Questions for possible interview with Ken Silverman [collection of questions is completed]

[UnknDoomer]

In continue of

topic. By coincidence, Ken got in touch shortly before John Romero, so the formation of the list of questions turned out to be parallel. For those who don’t know who he is, but still want to address a question:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Silverman
2. http://www.advsys.net/ken/

 

Three conditions applied:

1. No joke questions.
2. 1 person - 1 question. Subquestions allowed.
3. Total amount will be limited to 30. Slots left: 0.

 

Will be waiting for your offers.

--

 

Current questions list:

 

1. Has anything inspired you to create the Build engine? And, regarding your participation in specific games development, perhaps you can mention a few interesting facts?

2. taufan99 asking: "Ever since I played Ken's Labyrinth and your other programs, I've fallen in love with the KSM format. However, I'd like to know if you may release a converter to the General MIDI format, because even though I acknowledge that AdLib is a good sound card, I'm more of a General MIDI fan myself.".

 

3. vyruss asking: "During the experimentation phase of the build engine, what led to the final design decision to use portals amongst other technologies of the time? I am aware of it's benefits compared to other rendering technologies at the time, as well as the constraints of mainstream user hardware - was there a significant analysis done on different approaches to measure their strengths and weaknesses, or did the idea start in one iteration as an engine unrelated to the Build engine and then grew organically from there? I ask this because of my (hazy) memory showing different levels of capability between something like Ken's Labyrinth going to Duke Nukem 3D and other big names of the day.".

 

4. DNSKILL5 asking: "Build during development of first Blood times. There is some controversial information about this period available around the web. Long story short - things seem to have gone rough with this one. Could you tell us a little about the specifics of the work at that project?".

 

5. "The Legend of the Seven Paladins 3D" (1994) counts as the first commercial, Build based project. Also, in contrast to further one, it's based on an early version of the build. Still, its story itself rather remains in fog. Can you, perhaps, shed some light on this unusual project?

 

6. On your site I've noticed a title called "Fate" (1996), from Capstone, which is interesting, because I've never heard that they have made a bet on Build much specifically. "Corridor 8: Galactic Wars", which is supposed to be a sequel to "Corridor 7: Alien Invasion' ' (1994) uses the Doom engine at the end point. Can you tell me a bit about this title?

 

7. Zdoom-derived ports support the .kvx voxel format (and only that), making this ancient format from the Blood era the single, uncontested voxel standard for the doom community, which is known to be the most alive (there is, of course, DelphiDoom, which can eat .vox, but it’s exotic with a bunch of its own limitations. There are a lot of voxel formats and editors. But in order to put voxels into Doom, you need to run them through a converter editor into .kvx. There you can optionally tint and center them. Such an editor is the yours editor of SLAB6, a software from 2011, which has long been lying around. SLAB6 has a limit on voxel model sizes of 256x256x255 pixels.

 

Mastermind, for example, could fit in. But if you upscale it, it won’t anymore, or, at least, it seems so. There are no more modern alternatives on the horizon and are not expected and in general this creates a bad syndrome when something modern is tied to ancient abandoned infrastructure.
 

Generally speaking. It is possible to bypass the limitation through your utility, POLY2VOX. But this requires a schizophrenic voxel-model-voxel conversion scheme with dirty hacks in the 3D editor for centering. Which is also not good.

 

Long introduction ends and this raises the question. Do you have any plans to release a more modern version of SLAB6?

 

8. ck3D asking: "To this day Build is an oddity in the landscape of game engines that, most often, are designed with rather imminent concerns of practical application in mind. Especially modern games tend to rely on photorealism a lot more than in the general 90's for user immersion and relatability, sometimes at the expense of more creative alternative approaches to complement. Games such as Duke Nukem 3D didn't miss any of those marks and somehow managed to push credible environments all the while technically introducing reality-bending tricks: sector-over-sector (allowing for the potentially endless stacking impossible spaces on top of shared coords), and walls possibly rewriting their position at runtime are features that make it that, in addition to being a tool that was destined to serve production, Build also can be approached as its own mini-medium and generally is as such by most longtimers in the mapping communities.
 

How much of this creative freedom was deliberate and maybe important to you when designing the engine, were you hoping (or did you even expect) those uncommon and relatively experimental features would be embraced by its users, were you aware of the punch they would eventually pack to the point where they still are influencing some niche schools of level design, or were you just having mindless fun while it lasted and still unaware of how more rigid gaming was just about to become as soon as the next couple of trends came up?

Subquestion that are also related to intent. While it is common popular canon to retain "realism" as a forte of the engine, I would tend to disagree and argue it really is suggestion-based, and the apparent relatability of most Build environments really is just a surface level hook towards more abstract level designs and creative layout ideas. It relies on disguising a lot in order to put players in situations they normally wouldn't be drawn to because said situations usually are quite technical (and so, paradoxically, a lot of fun for mappers to compose). What do you think?".

 

9. How was your experience working with 3DR on Duke Nukem 3D regarding the feedback you got directly from level designers? Did you approach your task of creating the game engine purely from a coding / mathematical perspective according to what the developers needed, or did you actively look at it in a way that a level designer / player would? Did the level designers catch on quickly with how to use the editor or did you struggle to find a common ground / show them your perspective?

10. The flagship Build engine games had relatively protracted development cycles, with Shadow Warrior dating back to 1993-1994, and the Build engine actively evolved throughout all those years. Did you play every build of Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D, or was it up to the playtesting team?

11. Have you played Shaw's Nightmare, and if yes, what do you think of it? It sure feels like it could use some performance optimizations.

12. Powerslave never uses sloped surfaces in any of the official maps, and it had been thought for a long time that the Build engine version it runs on does not have this feature implemented yet. However, recently it was discovered that Powerslave actually does have full support for slopes, and a custom map pack was created to take full advantage of this feature. Since sloped surfaces would seem like a logical element in an Ancient Egypt-themed game (e.g. to create pyramids), it was speculated by the community that 3D Realms might have withheld information about certain tech specs when it sub-licensed the Build engine, to retain the competitive edge with its own products. Can you comment on this in any way?

 

13. If you were to recreate something equivalent to the Build Engine using the knowledge you have now, would you make any design changes?

14. At the turn of 1997-1998, computer game developers would inevitably have to switch to full-fledged 3D graphics. Were you, perhaps, planning a completely new and truly 3D engine instead of Build at that time, i.e. before 00's? Later on, it seems, Voxlap took that niche.

15. In continuation of the previous one. Looks like you are a fan of voxels, were you tempted to work more with traditional full 3D in overall, except for the POLYMOST renderer for Build?

 

16. drugon asking: "In the second half of the 90's, 3D graphics were actively developing and at some point it seemed that shooters using sprite monsters would sink into oblivion, giving way to shooters with 3D models. Sprite monsters themselves were obviously a technical compromise at the time, allowing the hardware of that time to somehow adequately pull out the game without sacrificing the detail of the environment, like early simulators, where simple 3D models without sprites were used. But as often happens with popular games, constrained by technical limitations, these limitations then become a stylistic guideline for future developers. Sprite objects in first-person shooters are a clear example of this and are often used in modern retro shooters (Mullet Madjack, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, Supplice, so on). Did Ken imagine at the turn of the 90's and 00's that such a technique would generate so many followers and would be relevant to this day?".

17. drugon asking: "Well, one more specific question, if I may. Did Ken think that the Duke engine would be used to some extent decades later? And not only in the many really worthy fan free works (WG Realms, Duke Nukem Forever 2013, so on), but also in the commercial release?".

 

18. What is your opinion of ray tracing as an option? It gets a lot of attention in recent years, which also took a place in classic titles, Doom including. It's just another temporary "noise of the modern" or it's something like the "real deal" thing?

19. If in '24 it would be required to make another engine from scratch, with software rendering, for a new 3D shooter, what would be the main differences in comparison to Build?

 

20. Do you have any regrets working on Build or stuff youd wish youd have differently or no? This includes technical related aspects of Build.

 

21. What do you think of the potential of voxel engines like VOXLAP today? Voxelstein 3D was more of a tech demo, but it is still quite an interesting experience. Do you think games like it have a future?

 

22. Cheello is currently working on his his massive Voxel Duke Nukem 3D project, which aims to recreate every sprite in the game. Have you seen Cheello's other work: Voxel Doom, Voxel Blood?

23. Is there any feature that Build engine (prior to open sourcing) didn't have that you wish you had implemented?

 

24. If not a secret. Why did you decide to leave the major game industry? Commercial one kind i.e. Is there any chance of you returning to it, maybe even a Duke related thing or a Build based title, as unlikely as it is, if someone asks?

 

25. Did you ever envision Build 2 as anything beyond a summer camp learning project? What kind of game do you think it could work better with than, say, EDuke32? What prompted you to release Build 2 in 2018, almost 10 years after you stopped working on it?

26. What's the story with the mysterious Ken's Labyrinth II? It appears that the project has been in the works since around 2007, but it has almost no publicity. Are / were you involved in any way apart from licensing the characters? Isn't it a bit disappointing that the game is using GZDoom and not Build or another engine of yours?

 

27. Ken, you mention your love for cartography and maps, and there are images of the US map among the wall textures in Ken's Labyrinth. Has this hobby of yours been useful for designing maps for Ken's Labyrinth, or for any other aspects of game / engine design?

 

28. Can you tell us what you are doing now, what projects you are interested in. Do you currently make any software for creating games?

 

29. Have you played Ion Fury and if so what do you think of the game? Do you think it is a worthy spiritual successor to Duke Nukem 3D? Do you believe more games like Ion Fury should be coming out?

 

30. Any final words you would like to say to our readers?

Edited May 31 by UnknDoomer

[taufan99]

Here's my question for Ken Silverman:

"Ever since I played Ken's Labyrinth and your other programs, I've fallen in love with the KSM format. However, I'd like to know if you may release a converter to the General MIDI format, because even though I acknowledge that AdLib is a good sound card, I'm more of a General MIDI enjoyer myself."

[GibFrag]

What’s Ken’s side of the story to this text file (GEORGE.TXT) found in a prototype version of Blood? 

[UnknDoomer]

@DNSKILL5, I briefly checked this file. Based on what mentioned there, I suppose, we will not get much answers. Better to ask something else, I guess, rather then raising old conflicts.

[GibFrag]

Okay, then let me rephrase it with: What was it like working on BUILD during the development of Blood? 

[UnknDoomer]

Well. Still not sure about this one, still, for the moment we have not much questions, so I've edited it, as I can, and added into the list.

Edited May 27 by UnknDoomer

[Marmiteman02]

Why are Build Map Editors so far behind in useability then the mapping tools for other engines ?

[UnknDoomer]

@Marmiteman02, see no point to ask such question, it's, basically, rithoric one kind. Unless you can reformulate it in a different form.

Edited May 28 by UnknDoomer

[taufan99]

35 minutes ago, Marmiteman02 said:

Why are Build Map Editors so far behind in useability then the mapping tools for other engines ?

I'm sure Mapster32 is managed by the EDuke32 team, not Ken himself.

[Sinshu]

If you were to recreate something equivalent to the Build Engine using the knowledge you have now, would you make any design changes?

[vyruss]

Not sure if this has been asked with any Q&A for Ken but I have this one that I've been curious about:

During experimentation phase of the build engine, what led to the final design decision to use portals amongst other technologies of the time? I am aware of its benefits compared to other rendering technologies at the time, as well as the constraints of mainstream user hardware - was there a significant analysis done on different approaches to measure their strengths and weaknesses, or did the idea start in one iteration as an engine unrelated to the Build engine and then grew organically from there?  I ask this because of my (hazy) memory showing different levels of capability between something like Ken's Labyrinth going to Duke 3D and other big names of the day.

[oneselfSelf]

On 5/27/2024 at 12:00 AM, DNSKILL5 said:

What’s Ken’s side of the story to this text file (GEORGE.TXT) found in a prototype version of Blood? 

 

Honestly I think both sides had some unfortunate circumstances and I do not blame the original Blood team for bailing. I cannot imagine the stress Ken had to go through while developing the Build Engine with three whole games being developed on top of it. All handled by separate teams that, just based on the text file alone, didn't really communicate whatsoever. Not only that but the second coming of Digital Christ, John Carmack, was about to unleash the Quake engine onto the world so they needed to act fast before the spotlight gets ripped from them.

 

It's amazing that those games even came out, let alone a few months apart.

[UnknDoomer]

Continue to collecting questions.

Edited May 31 by UnknDoomer

[UnknDoomer]

Slots are full, questions are no longer accepted, list has been sent to the addressee.

Edited May 31 by UnknDoomer