Ken Silverman Shares Build2 Engine

Build engine developer Ken Silverman has finally shared a working version of the engine’s unfinished successor called Build 2. It’s kind of big deal if you think about the legendary titles created with the help of the original Build, like Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, and William Shatner’s TekWar.

You can now learn how Build2 games could have looked like. Sadly, Silverman hadn’t seen the project through, so we didn’t get any games built with the second iteration. The developer shared a build of the engine you can now download. You will also get an editor and some script samples.

Some new features of BUILD2 over the classic Build Engine:

• Native Windows, 32-bit color, 6 degrees of freedom, pure CPU rendering
• Native support for the sector over sector (SOS).
• Advanced lighting system with true dynamic shadows, colors, spotlights.
• Multi-user editing with client-side prediction.
• Powerful scripting compiler in EVALDRAW.
• Full RGB color mapping.
• Voxel sprite support.
• Skybox support.
• No sector/wall/sprite count limits.

Silverman states that he started developing Build2 back in 2006 and introduced it in a summer camp in 2007 to give kids an idea on how to make 3D games and gather some feedback. After a few years, enrollment dropped off at the camp, and Silverman lost interest.

This move can probably be linked to the recent release of 3D Realms’ Ion Maiden created with Silverman’s Build engine. 

The news is kind of sad, but it’s still nice to get your hands on the second version of the legendary engine, right?