... But if you actually look closely, you'll see it doesn't leverage many of the build's new features, such as slopes and other advanced techniques, right? It still feels very much like a Doom engine game, even though it's not. So that's kind of like where Duke would stand apart. And 3D Realms actually hired Ken Silverman to work on this, but Ken did not design build, from what I understand, specifically to make Duke 3D. ...
... It's a source port that I have played a bit of and honestly, it's not worth it. It's not that good, but come on. They try to simulate a city with pedestrians. It's got a working train system. It's got all this stuff that feels way ahead of its time. It barely works, but it was all thanks to the build engine. But if you actually look closely, you'll see it doesn't leverage many of the build's new features, such as slopes and other advanced techniques, right? It still feels very much like a Doom engine game, even though it's not. So that's kind of like where Duke would stand apart. And 3D Realms actually hired Ken Silverman to work on this, but Ken did not design build, from what I understand, specifically to make Duke 3D. He just designed this killer engine and the team at 3D Realms was able to leverage that to create the game. Yeah, and it sounds like they initially just wanted to make a feature clone of Doom. Doom is popular. Let's do our own Doom. This is the one period in time in which your third game could be called 3D, and I love that. I really miss that era. ...
19 more quotes about Doom from this episode
01:07:46 - 01:08:53
... And there's an entire episode that takes place in space, in like spaceships. It's similar to what you would see in a Doom game, but because of the tools they're playing with, it's a lot more interesting. There's like teleporters, there's varying geometry, there's ships flying around you. ...
01:00:22 - 01:03:38
... And I'm trying to remember, to bring myself back to 1996, like, did I play with mouse? Look, I probably did, but I don't think I played Doom using the mouse at all. And I can't remember. ...
00:49:34 - 00:51:15
... I have not played that content. I feel like opinions are mixed on that, but it is still nice to see what would they do 10 years ago with all of the level design hindsight they have. I've always wanted specifically Nightdive to tackle this, and I'm sure there's licensing reasons why they can't, but when they've re-released stuff like Quake, Quake 2 Doom, they always create these amazing level packs. Like for Quake, they worked with machine games to create like brand new episodes, which is like, what could you do…
00:24:23 - 00:26:48
It's very impressive technology that could run on low end PCs of the time, which is why it was so popular. You might not have been able to run Quake like John, I believe you said, but you could definitely run Duke Nukem 3D and other build engine games. And yes, this was invented by a genius teenager named Ken Silverman, who essentially basically he took a look at Doom, correct? And said, okay, here are all the things. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. And Wolfenstein, right? ...
01:34:33 - 01:37:47
as you would in real life, there will be objects under or over things. And you need to, like, not just look for the big shiny object like set up for you on a pedestal. And this has carried through to a new generation of games. You've got Ion Fury, which released a few years back with an expansion more recently, and that runs on the Duke 32 engine and was made by people from the Duke Nukem modding scene. You've got Salaco, which is, despite running on the GZ Doom engine, feels like a build engine game because it…
00:41:44 - 00:43:24
... Yes, yes, so it is, and there's the secret within where you find Picard's really ready room, which has, like, more porn on every screen going. And there's sort of the attitude in finding, like, the space marine from Doom, you know, that's one Doom space marine. I think Lara Croft's in there as well, and maybe in the PlayStation version. ...
01:17:02 - 01:19:05
... Okay. Thank you. If I recall, I'm pretty sure both this and Quake and Doom, in fact, that was one of my favorite things to do was to play Duke and co-op. But it was just like the single player levels, but you just run around with another dude, basically. ...
00:54:59 - 00:57:22
... This is not actual geometry as far as we know, but it evokes that kind of feeling. Walls can break down and reveal hidden passages, buildings will crumble, earthquakes tear apart the land, water levels rise and lower, and this was not possible until they could dynamically alter these sectors, which is not going on in Doom. Exactly. That is a key feature, and you actually see it in stuff like Witch Haven beforehand, but Duke really takes it to the next level, and it does make the levels feel a lot more dynamic.…
00:02:29 - 00:04:51
... Yeah, I played it, like, right as the original shareware version was coming out. My parents generally did not care what I was playing games-wise. I started with Wolfenstein and Doom and Catacuma before that, but I remember my dad, who was the one who got all the hardware in the household, and he was impressed with the technology, the collapsing buildings, the interactivity of the environments. He kind of just shrugged at the ridiculous macho action man stylings, and it was being able to just do these little…
00:21:42 - 00:23:05
... But you had the limited height, no elevation changes, no weird curves or angles on the walls, it was extremely limited. Whereas Doom, this was where John Carmack came up with this idea of doing sector-based 3D, which allowed you to sort of arbitrarily define the height of walls within a space to create this sort of like 3D structures, if you will. And like a control sector kind of dictated the height and texture of the target sector in the game, which allowed for like platforms and different heights and ceilings…
00:18:49 - 00:20:34
Yeah, for sure. So the early '90s was indeed a very important time for this first-person shooter genre, and Wolfenstein was one of the key ones, but there were so many others. And I think what ended up happening is that at first you saw a lot of companies develop Wolfenstein-like games, which actually relates to the build engine itself, as we'll get to. But quickly after, you got Doom in 1993, and this was really when the floodgates opened and we started getting what they always called "Doom clones" at the time.…
00:39:37 - 00:40:07
... But Duke actually made it logical, right? And Doom, everything's very abstract. You just look at stuff like, oh, a wall open, right? ...
00:06:12 - 00:06:47
... I think another major factor just very briefly is this is a game that has character, and you are a character. You are Duke Nukem that's like inarguable. In Doom you're a marine, sure. You're BJ Blazkowicz in Wolfenstein, but that's just like whatever. This is a guy who talks, he talks about what he's seeing. He is there. The world has character to match him. ...
00:46:31 - 00:47:07
... But yeah, there was this whole market for selling CD-ROMs packed with levels from around the internet. I mean, I got into that first with the Doom packs, and then it was hard not to get into that because internet access was so sparse at the time. It was difficult to get on the internet. ...
01:11:28 - 01:12:03
... But I did notice in this game, if I'm playing it again, I would not call this a cover-based shooter, but I was using cover a lot more than I would in Doom or a similar older game, just because there is so much stuff in these levels. You're not just walking down big hallways or in big rooms. ...
00:58:26 - 00:59:02
... Yeah, I think it's a reasonably common shareware thing, maybe I'm being unfair here, that the first episode is the best episode, that's the one that gets you to buy the game. I mean, I feel that way about the original Doom, which is a game I love passionately, but I do feel episodes two and three aren't quite as interesting as episode one. That's down to Sandy Peterson, who, let's be honest, he's New York. ...
00:11:00 - 00:11:39
... They were popular for offering in a way console style gameplay on the PC. And if you go read the book Masters of Doom, which is great, it really explains how id Software unlocked that kind of capability on the PC, which was not built for fast side scrolling gameplay. It's why PC games were often adventure games or RPGs at the time. ...
01:32:19 - 01:32:57
... So hats off to Duke Nukem 3D. Any final thoughts here? Yeah, so like one of the things that really stuck out to me is like we're all still playing games like this, right? Between Doom, the Duke Community Quake, and I've thought a lot about like why is that? Like what makes these games so good? And along the way, I'm revisiting other shooters from newer eras. ...
01:24:34 - 01:25:15
Demon Throne is Duke Nukemisekai, he is flying through space on a mission when his ship explodes, and he has been spirited away to a magical world where a wizard says that I've called you here Duke of Newcomb to save this realm. And yeah, it's a big Duke Nukem fantasy adventure with enemies from Heretic, Hexen and Doom in there. I want to play this more than anything. Awesome weapon sprites, too. Yes, it is getting into weird cross over territory. He literally has like a cannon, like, you know, the type that you…
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