I remember as a kid in the 90s there was some kinda bug with the sector effectors in Build that just irked me beyond comprehension, and I despised Ken for it, for years. He was missing from the Duke3D team photo that was in the CD booklet even though he was the "Engine Programmer". I didn't know it at the time, I assumed he worked for 3D Realms, but he was basically just an indie dev who'd licensed his engine to them to build Duke3D with. I needed a face to put that hatred toward! I don't even remember what the bug/problem was. It was silly, I know that now as an adult, but the name Ken Silverman brought me a lot of mixed feelings back then. I was fascinated that he'd managed to create a better-than-Doom engine, but was frustrated because the dang sector effectors didn't do what they were supposed to! It might've not been sector effectors, it very well could've been something with the sector vertex editing or something silly. I just remember thinking "How could Ken let this happen?!" and staring at the 3D Realms team photo in my Duke3D CD booklet that said "Not Pictured: Ken Silverman". KS was super accomplished for the time, clearly right up there just about with Carmack and the like. It's a privilege and an honor to have played and built levels for the games that were built out of his ingenuity. It sculpted and inspired me into becoming the indie dev that I am today.
Are you sure you weren't just using them incorrectly or misunderstanding their intention? There was an entire book on making Duke 3D levels (which I own still).
A long time ago teenage me was visiting Ken's webpage a lot and also trying all these test programs he made available. But what I remember most fondly is e-mailing him with my silly teenage ramblings and Ken actually taking the time to respond every time! Ken Silverman is such a great person.
This is nowhere near complete. The only thing that even has collision detection is the walls and floor. You would basically have to finish the engine before you remade DN3D
It is a shame that no one has been interested in using this engine. Can you imagine what would have happened if Duke Nukem Forever, Blood II, Prey or a hypothetical Powerslave/Exhumed 2, Shadow Warrior 2, and Redneck Rampage 3 would have used this game engine.
Well, Ken actually decided to scrap this and use some of the code from it to make an even more powerful engine called KENVEX around 1999. The reason why the games you mentioned didn't use that engine was because Ken and the other developers kinda got in over their heads and they couldn't figure out how to finalize the level editing system, and there were also a lot of other components that had problems.
I’ve tried a few times here or there, but Ken’s code is a bit sloppy (he’ll use really confusing variable names, and define/redefine structures that exist in multiple files). Ken used a Watcom C compiler as well to write most of this, and it doesn’t work with most modern compilers, so you’d have to rewrite pretty much EVERYTHING just to get it to work.
