whabang wrote:
Didnt it use the same pseudo-3D system as Doom?
Nope!
Duke3D uses a game engine called "Build" AFAIK.
It's the same engine that is used in Shaddow warrior, Blood, Terminal velocity, and coutless other games.
Hi all, finally made it here today :-D
Your basic Duke Nukem3D engine was AFAIK a custom job made my 3DRealms. It stood way ahead of Doom in the following respects
1) Its map architecture supported overlapping zones (similar to upper / lower rooms in alien breed 3d / tkg)
2) The map structure allowed sloping walls and floors. I'm not sure if it was a full 3D bsp structure in the style of Quake, but it was certianly more developed than the pure 2D bsp structure of Doom.
3) Movable sections of the map were not restricted to simple up/down doors / lifts. You could have moving platforms, horizontal, vertical, rotating rooms, you name it.
4) You could have mirrors ;-)
5) You could damage almost anything :-D
6) The viewport supported limited z-axis rotation (sideways tilt or roll), as well as x-axis rotation (look up/down or pitch). Was used to great effect in earthquake effects or when you got too close to an explosion or demolishing building.
7) There was a limited degree of coloured lighing rather than the brightness only effects of Doom. Quake didn't even get this until Quake 2 :-)
It used a simple scripting language for all the behaviour of objects, weapons, monters etc. that was compiled by the engine at load time. This feature is what allowed the Duke3D engine to be a game engine in the true sense and gave the fantastic interactivity that made it such great fun to play. Whilst not quite as advanced as QuakeC and its accompanying virtual machine, the code (in script form) was just as portable, so conversions could still 'run anywhere' the engine did. By contrast, Doom used tables to match entities up with sets of pre-defined behaviours (similar to the idea in TKG's game linker).
9) It had a rotating map (like TKG) that even supported texturing to give a kind of top-down 3D view of the game..
10) Duke Nukem 3D was utterly hysterical :-)
