The History of Ken Silverman's Build Engine

[TheFancyEddie20]

The goblin thing freaked me out

[mrsoultwister]

i wonder how much money he made off this engine

[playinggamespoorly]

it almost looks like minecraft, the wooden room



[jackoneill45]

I Wonder if Duke Nukem Forever would have been a better game if Ken stayed with 3D realms and made the engine himself. I mean all they kept doing was licensing new engines over time, maybe if he was there he would have just constantly updated his engine instead. IDK, just wish DNF wasn't so shit compared to D3D

[jackoneill45]

I came for the history, I stayed for the music

[GuitarDeity]

Our modern games today probably would be a lot different (in a bad way) if it weren't for Ken Silverman's accomplishments.

[thekazuya005]

duke nukem,the best game createt by the build enige

[SledgeNE]

Very nice Video!!! It's interesting to see the stages of development of Ken's Build-Engine.

[dilatube]

whats the song playing at 5:00

[xDarkness227]

2:04

[TheCrelio]

Ancient chinese secret!

[dischodave]

"Ken released the source code of the build engine for free in June 2000."....and yet Monolith still refuse to release the source for Blood so that it to may be subjected to a nice facelift. Bastards!

[TheMechkid]

wait i wonder if he's still alvie so i can meet this guy that will be awsome!

[TheGameSquid]

@TheMechkid Silverman is most certainly alive! In fact, he's only 36 years old now. Here's the stunning part: the reason while he's still so young is because he was contacted by Apogee to create the Build engine BEFORE he even started his first year in college! In fact, he didn't start his college career until three years later, because he was too busy creating one of the most iconic game engines of all time.

[leileilol]

aww no prepsong.kdm

[BenMursa]

Kens Labyrinth was so much fun. Ah, memories.

[The1337DoomCokie]

Thats why Duke nukem 3d reminds me of Doom!

[ItsCoolFromSaturn]

Wow, this video was so comprehensive and interesting. Well done!

[Fernito69]

Nice vid!



[matthewdoucette]

great vid!!

[fallout111111]

what is the name of ths song that starts at 3:35?

[grounder]

@fallout111111

Found it. It's Ken Silverman's DRIFSNG2.KDM song

[finfrosk]

Cool! Really interesting.

[Phobosdeimos1]

It's so pleasant on the eardrums! Sounds a bit like the music from BOOM (the doom based bomberman game - search on here for the music to level 1 and 2, i love it!)

[Dakkiller1]

CUTEFLOOR

SOMEONE HAD STOLEN YOUR VIDEO (AKA network502)

watch?v=T9DGx4r_WMI

[CuteFloor]

@Dakkiller1 thnx

[Phobosdeimos1]

This guy was a child prodigy,

What's the music at the end?

[CuteFloor]

@Phobosdeimos1 It's BLASTONG.KDM composed by him :)

[cacodemon357]

@Phobosdeimos1 Ken Silverman was inspired by john carmack's work in the first place, and used his idea of sectors, so although Ken is a prodigy, I think that Carmack is a bigger one.

[megaboost405]

,o,o,o,o

[Solarexistence]

I have so much respect for Ken Silverman. Making an engine like that from scratch is damn impressive and he was so young! He deserves way more credit for that!

[dcheartly]

When I was a kid i had history classes. I was always average, never interested in them. However, if this was the stuff they taught you way back when, I would've payed a lot more attention. Thank you for this very informative video, I certainly have learned a thing or two :)

[The1337DoomCokie]

Im very sad that the enegine when it was "better" wasnt used in doom then

[carbonseven1st]

wow in my perception ...this is one of the most interesting vidz on utube. I wonder how much cash Ken scored by making this engine,.....anyway its a still cute looking engine, im glad ive seen this video (wow i have never said it on utube lol)

[Dr4m4t1cD15turb4nc3]

he build engine= the last fun group of FPS games.

[RussRockeScientist]

I spent so many hours of my youth on the Build editor for Duke3D, I had several boxes of floppies full of levels I made. Making stuff in Build was always way better than legos because I could run around in it. Thanks Ken!

[3ddreams]

Thanks to Ken Silverman cause to born great games like Duke Nukem. Duke Nukem is my one of first played pc game. It changed my life. Now I am a game developer. God blest you.

[666Makkura666]

Hail to the creator!

[PJAYLUZ]

Wow! what a difference in 6:03 to 9:14

[msndokaralho]

Of all the games made with the licensed version of the engine, IMHO Exhumed is the best.

[mout12]

I had so much fun building maps in Duke Nukem! I made some crazy shit, and played it online with KALI. Anybody else remember KALI?

[SPYmaps]

what a great engine it was back then, i made tons (over 100 sp-maps) with it, with old Duke, Shadow warrior and Napalm. o, those good old days.

ofcourse the engines of now much better, but still does the Build engine has a very warm place in my hart and for that i want to thank Ken Silverman!

funny, never knew he was so young when he started this all, (17 years when he released his first version!! his father helpt him with selling (?) it to a company.

great movie,

leon

(sp-mapper)

[TheXRealXBrapp]

I always thought duke 3d used real 3d...

[volvo145]

i still dont understand how its fake 3d.you cant look straight up. thats the only thing that i find different from other game engines.

[Azadeth666]

Who's this Ken Silverman jew?

[volvo145]

@Azadeth666 yea he propably is.

[DukeNukem2020]

Yes, Redneck Rampage. I had that game, and it was AWESOME

[Borisyoch]

@DukeNukem2020

Yes it was supreme in graphics!

[seablue]

marvelous video!

[muffinman540]

What is Ken up to now?

[ubercraz007]

Ken is a real nice guy. He actually coached my programming team in high school. His first day, he gave us a speed run of duke nukem 3d. Was actually pretty mind blowing them.

[joshguenther]

Nice work on the video, well put-together.

[iiixiayyy]

geez... dn3d brings back so many memories. ken silverman gave something great to the gaming world. i'm a gamer at heart and now i am making my own games because of inspirational guys like ken. thanks a lot for this great upload!

[tinkerthecat]

excellent video on the progression of the build engine a good insight to how games like duke nukem 3d look was achieved

[CodyRicheson]

This engine was quite amazing for its time, able to provide the illusion of 3-D without the taxing computation that most computers at the time couldn't have handled. Despite how limiting the engine ultimately is (true 3-D structures are not possible, even with portals and sector stacking), the Build "classics"--Blood, Shadow Warrior, Redneck Ramapge and of course Duke Nukem 3D--all had varied and clever level designs.

[SandersonCallum]

that light blue-ish color always reminds me of Build Engine games XD

[hobbes71002]

Lol, at like 2:45 I feel like I'm on LSD or something :S

[akazification]

we is fuckin' genius

[LegionsOfAnon]

What a great overview, very nicely put together. :)

[GenyaArikado99]

Well-made video. Thanks!

[foamyjesus]

Ken Silverman is an absolute legend.

[ZykovEddy]

3:21

is that 3D model of Earth?

Looks awesome for it's time.

[mrnevermind]

so inspirational

[moosemaimer]

Thank god you didn't mention Extreme Paintbrawl.

[szabotihamer16]

WOW this video was awesome...

By the way I've got some questions that I would like to ask.

-What font did you used in the video?

-What program did you used for making the title labels in the video?

They are so cool! Thanks for the awesome video

[DMalenfant1]

pretty damn impressive for early 1990 and for a kid.

[Jinmane]

I looked at the code, and there's a function 2000 lines long consisting of trillions of nested ifs. Really ugly code. I guess software engineering practices have improved a lot, or perhaps he was just quite amateurish then; I suppose that makes it even more impressive actually..

[Tunnelfish]

Quite the talent, when games were fueled as much by passion than profit.

[UnexplainedDirge]

No way! Redneck Rampage!! I haven't played that game in years.

[AndrewDBarker]

I wonder if it's a good or bad thing that I've played all of these games.. Thanks for the memories Ken. :)

[xilefian]

@xxsamyu Yes but it's part of it's History, look at the title.

The author never said it was Build engine, they specifically said he started work on a new engine that he called Build.

[sonickun95]

Aw geez, i guess 5 people are jealous of Ken Silverman :(

[sonickun95]

Ken's Labyrinth looks kickass :D

[Dakkiller1]

I'm learning how to use the Build editor even though im 15.

I'm also into Ken Silvermans music and his other projects like his Voxle Engine and its editor.

[xilefian]

@Dakkiller1 15 is a rather late age to start actually, I started producing my own indie games at the age of 11, right now I'm programming my own ray caster game engine, and I've been able to make maps for Marathon for years.

[Jinmane]

@xilefian I started when I was 10, but was under the illusion that I was better than I actually was. This illusion was only broken relatively recently when I realised that in fact I was rather shit. I wish my parents or teachers had recognised my potential, rather than left me alone to do what was essentially nothing more than playing around with If-statements the way other children play with Lego. I could be so much better by now if I'd had just some guidance, or a pressure to improve.

[xilefian]

@Jinmane I met a young lad who's in the exactly the same situation right now, keeps messing with if then else statements inside someone else's framework for an OS and calling it all his amazing work.

My pressure to improve comes from the people I work around, all game programmers, modellers and mappers. I can't stress how important it is to evolve when programming and improve.

[querpmuerp]

Great tribute!

[Dechristian3]

Ken i think revolutionized duke nukem, and the start of kick ass fps

[HideFromFacebook]

I dont understand what "sector" means

[xilefian]

@HideFromFacebook Originally raycasters used square grids to render, so rooms would be map up of cubes, or other shapes if the programmer was good (Like Ken), after Doom, raycasters started using a system that focused on vectors and not grids, so line 43x,67y:50x,77y was a wall, as opposed to grid 43,67+44,68+45,49 etc etc

[binarysplit2]

What is Ken doing these days? I know he's working on a voxel engine and his website lists a few small projects, but those alone doesn't seem to explain all of the last decade, especially at Ken's amazing programming speed...

[broiler1985]

really nice video!

[carfoz]

I love history classes like this ;). makes me feel 14 again. Thank you for the upload.

+5 +fave :).

[BronzeTurd]

i love voxel graphics cuz of voxelstein

[DOOMRPG]

1993 really high!!!

[nooblet911]

build was a a league above the doom engine but not exactly a match for the quake engine (still less demanding though)

[fumarpuedematar666]

yeah build.exe was cool when i was kid, and now i have fun with radiant.

[MrZoider]

INDIES RULE.home-made engines like BUILD are the best!

[czlowiekzwyzyn]

2:20 from what game is this music?

[ogopolo]

with games i like realism in a redicoulus epic full scale warfare perspective

[Titanium640]

I might sound a bit crazy, but the up/down feature of the build engine is more realistic than current 3d games. Today they look distorted with the sides of the objects 'bending'.

[GentleSavage1]

it certainly wasnt more realistic, it cheated by shifting walls up/down, walls could not be rendered for not being perpendicular to the ground plane of the player's eye coordinate system.

you could see how distorted that looked, and then the enemy sprites held against that, ugh.

What do you mean with things looking distorted nowadays?

Could you demonstrated that with (annotated in a gfx application) screenshots?

I can only guess you're referring to too wide FOV, bu thats for left/right also.

[cbuosi]

Great video! So many good memories! As other had said, its from a time that games where just fun, and not all about graphics and reality.

Thank you Ken for a spetacular game engine!

[Choominator]

Build was amazing. I don't know who here got to play with the Build Editor that came with Duke Nukem 3D's CD, but I lost 2 years of my life making maps with it, it was the most usable map editor that I've ever seen, and I'd love if companies such as Crytek could take usability tips from it, because it was just amazing, it was the only map editor where I was able to express my creativity with a professional feel to it.

[antdude]

Nice MIDI music! Are there other histories like this like id Software's engines and other game engines?

[Gorhug]

Dammit, the duke3d portions are as nausea-inducing as ever, thank god the tech has improved, motion sickness is not fun. Nothing against the game though.

[TAz69x]

The Build engine basically powered my preteens XD

SOOOOOOOOO much fun had with its incarnations. My favorites are:

1. Blood

2. Duke Nukem 3D/Shadow Warrior (sweet advancements on the engine in the latter)

Search Shadow Warrior for a cool Shadow Warrior engine demonstration. The silent portals and dynamic level elements (eg. moving holes in ceiling/floor above) are just amazing to look at.

These truly were the GOLDEN ERA of gaming, before over-complication overshadowing sheer fun.

[BenMursa]

@TAz69x Blood scared me. Plus our computer had some failwail graphics card and everything looked terribly washed out. But yeah, it was the first game where I could asplode enemies. And I loved it to death.

[jeanreno]

Fantastic!

[XxTodesengelxx]

5:23 Damn that looks and sounds a lot like the beta version of Duke Nukem 3D!

[DiamondClaw1991]

It's a game named Shadow Warrior

[TheDreamWeb]

Thanks, CuteFloor! I didn't learn anything new, but it was a nice ride down the memory lane. :3

[Bam050196]

Games that Utilize the Build are Really fun, action, & Entertaining.

[PokeParadox]

Very nice display of the progression of the engine.

[xxxx59xxxx]

the more updates the more violent lol

[zbarsky]

Music kicked ass

[st8sis]

Just a great video. Awesome progression and choice of tech displays. I kind of love you just for this:-P

[BuzzardQ2]

Where´s ken now?

[Reconite11]

Very nice, faved and subscribed.

Most nostalgic video on the internet. :[

[zerok116]

awesome DOS'ish intro.

one of the best things (imo) of the ken engine were the high quality voices that made duke nukem's lines so great :)

[MegaKEK]

Nice video CuteFloor, very professional looking.

I got some great memories from games powered by the Build engine (including my many fights with the Duke3D map editor :P), so thanks Ken for making all that possible.

[fsm1982]

Very GOOD WORK!!

Thanks for do this and post it to we assist.

Bye!

[ZombieCallum]

WITCHaven was the first build game cutefloor

[Dechristian3]

were did you get Build anyway?

[ZaeGame]

Awesome i baely knew anything about this engine even though im a huge fan of Duke Nukem 3D

Thanks cutefloor, your awesome!! :D

[WARSORE666]

Five stars! Beautiful video! Thanks!

[zyriuz2]

in the fate game it looks like they got dynamic light i thought build engine had only stationary light if u know what i mean

[TheSingerWhoEats]

i love old games, they show history to what people used to play

[deplague]

Great vid!

[WhiteMageMentality]

You do this for fun?

Like the other people have said here, get hired by someone!

[Rivar90]

Thank you Ken Silverman!! :)

[ToxicBarrel]

Interesting stuff.

[cbob3000]

awesome video, thanks man!

[i486x]

Beautiful. Kinda like my Armored Fist 2 trailer.

[archy9752]

A truly revolutionary engine.

[JacksRache]

I like what he tried with angled walls. I guess he made mistakes in some mathematical functions and thus screwed up the perspective.

Anyway, awesome video, CuteFloor! I enjoyed it alot!

[riot88ns]

you should have a TV show and make documentarys like this. Excellent video man. Very well made. I'm looking fordward for more of this kind of videos. Keep up the good work!

[MrMagic1163]

very nice feature you did !

[dumaramutsi]

excellent documentary..simply 5 stars :)

i just have a question...did ken make a good money with this??

sorry if it sounds rude..but i always has that question in my mind :/

[JurisL85]

ohh yes i was talking to him.. you know that Ken never actually worked after Duke 3D? so imagine how much hi made from those games using his engine? so much that he woes not have to work since then! he just does what he likes. programming Voxel Engine.

[dumaramutsi]

wow..amazing...i never knew that! ty for answer my question man! ;D

[xilefian]

@JurisL85 His voxel engine has more potential than he knows though, games like Crysis use voxels for their distant environments.

[solothurn666]

whoa. a great vid to see. now i know the origins of the greatest engine of all times. thanks for that vid, man ;)

[ludersatan]

hey cutefloor: ive seen that you´ve uploaded quite a lot of cool demos from games like Dark Forces and other lucas arts games........ here is an idea to a demo you can do some time in the future: Outlaws.

the demo for this cool western 3d-shooter was awesomme.

[6x6x6]

The Build is such a great engine. I still love making levels for Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior

[dosnostalgic]

Excellent stuff sir! I have been thinking of making a build engine retrospective myself (and probably will)

[blenderuser]

Very nice review of the engine! Could be great with more comprehensive engine reviews like this (and the more technical the better :D)

[Gannok130]

Cutefloor could you do a video of the Alpha version of Blood? You can find in Deathmask's site.

[NESMASTER14]

Great video! I agree with Demiath. 5 stars : )

[vipor29]

that guy is a legend..i remember kens labyrinth when it was first released...its cool that we can go back and play these thru dosbox

[CrazySandtrooper]

Awesome video. Makes me want to play all those game again.

Good times :)

[ANoobGuyProductions]

did ken make all these sounds in his game?

[CuteFloor]

I think so :)

[DukeNukem2020]

@CuteFloor I can tell that Ken made some sounds(Like the explosions) himself.

[187onaPigeon]

How the hell did he manage to do that fake vertical looking? It looked strange, still does and it made me dizzy lol. Great video, thanks man.

[CuteFloor]

What Ken wrote about this on his website:

04/24/1994: Added "fake" LOOKING UP & DOWN after discovering that it wasn't too difficult to shift the screen up & down. 3 days later, the same effect mysteriously appears in Apogee's other game that they were working on at the time, ROTT. What a coincidence!

[TAz69x]

He would "extend", aka increase the [vertical/Y-axis] size of the display, then display a portion of the extended vertical screen to simulate looking UP or DOWN.

Since the renderer draws walls vertically ALL of the time (as well as the screen effectively becoming "stretched vertically"), the farther up or down the player would look, the more distorted the image would become.

[Demiath]

Nice. An impressively comprehensive overview of an innovative and versatile engine. Also, the music is great.