How was the parallax scrolling of Duke Nukem II designed?

Creating a parallax effect (the movement of independent elements on different levels of the Z axis at different speeds) presented software developers for PC platforms with difficult challenges in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Implementing a parallax effect on the software side would have been easy, but the limitations and peculiarities of the available hardware created difficult problems and required new solutions.

The developer of the RigelEngine, which was used for a modern re-creation of Duke Nukem II, recently published an article about all the technical and programmatic challenges that the developers of Apogee Software had to overcome in 1992-1993 to implement a proper parallax effect in their baby, Duke Nukem II. It is a technical analysis that shows how intelligent minds with enormous technical sophistication, patience, perseverance, creative solutions, and tricks made the impossible possible.

A must-read – check it out on Lethal Guitar’s blog!