A tempting morsel for the techies, creators and archivists amongst us earlier than RPS information indicators off for the weekend. Apogee/3D Realms’ BUILD engine has seen a little bit of press in current weeks, because of the early entry launch of Ion Maiden, a Duke Nukem 3D successor constructed utilizing the famed DOS-era codebase, albeit operating by way of a contemporary source-port.
After abandoning a primary try at a successor engine means again within the day as a result of difficulties in making a first-person modifying interface, authentic engine developer Ken Silverman returned to the fray in 2006. Work continued on BUILD2 till 2011 earlier than he misplaced curiosity. Now, he’s released the final work-in-progress version to the public, and it’s spectacular sufficient that I discover myself questioning what the retro FPS scene would appear to be at present if this got here out 7 years in the past.
The BUILD2 engine is a powerful piece of labor, and appeared (at the very least at one level) largely backwards-compatible with Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior’s maps and entities. Sadly, it falls quick on just a few notable options akin to transparency rendering and animated textures. On the opposite hand, BUILD2 goes far past the unique in quite a lot of methods, together with a way more superior lighting engine, voxel rendering for entities and true room-over-room 3D areas.
Given the explosion of Doom-based modding and engine work that’s occurred over the previous few years, plus the resurgence of the Duke 3D scene leading to an entire new, well-received throwback shooter, I can solely start to think about what the present panorama would appear to be if Silverman had spent just a bit longer engaged on BUILD2, at the very least lengthy sufficient to deliver it as much as par and ideally backwards-compatible with BUILD1’s greatest video games.
You can choose up the BUILD2 engine, editor, pattern scripts and all here. Kudos to YouTube channel CuteFloor for the wonderful video explaining the trials and tribulations the engine went by way of to get thus far.
