Playing Blood without choking hands

mattjoes

#1 Posted 12 June 2021 - 08:20 PM

Hello,

I love Blood but I hate choking hands, and to a lesser extent, gill beasts, so I was wondering if there is any way to disable these enemies while playing with a source port, so that they don't appear at all in any level. I'm particularly interested in playing Death Wish without any damned hands or beasts showing up. It would also be nice to be able to play the original Blood without them, though by now I've memorized where the hands appear so I'm ready to deal with them.

Ninjakitty

#2 Posted 12 June 2021 - 08:38 PM

mattjoes, on 12 June 2021 - 08:20 PM, said:

have you tried extracting the game files (im assuming Blood has a .GRP with .ART files in it) and deleting the art tiles specific to the monsters?

XGroup (for extracting a .GRP if Blood has one): http://www.proasm.com/sw/swutils.html
Build ART File Editor: https://m210.duke4.n...rt-files-editor

definitely make a backup before you try anything like this, but i think it would work

This post has been edited by Ninjakitty: 12 June 2021 - 08:39 PM

DNSKILL5

Honored Donor

#3 Posted 12 June 2021 - 09:14 PM

Hmm, I don’t think that’ll work for this, Ninjakitty. Blood doesn’t have a GRP in the same sense as Duke or SW, but does use .art files. I’m not sure if the game would even run if the art was missing though. If you replaced the art with a blank image, and nulled the audio files, they would only become invisible and silent characters, which would likely make things much harder.

Mattjoes,

Just to be sure, are you aware you can push the hands off you by tapping use quickly and rapidly? Some people have gone decades not knowing so just want to make sure. As for the Gill beast, getting them out of the water is usually the best way to take care of them.

I don’t think you can remove these enemies without altering the maps to “delete” them from the board. You could do that through a map editor. It would be tedious work though. Otherwise, you’d have to edit the source to force the game to forget about those two.

mattjoes

#4 Posted 13 June 2021 - 06:42 PM

Thanks for the suggestions.

Yes, I'm aware you can push the hands off that way, though I remember on certain occasions I found it near impossible. Maybe I was playing in a harder difficulty. But it's not really a matter of gameplay, it's just that I find the hands and the gill beasts a bit too unsettling for my taste, hence my wish not to have to see them at all.

I could edit a few maps if there was a way to batch select all the creatures of any given kind and delete them (is this possible?), though I think a few objects in the game explode and spawn more enemies (like the baby carriage in The Sick Ward), and I doubt there's an easy way to discover them except for playing.

Ninjakitty

#5 Posted 16 June 2021 - 01:31 AM

well i got around to trying my method and it worked
so long as you delete the starting sprite for an enemy it will not spawn, but to be safe you can delete all sprites relating to the ones you want to remove

This post has been edited by Ninjakitty: 16 June 2021 - 01:33 AM

mattjoes

#6 Posted 31 July 2021 - 11:51 AM

Ninjakitty, on 16 June 2021 - 01:31 AM, said:

I gave this a try and it didn't work. Where did you test it, vanilla Blood? I tried it on Fresh Supply and NBlood. The hand still spawns. I can't see it, but I can hear it and it hops on me. The screen goes dark as it chokes me.

Ninjakitty

#7 Posted 01 August 2021 - 04:32 PM

mattjoes, on 31 July 2021 - 11:51 AM, said:

i deleted the first frame of the zombies as a test because i didnt know where to find choking hands in-game. the zombie test worked, so i assumed it would work on all enemies; but you're right for some reason it doesnt work on the choking hands.
i dont have any other ideas except just manually removing them in the map editor.