KEX Engine

Official logo of the KEX Engine.

The KEX Engine is a proprietary cross-platform game engine framework originally created by Samuel Villarreal (Kaiser) for Nightdive Studios. It provides special support for the remastering of older titles, providing system abstraction layers and a broad range of interfaces to various libraries and platform APIs while remaining largely agnostic with respect to how game logic should function. This is exploited within Nightdive to bring aging titles rapidly up to date.

KEX 3 was a nearly complete rewrite and redesign of the older KEX 2 code base. Its innovations included added support for a multi-threaded game loop allowing maximum GPU usage, support for the Vulkan rendering API, and portability to various console platforms. As of 2021, KEX 4 is currently in development and exchanges the multi-threaded game loop for GPU-level parallelism.

It is notable for becoming the basis for the 2020 re-release of Doom 64 and the 2024 re-releases of Doom and Doom II as "Doom + Doom II", as well as the re-release of Killing Time as Killing Time: Resurrected later that year.

Games[edit]

Platforms[edit]

PC (Windows/Linux/macOS; Epic Games Store, GOG, Steam)
Nintendo Switch
Microsoft Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Sony PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5

Retired platforms[edit]

External links[edit]

References[edit]

↑ McWhertor, Michael (12 March 2020). "Blade Runner remaster coming to PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One." Polygon. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
↑ Holt, Kris (24 October 2023). "The Star Wars: Dark Forces remaster will arrive on February 28, 2024." Engadget. Retrieved 24 October 2023.

Nightdive Studios v · t · e
Employees Xaser Acheron • Dimitris Giannakis • James Haley • Stephen Kick • Lexi Mayfield • Edward Richardson • Sven Ruthner (contractor) • Matt Tropiano • Samuel Villarreal • Max Waine
Games Strife: Veteran Edition • Doom 64 • Doom + Doom II • Killing Time: Resurrected Technology: KEX 2 • KEX Engine

Source code genealogy
Based on	Name	Base for
KEX 2	KEX Engine	Doom 64 (2020 version)
		Doom + Doom II
		Killing Time: Resurrected

[1] McWhertor, Michael (12 March 2020). "Blade Runner remaster coming to PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One." Polygon. Retrieved 30 March 2020.

[2] Holt, Kris (24 October 2023). "The Star Wars: Dark Forces remaster will arrive on February 28, 2024." Engadget. Retrieved 24 October 2023.

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