This and Unreal were the last great software rendered 3d game engines before GPUs became mainstream.
EDIT: I should have mentioned the BUILD engine too, written single-handedly by one developer for Duke Nukem 3D.
EDIT: I should have mentioned the BUILD engine too, written single-handedly by one developer for Duke Nukem 3D.
Ken Silverman was a prodigy of sorts. I always wondered what he would have done if he had ended up staying in the industry.
> 08/24/1993: Ken signs employment agreement with Apogee Software Productions. A special provision on the contract says that Apogee cannot interfere with Ken's education.
Inferring from the first entry in the timeline, he must have been 17 or 18 then.
06/09/1992: Ken's brother, Alan, hogs the computer by
playing a new game titled "Wolfenstein 3D"
06/16/1992: I decide I can win over his time by making my
own version, originally titled "Walken" (Walk + Ken)
stonewall: In 1993 you made a proposal for the Build engine on
behalf of Epic Games. At the time Epic was releasing pinball
games and a year later research began on Unreal. What were your
plans for Build and how did not getting that engine affect Epic?
Mark: I'd say we came out way ahead the way things worked out.
With Ken Silverman (creator of the Build engine) on board we
might not have been as motivated to make our own technology.
Build was good tech and of course Duke Nukem got made with it,
but it wasn't a long-term technology play like the Unreal Engine.
So both Epic and 3DRealms ended up better off for the way things
worked out. 3DRealms produced the monster hit Duke Nukem 3D and,
by complete coincedence, we went on to produce the engine that
they will use for the sequel to it.Maybe because these days you can't get away with a CLI compiler and some freeware to make "total conversions".
There's this incredibly high cost curve for assets. Back about 6 years ago the dev:art ratio was about 1:10 and I'm going to guess it's even higher these days.
That's partially also why you see pixel art style thrive in the indie game space. It's the right combination of low production overhead that can still convey a large amount of information/style.
Quake 1 had quake-c and a simple compiler (and later decompiler) and some third party freeware to make models and maps.
Come Quake 2 you needed visual-C++ and 3D studio to make mods.
I suppose something came along later on in the lifespan leading up to Quake2?
To this day, I haven't encountered a better FPS than Quake3. Quake3 isn't the fastest (Painkiller was IIRC), but it hit the sweet spot and today's contenders (including the new Quake) fail to deliver. The new Unreal Tournament looks promising and likely to be a replacement for Unreal Tournament 1.
I've tried and failed to play an FPS with a controller on a console and PC. The games are adapted to the imprecise input devices but it's still nothing like the Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament 1 keyboard+mouse experience. I couldn't get a positive experience out of it, and I hope kids getting started will have a chance to play those games as intended in order to have the full picture.
Graphics make you buy the game, mechanics make you keep playing, and story gives you happy memories afterward. That explains why AAA games have good graphics, average mechanics, and bad stories :-)
I eventually got GLQuake and did the same for Quake 1, it was so exciting!
The first games I got working on my 3dfx was Quake and Tomb Raider, both game changing for the time.