Ken Silverman (born November 1, 1975) is an American

game programmer A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebases for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines, all of which fall ...

, best known for writing the

Build engine The Build Engine is a first-person shooter engine created by Ken Silverman, author of ''Ken's Labyrinth'', for 3D Realms. Like the Doom engine, ''Doom'' engine, the Build Engine represents its world on a 2D computer graphics, two-dimensional grid ...

. It was most notably utilized by ''

Duke Nukem 3D ''Duke Nukem 3D'' is a 1996 first-person shooter, first-person shooter game developed by 3D Realms and published by FormGen for MS-DOS. It is a sequel to the platform games ''Duke Nukem (video game), Duke Nukem'' and ''Duke Nukem II'', published ...

'', ''

Shadow Warrior ''Shadow Warrior'' is a series of first-person shooter video games that focuses on the exploits of Lo Wang, a modern ninja warrior who fights through hordes of demons. The original series is made up of one game, '' Shadow Warrior'' (1997), and t ...

'', ''

Blood Blood is a body fluid in the circulatory system of humans and other vertebrates that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells, and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells. Blood is com ...

'', 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 21, 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'', ''Do ...

(later succeeded by Tim Sweeney), Silverman started work on the Build engine sometime before his first semester at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

in 1993, under a contract with

Apogee Software 3D Realms Entertainment ApS is a video game publisher based in Aalborg, Denmark. Scott Miller founded the company in his parents' home in Garland, Texas, in 1987 as Apogee Software Productions to release his game '' Kingdom of Kroz''. In the ...

. 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 world's most advanced 3D volumetric display system.

Projects

Ken's Labyrinth

''Ken's Labyrinth'' is a

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

video game coded by Silverman. It was originally released in 1993 as shareware by

Epic MegaGames Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Ma ...

. 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 to 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 In computing, a voxel is a representation of a value on a three-dimensional regular grid, akin to the two-dimensional pixel. Voxels are frequently used in the Data visualization, visualization and analysis of medical imaging, medical and scient ...

-driven graphics

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...

. 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), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name. Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Tom'' (1973 film), or ''The Bad Bunch'', a blaxploitation film * ''Tom'' (2002 film) ...

. 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 The ace of spades (also known as the Spadille, Old Frizzle, and Death Card) is traditionally the highest and most valued card in the deck of playing cards. The actual value of the card varies from game to game. Design The ornate design of the ...

'', a 2011 online multiplayer shooter, was developed from the Voxlap engine.

Other projects

Other creations by Silverman include the ZIP file archiver KZIP, the EVALDRAW programming environment, and the

PNG Portable Network Graphics (PNG, officially pronounced , colloquially pronounced ) is a raster-graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. PNG was developed as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange ...

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.

Voxon Photonics

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 A volumetric display device is a display device that forms a visual representation of an object in Three-dimensional space, three physical dimensions, as opposed to the planar image of traditional screens that simulate depth through a number of di ...

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