The History of Ken Silverman's Build Engine
The Build engine was written by Ken Silverman (previous creator of Ken's Labyrinth in 1993) for 3D Realms, who also licensed it out to various other developers. In the modern era it has been revived via source port EDuke32 for games such as Ion Fury (2019) and A.W.O.L. (2022). While sprite and sector based like the Doom engine, the use of portal rendering rather than binary space partitioning allowed for more dynamic environments. The source code was released in 2000, followed by releases of the Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior game code in 2003 and 2005, as well as the Capstone Software code in 2007. Other games were reverse engineered.
Games[]
Left to right: Jake Cardigan, Jon, Leonard, Caleb, Lo Wang, Grondoval, Duke Nukem
Left to right: Grondoval, Caleb, Lo Wang, Leonard, Duke Nukem, Jon
Ranking Every Build Engine Game From Worst to Best (Including Eduke32)
- Ken's Labyrinth (1993; precursor game)
- Rock'n Shaolin - The Legend of the Seven Paladins (1994; unauthorized, South Korea only)
- Witchaven (1995)
- William Shatner's TekWar (1995)
- Duke Nukem 3D (1996)
- Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition (1996, aka Plutonium Pak)
- Duke!ZONE (1996, levels pack)
- Duke!ZONE II (1997, includes exclusive episodes)
- Duke Xtreme (1997, levels pack)
- Duke It Out In D.C. (1997)
- Duke Caribbean: Life's A Beach (1997)
- Duke: Nuclear Winter (1997)
- Witchaven II: Blood Vengeance (1996)
- PowerSlave (1996, PC version only)
- Fate (1996; demo only)
- Blood (1997)
- Blood: Cryptic Passage (1997, aka Passage to Transylvania)
- Blood: Plasma Pak (1997, aka Post Mortem)
- Shadow Warrior (1997)
- Shadow Warrior: Twin Dragon (1997, online only)
- Redneck Rampage (1997)
- Redneck Rampage Rides Again (1998)
- Redneck Deer Huntin' (1998)
- NAM (1998)
- Liquidator (1998; unauthorized, Russia only)
- Extreme PaintBrawl (1999)
- WWII GI (1999)
Two more games by Capstone Software, Corridor 8 and Witchaven III, were cancelled when that company went bankrupt in 1996, although a prototype of the former exists online. The modern incarnation of 3D Realms published a new shooter using an enhanced version of the engine in 2019 called Ion Fury, as well as the expansion Aftershock in 2023.
Three cancelled expansions exist for Shadow Warrior: Twin Dragon by Wylde Productions and Level Infinity, Wanton Destruction by Sunstorm Interactive, and Deadly Kiss by Simply Silly Software. All were later released freely online in 1998, 2005, and 2010, with Deadly Kiss only in a provisional state. Twin Dragon and Wanton Destruction were subsequently included in digital re-releases of the game, while a fan project exists to polish up Deadly Kiss to completion.