Ken Silverman

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Ken Silverman 2002

Ken Silverman (born November 1, 1975 in Mount Kisco , New York ) is an American computer game programmer . He became known through the development of Ken's Labyrinth and the build engine , which was first used by Duke Nukem 3D .

Life

Ken Silverman grew up in Yorktown , New York for the first years of his life before his father Harvey Silverman got a position as a professor at Brown University in 1980 and his parents moved with him and his brother to East Greenwich , Rhode Island .

With the Texas Instruments TI-99 / 4A he received his first computer at the end of December 1983.

He learned programming from his family at an early age. His father was a professor of electrical engineering , his mother a programmer at GTECH .

Together with his brother Alan, who was 3 years older than him , he developed a Pac-Man clone for the TI-99/4 in 1984 . While his brother did most of the programming, he was mainly responsible for designing the labyrinth.

During high school he developed other computer games himself , such as the Tetris clone Kentris . When developing Kentris , he switched from the QuickBasic programming language to C in the early 1990s .

In January 1993, Ken's Labyrinth was his first computer game published by Epic MegaGames . The first person shooter based on simple raycasting is considered a clone of Wolfenstein 3D due to its rendering process . Silverman originally developed the game under the title WalKen , a combination of walk (English for "to go") and his first name, and was encouraged by his father to publish it. Ken Silverman has now published the game and the source code on his website for free download.

In 1993, after the success of Ken's Labyrinth , he signed a contract with Apogee Software to develop a 3D game engine . Apogee actually wanted to license Doom , which Id Software had no interest in, which is why they came back to Ken Silverman, who had already contacted them in October 1992 for the publication of Ken's Labyrinth . Silverman's graphics engine , called the Build Engine, was first used in the 1996 first-person shooter Duke Nukem 3D . The build engine was in competition with John Carmack's Doom engine .

"If I had to pick who I think is just the most talented, it would probably be Ken Silverman, the guy that did the BUILD engine."

"If I had to choose who I think was the most talented, it would probably be Ken Silverman, the guy who made the BUILD Engine."

- John Carmack : bootNet

A month after Silverman signed the contract with Apogee, he began his college studies at Brown University in Providence in 1993 , but interrupted it to develop the build engine. He returned to the university in 1997 and finally graduated in May 2000.

After the successful build engine, which was used in some games of the era such as William Shatner's TekWar , Shadow Warrior and Blood , he developed further engines and software tools. At the turn of the millennium he worked on the Voxel rendering engine Voxlap and in 2006 began developing a successor to the build engine under the title Build2 . He worked on Build2 until 2011 before losing interest in it. In 2018 he finally released the unfinished version from then.

In 2005 was Ken Silverman co-founder of Ardfry which the PNG - data compression software PNGOUTwin and a few image- codecs published.

At the beginning of 2013 he started to work at Voxon Photonics as chief computer scientist . The aim of his work there is to develop a voxel engine for a new type of holographic device called the Voxiebox .

"For me, programming is not just an interest or a hobby - it IS my life."

"For me, programming is not just an interest or a hobby - it IS my life."

- Ken Silverman : Reloaded.org

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ken Silverman: Ken Silverman's Official Home Page. In: advsys.net. Retrieved September 1, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c Lynton Manuel: Behind the scenes with Voxon Chief Computer Scientist Ken Silverman. In: Voxon Photonics. Retrieved September 1, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c Ken Silverman (3D Realms) - Interview. In: Arcade Attack. May 1, 2017, accessed September 1, 2019 .
  4. ^ Brian Crecente: The four lives of Epic Games. In: polygon . Retrieved September 1, 2019 .
  5. ^ A b c Interview with Ken Silverman. In: RGB Classic Games. November 21, 2005, accessed September 1, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Rene Patnode: id as Super-Ego: The Creation of Duke Nukem 3D. (PDF) In: fabiensanglard.net. March 22, 2001, accessed September 1, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Ken Silverman: The official Ken's Labyrinth page. In: advsys.net. Retrieved September 1, 2019 .
  8. ^ Joe Siegler: History of the Build Engine. In: 3D Realms . March 12, 2018, accessed September 1, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Alex St. John: Countdown to Carmack - boot interview. In: bootNet. November 25, 1997, archived from the original on January 30, 1998 ; accessed on September 1, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Alex Wawro: Now you can muck around with the Build engine successor: Build2. In: Gamasutra . March 9, 2018, accessed September 1, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Ken Silverman interview (from 2001). In: Strife Streams. Retrieved September 1, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Dominic Tarason: Ken Silverman's long-lost BUILD2 engine released. In: Rock, Paper, Shotgun . March 9, 2018, accessed September 1, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Camilo Salas: Now's Your Chance to Make a Home Hologram. In: Vice . October 23, 2015, accessed September 1, 2019 .
  14. ^ Ken Silverman Profiles. In: Reloaded.org. Retrieved September 1, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Silverman, Ken
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Silverman, Kenneth J.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer game programmer
DATE OF BIRTH 1st November 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Mount Kisco , New York