Ken Silverman (born November 1, 1975) is an American game programmer, best known for writing the Build engine. It was most notably utilized by '' Duke Nukem 3D'', '' Shadow Warrior'', '' Blood'', and more than a dozen other games in the mid- to late-1990s. Once considered the primary rival of

John Carmack John D. Carmack II (born August 20, 1970) is an American computer programmer and video game developer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its 1990s games ''Commander Keen'', ''Wolfenstein 3D'', ''Doo ...

(later succeeded by

Tim Sweeney Tim Sweeney may refer to: * Tim Sweeney (disc jockey), disc jockey and host of Beats in Space * Tim Sweeney (game developer) (born 1970), game developer and founder of Epic Games * Tim Sweeney (ice hockey) (born 1967), American ice hockey player * ...

), Silverman started work on the Build engine sometime before his first semester at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

in 1993, under a contract with Apogee Software. In the wake of ''Duke Nukem 3D'' and other Build engine games, Silverman left the commercial game industry. Silverman has been CTO and co-founder of Ardfry Imaging, LLC responsible for the PNG Compression tool PNGOUT. He is the founder and Chief Computer Scientist of VOXON, makers of the Voxiebox holographic 3D arcade game system.

Projects

Ken's Labyrinth

''Ken's Labyrinth'' is a first-person shooter video game coded by Silverman. It was originally released in 1993 as shareware by Epic MegaGames. The source code to the project and even older versions can now be found on Silverman's website.

Build engine

The Build engine is a first-person shooter engine created by Ken Silverman for 3D Realms from 1993–1996. The engine was used in a number of popular games of the era, and its source code was released on June 20, 2000. Shortly after the ''Duke Nukem 3D'' source code was released in 2003, Silverman added the Polymost renderer to the Build engine. From 2006 to 2011 he prototyped a successor to the engine, titled Build2. He released his drafts for the engine on March 7, 2018.

Voxlap

In 2000, Silverman started work on Voxlap, a voxel-driven graphics engine. In addition to the engine, a Voxlap-powered tech demo was produced in cooperation with

Tom Dobrowolski Tom or TOM may refer to: * Tom (given name), a diminutive of Thomas or Tomás or an independent Aramaic given name (and a list of people with the name) Characters * Tom Anderson, a character in ''Beavis and Butt-Head'' * Tom Beck, a character ...

. Since 2003, development on the engine has been fairly static - the source code to the engine was released by Silverman in 2005, allowing commercial derivatives with permission. '' Ace of Spades'', a 2011 online multiplayer shooter, was developed from the Voxlap engine.

Other projects

Other creations by Silverman include the

ZIP Zip, Zips or ZIP may refer to: Common uses * ZIP Code, USPS postal code * Zipper or zip, clothing fastener Science and technology Computing * ZIP (file format), a compressed archive file format ** zip, a command-line program from Info-ZIP * Zi ...

file archiver KZIP, the EVALDRAW programming environment and the PNG file-size optimizer PNGOUT. In 2006, a GUI-driven version of PNGOUT known as PNGOUTWin was released by Ardfry Imaging, a small company Silverman co-founded in 2005.

Voxiebox

In early 2013, Silverman joined Voxon Photonics as Chief Computer Scientist. His role is primarily that of programming the volumetric graphics engine for the Voxiebox, a swept surface volumetric display being described by Voxon as "the world's first holographic arcade game system". The Voxiebox is capable of generating points of light within a volume of space, and in doing so enables the creation of 3D multiplayer gaming experiences that can be viewed from any angle without special glasses.

References

External links

*
An interview with Silverman

MobyGames' rap sheet on Silverman

Ardfry Imaging, LLC
- Silverman is CTO and co-founder of Ardfry

- Interview with Silverman's father {{DEFAULTSORT:Silverman, Ken 1975 births Living people American video game programmers Brown University alumni