Wonko the Sane  - 2009-03-21
so he ripped off Wolf3d in the days of Doom and went on to rip off Doom in the days Quake?
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Wonko the Sane - 2009-03-21 what part of that is incorrect? Sure, it's impressive for a 17 year old but it doesn't bring anything new to the table.
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Rape Ape - 2009-03-21 Ken's Labyrinth, iirc, came out before Doom. Ken went on to make the Build engine (at age 17), which powered Duke 3D as well as a score of other games. While Quake may have been more memorable as a technological milestone, I still believe that the Build engine was better at taking advantage of what was capable at the time -- that is, sure, Quake was full 3D, but most of the time you could only have one enemy on-screen at a time, which made for pretty fucking boring gameplay, whereas Build engine games featured sprites which, while less advanced, technically, made better gameplay possible on the systems at the time -- it was a smarter and far better engine for that reason.
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Sputum - 2009-03-22 I'd have to agree with wonko. I could be mistaken, but this looks like it was actually made on the wolf3d engine, which makes it not too impressive.
Also you're totally wrong about quake only being able to have one enemy on screen at a time. The Quake engine was way better in every respect than the build engine. Especially considering duke nukem was the only good game on the build engine.
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Rape Ape - 2009-03-22 But Ken's Labyrinth wasn't made on the Wolf3D engine. It was a kind of dumb, crappy game, but the point is it was impressive that it was made by two little kids rather than a team of adults. However, re: Build vs. Quake, I was using hyperbole, but Quake had nowhere near the amount of enemies that Doom, Wolf, Duke3D, Dark Forces, etc., etc. had on screen at a time, and it made the game really boring compared to all of those games -- the engine basically put technical bullet points ahead of gameplay concerns.
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Sputum - 2009-03-22 well, I see what you are saying but I still disagree. I felt that quake was more fun than the other FPS games that came out before it, including Duke3d and even Doom. There might have been slightly fewer enemies on screen at a time, but what those enemies were capable of and the levels they were in made it more fun for me.
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Caminante Nocturno - 2009-03-21
This had a charm all its own.
Which is funny, considering where it came from.
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glasseye - 2009-03-21
Also, the game is freeware now:
http://www.advsys.net/ken/klab.htm
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Redlof - 2009-03-21
This is actually pretty impressive as just a tech demo, but why anybody thought they could sell this without redoing the graphics and gameplay, I have no idea.
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Yellow Lantern - 2009-03-22
I don't have time to watch this right now. I'll save it for later.
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pastorofmuppets - 2009-03-23
It's not that he ripped off Wolf 3D. It's that he's one of a handful of people who were capable of doing something like that, especially at that age.
There was always a computer games industry but during the BBS days a real transition took place. Not just 2D to 3D but one-or-two person teams making games to large companies. A couple of real rock stars filled the gap, guys like John Carmack. JC considered KS to be in his league, which is a fairly high achievement all on its own.
Of course, Carmack being Carmack, he went on to do Quake and the rest, and my best guess is that Ken got sick of game engine programming. He still does software development, though.
I posted the video because it's a cute game and I remembered liking it and was wondering who else remembered it. Ken did all of the music, sound effects, level design and artwork. His name is in the title and the story has something to do with his dog. So it has a weird humor to it.
And yeah, it did pretty well from what I remember.
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