BS Engine

BS Engine

Make your own old-school FPS without wrestling with a giant modern engine.

BS Engine is a game engine and editor built specifically for retro first-person shooters and boomer shooters. The goal was pretty simple: I wanted something that felt closer to making a Doom, Heretic, Duke3D or early Quake-style game than setting up a modern 3D project from scratch.

You can build maps directly in the editor, import your own textures, enemies, weapons, decorations, sounds and music, set up lighting, doors, liquids, slopes, multiple floors and other gameplay elements, then jump straight into the game to test it.

Most of the engine is designed to be usable without writing code, but if you want to go further there is also a built-in JavaScript scripting system. Scripts can react to things like shooting, taking damage, picking up items, opening doors, entering areas and killing enemies. They can also modify the HUD, spawn enemies and projectiles, control lights, change parts of the map at runtime and even create entirely new gameplay systems.

I've been building BS Engine around the kind of stuff I personally like in older FPS engines: fast iteration, simple tools, chunky pixel art, lights and shadows, weird scripted events, and being able to get an idea working without having to build ten other systems first.

Some of what BS Engine currently supports:

• Multi-floor maps, stairs, slopes and raised/lowered areas
• Custom wall, floor and ceiling textures
• Animated liquids including water, lava and poison
• Swimming and underwater effects
• Dynamic lights, shadows, flickering and pulsing lights
• Doors, large merged doors, moving platforms and crushers
• Hitscan, projectile, melee and explosive weapons
• Custom enemies, decorations and pickups
• Enemy AI that can navigate around the map and use stairs
• Skyboxes and environmental settings
• Flashlight support
• Custom HUD layouts
• Custom title screens and menus
• Scripted triggers, events and gameplay logic
• JavaScript scripting API
• Custom projectiles and effects
• Built-in playtesting
• Standalone HTML game export
• Projects can be packaged into desktop games separately using GameCrate

BS Engine itself was actually built in HTML/JavaScript and packaged into a Windows executable using GameCrate, so the same workflow can be used for games made with the engine.

The scripting system is probably one of my favorite parts of the engine because it can be used for both tiny changes and much bigger systems. Something as simple as a cheat-code script can listen for the player typing GODMODE and prevent all incoming damage, while another script could create an arena wave system, enemy radar, lockdown sequence, CRT filter or even a completely different game mode.

BS Engine isn't trying to compete with Unreal or Unity. That's not really the point.

It's meant to be a focused tool for making the kind of retro shooters I grew up with, without needing a huge amount of setup just to get started.

BS Engine was heavily inspired by EFPSCE. One of the main goals was to keep that same kind of straightforward, easy-to-understand workflow while adding some more modern conveniences, visual tools and quality-of-life features that I always wished were there.

If you like old FPS engines, sprite enemies, chunky pixels, colored lighting, secret rooms and making weird little shooters, that's basically what BS Engine is for.

EFPSE-CE Modern Warfare and Shinobi Template by TJ - Credited