The Build Engine

[DacaZ]

Duke Nukem? Tek War? Redneck Rampage? Shadow Warrior? Nam?

The best for me is still Blood. Yeah, I rank it just a bit above Duke Nukem just because of its great atmosphere and sense of humor. I spent some serious time with this game and loved every minute of it. The voicework was great, lobbing sticks of dynamite, using voodoo dolls and of course kicking around zombie heads like soccer balls. Great levels too. I'll never forget the carnaval level.

I guess the Build Engine hit its low with Extreme Paintball. But we'll sweep that one under the rug for now.

Can't remember if Hexen used the Build Engine or Doom? Anyone remember?

[Diff-chan]

Nah, Hexen used the Doom engine.

I think the Build engine was tripe, actually. It made its debut in 1996 with Duke Nukem 3D, and a little more than a couple of months later, Quake came and rendered the 2D sprite-based engine obsolete. Still, it hung around for a long time.

The first time I played an online game was with Duke Nukem 3D, on the TEN beta (and later Kali), so thats cool. I also learned m+k control with Duke. However, I never really thought the game was much good outside of multiplayer. DN3D was essentially the equivalent of a movie that has all the best parts in the trailer - the first episode of the game (which was given away free) was easily the best in the game, while the other two were pretty poor.

So 3D Realms released an obsolete engine that powered a mediocre singleplayer/clever multiplayer game, and somehow got the biggest ego in the game industry. They've spent nearly six years working on Duke Nukem Forever. What a bunch of tools.

[Riptwo]

Blood was a great game. Throwing burning cans of hairspray into a crowd of your friends and enemies alike in CTF rules me. Voodoo dolls, flare guns, tesla cannons, oh my. And the game had a killer soundtrack. And yeah, while the Quake engine did make the Build engine's graphics seem fairly inferior, it couldn't match the scale of the maps for ages. The Build engine was more adept at handling huge outdoor areas, where Quake's engine was far better for more claustrophobic environments. Granted, the outdoor maps in Build games looked pretty poor, but they had a sense of scale that the Quake engine couldn't match. So yeah. Go Build, go.

[Tain]

I love the Build Engine simply because I used to be a fucking idiot. Still am, to an extent.

Build made modding easy. The easiest level editor I've seen for such a game, and that Con scripting stuff was simple.

Duke 3D was also the first FPS that I played "seriously". I'd play it day in and day out. Even today, I'll play it every once in a while.

Shadow Warrior was also fun, but I could never get into it as much as Duke3D. And Blood is a game that I still plan to play, some time.

[Chojin]

The build engine was great. It was incredibly easy to use and make levels with(Although sometimes assining tags proved a problem). Also, on AOL waaaay back in the day when you went to keyword 3D Realms it took you to a user field where you could submit and d/l levels for Duke Nukem 3D. I used to love checking out and submitting levels and watching my better maps get ultra d/l counts(Great for the ego). Of course they eventually got rid of that and thus AOL was useless again.

When Blood came out, the build engine was tweaked so it could finally take advantage of the z-plane and you could do all that room over room stuff...too bad no one cared anymore. Quake already owned everything by then.

[piku]

I never really played too too much Duke3D, other than a bit of shareware, so I really can't comment. I do know that Quake eats it alive however

One thing I haven't tried out though is the much-vaunted multiplayer aspect of it. And that’s the problem with multiplayer - once you miss it the first time around, your done.

[ChaoofNee]

Originally posted by diffusionx
DN3D was essentially the equivalent of a movie that has all the best parts in the trailer - the first episode of the game (which was given away free) was easily the best in the game, while the other two were pretty poor.

That must be why they gave away the whole thing for free in PC Gamer.
Yup, I've got the entire thing for free. Legally.

...and lemme tell you, dif, I agree with you...
Would've made more sense to put the episodes in reverse order.

[CypherUppercut]

Hehe... I actually wrote a college paper about the Build engine for an art theory class. Amazingly I got an A on the paper. Good memories...

[Stone]

I think Shadow Warrior might've been my favorite Build game...hard, fairly interesting levels, good weapons, and I kind of enjoyed the humor. Some of the puzzles were really bad, but, eh, you can say that about most of the games released at the time.

[GohanX]

Duke Nukem was definately the best for me, although Shadow Warrior is a close second.

I've bought Duke Nukem 3d THREE times now...from either losing or scratching up the original discs. But hey, last time it was only 5 bucks...