Build Engine: A Short Lived but Glorious 2.5D Powerhouse

What you'll notice with my voice in the video is that it's more repressed and quieter. The reason is because the fluffy butt club are sleeping. I spoke too loud last time and woke up the mother that's now coming to roost while I was recording for this video.
This is a video that talks about the Build Engine, a 2.5D engine from the 90s that rivaled both Doom and Wolfenstein in it's capabilities, and gave off more impressive displays of 3D as evidenced in Duke Nukem 3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior. But the engine isn't used as often as something like Gzdoom, and there are fundamental limitations that are still somewhat present in the engine like the way AI is handled, it's use of the .ART format which isn't as intuitive as .WAD
But it's an engine that also made it's mark in fps history, even with the presence of fully fledged 3d fps games coming out of the woodwork which kickstarted with Quake, and it still has a thriving modding community thanks to the existence of EDuke32 and Mapster32. Also, Ion Fury and AWOL show that the engine is still viable for retro fps game development.
Links:
fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/
www.eduke32.com/
localinsomniac.github.io/ntma...
www.indiedb.com/games/wgrealm...
www.moddb.com/games/the-amc-tc
• The History of Ken Sil...
• Ken Silverman's BUILD2...
• Chicken Feet - Trailer
• Why looking up feels w...
Chapters:
Intro - 0:00
Start of Video - 1:00
#gamedev #gaming #dukenukem #blood #shadowwarrior #buildengine #gamedevelopment #doom #wolfenstein #gameengine

[@CarlMahnke]

When you bought duke3d back then, you got the CD with all tools needed to start making your own maps. Also, the build editor had this live 3d preview of the map so you could see your map without any compiling. All this was pretty unique at that time.

[@dmitrykim3096]

I spent a lot of time trying to make my home :-)

[@LuigiElettrico]

I had so much fun in the original DOS mapster for Duke 3D back then... and playing those maps with friend over LAN :D

[@thelegendofdevon]

I really love the 2.5D aesthetic, its just really neat. I also love that this engine still lives on with Ion Fury, and so many projects for the older games, like Duke 3D and Blood. I think a lot of the charm is that "Doom Cute" where you have to truly hand craft everything in such obscure ways to make it look more and more like real life. The moment you understant how the sauce is made, even on a base level, it changes how you play and view these games, so there are moments where i will just be left with my Jaw on the floor when I have that moment where i understood what they did, its true craftsmanship, whee others might look at the same thing and not really get my amazement. The extreme example would be something like MyHouse.Wad, where even if you don't pick up the tricks meant to throw off people who know the tricks, you'll eventually start to notice the oddness while playing just because of how much it stretches that 2.5D Doom Engine to make something unique. For those who love Build, Shaky Grounds would be a GREAT introduction to Duke 3D (or reentry into it), since it really shows what the engine can do with modern hardware expanding scope of absolutely everything.

[@unduloid]

3:33 "Apogee" is pronounced with the emphasis on the _first_ syllable. Just ask Civvie11.

[@nemtudom5074]

You know, 2.5D was never going to last forever, and thats fine, but since it had to go out eventually, im glad it went out guns blazing with the holy trinity. Wolfenstein was a nice proof of concept Doom was groundbreaking And the Trio showed everyone that outdated technology, doesnt mean it cant be fun. This 'i know im on the way out, but i'll make sure they remember me' vibe is something i admire a lot

[@Vlad-1986]

Man, Ken wasn't 18 when he made this engine. He was 11. Fucking 11 years old! I have been coding since I was 8, now I am nearly 40, and no way I could do the same thing now. And his brother made some cool stuff too. He is one of many examples that made me love computers.

[@brokenportals]

Yeah it's an uncanny level of talent that not a lot of people have. The time of when he actually started working on the engine was an oversight on my part, because I was also looking at the initial release of the engine and got it confused.

[@alexmazvi]

Most complex AI on games are made from scratch. In fact, there's not much point on critizicing the AI capabilities of any engine as it is totally dependant on the gamedev itself and not the engine.

[@brokenportals]

That is true. But the Ai between the build engine games in the 90s weren't that far apart in terms of how they were implemented.

[@Saavik256]

Personally, I find Build's editor pretty easy to use. :)

[@brokenportals]

I think it's a matter of what one's comfortable with. UDB and Slade are definitely more accessible for modding. But Mapster32 is still just as good once you get past the navigation barrier ad well as memorising hockey's.

[@Saavik256]

@@brokenportals Well, back in the day I didn't even know it was possible to make extra levels for Doom, but Duke3D came with all the tools included. I just printed out the accompanying text files + some stuff from the early internet and put 'em in a three-ring-binder and went to town. Even still have Duke3D installed on my old 486 laptop that I took to the seaside with me every year, I am sure. And the aforementioned three-ring-binder still sits on my bookshelf.

[@mytube9182]

The engine itself maybe short-lived in terms of being selected to use in new game developments in its time. But remember that all the games that have been using this engine are now resurrected and stay in an undying state which means they're extremely long-lived.

[@brokenportals]

The engine reached its peak at a bad time. GZDoom is in a way, its successor.

[@henryfleischer404]

The build 2 engine sounds fascinating. Maybe once I'm done making a game in Godot, and have gotten better with C#, I'll take a look at it. I've got 2 first person shooters I want to develop in the future.

[@darkfoxfurre]

I'm still frustrated with Ion Fury. They promised online multiplayer and co-op before the game was released; and they just quietly deleted it from their list of features.

[@brokenportals]

Come to think of it, it would of been cool to see, because we often see 3d multiplayer, but not in the 2.5D fps realm.

[@Rountree1985]

@@brokenportalsyes we do.

[@brokenportals]

@@Rountree1985 Not that many anyway.

[@TAURON85]

My boy pronounced "Wolfenstein" correctly. Not many mono-lingo English do that. 😎👌

[@kawamikazecheant]

What they succeed to create in terms of level design and details in those games is amazing, all the secrets too, adding replayability. In my opinion Doom is more about shooting, action, staying alive, while Build engine games need you to think about the exit and how to reach it. Shooting also makes more sense in Doom, as, from what I remember, it's never unfair, unlike in Build engine sometimes. Secret rooms into secret rooms and alternate paths are really something, and a lot of great mechanisms in 2.5 don't necessary look so good in 3D.

[@alexello1189]

I like to consider the holy trinity of 90’s fps game engines being idtech, build, and the often forgotten xngine by Bethesda Softworks. The xngine was just as capable as the other two and arguably had more going on under the hood. I’ve yet to see someone compare the three in a video but thought I’d mention it.

[@nick9323]

no word about Raze ?!

[@jimmyjimbo72]

1:37 Sigil! An absolutely brilliant mod by THE John Romero (the soundtrack being composed by Buckethead). A sequel that runs on DOOM II is due to be released in December 2023.

[@brokenportals]

A sequel? Hell yeah.

[@johneygd]

It’s mind blowing how good fake 3D could look❤️

[@Roxor128]

Back at the time, I didn't really think that much of Quake's look. It was okay, and I did have a boot disk for playing it (only had 8MB of RAM, so needed a pretty clean boot to have enough free to run it). For me, it took until Unreal and Half-Life before real 3D beat out fake 3D. Unreal has the unique distinction of having a software renderer that dithers the texture coordinates instead of just doing nearest-neighbour sampling.

[@fabiohk234]

The BUILD engine had Ken Silverman, but Quake's id Tech 2 had John Carmack.

[@bloodborne410]

we need more videos about this engine

[@drusik]

If mentioning Doom Mods for BUILD experience, I highly recommend you try out GZDoom mod Bloom which is a Blood/Doom crossover done incredibly! All Calebs items put into the mod, and the maps and npcs are all unique, combined between the two games, because the universes blended.

[@brokenportals]

I've tried it before. It's excellent.

[@CYON4D]

Although Ion Fury looks and plays great I wasn't into it enough to finish the game. I stopped playing it after a short while.

[@brokenportals]

It definitely leaves some things to be desired. The arsenal is kind of disappointing. And it's a shame but the Sprite work for them are great.

[@CYON4D]

@@brokenportals I agree sprites, textures and maps look fantastic.

[@modernmobster]

The first half is fantastic. The second half is a marked decline in level design and overall quality with a number of levels that I absolutely loathed (that Neverending sewer level being nearly as bad as the Redneck Rampage sewer level, which is one of the worst FPS levels of all time). Still a much better game than Redneck Rampage, but just not good enough to be as legendary as the build holy trinity.

[@aidencrawford9704]

Powerslaves build engine version isnt really a metroidvania like the other ports... 🤓

[@brokenportals]

True, and each platform/port had differences between each other.

[@psyantologist]

neat historical overview

[@brokenportals]

For sure, and I brought those examples up because the resurgence of retro inspired games haven't been exclusive to just fps games throughout the 2010's.

[@The_Nametag]

It is a little jarring hearing talk of the 90's engines when using modern ports. Talk of Doom... playing Sigil. Talk of Blood.. playing Fresh Supply. Talk of Duke Nukem 3D... playing World Tour. Yea, these are the versions available now. Though getting a more faithful source port, like Raze. Yea, it's higher res, modern systems, but it's a bit more faithful than World Tour's colored lighting etc. Also a note, PowerSlave's map structure was in the console release, the PC release had more traditional level based progression.

[@brokenportals]

I see where you're coming from. But modern sourceports provide accessibility which is important for bringing in newcomers. Personally, I just find it easier.

[@SomePotato]

Thanks for the friendly reminder to *finally* play Ion Fury!

[@Motofanable]

11:00 I wonder if Build Engine could kept on if polymost and voxels support was introduced earlier.

[@martin128]

I have nitpick with this video. When you are talking about about these games graphics when they came out, you probably should show how they would have looked at 90s not these newer engines that have some improvements. For example in your doom footage, you have trilinear texture smoothing, same for other build games you have footage for. Also showing quake with the new remake is also somewhat misleading. Otherwise good video and information. You made some good point about there only being 3 good games with Build engine from 90s.

[@Fizbun]

What was the background song? I know I've heard it somewhere.

[@brokenportals]

The theme for Duke Nukem Forever.

[@grahamwilson4053]

No love for Alien Armageddon?

[@SevenCompleted]

you need to try WG realms 2 im surprised it wasnt mentioned in the mods

[@gotonethatcansee]

eduke needs LAN support

[@armorgeddon]

Wait, you can't do multiplayer with Eduke?

[@gotonethatcansee]

@@armorgeddon did not work for me

[@armorgeddon]

@@gotonethatcansee Hm, ok, I'll need to read the Eduke docs.

[@IT-sq5rj]

Blood was and is the best!

[@zer00rdie]

Short Lived? Are you mad?

[@docnotL]

Ironically even though full 3D graphics were much more technically impressive I think some 2.5D games like Blood, Duke Nukem 3D and DOOM from that time have held up much better graphically by today's standards. 2.5D games have sort of a timeless look to them, they have their own cool style while many 3D games from that era just look like crap now.

[@grahamwilson4053]

I also have to ding a point for using footage from Blood - Fresh Supply and Quake (2021) as neither use their original engines, and are instead based on Nightdive's Kex Engine. If you used NBlood and Quakespasm it'd be a modern incarnation but still a direct descendent.

[@artCharles]

I'm pretty sure they still use the original engine, the Kex Engine is just a sort of "shell" it runs through.

[@grahamwilson4053]

@@artCharles "Problem is that I also avoided using any BUILD code at all. That was my mistake. The second mistake was failing to understand the clockrate/tick rate of BUILD. Originally, the logic that I reverse engineered was running at 2x the speed in Kex, so everything had to be scaled down. I should of researched more on that rather than just scaling everything I hated BUILD's collision code so much that I didn't even think twice about the impact it would cause when I rolled out my own if I am ever given the chance to revisit FS. I am going to add an option to switch between collision modes." - Samuel "Kaiser" Villarreal

[@grahamwilson4053]

My impression is that Kex is indeed a shell, but for reverse engineered code or some original where available

[@artCharles]

@@grahamwilson4053 Oh. Alright, that makes sense.

[@SevenCompleted]

pc powerslave is not a metroidvania thats the console version. the vanilla pc version is also kinda jank cause the controls. strafing is messed up playing keyboard only back in the day it would have been fine but using a modern control scheme doesnt work without hacks.

[@brokenportals]

I see. I thought all the versions were on the same page. Thanks for clearing things up.

[@SevenCompleted]

@@brokenportals yeah the pc powerslave is your standard build shooter but its got great level design just a shame about the controls haha

[@arc-sd8sk]

f*rst