Interview with Ken Silverman
I interviewed Ken Silverman (the man who made Build and helpt to bring all those good games including DN3D come to life) on the fifth of October. Here it is, I hope you'll find it very interesting:
What projects are you currently working on?
My long term project is Voxlap, but I often get distracted with smaller side projects so progress isn't really fast these days.
When you first started making your Build engine, did you have any idea that it would be such an succes?
No, of course not. Once the teams started to get comfortable with my engine, my views started to change.
What was the most annoying thing to make in the Build engine?
The most annoying thing was trying to find all the network sync errors in each Build game. Duke, Shadow Warrior, and Blood all had unique bugs because I changed my network code each time during the project.
What do you think is the best feature in Build?
I think it was the Build editor because it lets you edit things in the 3D view. You can now do things so much faster when what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG). I'd say that the second most important feature would be that you could move walls around inside the game - for swinging doors, subway cars etc.
Was it hard to implement the VOXEL* stuff (like in Blood)?
The hardest part with the voxel stuff was to drawing them in the scene with the correct occlusion (z-buffer).
What other sort of things did you all do for Duke Nukem 3D (exept from Build)?
I once wrote a FAQ about this: http://www.advsys.net/ken/kensrole.txt
How did you learn to program that good?
My family taught me the basics of programming in BASIC and C. Sometime around 1990 I was beyond their help, so I had to learn how to figure things out myself at that point. Social life at high school wasn't going that well so I had a lot of free time to think about computers. Study halls were the best because I would design my algorithms in there. As far as what's going on in my brain, I really couldn't tell you. If it makes you feel better, I believe my skills are more due to enviromental influences than to genetics.
Don't you ever get sick of programming even after all those years?
No. As long as I have an idea in my head, it doen't get boring.
What's your favorite game that was ever made with Build?
I care mostly about engine features, so my answer to that is Shadow Warrior because it has all the latest technology, such as voxels, room over room, translucent floors. Of course I like Duke to because it was a big hit and everyone recognizes it.
The DNF team doesn't include you, why aren't you working on DNF?
I knew development for the next game would be very long, so I decided to finish college while I was still young. I graduated in May 2000 and have no desire to relocate to Texas
Is there anything you'd still like to say to your fans?
I always enjoy reading and responding to E-mails from my fans. I'm not sure what else to say...
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*VOXEL = VOlume piXEL, used to make 3D objects. For more information on voxels visit Ken Silverman's Official Home Page |
