Realistic Reflections Made on a 28-Year-Old Game Engine

When it comes to technology from the bygone pre-2010s era, many people are often quick to dismiss it as outdated rubbish, highlighting the novelties of modern hardware and software that were technically impossible to implement back in the day.

While this statement can be true in relation to many fields, such as computers and mobile phones, it becomes much more debatable in the realm of game development, considering how often developers perform what can only be described as tech-wizardry and running contemporary games on game engines that are can often be older than the developers themselves.

The most obvious example that instantly pops to mind is Rockstar, which, as many of you likely know, continues to run its legendary Grand Theft Auto series on the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE), an engine from the late 90s developed by Angel Studios, now a part of Rockstar San Diego.

Throughout the years, thanks to continuous updates, RAGE has been able to handle GTA's massive open worlds with relative ease, with Rockstar using it for both GTA IV and GTA V, and seemingly not planning to change the status quo for the upcoming GTA VI.

A little less-known fact about the tech behind GTA V is that besides RAGE, Rockstar also used Scaleform GFx, an incredibly obscure vector graphics rendering engine capable of displaying Adobe Flash-based user interfaces and HUDs in video games, to set up the game's UI elements, including the map. Developed by Scaleform Corporation, Scaleform GFx was acquired by Autodesk, the makers of Maya and 3ds Max, in 2011 and was ultimately discontinued and removed from the market in 2018.

In the past, Bitsquid was used to bring a variety of games to life, including Escape Dead Island, Warhammer: Vermintide 2, and, most importantly, the original Helldivers. Following its acquisition by Autodesk in 2014, the engine was integrated into the company's game development toolkit and renamed Autodesk Stingray. Four years later, also in 2018, Stingray was declared dead by its developers, which prompted Arrowhead to update and enhance the engine themselves in order to produce Helldivers' latest installment.

Joining the ranks of brilliant creators who have successfully harnessed old technology to create something beautiful is Game Developer Artem Brullov, who recently experimented with Ken Silverman's Build Engine, initially released in 1995 and made popular by the 1996 hit Duke Nukem 3D.

Considered to be a 2.5D engine, Build represents the in-game world on a two-dimensional grid using Sectors – closed 2D shapes – and utilizes Sprites – simple flat objects – to populate the world geometry with objects. In addition to Duke Nukem 3D, the Build Engine was also used to power games like Witchaven, William Shatner's TekWar, Blood, PowerSlave, and Shadow Warrior.

Using the EDuke32 port of the engine, Artem set up an appealing retro-style rain effect and impressive reflective surfaces, achieved by manually remaking the level geometry upside down – one of the few ways to create in-game mirrors developers had back in the 90s.

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