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[RELEASE] Historical snapshots of Ken Silverman's works

User is offline   NY00123 

#1

Hi all,

This release may be seen as a successor to the following one from May 2019: https://forums.duke4...es-and-sources/
There's also this SW-related February 2019 release thread (emphasis on a few Build Engine sources and binaries): https://forums.duke4...de-re-released/

Archives: https://ny.duke4.net...ves-20241213.7z
Data patches: https://ny.duke4.net...hes-20241213.7z



Mainly thanks to Ken Silverman, you should now have access to multiple snapshots of Ken's works. That includes snapshots of the Ken-Build test game and/or sources (exact contents vary by the directory), two snapshots of 2DRAW, three of Polytex, various test programs (often written in QuickBasic) and more.

Let's hope I haven't messed up. I've uploaded two files. One had the replacement of copyrighted graphics and sounds not of Ken, usually from Doom. The other is a "patches" archive that may let you restore these resources.

Unsurprisingly, this might be the last time I prepare such an amount of contents for release.

Two questions may be brought up:
- Why use a license like the familiar BUILDLIC.TXT one of June 2000? Well, here's what I know about Ken and shouldn't be new information. It's true he supports sharing his works with the public, as shown in his website. On the other hand, in case one wants to make commercial use, Ken prefers getting contacted for the details.
- Why include converted and edited Doom maps (outside of the "patches" archive)? Well, apart from having the edits applied back in the 1990s, the previously released Build_Apr1994.zip snapshot had already had one of these maps. By the way, this snapshot is re-released here under BUIL0408, now with a few changes. These mainly refer to the addition of previously missing files (also in the "patches" archive).

// "Build Engine & Tools" Copyright (c) 1993-1997 Ken Silverman
// Ken Silverman's official web site: "http://www.advsys.net/ken"
// See the included license file "BUILDLIC.TXT" for license info.

Disclaimer
----------

Unless stated otherwise, assume that what is mentioned in this file,
along with the newly included files BIN-BAS.TXT, FILESLST.TXT and NOTES.TXT,
was not written by Ken Silverman.

Consider most of the included contents to be internal development versions.
Any of them might malfunction in any unexpected manner.
Use at your own risk.

Executables found under BUIL0624, BUIL0719, BUIL0801 and buildold_12_30_94
use code not written by Ken, namely the files SPW_INT.H and SWPINT.OBJ added
for supporting an old SpaceBall controller. To compare, a different version
of the file SPW_INT.H may be found alongside the Rise of the Triad (1994-1995)
sources as released in December 2002. The aforementioned files added
for SpaceBall support are included for reference, but you should
assume nothing regarding what you're allowed to do with them.

The same might hold to other files when it comes to
what you're allowed to do, in case Ken was not behind them.

Terms of use for Ken Silverman's assets, binaries and sources
-------------------------------------------------------------

See the included license file BUILDLIC.TXT for "Build Engine & Tools"
license info, along with 2DRAWLIC.TXT for the 2DRAW license and CUBESLIC.TXT
for the CUBES5 license. Their contents were originally written by Ken.

The contents of 2DRAWLIC.TXT and CUBESLIC.TXT were copied from
larger document files released by Ken earlier, 2drawsrc.txt and CUBES5.TXT.

About
-----

This is a collection of multiple revisions of past works of Ken Silverman.
Included here are various revisions of the Build Engine, the Build Editor
and the Ken-Build test game. Also covered are a few Polytex revisions,
two revisions of the 2DRAW engine, an early program
rendering Chess pieces (CHESS_ANIM), revisions of multiple
test programs (often written in QuickBasic) and more to find.

More often than not, source code is included. You should also find binaries.
There are good chances that in at least a few instances, an executable
will not match sources found in the same directory.

As of writing this (December 12-13 2024), it's been not much more than 30 years
since the first known (technical) release of a game using the Build Engine,
namely Rock'n Shaolin: Legend of Seven Paladins 3D. It's also just a week,
more-or-less, from 31 years since starting the sector-based Build Engine.
That was done by Ken after a phone call with John Carmack.
This usage of sectors replaced the grid-based approach from earlier in 1993.

Good chances are a subset of the included directories is based
on snapshots of Ken's work tree. Such snapshots are directories
with MAKEFILE and TEAMMAKE file pairs, and a portion of them
has full ENGINE.C sources. Other directories are probably based on
partial backups and/or archives originally prepared by Ken for game developers.

Some more details
-----------------

Most contents were found and sent by Ken before preparing them for
release. The files under BUILD_FROM_MATT came from Matt Saettler,
while the ones under BUILD_FROM_SW_TREE were sourced
from an internal Shadow Warrior development CD.
In fact, outside of CHESS.EXE and STUFF.DAT, the contents of BUILD_FROM_SW_TREE
had already been released back in May 2019. A URL may be found
further below for the May 2019 release.

Certain Ken-Build game assets were replaced, due to
originally coming from other games. BIN-BAS.TXT has notes of
mine about included binary (non-textual) QuickBasic .BAS files.
For textual .BAS files and other sources, it is up
to the general public to discover their purposes.

Additional collected notes written by me during reviews (with edits)
may be found under NOTES.TXT.

FILESLST.TXT covers a list of files with their original
line counts (for textual files), sizes and timestamps,
before any modification was applied.

Note that if you compare the details of BUILD_FROM_SW_TREE under FILESLST.TXT
to the ones from the aforementioned May 2019 release, you'll find that 9 files
had their timestamps changed by 1 hour. The apparent reason was that extracting
the files at the time (before the May 2019 release) introduced an offset
in cases daylight saving time was considered to be inconsistent in any manner.

Either way, it is important to mention that generally speaking, at least
for old ZIP files, embedded timestamps were assumed to be local ones,
without storing any accurate timezone information.

Acknowledgements
----------------

Many thanks should go to Ken Silverman for approving the release
of historical versions of works of him and sending most of the materials,
along with Matt Saettler for the files he had in his possession.
Further thanks 3D Realms for locating materials
including the aforementioned SW CD's data and sending them
to Richard Gobeille and Evan Ramos, who further inspected contents of them.

Additional thanks go to Ken for his original works on the Build Engine and
other works of him (like Polytex), along with previously granting access
to source codes for a great deal of them.
Special thanks go to Nuke.YKT, Barry Duncan and Max Ylitalo.

Finally, thanks to all fans of the Build Engine and games made with it.

Ken-Build map credits (derived from a list supplied by Ken)
-----------------------------------------------------------

   //Ken & Allen Blum:
NUKELAN2.MAP, NUKELAND.MAP
  
   //Ken:
AI.MAP, BOARDS.MAP, BOARDS2.MAP, BRIDGES.MAP, CLIPTEST.MAP, DEATH.MAP,
EVIL.MAP, EVIL2.MAP, GROULAND.MAP, HOUSE.MAP, INTRO.MAP, KENSIG.MAP, KLAB.MAP,
LOOKATME.MAP, MABOARDS.MAP, MIRRORS.MAP, MONWALK.MAP, OVERLAP.MAP,
SLOPTEST.MAP, SORTTEST.MAP, SUBWAY.MAP, TEST.MAP, TRAP.MAP, TRAPS.MAP
  
   //Ken & Andy Cotter (see notes for NSNOAL.MAP)
ABOARDS.MAP, ABOARDS2.MAP, ALBOARD.MAP, EVILAL.MAP,
GYM.MAP, MAZE.MAP, MINIGOLF.MAP, NEWSUB.MAP,
NSNOAL.MAP (also has Blum & Kemp's influences from NUKELAND.MAP & MDKBOARD.MAP),
NSPIRAL.MAP, SPIRAL.MAP
  
   //Andy Cotter:
ANDY.MAP, ANDY2.MAP, ANDYLAND.MAP, ASCBOAR2.MAP, ASCBOARD.MAP, ASCHOUSE.MAP,
BEACH.MAP, BIGBIG.MAP, BIGROOMS.MAP, MONWARP.MAP, MYBRIDGE.MAP, OLDNEW.MAP,
STINKS.MAP, STRANGE.MAP, SUCKER.MAP, SIZES.MAP
  
   //Ken and Martin Kemp
MDKBOARD.MAP

   //Doom (conversion & editing by Ken, episode 1 maps by John Romero)
DOOM1.MAP, DOOM2.MAP, E1M2.MAP, E1M3.MAP,
E2M1.MAP (by Tom Hall & Sandy Petersen)
  
   //Unknown
NEWBOARD.MAP

Background
----------

This section concentrates at the process leading to the release
of the included files. There's also the earlier history
of Ken's works leading to the Build Engine itself.

Examples of such works:
- The game Ken's Labyrinth.
- The Build Engine (all 1993-1997 incarnations and 2000's open-source release).
- 2DRAW, an engine that was supposed to be used for the canceled Apogee game
"Crystal Carnage". 2DRAW was also used by Ken for testing error correction in
network/modem code (mmulti), which was further used in Build Engine games.
In particular, the COMMIT driver supplied with such games
could be used with 2DRAW.
- The POLYTEX engine, which was supposed to be a successor to the Build Engine
before focus had to shift back to the latter.

As a fresh reminder (see list further below), May 2019 had the release
of a set of historical Build Engine object files, sources and headers.
A few more were also released earlier in February 2019, alongside
Shadow Warrior (1997) sources matching versions 1.0-1.2.
These Build Engine files were released after obtaining
Ken's permission back in July 2018, following Evan's contact.

Later in September 2019, Barry got in contact with Matt
in order to check if there are more such Build Engine files.
An archive was sent by the very beginning of October 2019,
the one used as a base for the contents of BUILD_FROM_MATT.

As of March 2021, I started going through the files in Matt's archive. I also
checked STUFF.DAT from the version of Ken-Build matching BUILD_FROM_SW_TREE.
All files differing from CHESS.EXE and STUFF.DAT had already been included
in the 19961013 directory of the aforementioned May 2019 release.

I approached Ken afterwards. By the beginning of April, me and other
few people turned out to receive a significant collection of archives
of Build Engine / Ken-Build files and more from Ken. They were described
as mostly being remnants from old floppy disks and other sources
of data not getting overwritten on the hard drive.

According to timestamps of local files, reviewing of mine had finally begun
for real in late August 2023, initially with the two 2DRAW builds.
I continued with other archives in September 2023. These covered files related
to the Build Engine and a few revisions of Polytex, along with more files.
In a certain sense, this iteration of reviewing was probably the most
significant, writing internal review notes for each relevant tree.

A bit more was done around mid-October 2023. Small edits to the aforementioned
review notes were done as of the first half of November 2023, while preparing
an internal summary and going through certain contents.

The next stage was in April 2024. I started arranging files differently,
including separate trees covering edits/replacements of files.
After contacting Ken, by the beginning of May 2024, I got a response
listing map credits, adding on top of what I found in Ken's website.
That was also the email convincing me to check the various binary .BAS files.
Notes of mine about them may be found under BIN-BAS.TXT.

Additional final stages of preparation were conducted sometime
in October 2024, and later, by the end of November (and December 1st) 2024.
A few more additions and edits were applied by December 12th, along with
even fewer edits by the release day of December 13th 2024.

References to previously released contents
------------------------------------------

- An earlier release of historical Build Engine sources and object files from
May 2019 (https://dukeworld.com/2001-current/source/buildsrc-20190520.7z).
Among other things, it had already included contents
of BUILD_FROM_SW_TREE, sans game data or CHESS.EXE,
plus headers of BUILD_MISC_199604.
- A 1995 revision of CACHE1D.C (renamed CACHE1D.TXT), as well as
a source snapshot of ENGINE.OBJ from 1997, found alongside Shadow Warrior
source archives (https://gitlab.com/NY00123/sw-src-and-build-addendum/,
https://ny.duke4.net/files/stuff/sw-src-and-build-addendum-20190129.7z).
- Ken Silverman's Build Engine Source Code Page, covering the original
open-source release of the Build Engine from June 2000,
the SLABSPRI voxel editor source code, A.ASM ported to C,
POLYTEX engine demo and source code, the initial test program
for POLYMOST, and other files (https://advsys.net/ken/buildsrc/default.htm).
- The collection of Shadow Warrior prototypes released as a part of
Shadow Warrior Classic (1997) on Steam, particularly the 1995-02-10
revision which contains Ken-Build binaries and some data
(sw950210, https://store.steampowered.com/app/238070/).
- PND3D Demo and Source Code (https://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/pnd3d.htm).
- The Voxlap Engine source code (https://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/voxlap05.htm).
- The Voxlap page, covering a collection of heightmap voxel demos predating
Voxlap, including the GROUDRAW demos (https://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm).
- An early 1994 snapshot of the Build Engine distribution
(Build_Apr1994.zip, https://advsys.net/ken/build.htm).
It's re-released here under BUIL0408, with a few differences.
- The first sector-based Build engine
(buildsec.zip, https://advsys.net/ken/build.htm).
- A grid-based BUILD engine snapshot from 1993
(builgrid.zip, https://advsys.net/ken/build.htm)
- The first ever BUILD demo (build1.zip, https://advsys.net/ken/build.htm).
- "picrot4.bas" i.e., "PICture ROTation demo #4"
(picrot4.bas, PICROT4.EXE, https://advsys.net/ken/build.htm).

Other files can be found at Ken Silverman's official web site
as of writing this.

-Yoav N.


This post has been edited by NY00123: 13 December 2024 - 01:31 AM

8

User is online   jkas789 

#2

Very cool dude. Thanks for the hard work.
1

User is offline   NY00123 

#3

View Postjkas789, on 17 December 2024 - 07:51 PM, said:

Very cool dude. Thanks for the hard work.

You're welcome, thanks for your response!

For visitors in general, to bring some clarification, you should find a total of 38 directories with varying amounts of contents.

See the following list for details; Let's hope I'm not wrong here. Except for the directory names, these represent ZIP files as received from Ken in their original forms, preceding my reviews. The leftmost timestamps were assigned to the ZIP files themselves. Additionally, for each directory or ZIP file, the rightmost timestamp should match the most recent file given under FILESLST.TXT. The list should be sorted by the rightmost timestamp.

BUILDOLD.ZIP indeed matches the directory I called buil010294_BUILDOLD; Reason being that BUILDOLD.ZIP was originally in buil010294.zip when I received it. Multiple copies of BUILD1.ZIP were found under buil112093.zip, buil112493.zip, buil120693.zip, buil120893.zip, buil121393.zip and BUILDOLD.ZIP (the latter being within buil010294.zip as mentioned).

The oldest archive looks like CHESS_anim.zip, covering a demo rendering Chess pieces (as 2D sprites) in 3D space. The video I published about a week ago shows this demo, alongside other few demos.

1993-08-31 21:38:58 CHESS_anim.zip        1993-08-10 14:47:32
1993-08-31 21:17:38 builold!.zip          1993-08-31 20:13:16
1993-10-21 23:06:54 BUILD1.ZIP            1993-10-22 00:05:00
1993-11-20 17:32:04 buil112093.zip        1993-11-20 15:17:06
1993-11-24 11:37:46 buil112493.zip        1993-11-23 08:44:26
1993-12-06 18:36:08 buil120693.zip        1993-12-06 17:28:10
1993-12-08 15:36:18 buil120893.zip        1993-12-08 13:29:56
1993-12-13 17:06:50 buil121393.zip        1993-12-13 11:43:08
1994-01-02 11:31:54 BUILDOLD.ZIP          1994-01-01 23:29:10
1994-01-02 12:32:32 builsect.zip          1994-01-02 00:59:14
2003-11-13 17:44:12 buil010294.zip        1994-01-02 18:43:28
1994-04-07 23:53:40 BUIL0408.ZIP          1994-04-07 22:47:56
1994-05-20 19:11:28 BUIL0422.ZIP          1994-04-20 18:31:26
1994-06-02 23:46:18 PTEX0602.ZIP          1994-06-02 22:40:30
1994-06-24 02:46:12 BUIL0624.ZIP          1994-06-24 01:45:30
1994-07-20 00:00:44 BUIL0719.ZIP          1994-07-19 22:58:16
1994-07-20 00:10:32 2DRW0719.ZIP          1994-07-19 23:10:08
1994-08-01 12:24:18 BUIL0801.ZIP          1994-08-01 11:23:34
2019-07-09 00:48:24 buildold_12_30_94.zip 1994-12-30 15:19:44
1995-04-11 14:05:48 PTEX0412.ZIP          1995-04-11 12:47:42
1995-06-13 00:38:08 buil1995.zip          1995-06-12 07:40:52
1995-06-27 03:20:34 2DRW0628.ZIP          1995-06-27 02:20:04
1995-07-28 16:10:40 buil0723.zip          1995-07-23 23:06:54
1995-07-28 14:57:50 PTEX0726.zip          1995-07-26 22:16:30
1995-10-20 02:25:02 BUIL1020.ZIP          1995-10-20 01:18:40
1995-11-01 19:44:02 BUI1101B.ZIP          1995-11-01 19:12:48
1995-11-10 05:19:34 BUIL1109.ZIP          1995-11-10 02:42:04
1995-11-22 00:30:00 BUIL1121.ZIP          1995-11-21 23:29:04
1995-12-12 00:59:06 BUIL1211.ZIP          1995-12-11 23:58:20
1995-12-31 21:18:14 BUILT.ZIP             1995-12-31 20:15:02
                    BUILD_MISC_199604     1996-04-13 17:19:38
1996-05-06 15:24:00 BUILDBAK.ZIP          1996-05-06 14:08:46
1996-06-15 02:39:42 BUIL0615.ZIP          1996-06-15 01:38:48
2019-07-07 13:50:38 buil062896.zip        1996-06-28 12:42:20
1996-07-05 14:15:06 BUIL0705.ZIP          1996-07-05 13:14:40
1996-09-06 21:51:08 BUIL0906.ZIP          1996-09-06 20:47:40
                    BUILD_FROM_SW_TREE    1996-10-17 01:39:46
                    BUILD_FROM_MATT       1998-07-22 10:49:46

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