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Ken Silverman
Personal blog · advsys.netgamesprogramming
Ken Silverman writes Advanced Systems Consulting, Inc, a personal blog at advsys.net about games and programming. Since 2009, 44 different Hacker News readers have linked it 53 times, most often “Ken Silverman's Voxlap Engine”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
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53mentions?
44HN people?
2009–2026first – last linked?
Most-linked posts?
- Ken Silverman's Voxlap Engine6 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2017-03-10
- /ken/utils.htm5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-04-26
- /ken/build.htm3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-06-23
- Ken Silverman's PND3D engine3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-10-02
- /ken/voxlap.htm2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-04-14
- /ken/utils.htm2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-06-27
- Ken Silverman's Projects Page2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-12
- /ken/util/pngout.htm2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-03-17
- /ken/carmken.htm2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-30
- BUILD2 Demo and Tools2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-03-10
What Hacker News says?
Ken Silverman started working on the Build engine in 1993...seems like forever ago. http://advsys.net/ken/build.htm
Comment linking /ken/build.htm
on “Duke Nukem 3D Mirror Universe”Submitted Ken Silverman's Official Home Page as a story · 20 points
HN discussionBefore I really knew how to program, I tried to port http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm to Linux: https://github.com/Ericson2314/voxlap It was written in the same C / inline assembly style. Unfortunately seemed to me like the final ASM didn't quite do the same thing as the original C.
Comment linking /ken/voxlap.htm
on “Original Age of Empires 2 dev talks about its usage of assembly code”Submitted Ken Silverman's PND3D engine as a story · 8 points
HN discussionLooks great. What does concern me is the VERY limited view distance. I assume this is a micro-voxel engine. So that in that small space there are millions of voxels. Scaling that up to give a reasonable draw distance is a challenge I have not seen anyone live up to yet. If you like this style of engine check out http://www.atomontage.com/ and Ken Silvermans http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/pnd3d.htm Keep up the good wor…
Comment linking /ken/voxlap/pnd3d.htm
on “How Does Voxel Quest Work Now?”Submitted Ken Silverman's Projects Page as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThey are impressive on a technical level, especially given how well everything runs. However, I think that the other was pointing out that the game feel/presentation itself was a bit lacking - not having much momentum to it, or just the destruction itself not feeling particularly eye catching (even if the gameplay is fun, due to you needing to act within a time limit). I'm inclined to somewhat agree, because you can…
Comment linking /ken/voxlap.htm
on “Nvidia PhysX 5.0”Submitted Ken Silverman's Official Homepage as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBut technically this is a "voxel editor" - because originally "back in the day" - voxel engines (those few that existed) rendered everything with pixels. With a bit of googling, you can find some of these engines - here's a start - Ken Silverman's VoxLap (if you don't know who he is - then I haz a sad): http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm Note that these are not "small 3D cubes" - they are literally just pixels. It was…
Comment linking /ken/voxlap.htm
on “Spritestack – 3D pixelart editor based on sprite stacking technique”Submitted BUILD2 Demo and Tools as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFrom [1]: > 08/24/1993: Ken signs employment agreement with Apogee Software Productions. A special provision on the contract says that Apogee cannot interfere with Ken's education. Inferring from the first entry in the timeline, he must have been 17 or 18 then. [1] http://advsys.net/ken/build.htm
Comment linking /ken/build.htm
on “Happy 20th Birthday, Quake”Submitted Ken Silverman's Voxlap Engine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttp://advsys.net/ken/build.htm : 06/09/1992: Ken's brother, Alan, hogs the computer by playing a new game titled "Wolfenstein 3D" 06/16/1992: I decide I can win over his time by making my own version, originally titled "Walken" (Walk + Ken) http://advsys.net/ken/mrein.htm : stonewall: In 1993 you made a proposal for the Build engine on behalf of Epic Games. At the time Epic was releasing pinball games and a year la…
Comment linking /ken/mrein.htm
on “Happy 20th Birthday, Quake”Submitted BUILD2 Engine as a story · 2 points
HN discussion>> written single handled you one developer for duke nukem 3D Ken Silverman was a prodigy of sorts. I always wondered what he would have done if he had ended up staying in the industry. http://advsys.net/ken/build.htm
Comment linking /ken/build.htm
on “Happy 20th Birthday, Quake”Submitted Ken Silverman's Voxlap Engine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGreat write up and +1 kudos to author for diving into the details. For the mere mortals out there looking to make their GIF, JPEG, and PNG images smaller (and websites faster), I highly recommend ImageOptim ( http://imageoptim.com/ ). This Mac-only tool combines all of the libraries below to compress your images down to the (nearly if not the) smallest, cross-system compatible size. If you're Mac based, try this: *…
Comment linking /ken/util/pngout.htm
on “The Tiniest GIF Ever”Submitted Build 2 game engine by Ken Silverman as a story · 2 points
HN discussionVoxlap is how I got my sister interested in programming. She really liked the cave blasting demo. http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/cave.zip
Comment linking /ken/voxlap/cave.zip
on “Duke Nukem 3D Code Review”Submitted Ken Silverman's Official Home Page as a story · 2 points
HN discussionApparently John Carmack thought highly of Ken's programming, too: "Carmack: Well there's a big difference between who I consider the most talented and who I would necessarily hire, because you have to hire people that fit right. 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. He does engines and tools. He's great as an editor. He writes a…
Comment linking /ken/carmken.htm
on “Graph Toy, an interactive graph visualizer using mathematical functions”Submitted Ken Silverman releases demo of Build2 engine as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of my favourite Windows application ever: EvalDraw. It's like this, except that beyond drawing single-argument f(x) -> y functions, it also draws f(x, y) -> z heatmaps, f(x, y) -> (R, G, B) colored heatmaps, f(x, y, z) -> (R, G, B) volumetric 3D graphics, and all these have also a f(..., t) -> ... variant for animations. And then you dig in and discover it somehow also has keyboard & mouse input hand…
Comment linking /ken/download.htm
on “Graph Toy, an interactive graph visualizer using mathematical functions”Here is a very old voxel project that still amazes me http://www.advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm It has pretty cool looking visuals, dynamic objects and some basic physics as well. I think the most impressive part the developer was able to run this on ~10-15 years old computers.
Comment linking /ken/voxlap.htm
on “How Voxels Became ‘The Next Big Thing’”During my university times, I often used EvalDraw as quick 2D/3D graphing calculator: http://advsys.net/ken/download.htm You type in some C-ish code, it gets immediately executed and drawn. Instant feedback was a winner feature here. Graphing y=f(x) was AFAIR as simple as typing "(x)" in the first line and writing an expression in the next. "(x,t)" for time-varying singals, "(x,y)" for 2-d functions with values view…
Comment linking /ken/download.htm
on “Programming Minecraft on the Raspberry Pi”PNGOUT ( http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm#pngout ) and PNGCRUSH ( http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush/ ) are similar utilities that can compress PNG files even further. The idea is that you do all your invasive stuff (like reduce colors etc.) in Save for Web in Photoshop (or similar) and then let one of the two programs do its job, which will visually not alter the image.
Comment linking /ken/utils.htm
on “Things about Web Images I Just Learned”As a side note, one of the "tightest" ZIP compatible programs around AFAIK, Ken Silverman's KZIP: http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm Worth of note is also ZIPMIX that in a few cases is very useful.
Comment linking /ken/utils.htm
on “Zip Files: History, Explanation and Implementation”My first exposure to working with voxels was in jMonkeyEngine ( https://jmonkeyengine.org/ ) with a few plugins, when i wanted to display the sort of representation of a world that you see in games like Minecraft (the closest i had previously done was using particle systems for visualizing point cloud data). Almost immediately, it became clear that any sort of a larger world needs a lot of optimizations done to work…
Comment linking /ken/voxlap.htm
on “The Perfect Voxel Engine”Wow, very impressive. Made me remember this, which is one of favorites: http://www.advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm It has destructible scenes, physics and even some gameplay. Much smaller & simpler scenes and not as good looking though. But pretty good for a 15 years old project!
Comment linking /ken/voxlap.htm
on “The Perfect Voxel Engine”I get best results with pngout http://www.advsys.net/ken/util/pngout.htm
Comment linking /ken/util/pngout.htm
on “PNG that works”
