[Hank]

Hopefully I'll post this in the right section

I think, it might be an idea to clear up, who did what to transform the original Build Engine, that was, and I quote Captain Awesome: 'held together by a lot of bubble gum and scotch tape', to the current game.

When I downloaded Eduke32 and the HRP and Polymer etc., it sort of pissed in my pants, seeing what became of Duke Nukem 3D. There is another port, JonoF, and of course there is Ken Silverman, a true protegee who developed key elements of the Build engine, but who did the rest, the part that looks so good? If you google you'll get bits and pieces, but not the big picture - so please, the big picture.

[Plagman]

Ken didn't "develop key elements of the BUILD" engine, he wrote the engine from scratch for 3D Realms back in the nineties.

The big picture is as follows:

- After Duke3D was released in '96, Matt Saettler (originally from Monolith) got access to the code and improved the scripting and modding capabilities. 3D Realms released the result of his efforts as EDuke.
- Ken released the source to the BUILD engine in 2001.
- 3D Realms released the source to Duke3D in 2003, people were able to build Duke3D for the first time by coupling it with the BUILD source code.
- The source for EDuke was released at some point after that.
- JonoF ported the BUILD engine to modern platforms. After the Duke3D source was released, he ported it to his JfBuild codebase and that was JfDuke3D.
- Ken contributed to JfBuild by adding Polymost (which added an OpenGL renderer, model support, etc).
- TerminX took the EDuke codebase and merged it with JfDuke3D, and kept adding more scripting and modding capabilities. That's EDuke32.
- EDuke32 then became a standalone port, receiving features and fixes both from the EDuke32 developers (TerminX, hunter_rus, HelixHorned as well as smaller contributors) and JonoF (EDuke32 gets code contributions from JonoF's private repositories; that's not obvious since JonoF hasn't released a new version of his ports in ages).

[Hank]

Plagman, on Nov 18 2010, 01:11 AM, said:

Ken didn't "develop key elements of the BUILD" engine, he wrote the engine from scratch for 3D Realms back in the nineties.

I should have mentioned 'after' the source was released to the public. Correct me if I'm wrong, he introduced OpenGL into Build, after the source was out. That reminds me, who ported the DirectX?

After reading your post, I wonder: who made Polymer? Or is that considered 'a small contribution'?

Thanks, for your post, that gives me enough to research, for now.

[Plagman]

I'm not sure what you mean by that; on Windows, JfBuild always used DirectX for the windowing and input code (and so does EDuke32 by extension) but it's always used software or OpenGL rendering, never Direct3D.

Polymer is something I started adding to EDuke32 in 2006; it's an alternate renderer like Polymost and it leverages some of the support code that JonoF and Ken wrote to support high-res replacements (the texture and model loaders).

[Hank]

Plagman, on Nov 18 2010, 07:42 PM, said:

I'm not sure what you mean by that; on Windows, JfBuild always used DirectX for the windowing and input code (and so does EDuke32 by extension) but it's always used software or OpenGL rendering, never Direct3D.

What I meant by DirectX, when you open Eduke32, the prompt goes “initializing DirectDraw” and as you know it is one of Microsoft's DirectX APIs. I have to be careful what I write. Keep in mind for guys like me, this is awesome, so forgive my not so definitive vocabulary, again thanks for your responce!

And JfBuild (actually JonoF Build) - not sure what I did wrong there, but it's color palette did not work, so I did not play that port. This does not mean it lacks DirectX support, but on my comp it does not work.

[Plagman]

Yeah, JfBuild (and by extension, EDuke32) has always used DirectDraw to access the window for software rendering on Windows. It's weird that you had palette problems with JfBuild, though. Were you just using the test game dataset?

[Hank]

Plagman, on Nov 18 2010, 10:05 PM, said:

Yeah, JfBuild (and by extension, EDuke32) has always used DirectDraw to access the window for software rendering on Windows. It's weird that you had palette problems with JfBuild, though. Were you just using the test game dataset?

No, I tried to play Duke version 1.3. The game. This is the JFDuke3D, binary download. On this forum, not sure where the thread is, someone mentioned, the JonoF port and Eduke32 should work with ver. 1.3 – Eduke32 did (does). No matter, I will have more questions, for now you gave me a shitload of research to do. Thanks

[Hank]

I think you answered my other questions already, I just needed to read your first reply more carefully (post # 2). I got confused with other websites, and some of the headers in the source.

It's a team effort. Just like the Bundesliga (or put your fav sport here). Simple or complex as that.