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MeetyourUnmaker

So what is the best game on the build engine you think?

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On the topic of the Build engine, the guy who made BloodGDX just put out RedneckGDX.

 

https://m210.duke4.net/

 

I always thought Redneck Rampage was terrible. It was ugly, confusing, obnoxious, and had awful level design as well as awful weapon design. Nothing ever felt or worked right, and some of the enemies had way too much health. 

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The real issue I find with Blood is those damn giant stone gargoyles on the highest difficulty, the only weapon which seems effective against them is the tesla weapon but otherwise they are a real pain to deal with, in most maps I encounter them I just avoid them entirely.

Edited by Avoozl

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Extra-Crispy is designed to make coop more challenging. They probably just thought it'd be hilarious to use it to destroy players instead of having Nightmare. 

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I have to say the 3 of the holy trilogy are close to each other, the 3 of them has great level design. With that said:

Duke3D is the most accesible for anyone, the 3rd Difficult "Damn I'm Good"(I don't care the 4th, since the only difference is the respawns, which I hate like in Doom) is both, challenging and fun and the combat feels good for the must part. Duke has one of the worst shotgun of old fps, and feels underwhelming, it is ok but less fun than must other fps.

Blood is a HUGE step forward in every corner. The combat (even tho is a litle bit too "floaty") is incredible fun and adictive. Weapons are really cool (not you voodoo doll) and fun to use and is super challenging in Well Done! (3rd difficult). I tried "Ultra Crispy" but the number of hitscaners in the end of the 1st episode made me quit.
This game does not hold your hand at any point and is not for everyone, probably my favourite but really close to SW.

Shadow Warrior was my second game of the holy trilogy, and I was blown up on how ramped this was from Duke3D. The combat was brutal, lots of hitscaners and Shadow Warriors" camuflaged in the background with those oneshot Guardian heads of theirs. I really love every weapon in this game, specially the Grenade Launcher.
I loved for the most part every aspect of this game, even "No Pain, No Gain" (the 4th difficult) was brutal but doable. close call to Blood.

I won't count Ion Fury since is newer and the game is super cool and polished.

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Ah, I'll throw Ion Fury into the mix.  Still Blood.

 

Ion Fury takes second place though. The level design is by far the most consistently good of the lot, but the weapons, setting and enemies are not.

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My best BUILD Engine game is Blood for sure, especially when I had fond memories of playing it's multiplayer via DOSBox. I did have my second best, which is Duke Nukem 3D. I have some fond memories for the both of those games, like when I've completed the shareware episode of Duke3D on a Pentium 133MHz machine I've used to have (It was in a time when I was a vintage computing enthusiast) and having played Bloodbath with the community over the years.

 

Shadow Warrior was fine though, just haven't seen much usermaps and multiplayer games happen in quite some time, and the only couple of times I played it nowadays was multiplayer with OpenRift's DOSBox Deathmatch Club.

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My vote would go to Duke Nukem 3D. Best out of the box modding support of all the BUILD games (and you can say whatever you want about how hard it is to mod, but it still had the most tools and resources out of all the BUILD games even before the source code was released). I like the character and the use of realistic locations, the difficulty, and the weapons. Dukematch was a lot of fun. Loved using the holoduke to trick others into shooting it thinking it was me and using the steroids to get away to bigger weapons, then shrinking them and squashing them, all in a matter of seconds. 
 

also, the weapons are all useful throughout the game. The pistol is a useful weapon despite how many hits it takes to kill enemies due to its firing rate and the amount of ammo found for it being separate from the Ripper cannon. 
 

the only build games that I don’t like are: Nam, WW2GI Redneck Rampage (any of them), that shitty paintball game, and anything by Capstone. So the others are all good, but Duke 3D is my personally favorite. 

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Gotta be Duke 3D :-) 

 

Might have been just around my circle but that seemed to be the one everyone knew and loved whereas all the other build engine games were lesser know.

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If we talk about how hard the game pushes the engine to it’s limits than blood but other than that I’d say either Duke3D or Powerslave/Exhumed

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Ion Fury is my favorite. However if I just include the 90's Build engine games, then Blood.

 

Ion Fury, in my opinion has the best level design and it also has a dystopian cyberpunk style which is one of my favorite. The weapons and enemies are also much better than Duke3D and SW, although Blood still has the best weapons.

 

Blood has the best weapons and the best sound effects in my opinion. The gameplay is also vastly superior to both Duke3D and SW. The only thing I am not a fan of is the aesthetics and color palette of this game, which is opposite to most Blood fans who like it more due to its aesthetics and less because of the gameplay.

 

Duke3D used to be my favorite Build game up until a couple of years ago. My nostalgia for this game is strong, but that isn't strong enough to make me overlook its gameplay flaws. The sound quality in Duke3D is not very good, even for its time. The enforcers (Duke's equivalent of Chaingunners) have no pain states. Some weapons like the shrinker/expander and the freeze gun are too gimmicky. Mini-Battlelords become a joke when Shrinker is available. 

 

Shadow Warrior I find in some ways better than Duke and in other ways worse that Duke. Shadow Warrior has more polished weapons, but I find the enemy roster annoying.

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My opinion hasn't changed since, but I suppose I can divide my order in two categories, gameplay versus level design, which have very different results.

 

In the level design department, they'd go in this order: Ion Fury > Duke > SW > Blood. Ironic isn't it? Blood managed to end up last in this department. But the reason is quite simple, I am just not that fond of Blood's maps. For me, Blood's strongest point was always the gameplay, weapon and sound design, enemy roster, balance, and its edge, but in terms of aesthetics I have never been that keen on it, and despite by love for the paletted look in the other games including Doom engine games, I've grown to like Blood more without it. Unlike the other games, the red-ish tint the palette adds just doesn't work too well with what it was going for in my opinion, I like it more grim.

 

Gameplay-wise, however, that's gonna be Blood > SW > Duke. I have not seen enough of Ion Fury to be able to have a fully formed opinion here, so I left it out, but I doubt it's going to dethrone Blood, I've seen the entire arsenal and that's enough reason for me to still keep Blood in the first spot. These are the only Build games I care about, in the case of Exhumed I take the PSX version any time of day, it has way better levels, better sprites, and just seems to make better use of its features than the Build version ever does, it feels more advanced, ambitious, and polished, whereas the Build version feels extremely primitive and rough.

 

From this point onward, though, things go south for me. Redneck Rampage, Witchaven, TekWar, Legend of the Seven Paladins, NAM, WW2GI, and all the other godawful Build trash is not worth my attention, not even me acknowledging their existence. I would have much rather thrown these games into the deepest dumpster if I could, never to resurface again, all of them are worthless junk in my book.

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I don't like Duke as a character (that much), I don't like cityscapes, and I was underwhelmed by various things about Duke from its pistol reloading to its strange mid tier enemies which are basically high tiers lurking in the wrong tier. My favorite is going to be one of the other Build games, but I haven't played the others except for Powerslave.

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3 hours ago, AinuTheTaken said:

I don't like Duke as a character (that much), I don't like cityscapes, and I was underwhelmed by various things about Duke from its pistol reloading to its strange mid tier enemies which are basically high tiers lurking in the wrong tier. My favorite is going to be one of the other Build games, but I haven't played the others except for Powerslave.

Play Blood, you'll thank yourself. Caleb is far more likeable as a character than Duke, even though he's an evil son of a bitch, he's not full of the machismo and bravado like Duke. The weapons are creative and fun, and personally I like killing cultists and zombies more than aliens. It's a hard game due to all the hit-scanners, and some levels are kind of crap especially towards the end, but I've always loved it far more than Duke.

 

Shadow Warrior is okay, but it has the same issues as Duke 3D. Being made by 3D Realms, it makes sense. Unlikeable protagonist (seriously, Lo Wang?), hitscanners in all the wrong places, a reloading shotgun. Great level design though. It's worth a playthrough, but I would put it on the same level as Duke 3D.

 

And don't bother with the hot mess that was Redneck Rampage. Even though some people say it's good, it's not. It was a terrible game, and it deserves to be dragged into the street and shot.

 

So yeah, for Build engine games:

Blood > Duke Nukem 3D & Shadow Warrior > Powerslave > Redneck Rampage

 

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2 hours ago, Jello said:

Unlikeable protagonist (seriously, Lo Wang?)

 

Oops, Lo Wang dropped soap, you bend over get it. Plus the Wang Rap :D.

 

Na, I disagree, I think the OG Wang was great, and he was mercilessly anti-PC, easily putting Caleb and Duke to shame in this department, a testament to the 90s edge, a textbook example of a character thst would absolutely not survive in today's climate.

 

But it's all a matter of taste overall. It comes down to the kind of humor everyone prefers, I've been told numerous times my sense of humor is fucking trash, so I suppose it is kinda fitting, heh.

 

In terms of personality I prefer Caleb too, more chill and I've always been drawn to cynical, dark, and twisted personalities and he's indeed the most "evil" thing in Blood. But I very much think they are all great in their own right, different protagonists for different people.

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Blood is a great game, one I love, but my favorite is still Duke Nukem 3D.

 

The weapons are great, starting out with Duke's pistol, which instead of just being a vector for getting a better weapon and then being abandoned, actually remains decent for the entire game, by being really fast, you have a gun you can use for stunning and some decent DPS (particularly if you're kicking during), but it's offset by its reload, which makes sure you can't use it as a slowfire machinegun (yet the reload is so rapid it's not even an inconvenience) add to that its own ammo pool, meaning it can be there for you when your Ripper Chaingun Cannon runs dry. Ammo is common, so it's easy to have a good stockpile to fall back to at most times, and on top of that it remains a tool in your belt for shooting buttons and switches.

 

The shotgun I like a lot, a Winchester 1300 Defender with a dated 80s/90s tacticool appearance (pistolgrip with no stock, vertical foregrip on the pump slide, and a perforated 'heat shield' shrouding the barrel). It makes a good boom, and its generously tight spread lets it have good performance even at medium ranges (which makes Duke's shotgun a lot more realistic than those in many supposedly realistic shooters), I find myself relying on it more than all the other weapons, because it's so easy to score good hits and get in stuns, it's my number one choice for handling drone bombs.

Ripper Chaingun Cannon is really cool in design, but performance wise there's nothing to set it apart from any other really straightforward video game machinegun.

 

Then we have the explosive armaments, remote pipebombs of good utility, and a rocket launcher, though not remarkable in handling, is incredibly satisfying, the way the rocket detonates with a thick and base heavy BANG which can be heard from across the level, the way the area lights up for a split second, the erupting fireball that looks like it's straight out of a movie, the way it blows enemies into absolute pieces, scattering viscera and body parts all over; Duke's RPG is as powerful as it sounds, and I adore it. I can almost never get enemies to trip my Laser Tripmines, so I just use them as demolition charges instead, saving pipebombs and rockets for combat. The Devastator Weapon appears to be some sort of bizarre anti-air piece of some kind, a double barreled rocket machinegun, blasting a storm of micro missiles to overwhelm and atomize scores of enemies, even just a couple of these tiny rocket propelled grenades will take you far.

 

Looking at the unconventional weapons, the Shrink Ray is SO fun, just one zap and it'll turn most monsters harmless, whereupon you can crush them underneath your boot like you're stomping out a cigarette butt, it's satisfying to make a joke out of those fat bastard commanders in response to their taunts. The Microwave Expander Cannon is fun, I love the way enemies swell before violently bursting, the concept is novel too, but ammo is so very rare you barely get to put it to use.

 

It'd be a long essay if I were to get into all the other aspects of the game, like the open-ended level design with all its secrets, verticality, looping paths, and pseudo realism, or how the music and sound design is exquisite, complimenting them well.

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loved Blood, but the bugs in the early releases (e.g., game crashing when firing some weapons underwater) made for an occasionally frustrating experience. On the plus side, the moody, 19th century atmosphere (aptly described by @129thVisplane as Victorian) and dark humor more than made up for the bugs. Too bad Ken Silverman "lost" the source code.

 

Because Duke 3D was my first Build game, it is probably also my favorite. Irreverent, mouthy character with wise-cracking one-liners, juvenile humor (shot any urinals and drunk from the gushing water to restore your health lately?), and generally not taking itself seriously were among the reasons I found the game appealing. Plus, it had more-or-less realistic environments, some weird-but-funny weapons, and plenty of vertical-based gameplay.

 

I liked Shadow Warrior quite a bit, but it seemed more like an Asian variation of Duke 3D.

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1 hour ago, ReX said:

Too bad Ken Silverman "lost" the source code.

 

The source code to Blood was never lost. The developers made the stupid decision to not release it at the time and later on it could no longer be released due to legal concerns.

 

The developers still have it otherwise, Jace Hall in particular, and he even tried to release it years ago, but was not allowed to for the aforementioned reasons. It is currently owned by Atari and their higher-ups at WB. But all of this is moot now as the game has since been reverse-engineered and fully reconstructed in fan ports in the form of BloodGDX and NBlood.

 

Ken doesn't have the source to any of the games. He single-handedly designed the Build engine that powers these games, and he released its source long ago, plus various tools I think.

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26 minutes ago, seed said:

 

The source code to Blood was never lost. The developers made the stupid decision to not release it at the time and later on it could no longer be released due to legal concerns.

 

The developers still have it otherwise, Jace Hall in particular, and he even tried to release it years ago, but was not allowed to for the aforementioned reasons. It is currently owned by Atari and their higher-ups at WB. But all of this is moot now as the game has since been reverse-engineered and fully reconstructed in fan ports in the form of BloodGDX and NBlood.

 

Ken doesn't have the source to any of the games. He single-handedly designed the Build engine that powers these games, and he released its source long ago, plus various tools I think.

 

I don't get WB's decision-making process.  Blood is over 20 years old.  What harm would there be in releasing the sourcecode to a game that has nothing new done to it for decades?

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4 minutes ago, Master O said:

I don't get WB's decision-making process.  Blood is over 20 years old.  What harm would there be in releasing the sourcecode to a game that has nothing new done to it for decades?

 

Dunno, laws are strange. And besides, them officially releasing it now is pointless, we already have it, in both C and Java.

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Don't expect Blood's source code to ever release until Atari SA stops their Atari VCS scam bullshit and WB enters into agreement with Atari SA over Blood's source code.

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On 10/24/2020 at 12:16 PM, Master O said:

 

I don't get WB's decision-making process.  Blood is over 20 years old.  What harm would there be in releasing the sourcecode to a game that has nothing new done to it for decades?

They haven't figured out how to monetize the IP yet.

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Last time they tried in the form of Fresh Supply, but they had to rush NDS and release it prematurely, and also pull the rug under their feet before it was fully fixed following its premature release.

 

I think it's safe to assume Blood is now dead, for good. They had one chance and fucked it up. It will see nothing new as long as Atari/WB owns the IP.

 

"I'm dead... again!"

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On 10/24/2020 at 8:39 PM, Cacodemon345 said:

Don't expect Blood's source code to ever release until Atari SA stops their Atari VCS scam bullshit and WB enters into agreement with Atari SA over Blood's source code.

The VCS isn't a scam.

 

It is, however, overpriced.

 

Star Citizen is what you are after.

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So I just got to playing a little bit of Blood with the excellent source port BloodGDX, and it's certainly good. I'll have more to say as I keep playing.

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On 10/25/2020 at 7:16 AM, Master O said:

I don't get WB's decision-making process.  Blood is over 20 years old.  What harm would there be in releasing the sourcecode to a game that has nothing new done to it for decades?

 

Given what coders have done with reverse engineering, there would seem little to gain from a source release at this point.

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Indeed. BloodGDX,  NBlood and Fresh Supply have rendered the source code itself as pretty much redundant at this point. While it'd be cool if it ever did get released, there's no shortage of methods to play Blood if it otherwise never happens.

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