[Sanek]

I thought it would be interesting to make a list and discussion about BUILD engine-based games and their chronology, and I don't mean the dates of actual release! What I mean is to make a list of games based on the time when the actual time when all the action took place!
So, here's the list.
DATE-TITLE-EXPLONATION:

1910s - Blood - although trains (E1L3) pretty much existed since the early days of 19th century, the airplanes in E3L1 tells us that this is probably somewhere around World War One. If not even 1920s or 1930s - we have more wars before WWII than you might think.
1940s - WWII GI -
1960s - Redneck Rampage - rockabilly, drive-in theathers, color TV
1964-1975 - NAM - Vietnam war
1980s - Shadow Warrior - since there are so much in this game that was based on "Big Troube in Little China" movie, I think that 1980s would be the most fitting time. Well, I guess Robman will have his explonation later.
1990s - Liquidator - Boris Yeltsin on TV
and finally
2007 - Duke Nukem 3D - the calendar in E1L1
2045 - William Shatner's TekWar - according to game manual

I know that there are much more BUILD games, such as Witchaven or William Shatner's TekWar, but I don't remember these games very well. If somedoby will read this theard, I guess I can add these games to the list later.

[MetHy]

The E1L1 calendar look more like 2007 than 1997 to me but it's very hard to tell. Furthermore, the very start of DN3D want us to believe it takes place right after DN2, which IIRC took place in 1998.

Powerslave/Exhumed : There aren't many clues for a precise date, though the intro of the game specifies it's modern time. There is a helicopter, but more importantly there is a laptop computer which is able to recieve data (mission briefing of last level in the PC version) but also to send data (console version), probably through a satellite connexion. In other words I think it's safe to say it takes place in the 90's, or after.

However, it's safer to say most of them take place in their own alternate universe anyway, in which case IRL's notion of date make no sense. For instance, Shadow Warrior directly references Duke Nukem 3D "he he he, just like Duke Nukem!" (but also Tomb Raider), which obviously doesn't make any sense if, like you say, it takes place in the 80's.

[Micky C]

Yeah I don't think Sanek was implying that all take place in the same universe. Lo Wang referencing Duke was more just a bit of self-aware humour.

It's difficult placing the dates of the games. Duke 3D has advanced technology such as force fields and teleporters, not to mention moon bases and space stations.

Even games like SW and Blood are a bit tricky due to the exotic weapons like the rail and tesla guns respectively, which are more advanced than the setting would imply.

I love the way Blood Dragon handled this issue in the trailer: "welcome to the future! The year is 2007". Implying of course that society usually looks more advanced in movies that predict a given future period as opposed to reality.

[Sanek]

MetHy, on 17 October 2016 - 05:17 AM, said:

The E1L1 calendar look more like 2007 than 1997 to me but it's very hard to tell. Furthermore, the very start of DN3D want us to believe it takes place right after DN2, which IIRC took place in 1998.

Yes, this is my mistake. I changed the date.

MetHy, on 17 October 2016 - 05:17 AM, said:

However, it's safer to say most of them take place in their own alternate universe anyway, in which case IRL's notion of date make no sense.

Well, we all know that there's no aliens or zombies walking around the world, but we can beelive in it while we play these games, right?
Also, this is of course the alternative universe...

MetHy, on 17 October 2016 - 05:17 AM, said:

For instance, Shadow Warrior directly references Duke Nukem 3D "he he he, just like Duke Nukem!" (but also Tomb Raider), which obviously doesn't make any sense if, like you say, it takes place in the 80's.

What if Duke Nukem existed before the DN1,2 and 3D? He was a grown man by alt. 90s.

Micky C, on 17 October 2016 - 05:28 AM, said:

Yeah I don't think Sanek was implying that all take place in the same universe.

No, I don't think so. If we will think about it this way, then Doom was a part of that universe too, since there are a Doom marine corpse in E1L3..

[Perro Seco]

2045 - Tekwar. One of my favourites despite its quality.

[Sanek]

Perro Seco, on 17 October 2016 - 06:00 AM, said:

2045 - Tekwar. One of my favourites despite its quality.

I will add it. Do you have any explonation of it? I mean why this is 2045?

[Marphy Black]

Sanek, on 17 October 2016 - 05:01 AM, said:

1910s - Blood - although trains (E1L3) pretty much existed since the early days of 19th century, the airplanes in E3L1 tells us that this is probably somewhere around World War One. If not even 1920s or 1930s - we have more wars before WWII than you might think.

If you want to take its sequel into account, Blood 2 takes place in 2028, and its story states that nearly 100 years have passed since the events of the original occurred. That would place Blood at roughly 1928. There are still plenty of anachronisms, nonetheless, like the Remote Detonator using a modern electronic remote.

[K1n9_Duk3]

Sanek, on 17 October 2016 - 05:01 AM, said:

1960s - Redneck Rampage - rockabilly, drive-in theathers, color TV

The newspaper/manual from the GOG version (which comes with a replacementdocs.com sticker) is dated Tuesday, April 1, 1997.

And what about Witchaven I and II? They're just as fictional as Duke 3D or TekWar, so why not include them, too?

Spoiler

Probably because trying to assign real dates to fictional events becomes ridiculous at some point.

[Perro Seco]

Sanek, on 17 October 2016 - 06:02 AM, said:

I will add it. Do you have any explonation of it? I mean why this is 2045?

There is no reference ingame, but the manual says it takes place in the year 2045.

[Robman]

Sanek, on 17 October 2016 - 05:01 AM, said:

1980s - Shadow Warrior - since there are so much in this game that was based on "Big Troube in Little China" movie, I think that 1980s would be the most fitting time. Well, I guess Robman will have his explonation later.

Haha, sounds good.

The rail gun and Zilla's mech suit could have been invented by the 80's.
The cars look 80's/90's ish.

The computer towers/screens appear to be CRTs and AT/ATX, the computer in Zilla Construction is running at 260Mhz. So... 1997?
The game was released in.. 1997.

Lo Wang is aware of Duke's existence, if going by this thread and Duke took place in 2007, then Lo Wang would have to be taking place closely thereafter.

That funny little mock up of Lo Wang's details has him born 08/19/1951, I'm not entirely sure where it came from to be honest but that would make him 29 in 1980 and 39 in 1990, 46 in 1997. Lo wang seems older so age 46 fits(1997)

I'm gonna go with it taking place at the time of the creation of the game - 1997.

[oasiz]

Perro Seco, on 17 October 2016 - 11:17 AM, said:

There is no reference ingame, but the manual says it takes place in the year 2045.

This sounds familiar to me. Tekwar lore is big and the game is just a spinoff from the tv show / movies.
Story still mentions sonny and other teklords so its kinda parallel to the show as it has the same names popping up too, although the similarities are about as big as a typical nes movie game.

7 paladins also had some years in the intro from what i remember.
Paintbrawl is 97 likely too.
Fate was a bit cyberpunk, no recollection of years.
That bombshell prequel thing? Might need more footage to really make anything out of it. Cant remember if bombshell itself was present day.

[Micky C]

Robman, on 17 October 2016 - 05:53 PM, said:

Lo Wang is aware of Duke's existence

Like I said, I feel it makes much more sense if they don't take place in the same universe, rather that Lo Wang is simply breaking the 4th wall and acknowledging that 3DR made another similar game starring Duke. I.e he is NOT aware of Duke based on your argument that D3D took place before SW. Based on the overall technology level SW clearly takes place before D3D. Further more, there are no elements, or even references to elements, of magic in D3D.

It wouldn't be the first time they've done something like this. Wait around long enough in Duke Nukem 3D and Duke says "What are you waiting for, christmas?" talking to the player directly.

[Robman]

You can feel that way.. but Lo Wang does say : "Hory Cow!, Looka like Duke Nukem! AHaha!"
SW has Duke Burger stuff too.

No more "feelz" ... the .art hath spoken.

If the calender in Duke says 2007 .. well then clearly a time traveler brought a calender with him to 1996.

Duke and SW happen on opposite sides of the globe(sort of), crisis averted.

[Hendricks266]

>caring about canonicity of games that don't focus on storyline

[Micky C]

Good point, I forgot about the Duke Burger. You could argue the same with that though. Anything's possible I suppose, but the game world does have that 80's/90's feel.

Hendricks266, on 17 October 2016 - 08:15 PM, said:

>caring about canonicity of games that don't focus on storyline

Caring about a game released more than 20 years ago

[Robman]

Hendricks266, on 17 October 2016 - 08:15 PM, said:

>caring about canonicity of games that don't focus on storyline

But they do have stories.. which they follow.

[Player Lin]

oasiz, on 17 October 2016 - 06:48 PM, said:

7 paladins also had some years in the intro from what i remember.

Well, actually...it's not...the shitty intro level was based from the TRS of early 90s, but since there is no real references about the actual day so I guess you can safely used the game's starting develop date/release date...1993/1994 for sure.

But seriously, since Lot7P's background story/levels were in the other ancient times of China at 11th century so I guess it's just pointless to finding actual date or something for Lot7P.

(Unlike MARS 3D has a level actually point to 1999, Lot7P is more shitty on its whole thing so I won't try to make any sense about it... )

[necroslut]

3DR deliberately didn't specify a year for Duke 3D - it's just the "near future". I remember George talking about it once. The same is probably true for Shadow Warrior.
Redneck Rampage takes place during the 90's - the whole "point" of the game is that it's set in the backwards countryside, it doesn't mean it takes place during the 60's.

[MetHy]

I think WWII GI and NAM are pretty obvious as far as dates are concerned

[Jimmy]

K1n9_Duk3, on 17 October 2016 - 10:16 AM, said:

The newspaper/manual from the GOG version (which comes with a replacementdocs.com sticker) is dated Tuesday, April 1, 1997.

Yeah, Redneck Rampage is undoubtedly 1990's Southern America, but if you've never experienced it you might think it was the 50s or 60s. lol

[LkMax]

Jimmy Gnosis, on 21 October 2016 - 11:23 PM, said:

Yeah, Redneck Rampage is undoubtedly 1990's Southern America, but if you've never experienced it you might think it was the 50s or 60s. lol

It seems more like countryside USA to me, it shows a lot of american hillbilly stereotypes.

[Kathy]

Lo Wang is referencing "Duke Nukem 3d" video game, not the actual person in his world.

[Sanek]

All my theories has gone to pieces. Thanks everybody!

[Robman]

Kathy, on 22 October 2016 - 11:46 PM, said:

Lo Wang is referencing "Duke Nukem 3d" video game, not the actual person in his world.

Tell me how that changes anything.

[Kathy]

It changes the possible year in SW to 1996+, since SW isn't tied to Duke's 2007 calendar.

[Jimmy]

LkMax, on 22 October 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

It seems more like countryside USA to me, it shows a lot of american hillbilly stereotypes.

Same thing, the game takes place in Arkansas, a state in the South.

[MrFlibble]

Player Lin, on 18 October 2016 - 05:17 AM, said:

Unlike MARS 3D has a level actually point to 1999

Hopefully not to derail the thread, but could you please tell more about this reference to 1999? Maybe link to a YouTube video? Thanks.

[Player Lin]

MrFlibble, on 27 October 2016 - 06:48 AM, said:

Hopefully not to derail the thread, but could you please tell more about this reference to 1999? Maybe link to a YouTube video? Thanks.

In the end of Level 04(E1M4), monsters has sent to into the time machine and Ji Yuan has to go into it with himself without backup, then in Level 05(E1M5), Ji Yuan has been sent back to July 25th, 1999 to prevent the parents of Mars(who is leader of the Resistances) get killed by those monsters to changes the history after Ji Yuan used the time machine in the end of Level 04.
Since I can't start the game again for some reasons(the game keep give me NO CD-ROM error whatever I do), so I cannot do record footages anymore......sadly.

But, I wrote a txt files about translation of Chinese in Mars 3D(textures/cutscene screens etc) sometimes ago, and like I said above, according to the cutscenes after Level 04(E1M4) and start of Level 05(E1M5), it seems that part of game take place on 1999's Taipei City, Taiwan. But since I forgot about that level looks like so I can't give information about if the level itself has other references about this.
(At least based the textures used and then I checked the map layout of level 05 with SLADE 3 on the converted WAD file, it's based on Taipei main station around late 1990s for sure, maybe smaller/in-accurate but whatever, it's just a damn game)

Yes, since the plot is full of holes and my bad grammar seems made it may a little hard to understood...well, I don't know...

[Micky C]

On a parallel discussion to Build chronology, which of the SW and Blood iterations of Build is more advanced? They both have ROR and voxels. I've heard Blood has better physics but several of the effects in SW seem quite advanced. Then again effects aren't an engine feature per se.

[oasiz]

Blood and SW had very different approaches since they split up rather early on.

Instead of relying on Ken's stuff, Blood sort of re-invented the wheel by doing all sorts of stuff from their own resource caching to an unique and advanced effect system & channel communication. I would consider blood more of an early fork of the "apogee build" just because of that. Split was likely done around earlier sector based stuff, mid/late 1994 I'd estimate.
Lot7p seems to be an early licensing of the engine so probably this is the version that was sent to third parties.

Just looking at the leaked alpha blood source changelog you can see tons of sweet stuff as they kept adding more and more advanced features in it.
Also they really tried to go around Ken's stuff with their own injections as they only got the ENGINE.OBJ to go with.
No other game really tried to go beneath GAME.C, any requests (mostly Duke related stuff) got added in by Ken and third parties got things done after contacting apogee (And Ken did the additions).
Blood's devteam usually tried to fix any issues on their own, often getting frustrated when Ken broke something due to a new feature.

Anyway.. the end result was very advanced and not really comparable to duke or any other build game. While the tech was still being updated between build versions, it still had key differences internally and hence why properly porting it can be a challenge on it's own.

SW on the other hand handles things somewhat similarly to Duke with it's own version effector sprites and modifiers. SW still relies more on Ken's routines and tagging system available & used in other build games. In other words, GAME.C side modifications mostly.
SW could be considered an evolution from Duke's stuff without the CON language to drive it.

On a higher level, they are on par with each other but SW has a bit superior ROR while Blood has stuff like native sector movement easing that SW doesn't have. In more detail, Blood has redone a bunch of things to take better advantage of the engine but then again, SW has it's own set of features that can exceed blood's.

SW and Blood do still use the same feature set as the final build engine due to having slopes and voxels, with slopes being added in pretty late, barely in time for duke.