[Ninety-Six]

having a little fun with the title leave me alone


So very recently a friend of mine who was looking to get into Blood wanted to know what the best way to play it was. And in the process of trying and failing to answer, I realized I never really settled on one for myself. With Blood's rather infamous history with source ports, last I checked in on them they all had various issues. My usual default answer in that case is trying to set up the DOS version even if it's more work, but even the DOS version doesn't escape without a critical bug.


So instead I turn this question to the community here. And instead of asking the same question of what the "best" is, that's obviously very subjective, so instead I'm going to ask about the pros and cons of each, and since it's been a hot minute, this is going to be for me, too, as I'm not sure what's changed since the last time I tried to play (and it was a good few years ago).


What are all the advantages and disadvantages between using BloodGdx, NBlood, Fresh Supply, and we'll throw DOS in there too (just to be thorough)?

[Phredreeke]

NBlood: Has software and hardware rendering. Can emulate OPL3 if that's your thing. Has NoOne's customdude extensions which are used by a few addons, notably Spill's Eviction. Also an accepted port for speedrunning
NotBlood: Like NBlood with extra features
BloodGDX: Has software and hardware rendering but its software renderer is about 2.5 times slower than the above ports. Easiest port to load custom content in due to built in file browser. Runs in Java (though there's a download with a bundled runtime if you use 64-bit Windows and don't want a systemwide Java install). A few custom maps have problems running in GDX due to a lower XSprite cap.
Raze: Hardware rendering only. Single player only. Easiest port to use for Mac users. Could potentially have custom scripting in the future through ZScript. Just don't forget to turn on palette emulation.
Fresh Supply: Inaccurate port that even the creator disowns. Supports scripting through AngelScript. Most notable FS mod is Extra Crispy. Many custom addons have issues running in Fresh Supply. Has community made voxels bundled with it.
Dosbox: It's faithful I guess? I'd just skip it and use NBlood with software renderer.

My recommendation. Use Raze if you have a Mac. If you use Windows then it's easy to use any of them, I've used them all at some point. As for Linux I have no idea, but I think you'll have to build yourself or maybe use Proton

[jkas789]

As the resident Linux shill I have decided to grace this thread with my posh presence.

To add to what Phredreeke already posted:

• NBlood: By far the best source port for Blood bar none. Runs well on a toaster, you can run it on Linux natively and I think you can also run it on Mac OS. You have two options, you can either nab it from the AUR with the understanding that the AUR version is quite outdated or compile it yourself. Compiling it yourself is pretty simple tbh you just clone the git and then cd into the folder then just type make on the console. You can then grab the executable and the .pk3 file and drop it into your Blood installation or wherever you want. You can even use it in a portable installation as I do when I want to play in a couple of hospital machines that run Linux. The only downside is that managing mod installation is much more involved than say BloodGDX. But if you are looking into playing mods with a sourceport then you have that autist dog in you and it's a non issue.
  
  
• NotBlood: It's a fork of NBlood so pretty much the same. Real projectiles is much more reasonable than heatscanning cultists. You can even have both the Nblood and Notblood binaries on the same install without trouble and it virtually runs the all the mods NBlood can run (afaik). It's not on the AUR though (afaik).
  
  
• BloodGDX: It's great actually. On a linux machine it's basically native as well. I don't really like it because it doesn't feel as smooth as Nblood game play feels. There is this noticeable micro stutter when I'm in the middle of the action that I can't help but notice that makes me choose Nblood over it. However it is a totally valid choice, it runs on a modern potato and it easier to manage mod installs than in NBlood.
  
  
• Raze: It's fine. It doesn't run perfectly like NBlood does and it lacks support for some old maps but most popoular user episodes work with it unless it's something that needs the extra script stuff from NBlood. You can just nab it from the AUR as well. It does not run on a potato like the other options so keep that in mind.
  
  
• Fresh Supply: There are only 3 valid reasons to play FS in the year of our Lord 2025:
  
  1.- You want to have the achievements on your steam account.
  2.- You want to play the Extra Crispy mod
  3.- You and your friends are way too lazy and stupid to setup multiplayer on another port and just want something that works without effort.
  
  Just skip this one. I would go so far as to say that you should pirate the damn game and use a better port.
  
  
• DOSbox: I mean, you can use it if you want the "original" experience? I guess? But you can also play NBlood on software mode and achieve a similar result. ┐(￣～￣)┌

My overall recommendation is that if you are using Linux (and really any other OS that is not Mac OS) just use either NBlood or BloodGDX. Preferably NBlood.

[Ninety-Six]

Phredreeke, on 22 January 2025 - 11:24 AM, said:

Has community made voxels bundled with it.

Oh yeah that was something else I wanted to ask about but forgot. Are there ways to load up the extra voxels from FS into the other ports?

[jkas789]

Ninety-Six, on 22 January 2025 - 04:47 PM, said:

Are there ways to load up the extra voxels from FS into the other ports?

I think they are included in Blood.RFF? So they should be usable from the get go. And anyways most of those came from the excellent Blood Voxel Pack afaik.

Btw, if you are going to start using the Blood Voxel pack I would suggest commenting out all the voxel trees. This is because the tree sprites are used a lot as background setting in user maps and the game will slow to a crawl if you have voxel trees enabled.

[Phredreeke]

I'll add that if you're on an iGPU you can still get good performance in Raze if you switch to the OpenGL ES backend.

I'd recommend playing in NBlood with the software renderer at least once though, because it's really the most aesthetic usage of 256 colors in a FPS that I know of