What are the differences between id tech 1 and the build engine?

[cutie pie ^^]

There where a lot more games that i know of that where made using the build engine than with id tech 1, i believe that that is because the build engine tlicensed more often but if id tech 1 was open source right from the get go why would one be chosen over the other?

(please don't include anything about the build engine after doom 2 was released)

[Gibbon]

Well a few things:

 

1. Slopes

2. Destructible environments (well scripted level explosions to deform walls etc..)

3. Interactive objects

4. Breakable things (windows, objects, grates)

 

In general, it was just a superior engine that allowed a hell of a lot more creativity and design to happen.  Though it isn't as easily modded and the tools used are pretty ancient today.  Nothing like Ultimate Doom Builder, Slade and Deutex for BUILD.

[dyshoria]

one other difference is how idtech 1 isnt held together by duct tape

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Vanilla for vanilla, Build was mostly superior.  A couple things @Gibbon missed are that you could overlap sectors so some degree of room-over-room was possible (but it wasn't full freedom like Quake was, the two areas had to be pretty much separate from each other), and that you could also use any static tile as a scenery sprite, rather than Doom's strictly defined scenery objects.

 

It did have a couple drawbacks, notably the .ART system was a bit more of a nuisance to work with compared to .WAD in most instances (if you just wanted to swap out one graphic, you had to replace the whole .ART block containing it, or else use a patcher tool in a similar vein to DeuSF).  The physics were also jankier in some cases, an infamous bug is that you can break through a wall into void space fairly easily, and unlike in Doom where that's a speedrunning trick, entering the void results in instant death in Build.  There's a whole video called "Duke Dead Quick" that showcases a bunch of instances of this.

Edited April 28, 2022 by ETTiNGRiNDER : grammar

[Hisymak]

Important thing - Doom engine is much more intuitive and user-friendly for mappers than Build. That is also significantly caused by the available mapping tools.

In Doom engine, level actions and "scripting" is done through linedef specials and sector tags. Each linedef special has self-explanatory name in map editors so it's quite easy to use. Hexen extends that with thing specials and ACS scripting, which is a bit more complicated, but quite well usable too.

However, in Build engine, scripting is done through adding special "things" into sectors, and giving them specific tags (lo-tag and hi-tag). In map editors, those tags are just numbers, and every tag has different meaning, sometimes it's the function, sometimes it's a reference tag, sometimes it's a parameter (speed, sound number etc etc) and it is total mess extremely hard to remember. To make even anything simple in Build engine, like a door, you need to have a detailed tutorial, or no chance.

[Jaccident]

1 hour ago, ABirbWithGuns said:

if id tech 1 was open source right from the get go

It wasn't, they open sourced it a few years after doom was released.

[Doomkid]

I know this is a tangent, but since everyone has covered the basics of what's different already: Damn, I really wish Duke Nukem 3D had an editor that was as easy to use as the Doom Builder family. I love Duke 3D, but the tools sucking being ancient and the modding scene being small by comparison to Doom never allowed that love to truly blossom, if you know what I mean.

 

It's an even more niche situation now, because pretty much every BUILD feature of note was added (in one form or another) to advanced source ports years back. It's strange to me that, if I wanted to make some sweet Duke 3D-inspired stuff, Doom would still be the best place to do it..

[jval]

One fundamental difference between id-tech1 and BUILD is that id-tech1 uses bsp while the BUILD is a portal engine.

I'd like to mention voxels as well.

[Ludi]

I love the build engine, but I sure as hell wouldn't take the time to learn it. It's too much work for what can probably be done just as well in Boom, MBF, or even ZDoom

[Egregor]

[This post does not compare the engines except for my first impressions of them] Fun Fact about me (this could just as easily go in "how did you get started?" Thread):

 

My uncle showed me Wolfenstein in 1994  when I was about 10 or so. I was fascinated by it. Soon after I learned about Doom and Doom 2. In 1996 (at the age of 12) I remember going to a big box store and finding the book 3D Game Alchemy: Doom, Doom 2, Heretic, & Hexen and buying it. It also came bundled with a PWAD shovelware CD that contained 900 or so new levels. I spent a few weeks reading the book and practicing the tutorials but I didn't have internet back then and didn't get very far. I made about a dozen small levels with varying degrees of success.

 

Enter Duke Nukem 3D and the build engine. For whatever reason I found the build engine easier to work with. I believe it had 3D "in game" editing while the old doom editor that came w Alchemy did not. I learned to use it by copying tags from the original levels "how did they do that? Oh it needs THESE tags". I probably made 30 or 40 levels using the build engine, some of which were large.

 

During this time I hit puberty and realized I had become obsessed with mapping and that my social skills had plummeted, and I was loosing friends so I made a conscious decision to step away from gaming to focus on "real life". I still believe that was the right decision for me and my childhood.

 

Looking back I wonder what happened  to all those levels and how they would hold up today. Regardless I took about a 15 year long break before rediscovering my love of mapping.

[Frost-Core]

• Flying
• Slopes
• Breakable and Interactive Objects (best example is in duke3d when you use something like a toilet)
• Camera Shake

[Graf Zahl]

When talking "Doom engine", let's not forget that Hexen added a lot of things bringing it closer to Build. Also, lots of "Build" features are not part of the engine but of the games.

 

In the end, taking just the core engine, the biggest differences is that Build natively supports slopes and that its map geometry is not statically locked by a BSP, which allows a lot more freedom to do things. The texturing options were also better (but certainly not the texture storage...)

 

Most of what gets associated with Build was game-side features. Had the Doom engine had more life it probably would have seen game releases with the same capabilities - much of these Build features are available in some feature-centric ports, after all.

 

Build's biggest detraction is that unlike the Doom engine it was not made with content creators in mind but with the computer. No data was presented in a way that would make mapping a comfortable experience. The map format is just the raw internal representation of how the engine uses a map so the editor needs to know a lot more things to fill in some blanks and validate potentially bogus input. The latter is probably the reason why no better editors surfaced over time.

Another big problem is that the core engine had absolutely zero features for defining map actions and the map structures have no room to add them. This was what mainly resulted in defining everything through new sprites, creating another barrier for easy mapping.

 

Last but not least, while Build's physics model is a lot better than Doom's, the engine internal game physics functions are such an unbelievable clusterfuck of badly written code that the games often had no chance to implement something sane with it - a good example of this is "engine returns an error" -> "kill the player", because things were done in a way that makes it impossible to recover from.

 

[jacnowak]

25 minutes ago, Egregor said:

Enter Duke Nukem 3D and the build engine. For whatever reason I found the build engine easier to work with. I believe it had 3D "in game" editing while the old doom editor that came w Alchemy did not. I learned to use it by copying tags from the original levels "how did they do that? Oh it needs THESE tags". I probably made 30 or 40 levels using the build engine, some of which were large.

 

Yes, Build editor released with Duke3D had 3D mode and you could run around your level. This was a killer feature, none of Doom editors had that at that time (first version of Doom Builder was released in 2003 according to doomwiki, so 7 years after Duke Nukem 3D). I used to map for Doom using EdMap (with terrible results) and Build with its 3D view was a game-changer, it was much easier to build maps when you could see results instantly. Granted, the learning curve for actually doing anything interactive was steeper than for Doom (I remember a looooong list of sector effectors and sector tags with all their magic numbers and combinations printed and in lying on my desk when mapping - I was a kid back then, with plenty of time to learn useless things :P) but I think overall it was quicker to create something decent-looking with Build once you took the time to learn the tool. Doom Editors improved amazingly in terms of usability and accessibility for newcomers while Build still has the same editor I believe, so today it's much harder to map for Duke but it wasn't like that back in the nineties.

[7Mahonin]

Most people seem to think that BUILD is harder because they have to learn how to use a keyboard, but the BUILD engine was far easier for me at the time than any Doom editors that existed in the late 90s.
 

By todays standards, modern Doom editors are easier to use than Mapster32, but if you learned BUILD in the past, it is easy to pick up again because Mapster32 is essentially the same as BUILD was in the past only with more features. 
 

Wolfenstein 3D mapping, is, and always has been, a bit easier than both of these games. The main issue was making sure the map never exceeded DOS limits so the game wouldn’t crash. Now, with some sourceports, you don’t even have to worry about it regardless of what level editor you use. 

Edited April 28, 2022 by 7Mahonin

[DoomGater]

Back in the days, I loved BUILD and the editor, mostly because of the 3D-view. It was easy to use and most of the stuff required to create levels was already there on the CD-Rom. Please remember, the I'net was not always here... Anyway, I found it quite convenient. And yes, it is Aeons after Doom 2's release date (sorry, @ABirbWithGuns) but did anybody check the tools used to create Ion Fury? Is it a modern toolset or the same old stuff updated to 32/64 bit? I found Ion Fury quite impressing and enjoyed it a lot..

[7Mahonin]

4 minutes ago, DoomGater said:

Back in the days, I loved BUILD and the editor, mostly because of the 3D-view. It was easy to use and most of the stuff required to create levels was already there on the CD-Rom. Please remember, the I'net was not always here... Anyway, I found it quite convenient. And yes, it is Aeons after Doom 2's release date (sorry, @ABirbWithGuns) but did anybody check the tools used to create Ion Fury? Is it a modern toolset or the same old stuff updated to 32/64 bit? I found Ion Fury quite impressing and enjoyed it a lot..

Ion Fury uses Mapster32. All of the features made for Ion Fury have been implemented into the EDuke32 engine, and Mapster32 the build level editor. People can make user maps for Ion Fury now with that editor if they wish. 

[Koko Ricky]

The three biggest differences: 

 

1. Build has a greater range of options, allowing for more robust, interactive and detailed environments, similar to GZDoom's feature list. 

 

2. Build is much less stable, making crashes and glitches more common. 

 

3. Build is not BSP-based, allowing sectors to be moved and rotated freely along the X and Y axes, whereas even in GZDoom this is a challenging feature to implement. 

[DoomGater]

...which brings us to the almost philosophical question....
Is GZDoom still id tech 1 ?

[Jaccident]

26 minutes ago, DoomGater said:

Is GZDoom still id tech 1 ?

I'm honestly not sure it matters. It's certainly based on idTech1, and can play doom and all the other idTech1 games, but has lots of extra features. There is no exact definition that tells us when a certain amount of features makes it a different engine, so people will naturally come to different conclusions, but those conclusions affect pretty much nothing.

[Redneckerz]

In terms of Philosophy:

• Doom Engine is Plato
• Build Engine is Friedrich Nietzsche or Voltaire
• Quake Engine is Bertrand Russell

1 hour ago, DoomGater said:

...which brings us to the almost philosophical question....
Is GZDoom still id tech 1 ?

Still uses Doom rendering so yes.

All of JVal's DelphiDoom based ports of games (GLSpeed, RAD-X) are still IDTech1 by heart aswell.

[Gez]

1 hour ago, DoomGater said:

Is GZDoom still id tech 1 ?

The basics of the engine's architecture are still there, unchanged. You still have a BSP, a thinker list, tics, collision detection code that is scattered all over the place because walls, flats, and objects are checked separately, movement through a series of teleportation that does allow you to clip through walls if you're fast enough and the walls are thin enough, etc.

 

There's a new renderer (more than one in fact) and a lot of internal logic has been refactored to allow easy expansion and customization; but at the core, it's still the Doom engine with all its fundamental limitations like the way it is basically impossible to split actor processing across multiple threads.

[Doom64hunter]

7 hours ago, Gibbon said:

 Nothing like Ultimate Doom Builder, Slade and Deutex for BUILD.

SLADE works with numerous Build Engine data files as well.

 

5 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I know this is a tangent, but since everyone has covered the basics of what's different already: Damn, I really wish Duke Nukem 3D had an editor that was as easy to use as the Doom Builder family. I love Duke 3D, but the tools sucking being ancient and the modding scene being small by comparison to Doom never allowed that love to truly blossom, if you know what I mean.

 

It's an even more niche situation now, because pretty much every BUILD feature of note was added (in one form or another) to advanced source ports years back. It's strange to me that, if I wanted to make some sweet Duke 3D-inspired stuff, Doom would still be the best place to do it..

Even if GZDoom supports most of the features that eduke32 has on a technical level, it still takes significant work to replicate the same feeling that Build Engine games evoke. You can usually tell pretty easily what was created using the Doom engine, and what was created using the Duke3D fork of the Build Engine.

 

I think it absolutely would be possible to bring that same ease-of-use to mapster32, for example using the imgui library which was recently integrated into eduke32. The big issue is a lack of manpower. There simply aren't enough people with the time, interest and knowledge to implement or extend these tools.

[Dexiaz]

5 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I really wish Duke Nukem 3D had an editor that was as easy to use as the Doom Builder family

 

Actually, there was a good attempt:

 

[Graf Zahl]

42 minutes ago, Doom64hunter said:

Even if GZDoom supports most of the features that eduke32 has on a technical level, it still takes significant work to replicate the same feeling that Build Engine games evoke. You can usually tell pretty easily what was created using the Doom engine, and what was created using the Duke3D fork of the Build Engine.

 

Of course you can. It's different engines with different feature sets. ZDoom still added lots of Build-like features that just aren't used that frequently. For example, you could easily replicate Build's sector activation features with the sector action things. You rarely see this because regular line activations - which Build does not have - are often the better choice.

 

[Koko Ricky]

14 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

Of course you can. It's different engines with different feature sets. ZDoom still added lots of Build-like features that just aren't used that frequently. For example, you could easily replicate Build's sector activation features with the sector action things. You rarely see this because regular line activations - which Build does not have - are often the better choice.

 

This is very interesting as it seems like an obvious oversight not to have line-based triggers. I've watched one or two Build mapping videos and I want to say you place entities in the map the player activates. I suppose that accomplishes the same effect, but surely there are spots where line triggers are the most optimal method...

[Graf Zahl]

Build uses wall sprites instead. It's not that Build was unable to do line triggers, but none of the games implemented a system like Doom's.

 

[LouigiVerona]

All the tech details aside, I always felt that Ken Silverman's engines make walls feel thin. In Doom everything feels really solid. In Duke Nukem it all feels like cardboard to me.

[Graf Zahl]

That's more an effect of the sounds being used and probably the stupid death animatons where killed enemies disintegrate into a fountain of gibs.

The naked engine itself is just the same type of polygons that Doom is rendered with.

 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

People already listed plenty of the technicalities but I can add that I used to map for Duke in the olden days, as a kid. So here's my two cents.

One thing that stands out the most compared to vanilla Doom is how easy it is to make room-over-room effect. Elevator, stairs, or just jumping off a platform will get you in a different sector and it's really easy to do. Same with deep water. Also, Duke editor I used had a 3D view for texturing, height settings, lighting and stuff. Doom editors didn't have that for years to come. In short, making a Duke level was really quick and easy. Yeah, making them right is a different question entirely - gibbing swing doors being the prime example. But what if you wanted to have custom guns or textures? That was near impossible, as I remember it. Doom is super flexible compared to that. Yes, people love to complain about lots of things being baked in the doom binary but we really should learn to appreciate what we've got.

And the explosions. Oh god the BUILD explosions feel so satisfying.

 

Most of the things that made BUILD engine "better" was brought into Doom later on. Hexen is a technical marvel, and I absolutely love it for it. Too bad I can't stand a minute of the gameplay. Big thanks to the zdoom/gzdoom devs for Hexen map format. All the best things of Hexen with all the best things of Doom.

[Nikku4211]

Doom uses BSP, Build uses portals.

 

There was an effort back in the late 90s-early 2000s to bridge the gap between Doom and Build in terms of features with ZDoom, but it was ultimately decided that the engines were just way too different.

 

That being said, there was a time when it wasn't uncommon to see Build-like features like slopes and cameras and skyboxes (and sometimes even stacked sectors) used all the time in various ZDoom maps.

 

It's honestly pretty cool how you can get something close to Build's subway sectors using portals and polyobjects in GZDoom, even if the collision is flawed...