Duke Nukem 3D's Build Engine trickery

Found this Twitter thread this morning and I thought it would be cool to share here. Lots of stuff veterans probably know, but still pretty interesting! Plus, using sprites as flats and walls to make ROR effects is so insane I love it.

(Click on the tweet to see the full thread)

Pretty neat to see how some of those effects (Mirrors, silent teleporters, etc.) ended up being implemented on the Doom engine through Boom and ZDoom!

Duke definitely had some pretty advanced trickery for its day, yeah. But of course, it also came out like three years after Doom, so that's kind of to be expected.

Ken Silverman doesn't get nearly the credit he deserves, though.

Damn, 3D Realms were ahead of their time.   I guess I could try topping that with a big open air communal piss trough but I'd still be 25 years later.

In the 25 years since DN3D was released, I've never seen one person mention what a colossally *awful* design idea it would be to have a carpeted floor in a public bathroom with urinals... in an adult movie theater. 

A CARPETED floor. *shudder*

Wall-to-wall fixed carpeting is an awful bacteria and filth trap anywhere!  Let alone THERE!!

5 hours ago, Caffeine Freak said:

In the 25 years since DN3D was released, I've never seen one person mention what a colossally *awful* design idea it would be to have a carpeted floor in a public bathroom with urinals... in an adult movie theater. 

 

A CARPETED floor. *shudder*

Hey, carpet cleaners need a job too. I was always more curious about having a couch in the lavatory, so I never really thought about the carpet. Or the Jenny reference. Or the lack of a door. Really the whole level is really fucking odd.

The Elevator Gravitational Anomaly Discs (EGAD's) in ROTT are actually quite impressive. Is that where the idea started?

12 hours ago, Jello said:

Hey, carpet cleaners need a job too. I was always more curious about having a couch in the lavatory, so I never really thought about the carpet. Or the Jenny reference. Or the lack of a door. Really the whole level is really fucking odd.

Forget all that, what about the air duct that leads to the projectionist's booth? Do they really want to have the very finest in Hershey products wafting up into their booth for a whole shift?

Don't they know what an XL tub of popcorn buttersoup can do to a person's bowels?

Or are they just hoping to hear a lady grunt in pain as she gives birth to a brown monstrosity?

16 hours ago, Jello said:

Hey, carpet cleaners need a job too. I was always more curious about having a couch in the lavatory, so I never really thought about the carpet. Or the Jenny reference. Or the lack of a door. Really the whole level is really fucking odd.

The couch is indeed weird. I could see a REAL upper class establishment---the kind that might have butlers standing there handing you hand towels---having a sofa of some kind in their restroom. In a seedy place like an adult movie theater, it's just odd. The lack of an actual door isn't something unknown in public restrooms, but you more typically see that in extremely open, well-ventilated places like airports or beach locker rooms, not theaters.

The only rationale I could see behind the couch is that it's something the theater put there in case a couple of patrons decided to get busy with each other. It being a unisex bathroom, that might make some sense. How romantic.

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Forget all that, what about the air duct that leads to the projectionist's booth? Do they really want to have the very finest in Hershey products wafting up into their booth for a whole shift?

 

Don't they know what an XL tub of popcorn buttersoup can do to a person's bowels?

 

Or are they just hoping to hear a lady grunt in pain as she gives birth to a brown monstrosity?

Hey, as long as that secret moving wall (dividing the projection room from the ventilation duct) conspicuously placed by the establishment stays closed, there should be no problem with the odor. :D

Really the concessions stand in an adult theater didn't make much sense either, or the arcade with pinball machines and a rotating light. Come to think of it, the two turret guns guarding an alcove 100 feet off the ground with shotgun shells and a jetpack in it didn't make much sense either. Well jeez, the more I think about it, Duke 3D just doesn't make any sense at all.

Duke 3D is weird like that. It's designed to look like a real place, but it still remains very abstract and strange when you apply logic to it. Some of it is engine limits, with things like why the freeway level is just a small span of road, and some of it's weird design decisions like this carpeted bathroom with a sofa, but somehow it still remains memorable to me, so I guess they did something right.

19 hours ago, Caffeine Freak said:

Hey, as long as that secret moving wall (dividing the projection room from the ventilation duct) conspicuously placed by the establishment stays closed, there should be no problem with the odor. :D

I mean, for it to be intentionally built like that, someone has a secret shit-sniffing fetish...

11 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

I mean, for it to be intentionally built like that, someone has a secret shit-sniffing fetish...

Sshh sshhh, as long as they never find the secret door no one needs to know...