Is ZBlood really faithful to the original Blood game?

[TheNoob_Gamer]

I've never played Blood before. Is this TC a good place to start with, or should I go with BloodGDX first? 
And yes, I think this post should be here.
(This thread have been answered, please don't bump it. Thanks for participating!)

Edited February 22, 2019 by TheNoob_Gamer

[Avoozl]

You're better off going with GDX Blood as it relied on reverse engineering and part of the source code to be close to the original game, ZBlood doesn't hold a candle to GDX Blood.

Edited February 15, 2019 by Avoozl

[Beezle]

10 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

I've never played Blood before. Is this TC a good place to start with, or should I go with BloodGDX first? 
And yes, I think this post should be here.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/zbloody-hell/downloads/zbloody-hell-16 try this one: ZBloody Hell 1.9.4 , plays very well and I think holds very true to the original, hard to say which is better... this or BloodGDX, in my opinion but someone has said that they prefer this over the original and I'd definitely recommend it:)

[-TDRR-]

Skip BloodGDX and go straight to NBlood, with EXTREME accuracy, is open-source, and no washed out colors like in GDX! Did i mention it can play demos from the DOS version?!

 

It also has better TNT jumping, if you like that. (Nothing like blowing up two remote detonators and flying off to your destination!)

[Beezle]

1 minute ago, -TDRR- said:

 Did i mention it can play demos from the DOS version?!

No shit!? That's pretty cool, thanks for the recommendation TDRR, never heard of NBlood before. Yeah I noticed with GDX sometimes unless you're playing a custom mapset, Rage Against The Machine for example, the framerate can go all over the place, like 100's of fps lol.

[-TDRR-]

28 minutes ago, Beezle said:

No shit!? That's pretty cool, thanks for the recommendation TDRR, never heard of NBlood before. Yeah I noticed with GDX sometimes unless you're playing a custom mapset, Rage Against The Machine for example, the framerate can go all over the place, like 100's of fps lol.

Understandable that you haven't heard of it, it only came out a week ago and no one seems to really care, despite being x100 times better than GDX.

Yes, it's true! I have no idea how the author managed to make it so accurate, but it was a real win. Even the OPL music is emulated accurately! All i want is someone ports this to the Wii, that would be really good.

[hella knight]

I actually prefer zblood because it plays more like doom, I don't really like blood with all the hitscanners, bullet-sponges and other bullshit it has.

I think most people who are coming to it now try get through the first few levels on hard and then just drop it lol.

[SiFi270]

One reason ZBlood isn't that accurate is because some of its levels are from Blood TC, a limit removing wad that recreates levels from the original game but was never intended to be a straight-up remake, just a Blood-flavored adventure. Lately I've had a lot of fun turning it back into Doom with Crispy Doom's "-nodeh" parameter and Doomkid's Doom 64 graphics pack.

[seed]

It isn't very accurate since it's a recreation. If you want accuracy + quality of life improvements go for:

 

BloodGDX, which is a reverse-engineered port combined with parts of the alpha source code of the game, has high accuracy, and plays back vanilla demos. Runs on junk Java.

 

Or NBlood, fresh from the oven and derived from eduke32. Another reverse-engineered port, plays back vanilla demos, has high accuracy, multiplayer (although buggy at the moment), and does not run on Java. It might also be merged into mainline eduke32 in the future. Or it might not, that remains to be seen.

 

Lastly, there will also be Nightdive Studios's remaster of Blood, but what features it is going to have an how accurate it will be is currently unknown. It will run on the Kex engine, which was used for projects like Doom 64 EX.

Edited February 15, 2019 by seed

[JBerg]

NBlood is the most accurate remake as of now.

[snapshot]

I hope people realize that ZBlood is not a direct remake but rather a fan game set a year after the events of the original Blood :)

[holaareola]

49 minutes ago, hella knight said:

I actually prefer zblood because it plays more like doom, I don't really like blood with all the hitscanners, bullet-sponges and other bullshit it has.

I think most people who are coming to it now try get through the first few levels on hard and then just drop it lol.

And they'd be having a gentler time. One of the problems with Blood is that it shipped with an absolutely ridiculous bug that reversed most of the difficulties -- the easiest level is the hardest!

[whirledtsar]

5 hours ago, -TDRR- said:

Skip BloodGDX and go straight to NBlood, with EXTREME accuracy, is open-source, and no washed out colors like in GDX! Did i mention it can play demos from the DOS version?!

 

It also has better TNT jumping, if you like that. (Nothing like blowing up two remote detonators and flying off to your destination!)

 

NBlood is LESS accurate than BloodGDX. GDX can play demos from the original game and never desync, NBlood can not. Also loading custom content (including the official expansion Cryptic Passage) in NBlood is a pain in the dick.

[Loud Silence]

DosBox can run Blood pretty well if you set proper settings.

[-TDRR-]

41 minutes ago, whirledtsar said:

GDX can play demos from the original game and never desync

Really?! It doesn't play the title screen demos (or any demos i try for that matter) for me. And BloodGDX's renderer isn't very accurate vs the NBlood software renderer which looks exactly the same. It's kinda unfair to compare it though, considering BloodGDX has been out for MUCH longer than NBlood, so it still has quite a long road to go.

 

And even if BloodGDX is all that good, NBlood still has advantages, such as having both a GL and Software renderer, being open source and having better mod support. (or at least i heard they put some scripting language similar to the extended .con)

 

So, choosing either BloodGDX or NBlood may be up to taste, as the innacuracies are rather small vs something like BloodCM.

 

EDIT: Whoops, apparently BloodGDX does play demos, but they didn't play here for some reason, maybe outdated Java version may have something to do with it?

Edited February 15, 2019 by -TDRR-

[seed]

8 minutes ago, -TDRR- said:

Really?! It doesn't play the title screen demos (or any demos i try for that matter) And BloodGDX's renderer isn't accurate at all vs the NBlood software renderer which looks exactly the same. It's kinda unfair to compare it though, considering BloodGDX has been out for MUCH longer than NBlood, so it still has quite a long road to go.

 

And even if BloodGDX is all that good, NBlood still has advantages, such as having both a GL and Software renderer, being open source and having better mod support. (or at least i heard they put some scripting language similar to the extended .con)

 

So, choosing either BloodGDX or NBlood may be up to taste, as the innacuracies are rather small vs something like BloodCM.

 

Yeah, I've just browsed that topic to see what bugs people found and someone mentioned that BloodGDX is indeed capable of playing back demos recorded in vanilla, while they desync in NBlood.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

6 hours ago, -TDRR- said:

Understandable that you haven't heard of it, it only came out a week ago and no one seems to really care, despite being x100 times better than GDX.

Yes, it's true! I have no idea how the author managed to make it so accurate, but it was a real win. Even the OPL music is emulated accurately! All i want is someone ports this to the Wii, that would be really good.

Well, Revenant100/ Marphy Black posted this video, so I'm not too sure about that 'port' 's quality.

[-TDRR-]

28 minutes ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Well, Revenant100/ Marphy Black posted this video, so I'm not too sure about that 'port' 's quality.

It may not be super accurate, but to me the other benefits far outshine those of BloodGDX's. Each to their own.

[Nevander]

From least to most accurate, here is a list of the ones I know:

 

5. ZBlood (least accurate)

4. Blood Crossmatching (CM)

3. Blood GDX

2. NBlood

1. Blood (original, obviously it's 100% accurate to itself)

 

I predict the Nightdive one will be between NBlood and the original.

[Lila Feuer]

As a Blood fan, I liked zBloodv44, it has its moments. But faithful? Hell no.

[-TDRR-]

42 minutes ago, Nevander said:

From least to most accurate, here is a list of the ones I know:

 

5. ZBlood (least accurate)

4. Blood Crossmatching (CM)

3. Blood GDX

2. NBlood

1. Blood (original, obviously it's 100% accurate to itself)

 

I predict the Nightdive one will be between NBlood and the original.

Don't forget Blood Reborn! And Kaiser's Blood EX, which may be very accurate too, if his other ports are anything to go by.

[Lila Feuer]

The Night Dive one is Blood EX.

[Avoozl]

Because it will be on his Kex engine.

[Revenant100]

1 hour ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Well, Revenant100/ Marphy Black posted this video, so I'm not too sure about that 'port' 's quality.

This is correct behavior. NBlood's visuals and audio are already more accurate in its first release as of three days ago than BloodGDX is after over a year and a half of development, and its gameplay logic accuracy, which is already extremely high to begin with as evidenced by its ability to correctly reproduce 1.21's built-in demos (including E6M1's desync), is still being worked as can be observed from the ongoing commits. That we can even see these commits being made owes to the fact that NBlood is open source which allows it to be further developed into the future by anyone, whereas BloodGDX's closed source renders its future at the mercy of its author who has not and may never release the source, making it only slightly better than the source port limbo that Blood had been stuck in for the past two decades.

 

46 minutes ago, Nevander said:

I predict the Nightdive one will be between NBlood and the original.

By definition, Kaiser's BloodEX port for Nightdive will be less accurate than NBlood and BloodGDX because it's not running on the Build engine. It's running on the Kex Engine that will be closely emulating Build's behavior but intentionally not perfectly.

 

Edited February 16, 2019 by Revenant100

[Master O]

20 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

I've never played Blood before. Is this TC a good place to start with, or should I go with BloodGDX first? 
And yes, I think this post should be here.

 

1) Buy https://www.gog.com/game/one_unit_whole_blood

 

2) Use the files from above in nblood via its readme file:

 

https://forums.duke4.net/topic/10456-release-nblood-blood-port-based-on-eduke32/

 

3) Enjoy

[Dude27th]

On 2/15/2019 at 6:39 PM, whirledtsar said:

 

NBlood is LESS accurate than BloodGDX. GDX can play demos from the original game and never desync, NBlood can not. Also loading custom content (including the official expansion Cryptic Passage) in NBlood is a pain in the dick.

For me BloodGDX is accurate to the original Blood in the same way that GZDoom is accurate to MS-Dos Doom.
And I fell that NBlood is going to be something like Chocolate Doom in the future.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

On 2/16/2019 at 8:53 AM, Master O said:

 

1) Buy https://www.gog.com/game/one_unit_whole_blood

 

2) Use the files from above in nblood via its readme file:

 

https://forums.duke4.net/topic/10456-release-nblood-blood-port-based-on-eduke32/

 

3) Enjoy

Well, I've done a fair bit of researching to see if this game still exists on the market, and I do know how to install source ports, but thanks anyway.