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It seems like the big problem was that they were trying to be on the cutting edge by licensing other engines. But, by the time a engine is available for licensi
by colinplamondon 17y ago
It seems like the big problem was that they were trying to be on the cutting edge by licensing other engines. But, by the time a engine is available for licensing, the flagship title (Doom 3, Half Life 2, whatever) has already shipped and set the new standard. At the same time, they wanted to have the best looking game available, despite always being behind the curve in their base technology.
- dkarl 17y agoSheer hubris. They had a certain sense of humor, they had Duke, and they had a knack for creative physics ideas that affected gameplay, like Duke 3D's cameras, mirrors, and shrink-ray. They could have made a really fun game that was a year behind on the graphics and physics engines. But they wanted to be the best at everything.
- snprbob86 17y agoMost of the best games on those engines were produced by teams who used the engine as a starting point and built their own tech on top. Many games even contribute back to the parent engine project. Some that stick out in my mind are Soldier of Fortune (complete new damage system for Quake 3), Bioshock (advanced water effects for Unreal 3), Counter Strike (more reliable networking for Source), but there are countless more examples.
- defen 17y agoAnother great example is the original Half-Life - built on an extremely heavily modified Quake (1!) engine.
- krakensden 17y agoOr the Call of Duty games- 1 and 2 were both heavily modified Quake 3, even CoD 3 was still a Quake 3 base with a brand new rendering engine.
- TeHCrAzY 17y agoSource Engine is essentially the original HL engine + years of heavy duty modification. (This may somewhat fall afoul of the "replace all the parts in the robot one by one, is it still the same robot?" identity problem). I've never ceased to be amazed at just how flexible the orignal HL engine turned out to be!
- tetha 17y agoSo the source engine is a demonstration that continuous refactoring actuallz works well for a long time? :)
- nas 17y agoIMHO, the reason DN3D was groundbreaking was because of Build. Ken Silverman is obviously hugely talented.
- hallmark 17y agoI met Ken while I was a student at Brown. Not only is he talented (the Wired article only mentioned him as the 17 year old programmer from Rhode Island), but he is also an extremely nice fellow. Not at all cocky.