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Stroggos

Your views on a new project

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Most people here will know me as the guy who builds Kaiser's Doom64 Ex from the latest SVN revision, SVN Builds if you will, but I have come up with something new. A reverse engineered Blood port.

Now, for those people who don't know what Blood it, it was one of the last games to use the Classic BUILD engine, a DOOM engine competitor, and for the time it looked a bit shabby but it was great fun to play.

In fairly recent years, from 2000 - 2005, most important BUILD engine games have released their source codes so that their legacy goes on through the ages and gamers don't forget their gaming roots.

That was most except Blood. Since the non-release of the Blood code Blood has shot to a cult-like status and may never come down.

My idea is to reverse engineer Blood form the sources of Shadow Warrior and see what happens. I have posted this to see that your views are on the matter and my project.

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Yep good luck, It's time this relic got a proper port.

If you do get started on it I'll try keep a close eye on it.
exciting news taking to account your previous work.

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I would really, seriously appreciate this. Blood is my favorite Build Engine game, and the lack of a proper port has been making me (and a ton of other people out there, from the petitions I've read) very sad.

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Stroggos, you should contact both JonoF and Randy Heit. They might both have resources you can use; JonoF for his experience with doing BUILD ports, and I believe Randy has done a bunch of Blood map reverse engineering!

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There's a similar project that's been undergoing for some time called Cradle 2 Grave, or something along these lines. But they're using the EDuke port. From what i can remember, it's a complete recreation but developed to mirror the original game.

I think i saw it on ModDB, but this was some time ago, so any recent activity from the project is beyond me.

But if you can pull this off, i'm all in favour! I haven't played Blood for donkeys.

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Nomad said:

Stroggos, you should contact both JonoF and Randy Heit. They might both have resources you can use; JonoF for his experience with doing BUILD ports, and I believe Randy has done a bunch of Blood map reverse engineering!

Yes, in fact you can sorta load Build maps (including Blood maps) in ZDoom. You can't actually play them because they're not functional and there's no logic for the enemies and stuff, but you can explore them and some things do actually work (including the ambient sound things, a recent addition!). ZDoom also contains the code needed to decrypted encrypted Blood archives. So, not that I would suggest using it as a base, it is a good reference for reading and interpreting stuff.

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Six said:

There's a similar project that's been undergoing for some time called Cradle 2 Grave, or something along these lines. But they're using the EDuke port. From what i can remember, it's a complete recreation but developed to mirror the original game.

I think i saw it on ModDB, but this was some time ago, so any recent activity from the project is beyond me.

But if you can pull this off, i'm all in favour! I haven't played Blood for donkeys.


yeah that one is more of a mod then a port
don't quote me on it, but I thought they stopped development on that years ago, or maybe it was a different Blood mod all together.

[EDIT]
And what do you know, I was wrong. I do wonder what that other project was called though.

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Okay I'll get down to the design document later today! The first release is going to be more or less a "direct port" of the original Blood. Then I will release the source code and see what people do with it. YAY GPL!!!

[EDIT]
I have been looking through ZDoom's source code. It seems to be pretty cool the fact that it features the RFF format is cool. Also I don't know whether to use the publicly available source code of JFSW or whether to ask Jonof himself for the latest SVN revision.

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Those are the publicly available ones. But from reading several posts in his forums he also has a secret SVN as well.

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I hope, you get managed to pull that through. The last attempt, WinBlood, silently disappeared years before.

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cybdmn said:

I hope, you get managed to pull that through. The last attempt, WinBlood, silently disappeared years before.


I know I'm using some of the code from it. He actually had it runnable and playing but the only AI that existed was for the Zombie and even then the player couldn't die. It is a royal effort. Hopefully I get this thing down as I have been using the ZDoom code which in an obscure way links it back to Doom which I like because it gives me a reason to spam all the Doom and ZDoom forums lol.

But I am surprised at your initial response hopefully I gain favour in the Doom programming community for this aside from making SVN Builds of Kaisers work.

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Maybe you can get some suggestions or help from lucius, who works on DarkXL. Seems like he is very talented in doing such a job. I tried DarkXL a while ago, and it felt really much like the original.

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cybdmn said:

Maybe you can get some suggestions or help from lucius, who works on DarkXL. Seems like he is very talented in doing such a job. I tried DarkXL a while ago, and it felt really much like the original.


That is a pretty good idea. But I really want to gather all the information I can before really telling people about it. But as far as I can tell I am the only guy really having a go at this. I am a fairly competent programmer, yes, but I really wish there were more resources on the subject. The only real resource as to the RFF format is the email from Matt Saettler which still isn't 100% accurate. At the end of the day I really want to make the Open Source community happy with this, and it probably will.

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Stroggos said:

But as far as I can tell I am the only guy really having a go at this.


There is Transfusion, which is what the most people care for. But this isn't Blood for me. It misses the single player mode, and the "Build Engine Mood".

Stroggos said:

I am a fairly competent programmer, yes, but I really wish there were more resources on the subject.


As far as i can see it, and i am not a programmer, it needs a lot of engineering, before even a top programmer can do very much.

Stroggos said:

The only real resource as to the RFF format is the email from Matt Saettler which still isn't 100% accurate.


There is that alpha thing, but in JonoF's message board i've read, that this ist pretty useless, because it is very old code, with many features missing, and stuff like that.

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Transfusion hasn't been updated since 2007. In fact they haven't even added files to their SVN for nearly a year now. Which is s shame because it is fun but as you say it isn't Blood.

Yes it's going to take quite a bit of engineering but I'm up to the task. But, I'm not too confident on a 2010 release. Maybe a Alpha or Beta but not a massive "OMG it's exactly like Blood" release.

I have had a look at the alpha source code but as you say it is pretty much useless. The only thing I could really gather is that they really didn't go down the OOP route which is were I think I'm gong to go to make things easier.

I have decided to use ProASM's SW port as a base because it has all the latest updated code as well as all the features I want, well except some Blood stuff. But there is Room over Room and Voxel sprites. THe only thing I really need to do is port it to C++.

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Before you begin, I HIGHLY recommend that you start documenting the build engine source code, make note of how it works and make it available to those who wants to contribute. And for God's sake, be sure to add descriptive comments in the source files. You'll see why when you take a look at the code.

Anyways, I support this project. Make it happen.

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Thank you for your comments and suggestions Kaiser I will take them into account. I especially like this one:

Kaiser said:

Anyways, I support this project. Make it happen.


I will try to make it happen.

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I really, really want to properly enjoy Blood (I got the CDs last year at a Goodwill) without low-res memory-hogging DOSBox anguish.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE DOSBox, but not for Quake-era FPS games.

Make us proud, Stroggos.

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In my research I have found that Shadow Warrior and Blood render room over room two different ways. SW moves the sectors over while the map is loading while the way Blood does it id somewhat unclear.
So I two choices figure out how Blood does it or leave it the way it is. If I leave it the way it is there will be no noticeable difference. But if I do want to change it it will be 100% Blood! But as I say it would look the same and that's what matters.

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