[MetHy]

Interviews of Build Engine video games developers



I have made a blog to post the Q&A I've had with Shawn Swift and Bill Buchalter.
This blog will hopefully be used for future interviews as well.

This thread is dedicated to any comments you and I may have about these interviews.
Despite several threads being already related to this subject one way or another, I have decided to make a mega-thread to centralize the information from now on. Any new potential interview may be commented on ITT rather than in seperate threads.


Shawn Swift interview, part 1
Part 1 corresponds to what has already been released on this forum

Shawn Swift interview part 2
Part 2 is new!

Bill Buchalter interview
Includes a never released before map!
____________

Related threads:
Shawn Swift Beta Add-on maps
Duke Caribbean: multiplayer levels

Old interviews assembled by MrFibble

[MetHy]

Added Bill Buchalter's interview:
https://iamrealbuild...alter-interview

Lot's of interesting insight about Sunstorm!

And also, a never released before map by Bill Buchalter made before he joined with Sunstorm!

Screenshots:

 duke0510.png (653.49K)
Number of downloads: 30

 duke0513.png (149.51K)
Number of downloads: 28

 duke0512.png (226.85K)
Number of downloads: 28

MSDN map download:
https://msdn.duke4.net/bigcity.zip

Don't forget to check part 2 of Shawn Swift's interview as well, you're gonna love what he had to say as well as those high-res weapon renders.

[ck3D]

Woah that's a really cool initiative, great stuff. I was just telling Aleks the other day how you should have your own platform for your detective work, maybe one hosted by Duke4. I guess that'll be it! Thank you for your efforts; just about to dive in. Would love to see a new Duke map from you, by the way.

[MrFlibble]

MetHy, on 22 November 2020 - 08:02 AM, said:

And also, a never released before map by Bill Buchalter made before he joined with Sunstorm!

Just checked this out, very cool!

[jkas789]

Jesus MetHy, you are on a roll! Thanks for all your efforts mate.

[MetHy]

jkas789, on 22 November 2020 - 01:00 PM, said:

Jesus MetHy, you are on a roll! Thanks for all your efforts mate.

Thanks to Shawn and Bill above all!

MrFlibble, on 22 November 2020 - 12:05 PM, said:

Just checked this out, very cool!

Bill is quite humble but it's a pretty good map for 1996-1997. After playing it I'm not surprised Robert Travis would see the potential.

Big City map download link on dukeworld also:
https://dukeworld.co...y_BuckWiley.zip

ck3D, on 22 November 2020 - 09:25 AM, said:

Would love to see a new Duke map from you, by the way.

I'm busy with things but after that I'd be more interested in making maps for other games. Other Build games I haven't touched yet like Blood, but more importantly other engines like Doom or Quake/Q3A.

[NNC]

Good job MetHy! You should go for Allen Blum and Levelord as well, that would be huge (and don't forget me, I have my own questions ).

The map is horrible though. Battlelords appear at the worst possible locations without ammo/health/room for movement, punishing layout when a simple secret can drop you somewhere else around the map, sewer maze without scube/boots, glad it's over. Well, typical 1996/97 userlevel, I guess he improved a lot when joining Sunstorm.

[Jimmy]

Great work, as usual. Were those the only two art frames he had, did he have anything else? Have you tried contacting any of the other artists that worked for Sunstorm? There's definitely some lost art from them. If anybody needs help finding people, send me a PM. I'm pretty good at digging people up.

[MetHy]

The Watchtower, on 22 November 2020 - 05:30 PM, said:

Good job MetHy! You should go for Allen Blum and Levelord as well, that would be huge (and don't forget me, I have my own questions ).

The map is horrible though. Battlelords appear at the worst possible locations without ammo/health/room for movement, punishing layout when a simple secret can drop you somewhere else around the map, sewer maze without scube/boots, glad it's over. Well, typical 1996/97 userlevel, I guess he improved a lot when joining Sunstorm.

The 2 BLords in the secret place indeed make for a pretty bad trap. But I don't think the main BLord in the street is that bad, I think the idea is that if you're unlucky enough to go there first, you should think to backtrack, go towards the other path, and only deal with the BLord once you find the appropirate weaponry.

Jimmy, on 23 November 2020 - 01:21 AM, said:

Great work, as usual. Were those the only two art frames he had, did he have anything else? Have you tried contacting any of the other artists that worked for Sunstorm? There's definitely some lost art from them. If anybody needs help finding people, send me a PM. I'm pretty good at digging people up.

I didn't ask for the other frame(s); but as far as map files are concerned Shawn assured me that's all he had.
I understand the importance of preserving this kind of things, source files like those weapons art specifically, but I also don't want to make them feel like they're cows we're trying to milk with a constant "gimme more !", the majority of stuff I've shared here was shared to me without me asking.
My initiative was motivated by learning more about how development of these games and add-ons were going, and casting light on some specific unknow credits if I could; the files are like "the cherry on top of the cake".
There is also a point where it felt like I had outstaged my welcome.

My point is that trust isn't easy to gain and I hope I haven't brought on them unwanted attention and a thousand of e-mails of people asking them for "more betas!"

[Jimmy]

Well that was why I asked you about it instead, because you have the rapport. You really should see if he has anything else, art wise, but that's just my opinion so whatever.

[NY00123]

It is great to see that MetHy has been spending the time on the investigations, while Shawn Swift and Bill Buchalter had agreed to get interviewed.

Partially quoting from the blog, further thanks should go to Shawn for sharing beta versions of Gothic Library (CP03.map in Cryptic Passage) and Brown Water (DUKEDC7.map in Duke It Out In DC),
and to Bill for sharing a previously unreleased map for Duke3D, Big City.

As I wrote in the Duke4.net Discord about a week ago, I played Shawn's beta maps using DOS versions which I had ready with the files for most; In my case, v1.21 for Blood and v1.5 for Duke3D.
I didn't play Blood a lot, although I had a complete play-through in September 2011.
As things turned out - while I surely tried source ports - the copy of the DOS version which I used for replaying Gothic Library (finished version, and then the beta) still has saved games from Sep 2011!

As of yesterday. I went through Big City, eventually finding 8 secrets out of 9. It actually turns out that the missing secret is inaccessible, due to an internal game bug.

Spoiler

If you use the south-east elevator leading to the underground level, there's a hidden switch that should lower a pillar in front of it. This pillar has a matching activator and an SE 31 sprite. However, once the pillar's sector is tagged as a secret (i.e., lotag 32767), it can't be lowered anymore.

Having a tramway system that surrounds the outdoors area is an interesting concept; I don't recall how common it was for Duke3D maps.

I used registered v1.3d this time. As in the case of Blood, the specific directory in use also turned out to still have saved games from 2011; In that case, June 2011.
[I know that I'm going off-topic here, but a separate v1.5 dir also has its own saved games from June 2011, except for an overwritten one (in the first slot) from September 2012, identified with the string "TEST".
From what I recall, I played the first 3 episodes using v1.3d, and then continued to the 4th with v1.5.]

While I haven't figured out how to get the demo sequence given by big_city.dmo to play as expected, a possible good start is following these steps:
1. First of all, the demo should be a part of the usual demo sequence. Thus, it might be good to keep it as the sole demo file, named DEMO1.DMO.
2. It might also not hurt to have a copy of Big_City.map, renamed E1L1.MAP. Custom USER.CON code is probably another option.
3. Finally, I've used a modification of GAME.CON, in which the checktroophit state has been modified as described below.

Given these changes, while using registered v1.3d, Duke may kill both troopers and get a secret pickup. There might already be a desync-related issue at this point, though, mostly with the way Duke tries to go forward while encountering a wall, just a bit on the left. I don't know if it's due to changes in the MAP or in any CON file, or alternatively, if an internal beta version was used.

What I can say for sure is that the demo isn't compatible with version 1.4 or 1.5. It can theoretically be loaded in shareware v1.3d, but the map has contents which are missing from it.

--- GAME.CON	2010-05-04 20:28:37.000000000 +0300
+++ BIG_CITY.CON	2020-11-23 22:07:54.426564800 +0200
@@ -2131,7 +2131,8 @@
 
         ifwasweapon RPG { sound SQUISHED state troop_body_jibs state standard_jibs state delete_enemy }
         else ifwasweapon RADIUSEXPLOSION { sound SQUISHED state troop_body_jibs state standard_jibs state delete_enemy }
-        else { sound PRED_DYING ifrnd 32 iffloordistl 32 { sound LIZARD_BEG spawn BLOODPOOL strength 0 move 0 action ATROOPSUFFERING break } action ATROOPDYING break }
+        else { sound PRED_DYING action ATROOPDYING break }
+//        else { sound PRED_DYING ifrnd 32 iffloordistl 32 { sound LIZARD_BEG spawn BLOODPOOL strength 0 move 0 action ATROOPSUFFERING break } action ATROOPDYING break }
     }
     else
     {

[MetHy]

Jimmy, on 23 November 2020 - 10:37 AM, said:

Well that was why I asked you about it instead, because you have the rapport. You really should see if he has anything else, art wise, but that's just my opinion so whatever.

I'll try and ask him.
I didn't mean to point a finger at you btw, it's just that when I read your post I couldn't help but have flashbacks of something else, and well, you know what I mean.

NY00123, on 23 November 2020 - 12:40 PM, said:

As of yesterday. I went through Big City, eventually finding 8 secrets out of 9. It actually turns out that the missing secret is inaccessible, due to an internal game bug.

Spoiler

If you use the south-east elevator leading to the underground level, there's a hidden switch that should lower a pillar in front of it. This pillar has a matching activator and an SE 31 sprite. However, once the pillar's sector is tagged as a secret (i.e., lotag 32767), it can't be lowered anymore.

Having a tramway system that surrounds the outdoors area is an interesting concept; I don't recall how common it was for Duke3D maps.

That's weird about SE31 not lowering sectors lotag 32767, since it doesn't have an issue lowering sectors with lotag 1 and 2 (for water/underwater), maybe it's a very specific case.

The subway used like that sure is an interesting concept, though I do seem to recall one map from a long time ago which had a subway setup in a similar way, used as tramway going around the city from a high point of view; but I couldn't tell what the name of the map was. Mappers loved their subways in 1996-1997.

Thanks for looking into the demo as well. I figured it was an 1.3 demo and that we're probably missing con files or something else to make it run with no desync, but I thought I'd include it anyway in case someone finds a solution.

[NY00123]

MetHy, on 23 November 2020 - 02:15 PM, said:

That's weird about SE31 not lowering sectors lotag 32767, since it doesn't have an issue lowering sectors with lotag 1 and 2 (for water/underwater), maybe it's a very specific case.

I've had a few looks at the Duke3D code, and this is indeed a limitation of activator operation code.

From the open-source release (SECTOR.C:operateactivators):

                if( sector[sprite[i].sectnum].lotag < 3 )
                {
                    j = headspritesect[sprite[i].sectnum];
                    while(j >= 0)
                    {
                        if( sprite[j].statnum == 3 ) switch(sprite[j].lotag)
                        {
                            case 36:
                            case 31:
                            case 32:
                            case 18:
                                hittype[j].temp_data[0] = 1-hittype[j].temp_data[0];
                                callsound(SECT,j);
                                break;
                        }
                        j = nextspritesect[j];
                    }
                }

From EDuke32 (sector.cpp:G_OperateActivators):

                // ST_2_UNDERWATER
                if (sector[sprite[spriteNum].sectnum].lotag < 3)
                {
                    for (bssize_t SPRITES_OF_SECT(sprite[spriteNum].sectnum, foundSprite))
                    {
                        if (sprite[foundSprite].statnum == STAT_EFFECTOR)
                        {
                            switch (sprite[foundSprite].lotag)
                            {
                                case SE_36_PROJ_SHOOTER:
                                case SE_31_FLOOR_RISE_FALL:
                                case SE_32_CEILING_RISE_FALL:
                                case SE_18_INCREMENTAL_SECTOR_RISE_FALL:
                                    actor[foundSprite].t_data[0] = 1 - actor[foundSprite].t_data[0];
                                    A_CallSound(SECT(spriteNum), foundSprite);
                                    break;
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }

Quote

Thanks for looking into the demo as well. I figured it was an 1.3 demo and that we're probably missing con files or something else to make it run with no desync, but I thought I'd include it anyway in case someone finds a solution.

You're welcome!

While still not entirely there, another possibility is that at least one cheat code was originally toggled on before recording the demo, only that this information was lost, and isn't present in the DMO file. In particular:
- By enabling god mode and disabling clipping before playing back the demo, Duke may progress to the arcade room, before eventually going through a wall. The way he shoots the obstacles looks like the the intended behaviors for most.
- If only god mode is enabled, but my previously quoted CON modification for LIZTROOP is used, then in spite of an earlier desync, Duke will use an elevator to go up to the room with the yellow key door. The demo will clearly go out of sync again after using the elevator to go back.

The reason for the idea of using god mode, at least initially, is that Duke otherwise gets pushed by a laser coming from one of the troopers in the very beginning.
Disabling clipping should assist in a couple of a few cases Duke hits a wall's edge, as well as when he encounters a choking trooper (assuming no CON modification); Both may occur in the demo's very beginning again.

[Jimmy]

MetHy, on 23 November 2020 - 02:15 PM, said:

I'll try and ask him.
I didn't mean to point a finger at you btw, it's just that when I read your post I couldn't help but have flashbacks of something else, and well, you know what I mean.

It's all good, fam. I understand completely.

[MetHy]

I got a confirmation that this is all he's got, no other weapon frame sadly.

[duke3d.exe]

Cool map with 90's vibe, but I had to gave up because im stuck on the sewer maze, no way out once I jump inside. Would be cool if I could find more unreleased maps from people that worked on the 4 episodes and addons.

I also wonder who did the cobra and gorrilla enemies on Xtreme, that wasn't mentioned in the interview.