[the_raven]

You know, the Wolfenstein clone by Apogee software, released shortly before Doom, and eclipsed by it?
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold was one of the first FPS I ever played. It was a demo version that was pre-packaged on a software cd for out first laptop (good times), had only one episode, but heck, it was immensely fun! I still remember freaking out of the room that constantly spawned the High Energy Plasma Aliens (https://blakestone.f...gy_Plasma_Alien) as I didn't know about the value of strafing (did it even have strafing?) and as I was fighting one, another would always kill me. That is to say, I never did beat even the demo version, let alone the full game.
Anyhow, does anyone remember it? Have you played it? Would you play it again? Does it have any sourceports like eDuke32 or zDoom?

[Master O]

the_raven, on 16 January 2020 - 04:09 AM, said:

You know, the Wolfenstein clone by Apogee software, released shortly before Doom, and eclipsed by it?
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold was one of the first FPS I ever played. It was a demo version that was pre-packaged on a software cd for out first laptop (good times), had only one episode, but heck, it was immensely fun! I still remember freaking out of the room that constantly spawned the High Energy Plasma Aliens (https://blakestone.f...gy_Plasma_Alien) as I didn't know about the value of strafing (did it even have strafing?) and as I was fighting one, another would always kill me. That is to say, I never did beat even the demo version, let alone the full game.
Anyhow, does anyone remember it? Have you played it? Would you play it again? Does it have any sourceports like eDuke32 or zDoom?

A Blake Stone sourceport:

https://github.com/b...bstone/releases

Personally speaking, I want to get both Blake Stones from GOG, but once they and Rise of the Triad: Dark War go on sale altogether.

ECWolf, the sourceport that supports Wolfenstein 3D, also has Blake Stone support as one of its long term goals. However, it does not currently support either game, as far as I know:

https://maniacsvault.net/ecwolf/

[NightFright]

I played all levels of the game back in the days, even after having played Doom many times before already. It's an improved Wolfenstein clone with a better setting (IMHO), textured floors and ceilings and - informants (which can sometimes turn out to be traitors)! I still love the game and it's good to see someone wrote a very decent sourceport for it. I also provided three very rare Blake Stone user addons which are almost impossible to find online these days and gave them to the BStone author to host them on his website, "BSE90", "Guystone" and "Ling's Blake Stone Levels" which you can find at the bottom of the BStone website. It took me ages and lots of effort to dig those up since the few official download links died many years ago.

[the_raven]

Master O, on 16 January 2020 - 04:42 AM, said:

A Blake Stone sourceport:

https://github.com/b...bstone/releases

Personally speaking, I want to get both Blake Stones from GOG, but once they and Rise of the Triad: Dark War go on sale altogether.

ECWolf, the sourceport that supports Wolfenstein 3D, also has Blake Stone support as one of its long term goals. However, it does not currently support either game, as far as I know:

https://maniacsvault.net/ecwolf/

Nice! Thanks! I just bought Aliens on gog, but it's not on sale. Well, 2.30$ isn't much for a classic, I think.

NightFright, on 16 January 2020 - 05:39 AM, said:

I played all levels of the game back in the days, even after having played Doom many times before already. It's an improved Wolfenstein clone with a better setting (IMHO), textured floors and ceilings and - informants (which can sometimes turn out to be traitors)! I still love the game and it's good to see someone wrote a very decent sourceport for it. I also provided three very rare Blake Stone user addons which are almost impossible to find online these days and gave them to the BStone author to host them on his website, "BSE90", "Guystone" and "Ling's Blake Stone Levels" which you can find at the bottom of the BStone website. It took me ages and lots of effort to dig those up since the few official download links died many years ago.

Ooh, what do those add-ons do?

[NightFright]

Actually it's six addons, three for Blake Stone (66+78+90 = 234 maps) and another three for Planet Strike (3x24 = 72 maps). It's just new levels without any gameplay changes, but if you are done with the original episodes and want more, this may just be what you need. As far as I know, these are the only user addons ever made for these games, at least I wasn't able to find any others. They are most likely the biggest ones for sure.

[enderandrew]

Master O, on 16 January 2020 - 04:42 AM, said:

ECWolf, the sourceport that supports Wolfenstein 3D, also has Blake Stone support as one of its long term goals. However, it does not currently support either game, as far as I know:

https://maniacsvault.net/ecwolf/

Put this in your ecwolf.cfg file:

ShowPreviewGames = 1;

Then ECWolf will load Blake Stone and let you go in game and kill enemies. I haven't tried to fully play it to see how well it is supported, but it at least goes in game.

[Master O]

enderandrew, on 16 January 2020 - 08:02 AM, said:

Put this in your ecwolf.cfg file:

ShowPreviewGames = 1;

Then ECWolf will load Blake Stone and let you go in game and kill enemies. I haven't tried to fully play it to see how well it is supported, but it at least goes in game.

Blzut3, the creator of ECWolf, has said that Blake Stone support is not yet complete, so you shouldn't be using the port for those games yet.

[Darkus]

If I remember, the first time I played this game, it was on a friend's computer, using monochrome screen (green colors) and PC-Speaker sound. Along with Bio-Menace.

[Morpheus Kitami]

Blake Stone felt like one of the better shareware shooters back in the day, especially among Wolfenstein clones. Not better than Nitemare 3D, but it was second-best. A lot of blue, now that I think about it. It felt very much like a real office building, albeit a sci-fi one. It didn't get incredibly confusing like Wolfenstein or Isle of the Dead, everything always felt like it made sense. I liked the use of secrets, always felt like there was something to uncover. Never played the registered version very long, nor Planet Strike. I don't think that was because they were bad, just didn't have the interest for it.
Also, I didn't know this at the time, but the two main guys behind BS, Mike Maynard and James Row, also did the sequels to Catacomb 3D. I find it amusing that they picked up where iD left off twice. Three times if you count Mike now working on the new Doom games.

[enderandrew]

Master O, on 16 January 2020 - 09:12 AM, said:

Blzut3, the creator of ECWolf, has said that Blake Stone support is not yet complete, so you shouldn't be using the port for those games yet.

Support for other titles has been planned for years and years, and I don't think I've seen any commits for it in years. ECWolf barely gets any commits as it is.

It is open source so anyone else is free to jump and work on support for other games (myself included) but I don't anticipate it happening anytime soon.

ECWolf started as an early fork off ZDoom. One thing I like about GZDoom is that it has all these comparability options where you can change how various gameplay elements work since it runs different games that play differently. You can even mix-and-match features to play them how you want.

I'd like to see a similiar approach for ECWolf someday if/when it adds support for other titles, but part of me wonders if it might be better for someone to just fork the current version of GZDoom to get the benefits of all the new rendering features and how it already has a subsystem for defining different gameplay features and then go back in and add in support for the Wolf engine.

[OpenMaw]

I could never get into Blake Stone. I don't know. Wolfenstein held my interest for longer, and that's really weird because i'm a huge nerd, so the Science Fiction setting of BS should appeal to me more than killin' Nahtzees... But killin' Nahtzees was always more fun!


I'm hoping CV11 will do a Blake Stone run sometime, just so I can see what I missed. I own them both on STEAM, but I just haven't played them very much.

[Player Lin]

I played shareware version of first Blake Stone, a lot.
But never be able to play the full version or even the second game, even I got the copies of them, I just can't stand the old DOS control anymore...

And yes I know the bibendovsky's source port, but I think I would like to wait the ECWolf has its full support...

[Master O]

Player Lin, on 19 January 2020 - 05:18 AM, said:

I played shareware version of first Blake Stone, a lot.
But never be able to play the full version or even the second game, even I got the copies of them, I just can't stand the old DOS control anymore...

And yes I know the bibendovsky's source port, but I think I would like to wait the ECWolf has its full support...

Given the speed at which ECWolf is developed, you're gonna be waiting a long time.

[Player Lin]

Master O, on 19 January 2020 - 09:58 AM, said:

Given the speed at which ECWolf is developed, you're gonna be waiting a long time.

I already waited long time about a lot of things, like the poor DNF, and the TC for ZDooM engine just never had any updates for years... so...I'll just wait, unless it canceled.

[enderandrew]

Master O, on 19 January 2020 - 09:58 AM, said:

Given the speed at which ECWolf is developed, you're gonna be waiting a long time.

I took a quick look and it looks like the last commits to support other games was in 2017 for the basic support to read some ROTT data files.

The lzwolf fork is more actively developed. I wonder if Linuxwolf would be willing to pick up support for Blake Stone and other games.

https://bitbucket.or...olf/src/master/

[Arjak]

Blake Stone! Now that brings back memories! Doom was my first FPS, and as I was playing Doom 2, I got very curious about the secret levels and wanted to know what the deal was with the references, which led me back to Wolfenstein 3D, which I also fell in love with. It was in my quest for more levels that I discovered Blake Stone.

I remember really enjoying the level interactivity in that one, talking to informants, buying food from the vending machines to restore my health... If you really think about it, it was the first FPS to really have that kind of interactivity that we love so much about Duke 3D. Anyone who loves Wolfenstein 3D should definitely give it a try.

[NightFright]

Technically it was more or less the direct predecessor of ROTT. As such it is historically relevant. True shooter fans should have played it at least once.

But don't shy back from the BStone port, it is excellent and allows to play the game in modern resolutions and widescreen. I dunno what ECWolf can or should do better, this is as good as it can get, and that for a long time still. Why wait?

[filipetolhuizen]

I also recommend the BStone port. It always worked great throughout its development and the developer, Boris, is a great guy.

[MrFlibble]

Blake Stone: AoG is not my favourite game but I do like it, for reasons already mentioned above:

NightFright, on 16 January 2020 - 05:39 AM, said:

It's an improved Wolfenstein clone with a better setting (IMHO), textured floors and ceilings and - informants (which can sometimes turn out to be traitors)!

Morpheus Kitami, on 16 January 2020 - 02:53 PM, said:

Blake Stone felt like one of the better shareware shooters back in the day, especially among Wolfenstein clones. Not better than Nitemare 3D, but it was second-best. A lot of blue, now that I think about it. It felt very much like a real office building, albeit a sci-fi one. It didn't get incredibly confusing like Wolfenstein or Isle of the Dead, everything always felt like it made sense. I liked the use of secrets, always felt like there was something to uncover.

Arjak, on 20 January 2020 - 10:55 AM, said:

I remember really enjoying the level interactivity in that one, talking to informants, buying food from the vending machines to restore my health... If you really think about it, it was the first FPS to really have that kind of interactivity that we love so much about Duke 3D. Anyone who loves Wolfenstein 3D should definitely give it a try.

I completed the shareware episode once, on medium difficulty I think, but the game is very playable on hardest difficulty because it pushes the player to be more careful with the resources that you have. I quite enjoy the wall-tapping hunt for secrets from Wolf3D, and Blake Stone improves that by adding the minimap so you can make better guesses at where the secrets are.

One thing you immediately notice about the shareware version of Blake Stone is how much more content it has to offer compared to Wolf3D. It's not just the tech improvements like floor and ceiling textures and lighting fading with distance, you have a huge roster of enemies/monsters, ceiling turrets and those nasty energy alien spawning holes. The levels feel very densely populated compared to Wolf3D, and again, as said above, level layouts make much more sense and are not just mazes with different textures and props.

I bought both Aliens of Gold and Planet Strike on a GOG.com sale some time ago, and played a bit of Planet Strike, but surprisingly it did not make such a favourable impression on me in spite of several improvements like new mechanics with the radar map that must be powered by energy items that you find across the levels. There are other changes like all the player's HUD weapon sprites are now properly hi-res and look better than the AoG pixellated counterparts, monsters with partial invisibility etc. but the level design itself felt much less interesting and inspired to me. I got through about two levels, and they were very linear, although you can still go back and forth between levels via elevators like in AoG (I think). The second level was like open a door, flip a switch or maybe find a key to unlock access to an area with a mini-boss version of one of the original AoG episode bosses, defeat it, and proceed to the next area that is just the same except with another mini-boss. I stopped playing after I think the third such encounter. Maybe the levels get more interesting after that but so far I didn't feel compelled to find out.

[VGA]

I played several levels of it on the BStone source port last year, good game and good source port, forget about ECWolf.

The game has some good ideas, I love the informants

Wolf3D has the nice nazi theme but it is too shallow. Blake Stone spices things up a bit with usable stuff, more items, interrogating informants, an actual goddamn map!! Also, returning between levels!

[NightFright]

Too bad its successor was a step backwards. No idea who told the devs to limit map capabilities by making it use energy. Ok, it could detect secrets when zoomed in, but then it needed even more energy. Facepalm.

[K1n9_Duk3]

I'm not sure where you got that information. As far as I can tell, the automap doesn't use any energy when zoomed out all the way. Zooming in causes it to consume map energy, but it also shows more things on the map (enemies at 2x zoom, pushwalls at 4x zoom). They didn't limit the map capabilities, quite the opposite.

The only advantage the map in AoG had was that you could see the entire level, not just your immediate surroundings. But if you want/need that, you can backtrack to the teleporter/elevator and bring up the location selection screen. This shows you the full automap. I agree that it would have been nice to have the option to view the entire automap on the statistics screen (tab key) like in AoG, but I don't think I ever really needed that while playing through Planet Strike.

[Blzut3]

enderandrew, on 17 January 2020 - 01:51 PM, said:

ECWolf started as an early fork off ZDoom.

I know I'm really late in replying to this but to be clear ECWolf has never been a fork of ZDoom. It's a fork of Wolf4SDL with ZDoom's basic libraries, resource manager, some parts of the interface/2D drawing, some script interpreters (exceptions include DECORATE and MAPINFO which are from scratch), and general philosophy. Which is to say you will find no singular (G)ZDoom commit that ECWolf is based off of.

[Player Lin]

Blzut3, on 12 February 2020 - 01:10 AM, said:

I know I'm really late in replying to this but to be clear ECWolf has never been a fork of ZDoom. It's a fork of Wolf4SDL with ZDoom's basic libraries, resource manager, some parts of the interface/2D drawing, some script interpreters (exceptions include DECORATE and MAPINFO which are from scratch), and general philosophy. Which is to say you will find no singular (G)ZDoom commit that ECWolf is based off of.

I guess some just confusing since some features from ZDooM family and thinking it's based ZDooM...

You can't just fusing two totally different engine together.

[enderandrew]

Blzut3, on 12 February 2020 - 01:10 AM, said:

I know I'm really late in replying to this but to be clear ECWolf has never been a fork of ZDoom. It's a fork of Wolf4SDL with ZDoom's basic libraries, resource manager, some parts of the interface/2D drawing, some script interpreters (exceptions include DECORATE and MAPINFO which are from scratch), and general philosophy. Which is to say you will find no singular (G)ZDoom commit that ECWolf is based off of.

That seems to be semantics.

You brought in a large chunk of ZDoom's code into Wolf4SDL as a starting point. By my definition, you forked the code.

Graf Zahl created Raze by taking large chunks of EDuke32 as well as GZDoom. Most people call that a fork. You're saying it wouldn't be, because he didn't actually use git to fork the repository.

[Hendricks266]

enderandrew, on 13 February 2020 - 12:40 PM, said:

Graf Zahl created Raze by taking large chunks of EDuke32 as well as GZDoom. Most people call that a fork.

A fork of EDuke32, not of GZDoom.

[Blzut3]

enderandrew, on 13 February 2020 - 12:40 PM, said:

That seems to be semantics.

You brought in a large chunk of ZDoom's code into Wolf4SDL as a starting point. By my definition, you forked the code.

Graf Zahl created Raze by taking large chunks of EDuke32 as well as GZDoom. Most people call that a fork. You're saying it wouldn't be, because he didn't actually use git to fork the repository.

Is every port that uses libSDL an SDL fork? The problem is calling Raze or ECWolf a fork of GZDoom places too much emphasis on what that shared code does, and it causes confusion since people seem to think one or more of the following: 1) The projects have any chance of merging. 2) That they're just Doom skinned to play the respective games. 3) Scripting features from GZDoom can just be merged in. 4) That the goal is to follow GZDoom's modding paradigms verbatim.

The last one obviously applies more to Raze than ECWolf since there's a lot more architecturally similarities between the Wolf3D and Doom engines.

You are right that at the very strictest definition of "fork" ECWolf and Raze do contain code forked from GZDoom. But that does not follow how people normally understand the term.

[MusicallyInspired]

What we need is a "ScummVM" for retro DOS shooters with all the engines built into it like ScummVM and ResidualVM do for 2D and 3D point & click adventure games. Okay, we don't need it. But it'd be pretty sweet.

[enderandrew]

Blzut3, on 13 February 2020 - 02:14 PM, said:

Is every port that uses libSDL an SDL fork? The problem is calling Raze or ECWolf a fork of GZDoom places too much emphasis on what that shared code does, and it causes confusion since people seem to think one or more of the following: 1) The projects have any chance of merging. 2) That they're just Doom skinned to play the respective games. 3) Scripting features from GZDoom can just be merged in. 4) That the goal is to follow GZDoom's modding paradigms verbatim.

The last one obviously applies more to Raze than ECWolf since there's a lot more architecturally similarities between the Wolf3D and Doom engines.

You are right that at the very strictest definition of "fork" ECWolf and Raze do contain code forked from GZDoom. But that does not follow how people normally understand the term.

Fair enough.

[MrFlibble]

NightFright, on 11 February 2020 - 10:58 AM, said:

No idea who told the devs to limit map capabilities by making it use energy. Ok, it could detect secrets when zoomed in, but then it needed even more energy.

I wonder if the map feature from Planet Strike wasn't inspired by a similar feature in Nitemare 3-D (AFAIK it predates Planet Strike).