Duke 3d speedrun. Demonstrating the bubblegum nature of Build.

[Technician]

Quasar said:

Chocolate Strife on the other hand is perfect. Still waiting for anybody to report on a flaw in it for me to fix, cuz I'd love to have any excuse to work on it again.

When I tried Chocolate Strife I caught cancer.

There you go. Have fun.

[Blzut3]

Quasar said:

The best example would be the fact that in Training skill, monsters do not slow down as they're supposed to do.

I'm not familiar with this, has it been reported? I would be interested in a list of these omissions.

[Technician]

Here a question: Since I've only played ZStrife, do the guards in the game hub re-spawn infinitely in the vanilla version? I've always thought it weird I could kill all the guards with a little patients. They'll inevitably stop spawning.

[Gez]

Keep in mind that the engine is basically still Doom. The guards in MAP02 do not spawn, they merely teleport. There are a few giant holding cells outside the player area. Open it in a map editor and look for yourself. In ZDoom you can also look at the monster counter on the automap or alternate HUD.

[Technician]

Gez said:

Keep in mind that the engine is basically still Doom. The guards in MAP02 do not spawn, they merely teleport. There are a few giant holding cells outside the player area. Open it in a map editor and look for yourself. In ZDoom you can also look at the monster counter on the automap or alternate HUD.

How do they teleport individually, as one is killed? I don't remember this being doable in Doom.

[Blastfrog]

Wow, Build has a pretty crummy foundation. Ken Silverman should've spent some extra time in masonry class.

Technician said:

How do they teleport individually, as one is killed? I don't remember this being doable in Doom.

It all depends on the whims of the monster movement AI. It operates in pretty much the same way as the E1M9 trap.

[Koko Ricky]

Can anyone explain WHY Build is so buggy compared to Doom, considering they're both ray casting engines?

[Da Werecat]

Some programs have more bugs, some programs have less. Ray casting has nothing to do with it.

GoatLord said:

they're both ray casting engines

Doom is not, as far as I know.

[Blastfrog]

GoatLord said:

Can anyone explain WHY Build is so buggy compared to Doom, considering they're both ray casting engines?

They may share a common trait of drawing in columns, but they're not raycasters. Doom is a BSP engine, Build is a portal engine.

As for why Build is a buggy POS, it's as simple that it was simply made sloppily. John Carmack is an excellent coder, and while there are some iffy things in Doom (even Carmack admits it, he doesn't even like his original idTech4 code anymore), it was overall crafted much more carefully.

I don't know a great deal about the Jedi engine, but it seems more stable than Build, and is also a portal engine. Like Build, it seems you are free to arrange portal connections however you like?

I do know a bit more about Marathon, though. Yet another portal engine, and although physics and monster movement AI is really wonky, it's a solid portal engine as far as drawing and world geometry are concerned (kind of restrictively low detail limits, especially in vanilla). Unlike Build (which could connect portals in possibly nonsensical ways), sectors still had to actually connect on the X and Y axis like in Doom, difference is that you can now overlap them without interference.

[MrrCaliber]

A couple of months ago, I came across this Duke Nukem 3D Code Review and it was a real eye-opener. A rather entertaining read too (author's footnotes are especially hilarious). Before I couldn't even imagine what a mess of a game engine the Build is. I'd like to say I am not a fan of the Build games and rarely ever play them today, but I played a lot of Duke and Blood and Redneck Rampage in the nineties when I was a kid, and the games always felt relatively bug-free, but still somehow glitchy in many ways, like the physics, aiming system, controls, etc. I think my biggest gripe was being squished by a swinging door.

[Koko Ricky]

Hit the nail on the head. That swinging door thing was total bullshit and I'm fairly shocked that it wasn't caught in playtesting.

[Avoozl]

And I thought only Blood's doors could kill you.