expecting some video essay narrating the events in detail and found a 2012 Powerpoint
Not dissapointed.
Great video! I had no idea the history of the build engine was so interesting.
I still have CDs with SW and BLOOD since i was 13. I remember, the SW shareware version four levels was better than another episode in full version ). And Duke Nukem 3D was my first game on Pentium-100MHz, where i then learned to build my own levels, where we played with my friend via 36kbps modem in far 1997.
Wow, this is even more informative than the Wikipedia page on the Build engine. The Wikipedia page doesn't even mention the part about Ken remaking Wolfenstein 3D. Did Ken basically remake Wolfenstein's engine, or did he just make his own little game using Wolfenstein's engine? I know it didn't have modding, but hackers at the time had their ways.
This thing, 3D with sprites character, is the most efficient format for FPS. Small size, complete experience.
Incredible! Love The Video! I'm a HUGE Fan Of Duke Nukem 3D And Ken Silverman's Build Engine! Great Vid My Guy!
The name Ken's Labyrinth perfectly encapsulates what 90s fps map design was like back then.
Solid informative video on one of my favorite old game engines.
amazing video man, very well explained and nice memories
Great video again Cutefloor, really enjoyed this one!
Decently entertaining video! Thanks LGR for pointing this one out.
Hey man thanks a million for making this!
Used to build a lot of maps for Duke Nukem 3D with BUILD editor. Totally loved it, so many cool things you could build with it. I was around 15 years old back then and had a lot of fantasy creating those maps, from gigantic cities to spaceports or military secret bases. Miss those days........I will always remember the name Ken Silverman. To me he's a legend in the gaming industry! #sectorEffector ftw!
Thanks for the upload. It was really interesting! I played Duke Nukem and Blood a lot when I first got a PC, but I had no idea about the history behind the Build Engine.
Great little video.
build engine was and still is amazing.
90s was great! When every idea was new and experimental.
I love the music. Where is it from: Ken's Labyrinth?
+CuteFloor ive watched this video a lot of time equally fun every time! ^^
KrisFrosz133 third song is MU40PROJ.KDM at least
You have just earned yourself a subscriber good sir!
wow
awesome
had no idea so many games shared the same engine
the music sounds awesome
i love this music
Great video man
Excellent videos. I like your style.
Great video. I'd love to see you do a video on Ion Fury/Ion Maiden.
Incredibly informative and interesting :)
It should be noted; the Saturn "port" of Powerslave did NOT use the build engine. Instead, it used the 'SlaveDriver' engine; which was notable because that version was true 3d, unlike the PC version.
Really fascinating, I liked this video. Ken is a genius.
great retrospective!
Top class review. Subbed.
The places you see in this video here kinda feel like those liminal space images
Never thought this guy was responsible for the games I know and love. Ken Silverman, you're an amazing chap.
I'm deciding on making a video on the build engine but going to get a bit more detailed.
Do you mind if I use your footage from the earlier engine demos? I'll give you credit during the video and in the description.
Much appreciated!
Its too bad silverman, sweeney, carmack never worked together at the same company, now that would have been amazing.
I suspect hey were all strong headed individuals wanting their own glory though and maybe better off as heads of tech at separate companies as pretty much what happened.
Why don't people just keep making games with the build engine? It's like the master race of game engines.
I'm interested in making a game (probably a short one) with the build engine but that's just a simple thought.
Well, the engines free for the public to use, and the tools are out there. I hope you do make your game and goodluck!
I remember I did some "games" with this engine in my teens. It was the Duke Nukem version. I remember I stole sprites from other Build games and also did my own in MS Paint. Man, I wish I could play my creations today. But they are all lost on some old harddrive only god knows where.
***** Ace of Spades was made with VoxelLap a newer engine by Ken Silverman.
Too complicated, too time-consuming and WAY too little finally.
Beautiful video.
So awesome, thanks much!
I still occasionally make maps for Duke3D and Shadow Warrior
I came here only to learn about these voxel models. I saw the min Blood and I am fascinated with them.
I wonder if these could be animated like sprites to produce fully 3D character models?
Sort of. If you use voxels as a rendering medium instead of a storage medium - meaning you'd model and animate in polygons (or purely geometric representations) and let the engine convert it to voxels. Storing voxels frame by frame is way more inefficient than storing vertices, and most engines today don't even do that - they store bone animations and compute vertex deformation in real-time.
Some animation is done directly in the gpu vertex shaders, things that don't interact with physics and can be easily represented algorithmically (trees and grass bending with the wind, clothes, hair and other soft body effects), and gpus only know about tringles, tri strips and tri fans. Though you can abuse vertex/tesselation/compute shaders to make cubes if you really want to, it just wouldn't really achieve anything generally useful.
quality stuff right there.
Thanks, very good video. Ken Silverman is a genius.
I've totally played Ken's labyrinth
Nice video =D
17 in 1993? Dude was 20 when he made the Duke Nukem engine variant. Not even a quarter of the way through his life probably and he already basically defined an entire genre
I think the build engine is superior to the doom engine as it gets rid of the pre-calculated bsp crap. Sadly, Silverman is way less known than Carmack.
Carl Mahnke "bsp crap" I don't think you realize how important that is.
Ken himself it seems wasnt too interested in gamemaking after making the buildengine, hes been busy with education and doing voxel stuff. As of now im not too sure what hes up to, hes got a website i think you can even throw away a mail to him.
He's been working for voxiebox for a few years now, last I checked.
The downside of Build Engine's code is that it's only usable for non-commercial purposes, as ZDoom showed until Ken relicensed one part of it, the voxel rendering code. Doom meanwhile got licensed under the GPL.
+Xane Myers (X-Man) actually gzdoom these days is better than build, and completely open source. No build engine code bugs like doors that crush you, and build engine features like slopes and room over room.
Weird request, could you somehow post the soundtrack(s) used in the video?
Masterful job. But i'm a little confused. If blood uses voxel-based 3D models, does that mean that the build engine can also use poly-based models? And if so, how is it then still a 2.5D engine?
It Can If You Can. And We Will Do It Anyway : )
Der Track 5:40 , der ab Duke Nukem 3D spielt, ist das ein ProTrackerMod? Kann man das irgendwo downloaden? :)
What is the intro music from, the first song that plays in this video, before the Ken gameplay starts?
this had to be the golden age of personal computers.
excellent video
I think there were an old game made with this engine ?
i cant seem to remember in the game there were no sound and no music
the first enemy you could encounter in a red cave was a green slime with eyes and teeth
and you could only attack by using magic consuming your mana pool
mana and health was very limited in this strange game almost feel like an open world maze
there were no explanation on the story or what i was supposed to do
but i dont remember the game name
Thanks man!
Ah. The build engine. Some of my favorite DOS games used the build engine. Also I didn't know about walken and the pre epic ken's labyrinth. A shame about fate, and I did not know about tekwar until now.
Good Job.
love this video
HERE COMES ANOTHER TOLL BOOTH
It's always weird seeing older prototypes of various engines, especially at 2:28.
That said, was all that violence at 07:38 really necessary?
You should see what Ken's up to now as our Chief Computer Scientist! Click on our CZcams channel and then check out our website... :)
As someone who has used BUILD for an indie game, I feel this video is just about right.
My old attempt? It doesn't matter, it was never released.
Even if unreleased, did you have any luck with Silverman licensing it for your use?
Im trying to make one myself, but im not really sure about the licensing.
There was no licensing talks involved at all. Just me making a game with intent to release for free, and Mr. Silverman being helpful when I needed help.
Kawa ﾠ the name of the game please
where is build engine released?
Huh. My cousin seemed to think that the original System Shock (1994) ran on the Build Engine. He didn't seem to be aware that the engine System Shock ran on was a fully 3D engine. It seemed he never player it as he wasn't aware that you could look up/down in that game. Speaking of which, I can't find much on System Shock's engine. I can't even find its name.
Also, didn't Carmack say the Build was put together with bubble gum or something? Was that purely out of spite?
this video has some neat vaporwave
Ken's labyrinth used to freak me out when I was a kid.
When I was 14 I used to make levels for Duke Nukem using Build... they weren't good. I went to get a degree in computer games programming and worked at Jagex, developers of Runescape. That being said, I worked in customer support for a year and haven't used my degree at all. At least I got to witness a coworker (mod_bach) take the processor from his computer, then take the cpu to the toilet, then come back having smeared shit on it, put it back in the computer, then call the IT support guy (Dean E.) who couldn't get the PC to turn on but could clearly smell shit. That was worth the degree.
can anybody please give me the the music at 0:20 ? it sounds really good for my retro party
Song is called labsng18.ksm, someone has finally uploaded it.
Man, from the beginning of this year until now, somebody has finally gave me the name.
Thank you very much. :D
You're welcome. ^^
Thanks!
Can I have the list of all music tracks you used?