The 3D Realms main Build engine games thread

Apparently this isn't on the front page of EE or anywhere so I figured there should be one somewhere.

This thread covers the main few Build engine games by 3D Realms (and one by Monolith), those being Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood and I think Redneck Rampage if that was made by 3D Realms. It probably wasn't but I don't know. This does not include Apogee's pre-96 platformers like Duke Nukem and the games they published like Wolf 3D, Blake Stone, etc.

Familiar people, show with all ye might your appreciation for these games in this thread. However, people new to these games, a quick rundown of the aforementioned in order of release:

Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive Software. The full version was released for the PC (the shareware version was released on January 29, 1996). It is a sequel to the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II published by Apogee. An expansion pack, Plutonium Pak, was released in November 1996.

Duke Nukem 3D features the adventures of the titular macho Duke Nukem (voiced by Jon St. John), who fights against an alien invasion on Earth. Along with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, Duke Nukem 3D is considered responsible for popularizing first-person shooters. It was released to major acclaim; reviewers praised the interactivity of the environment, level design, gameplay and unique risqué humor (a mix of pop-culture satire and lampooning of over-the-top Hollywood action heroes).

Source: Wikipedia

Blood
Blood is a PC game developed by Monolith Productions and distributed by GT Interactive. Development was underway at Q Studios, an independent developer funded by 3D Realms, in parallel with a number of other well-known titles. Following the success of Duke Nukem 3D, development progress was made public starting in June 1996 with weekly updates on their website. It was originally scheduled for release in early 1997. Q Studios was acquired by Monolith in November 1996. On January 22, 1997, a press release announced that all rights had been sold to Monolith so that 3D Realms could focus efforts on Shadow Warrior, another Build engine game slated for release the same year. Released on May 31, 1997, Blood utilized an enhanced version of the Build engine from Ken Silverman which featured the addition of voxels. The game falls in the first-person shooter category, and has an arsenal of weapons ranging from the mundane to the bizarre, numerous enemies and liberal amounts of gore.

Source: Wikipedia

Shadow Warrior
Shadow Warrior is a first-person shooter video game developed by 3D Realms and released on May 13, 1997 by GT Interactive. Shadow Warrior was developed using Ken Silverman's Build engine and improved on 3D Realms' previous Build engine game, Duke Nukem 3D. Mark Adams ported Shadow Warrior to Mac OS in August 1997.

The game's improvements included introduction of true room-over-room situations, the use of voxels instead of sprites for weapons and usable inventory items, transparent water, climbable ladders, and assorted vehicles to drive (some armed with weapons). Although ultra-violent, the game emphasized tongue-in-cheek humor and contained some sexual themes (although less blatantly than in Duke Nukem 3D). A combination of Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior was published by GT Interactive in March 1998, titled East Meets West.

Source: Wikipedia

Those are the main 3 well known ones. I'm not entirely sure about Redneck Rampage but someone post if it is relevent to these and I'll post the Wiki page on it.

Discuss any of these games, show your appreciation for them through "I LOVE THIS GAME",
videos

Redneck Rampage?

Technician said:

Redneck Rampage?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utURQJInO9c

Don't forget Powerslave/Exhumed

SavageCorona said:

Apparently this isn't on the front page or anywhere so I figured there should be one somewhere.

Why should Doomworld have any dedications to non Doom engine games?

I meant front page for the Everything Else section, not on the main page.

so you want a build page on the front page of the sub page not the main page?

What, no Ken's Labyrinth? Or TekWar?

Is Ken's Labyrinth a 1996/7 FPS based on the Build Engine? I was talking about the Duke Nukem 3D based games, not that, and I've never heard of Tekwar.

darknation said:

so you want a build page on the front page of the sub page not the main page?

I just found a lack of appreciation for those games on here, since they were heavily inspired by Doom.

I don't think Ken's Labyrinth was BUILD, but it was definitely a precursor since Ken Silverman was the main force behind BUILD. If I remember, KL was more like Wolf3D.

JonoF has a list of BUILD games on his site: http://www.jonof.id.au/build.games

Nomad said:

JonoF has a list of BUILD games on his site: http://www.jonof.id.au/build.games

There was a Corridor 8?!

Technician said:

There was a Corridor 8?!

If I remember correctly, it was mostly done but never got a public release.

Captain Red said:

If I remember correctly, it was mostly done but never got a public release.

It had a 'playable' demo but it had *no* graphics of its own. It was nowhere near done.

Witchaven?

Nomad said:

JonoF has a list of BUILD games on his site: http://www.jonof.id.au/build.games

Wow there's 12? I only knew of 4 of those games, those being the obvious ones.

I must get my hands on Witchaven, but only if there's a sourceport available for it.

Isn't Witchaven available on [I'm pretending to have this nuked by mods] for free? Not sure if I'm allowed to post links if it is though, or even if it's the full game or not.

EDIT: The version I tried from that site doesn't even appear to have sound, the options menu is non-existent so you can't change anything except gore and difficulty, the mouse support is essentially non-existent besides very slow strafing and turning and I'm not sure if it's the full version or not because it has no indication of it being either. I personally didn't enjoy it and it seemed dumb but I guess I recommend it for its cool RPG ideas like weapon durability and stuff.

SavageCorona said:

Isn't Witchaven available on [site] for free?

Only under an extremely subjective, oft-misinterpreted legal loophole. Reasonably sure the forum staff here would nuke your link if you posted it, anyway.

Is there a technical comparison on the capabilities of Doom's engine vs. the Build Engine?

Google couldn't help me on this one.

I'm pretty sure Shadow Warrior had the best Build engine version, since it had moving slopes, floors that could turn into slopes, 3D floors which allowed you to have underwater parts actually under the water, transparent water, voxels/3D sprites (as they were known at the time), proper crushers that actually kill you when it gets to the bottom instead of just pushing you into the ground humorously, lights you could change to an exact amount, rather than it being a sector effect and a your-mum-sized assload more.

I think Duke Nukem 3D is superior to both Doom 2 and Quake. Of course, nothing can beat Doom 1 and the textures don't seem as polished as those in Doom. Just compare TEKWAL4 to everything else (damn...I LOVE that texture)

SavageCorona said:

transparent water

Actually, you could do this in DN3D. More difficult to implement though, I'm sure.

DooM_RO said:

Just compare TEKWAL4 to everything else (damn...I LOVE that texture)

So nerdy you have a favourite texture. I love it.

I bought Shadow Warrior Redux and now that's my favourite of all the FPS games I played as a kid. I couldn't enjoy it as much back in the 90s/00s because of the poor mouse support and how much slower it felt. That's how much you should like, go buy Shadow Warrior Redux if you haven't already. It's really cheap on Steam, and it's probably going to be on sale for even less soon when the new one comes out. Not shameless plugging, OK.

Oh, and that's not even the nerdiest part about me. You can imagine how much the girls love me.

I've just finished Duke3D (again) so I might pick it up.

On a different note, don't forget NAM and WW2 G.I. And also, if I remember right, NAM just used a lot of modified graphics from other build engine games, most notably Duke Nukem 3D.

Also, wasn't there an Elder Scrolls game based on the build engine?

Clonehunter said:

Also, wasn't there an Elder Scrolls game based on the build engine?

No. Not at all. Never.

Bethesda developed their own engine until they got onboard the middleware license with NetImmerse for Morrowind (which became Gamebryo for Oblivion/Fallout 3, and Creation for Skyrim).

Arena was developed on a grid-based engine which was quite powerful as far as grid engines go (texture-mapped floors and ceilings, varying elevations, dynamic lighting, 3D floors, "diagonal wall" blocks, etc.). Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Redguard were developed on the Xngine, a powerful fully-3D engine which used heightmapped exteriors and polygonal meshes.

They have never used a sector-based engine like Build or Doom's. They directly jumped from Wolf3D-like grid (even if massively more advanced than Wolf3D) to full polygonal engine.

The only fantasy medieval games using the Build engine were those Withaven titles. You'd better not confuse them with Elder Scrolls titles!

SavageCorona said:

This thread covers the MAIN few Build engine games by 3D Realms (and one by Monolith)

Christ read the opening sentence, sure you can mention other variants which used the Build Engine but great way to start a thread off by entirely derailing from the main purpose.

Witchaven is such a pity.. I loved the first game but it suffered so badly from poor programming and just general all around lazyness, so buggy and broken.

The sequel is no fucking excuse! The control system is actually broken so you can't remap the strafe keys at all without DOSBox at least, so back in the day your pretty much left to using Keyboard Only with a bastardized control scheme. God damn it Capstone, they had brilliant concepts but just failed abysmally at pulling it off without screwing everything over, lmao Quality Support in the credits of their games. Also all the things that should have been fixed in the original were just left to not.

Avoozl said:

I must get my hands on Witchaven, but only if there's a sourceport available for it.

Unfortunately, while the source code has been available for a long time, the only man who could craft a sourceport, Jonof won't do so for legal issues.

SavageCorona said:

Isn't Witchaven available on for free?

I think it's classified as Abandonware since Capstone got nuked but never heard any official word on it.

How the hell did Tekwar even get to market in it's condition is one of the greatest mysteries of all time.. I'm not being funny but what was the final product if you can call it that looked like a borked beta.

I found a pretty good video on the history of the Build engine, with clips from pretty much every game the Build engine was used in, the development of the engine over time and a small insight on what happened.

Gez said:

The only fantasy medieval games using the Build engine were those Withaven titles. You'd better not confuse them with Elder Scrolls titles!

I think I indeed confused Dagerfall or something with Witchaven, confused them I did indeed.

SavageCorona said:

I'm pretty sure Shadow Warrior had the best Build engine version, since it had moving slopes, floors that could turn into slopes, 3D floors which allowed you to have underwater parts actually under the water, transparent water, voxels/3D sprites (as they were known at the time), proper crushers that actually kill you when it gets to the bottom instead of just pushing you into the ground humorously, lights you could change to an exact amount, rather than it being a sector effect and a your-mum-sized assload more.

I looked up how to do the 3D floors thing. Nasty hack. Makes the Legacy/GZDoom version look like the best thing ever. Using it for water makes implementation about as complex as the trickery used by DN3D mappers. It's interesting, but not enough for me to fiddle with the editor and try it out.