So, I've Been Thinking About Playing Blood...

...And I have a few questions to ask. What is the best source port? Do I want the Plasma Pak, and is the extra episode worth it? Is there anything else that I should know about before getting into the game?

EDIT: I've tried Raze, but it is GZDoom based and my computer can't handle GZDoom.

Definitely play Blood, it's by far the most mechanically enjoyable Build game IMO.

I recent played through all the episodes and both expansions on extra crispy in Raze (NBlood). I would recommend either using Raze or Fresh Supply.

The things to note are - don't play on the harder difficulties at the start, stick to the HMP equivalent. Secrets are important and there are a lot of them, try to find as many as you can (you'll see cool easter eggs/references too).

Blood is a fucking awesome game, you're in for a treat.

1 minute ago, xvertigox said:

The things to note are - don't play on the harder difficulties at the start, stick to the HMP equivalent.

Yeah, I've about how brutal the game is a lot. Definitely going straight to the easiest difficulty.

Just now, DSC said:

Yeah, I've about how brutal the game is a lot. Definitely going straight to the easiest difficulty.

I wouldn't do the easiest if you've played other 2.5D shooters but definitely towards that end of the spectrum.

I really enjoyed Blood on the hardest difficulty, it was punishing in parts but nothing too crazy. I just had to play more tactically and clear rooms in a smarter way. That actually reminds me of another tip, crouching heavily reduces the amount of damage that hitscanners do to you. I'm always crouching whenever I'm taking on cultists so be sure to try it out.

11 minutes ago, xvertigox said:

That actually reminds me of another tip, crouching heavily reduces the amount of damage that hitscanners do to you. I'm always crouching whenever I'm taking on cultists so be sure to try it out.

I really like how crouch is an actual useful thing to do in the game.

If you had a low end PC, i recomend you BuildGDX, its a javaport that really really lets you play Blood and a lot of user made content.
There is also NBlood, a port based on EDuke32, but after playing the hell out of Blood on BuildGDX its pretty difficult to change to another sourceport.
I just change when it start to fail on my end, but doesn't happend at all with BuildGDX and i have a pretty old PC.

Also, if you gonna play this, remember that this game, as Heretic, Hexen, Duke3D and Shadow Warrior, offered the option of looking up and down, so let yourself free on playing with mouselook on.
And yes, if you got the chance, try Cryptic Passage and Plasma Pack, this two expansions add two new episodes full of pretty good maps.

Fresh Supply is a good choice for starters. Its by Nightdive, so you know that its a good port, but a lot of people found annoying that they uses their on KEX Engine instead of a port of Build engine. Don't know much about this, but its something that i read a lot around.

As Palpatine from star wars would say: "Do it".

I play Blood on a laptop that doesn't handle Fresh Supply too well. I use the N-Blood frontend with the GOG version of OUWB and I run the game using the software renderer and it's very smooth. The laptop doesn't run GZ-Doom either but N-Blood runs nicely.

3 hours ago, P41R47 said:

Fresh Supply is a good choice for starters. Its by Nightdive, so you know that its a good port, but a lot of people found annoying that they uses their on KEX Engine instead of a port of Build engine. Don't know much about this, but its something that i read a lot around.

My understanding is that the KEX engine is the engine framework for drawing video etc and doesn't handle the game logic and whatnot. That's why Turok and Blood can run on KEX but obviously be completely different games. D64 runs on KEX but maintains demo comparability so there is a high degree of accuracy (at least in D64).

Blood is definitely the greatest of all Build engine games, I concur, but difficulty-wise, I must agree that it's so brutal. Even I still die often in Slightly Broiled (the third difficulty), and that's not to mention a few but also fatal bugs within the engine (such as getting squashed by doors). Otherwise, it's pretty enjoyable for the atmosphere and homages, as well as the very juicy amount of... blood and violence.

35 minutes ago, xvertigox said:

 

My understanding is that the KEX engine is the engine framework for drawing video etc and doesn't handle the game logic and whatnot. That's why Turok and Blood can run on KEX but obviously be completely different games. D64 runs on KEX but maintains demo comparability so there is a high degree of accuracy (at least in D64).

I don't gonna talk about things i don't know at all, but here is the entry of Fresh Supply on the Blood Wiki:
https://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php?title=Fresh_Supply#Reception

I really appreaciate that Nightdive made this new option available, and surely they work hard on it.

Just to clarify, i'm not against their work at all. I love what they made with Strife and Doom64.
But Its just a shame that its isn't a 1:1 port and i think thats what Blood is in desesperately need by the time being.
Right now, after all the patches, Fresh Supply is as good as the other options out there.

And have the option to be better if the patching continues.

8 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

But Its just a shame that its isn't a 1:1 port and i think thats what Blood is in desesperately need by the time being.

The initial launch was very rocky for long time fans of Blood as it was quite obvious in areas that there were issues. For new players it wouldn't matter (for the most part) but there were definitely issues.

There are no 1:1 ports for Blood as the source has never been released. All ports are approximations, with varying degrees of accuracy, using the original Blood assets. If I'm wrong on any of this someone please let me know.

9 minutes ago, xvertigox said:

 

The initial launch was very rocky for long time fans of Blood as it was quite obvious in areas that there were issues. For new players it wouldn't matter (for the most part) but there were definitely issues.

 

There are no 1:1 ports for Blood as the source has never been released. All ports are approximations, with varying degrees of accuracy, using the original Blood assets. If I'm wrong on any of this someone please let me know.

Don't worry, as much as i know, you are totally right.
There are no proper port of Blood cause the sourcecode is missing, lost, or whatever; they are all approximations,.

Thats why most of die hard Bloodlites, Blood fans, flipped out when they saw Fresh Supply.

All of them were expecting, as Nightdive was contacted by Atari to make this approximation of Blood, a proper sourceport as they got access to what Atari kept for a very long time: the sourcecode.
Don't know why Kaiser, as the article in the wiki said, decided to not use Build engine code and choose to create a KEX approximation instead, but he did a great job reacreating Blood. But people were dreaming with a Chocolate Blood, to say something equals in terms of accuracy.
Why he didn't use the code? Don't know, maybe the sourcecode its lost and he had no other choice than make it himself.

To be honest Fresh Supply would be improved further but Atari's contract got a time limit - at least that's what I could gather from the final changelog.

I'd say if you're interested in Death Wish -- arguably the best level pack for BLOOD, and for me personally it's supplanted the original game entirely -- then stick to BloodGDX and Fresh Supply.

FS and DeathWish did briefly make changes to be more compatible with each other, but I don't know if it ever reached 100% perfect compatibility, so go with BloodGDX for surety if you don't mind missing out on some of the QoLs of Fresh Supply.

You're better off going with BloodGDX/BuildGDX than Fresh Supply. The fan made source ports are more accurate than the new release since it can no longer be updated after the license expired and the new "enhancements" make it less accurate.

Fresh Supply, NBlood and GDX are readily available so I would go for those.

It's really a toss up between GDX, FS and NBlood since non of them are 1:1 accurate but also isn't a pain in the ass to setup and play like the Dos version.

Make sure you don't miss "cryptic passage" the official 6th episode. My favourite.

For Port:

I personally recommend NBlood over BuildGDX, as NBlood should offer better performance due to not having the Java overhead.

For Gameplay tips:

- I recommend to try the 3rd difficulty "Lightly Broiled" on first playthrough. It is roughly equivalent in difficulty to Duke3D's "Come get some". Skill 4 and 5 are not recommend for 1st playthrough.

- Crouching is very powerful in this game. The cultists cannot hit you as accurately when you are crouched. And some other enemies cannot hit you at all when crouched (like the fat butchers and the big/stone gargoyles).

- Cultists have a quick reaction time (time between seeing you and shooting at you) but have slow turning rate. You can circle-strafe and they won't be able to turn towards you quick enough to fire at you. Of course this tactic only works in some areas.

- Try to master the dynamites. This is a necessary skill for dealing with certain situations, especially on higher skills.

- Hell hounds (the hounds that shoot fire) can be killed without wasting ammo by luring them to fall inside water. Water kills them instantly. Of course this tactic only works in some areas. Also this tactic isn't necessary at all on skill 3.

What else:

I recommend to check out "Death Wish" level pack.

I've tried using BuildGDX, but it just refuses to start the game up. Anyone got any ideas why?

11 hours ago, P41R47 said:

Fresh Supply is a good choice for starters. Its by Nightdive, so you know that its a good port, but a lot of people found annoying that they uses their on KEX Engine instead of a port of Build engine. Don't know much about this, but its something that i read a lot around.

Kex is just a framework rather than a full-blown engine, providing a bunch of useful utilities to assist in making a game engine. You still have to actively implement the game engine code yourself.

4 hours ago, DSC said:

I've tried using BuildGDX, but it just refuses to start the game up. Anyone got any ideas why?

Strange, just unzip the content inside where you have all the blood files and it should do the trick. i decompressed the zip on my gog blood folder, made a shorcut of buildgdx and it worked right out of the bat.

Edit: try to download the last java update, as its a port dependant of java.

4 hours ago, DSC said:

I've tried using BuildGDX, but it just refuses to start the game up. Anyone got any ideas why?

stupid cellphone. sorry for double post

Don't worry, I managed to finally put the game working. Loving it so far, the game is so much fun! Already completed Episodes 1 and 2.

5 minutes ago, DSC said:

Don't worry, I managed to finally put the game working. Loving it so far, the game is so much fun! Already completed Episodes 1 and 2.

Wow you are fast!
I spent like two days on the first episode alone. I played it around 2000, but just the shareware edition and i played it a lot. Love it! But when i replayed it last year, it was like a new game to me, i didn't remember it at all.

Also i had to cling to Pinky on the inside, as the cultist totally rapped me from afar.

1 minute ago, P41R47 said:

Wow you are fast!

Nah, I'm not that good... I played on the easiest difficulty setting. I'll probably choose a harder one next time.

I can't say anything about ports, as I always used DosBox which, if tweaked properly, can get you playable framerates at 640x480. But obviously a decent port is preferable. The extra episode is really good. The whole game is fantastic and on par with OG Doom in terms of a quality FPS experience.

I'd prefer to use NBlood over BloodGDX. No Java, please.

11 hours ago, jazzmaster9 said:

Fresh Supply, NBlood and GDX are readily available so I would go for those.

 

It's really a toss up between GDX, FS and NBlood since non of them are 1:1 accurate but also isn't a pain in the ass to setup and play like the Dos version.

But both GDX, NBlood, Raze are more faithful than FS :P . That's as accurate as it probably ever gets.

I would recommend NBlood, no Java, runs better, and replicates the look of the original game better than GDX does. FS is a go-no since you can't run it anyway it seems, OP.

Nblood seems fine, I actually use Bloodgdx for two main reasons, the latter has proper controller support and also I was able to get a 3D skybox mod working with it, whereas I couldn't figure it out with NBlood. 

But Fresh Supply as much as things like vulkan compatibility is great, is just kind of glitchy and exhibits more unintended behaviour than the other two. It's very disappointing. 

I'm definitely planning to try Raze out when that gets closer to done.