[supergoofy]

From http://m210.duke4.ne...ava/50-bloodgdx

Installation instructions:

First make sure to have a JRE at least version 1.6 installed.

- place BloodGDX.jar to Blood folder

- if you are using Blood version below 1.21, take the files TILES016.ART and TILES017.ART from version 1.21 and place it in Blood folder, otherwise you will not see the texts (QFN format not decompiled yet)

- run BloodGDX.jar

[Fantinaikos]

All seems working perfectly, the only tangible flaw that differs from vanilla Blood are the .smk cutscenes (in .avi format on the disc) not reproduced that get played normally with the original exe. I don't think there are particular technical reasons for which they should not work, there is another manual fix for GDXblood.jar which allows to detect them?

[MrFlibble]

M210, on 19 May 2017 - 03:58 AM, said:

Hi there! I made a beta release of my BloodGDX
http://m210.duke4.ne...ava/50-bloodgdx
Enjoy

Are you going to eventually release your source code in any form? Would it be possible to isolate Blood-specific code against other Build engine code and encapsulate it into DLLs or something (so as to not violate non-reverse-engineering clauses of the license)?

[MrEWhite]

M210, on 19 May 2017 - 11:55 PM, said:

I updated my port a bit....You can add fps limit, vsync and disable sound/music driver now in bloodgdx.ini
For disable sound, search NoSound = 0 and change it to 1, and added NoMusic, FPSLimit, VSync.

FPSLimit and VSync will broke interpolation!

Also, I found that using VirtualMidiSynth (which allows midi soundfonts to be used) causes the game to hang when initializing midi on startup.

[Tekedon]

Does not work for me.. It complains that blood.ini is missing in c:\windows\system32\ whut??

[Fantinaikos]

Tekedon, on 20 May 2017 - 01:40 PM, said:

Does not work for me.. It complains that blood.ini is missing in c:\windows\system32\ whut??

Blood.ini shouldn't be in "System32" folder at all, it is an original Blood configuration file. How and what installation you choosed?
Make also sure that in GDXBlood there is not one folder path that search a file where should not for some reason.

[m210®]

Fantinaikos, on 20 May 2017 - 03:42 AM, said:

All seems working perfectly, the only tangible flaw that differs from vanilla Blood are the .smk cutscenes (in .avi format on the disc) not reproduced that get played normally with the original exe. I don't think there are particular technical reasons for which they should not work, there is another manual fix for GDXblood.jar which allows to detect them?

I will try to make smacker-player for playng cutscenes and my first success was in gdxTekwar. I will using GL renderer for playig it.

Quote

Are you going to eventually release your source code in any form? Would it be possible to isolate Blood-specific code against other Build engine code and encapsulate it into DLLs or something (so as to not violate non-reverse-engineering clauses of the license)?

I think it's good idea to make it as dll, but I still no expirience for make it yet...may be in far future))

Quote

Does not work for me.. It complains that blood.ini is missing in c:\windows\system32\ whut??

I test BloodGDX in WinXP and Win10, and my port haven't any reason for searching files in system32. What version of Windows and you using and what JRE are you instelled?

Try to launch it as Java -Djava.library.path=bin -jar *PATH to JAR file*/bloodgdx.jar or java -Djava.library.path=bin -jar ./BloodGDX.jar

[icecoldduke]

M210, on 21 May 2017 - 04:44 AM, said:

I think it's good idea to make it as dll, but I still no expirience for make it yet...may be in far future))

The fact you have interest in your project is very impressive. I would not waste time isolating the game code into a separate module, in a effort to "protect your engine code". Doing your project in Java was in my opinion your worst mistake. The fact your not releasing source code for it, is your second worst mistake.

[Fantinaikos]

I wonder if it is also possible play Cryptic Passage, with BloodCM was tedious to do because a total conversion of the maps and rest was needed but perhaps now all we need is a slight path change to the code that runs CRYPTIC.EXE instead of BLOOD.EXE.

BloodCM should updated too some day, someone may even found a Eduke.32 port of Blood useful for a themed mod, who knows.

Trying this anyway I found a little incompatibility: Like normally happens if the original BLOOD.CFG generated by the setup it's not into the folder it is impossible play Cryptic Passage from the Cryptic.exe, but if is there it makes some kind of conflict with GDXBlood making it crash.

[HulkNukem]

I can play Cryptic Passage right now with GDX; it's started under custom episode. I only played for a few seconds but some textures were messed up (there was no sky and some terrain had no textures either)

[fgsfds]

HulkNukem, on 21 May 2017 - 08:16 AM, said:

I can play Cryptic Passage right now with GDX; it's started under custom episode. I only played for a few seconds but some textures were messed up (there was no sky and some terrain had no textures either)

For now, you can rename CPART07.AR_ and CPART15.AR_ to TILES007.ART and TILES015.ART (back up already existing files). Proper support should be added later.

[Zaxx]

Fantinaikos, on 20 May 2017 - 02:20 PM, said:

Blood.ini shouldn't be in "System32" folder at all, it is an original Blood configuration file. How and what installation you choosed?
Make also sure that in GDXBlood there is not one folder path that search a file where should not for some reason.

I had this issue on Win 10. The problem is that Windows can block BloodGDX from runnig correctly (the OS thinks of it as a harmful app basically). To solve this just right click on BloodGDX.jar, go to properties and there should be a box you can tick for the system to stop blocking it under the "general" tab.

[DustFalcon85]

Blood 1 and 2 are 80% off on GOG.com. Pick them up if you don't have them yet.

I wonder if Jace Hall is gonna do something special on the 20th anniversary of Blood.

[axl]

DustFalcon85, on 22 May 2017 - 06:12 PM, said:

Blood 1 and 2 are 80% off on GOG.com. Pick them up if you don't have them yet.

I wonder if Jace Hall is gonna do something special on the 20th anniversary of Blood.

I'm just dreaming out loud here: the release of the source code and a brand new episode made by the original authors James Wilson III and Craig Hubbard... :-D

[Captain Kupo]

axl, on 22 May 2017 - 09:22 PM, said:

I'm just dreaming out loud here: the release of the source code and a brand new episode made by the original authors James Wilson III and Craig Hubbard... :-D

I dont have it on hand, but jace did tweet something a while back of him with some of the blood team

Possibly related, there was a short webm that popped up (from /v/?) showing off the first room of blood in what seemed to be a source port, showing off the tommy gun with bullet physics (i think kaiser was involved)

[HulkNukem]

Captain Kupo, on 23 May 2017 - 05:11 AM, said:

showing off the tommy gun with bullet physics (i think kaiser was involved)

Now I'm imagining adding in features from FEAR into Blood

[Captain Kupo]

Oops its do not distribute my bad i dont wanna have another powerslave ex on our hands

[axl]

Okay, deleted !

[Hank]

Did not see it here
The video link is here


Here is a Unity 3D version for Blood
http://www.moddb.com...lood-fan-remake

very alpha, but hey, he is all by himself.

[MrFlibble]

icecoldduke, on 21 May 2017 - 07:08 AM, said:

The fact you have interest in your project is very impressive. I would not waste time isolating the game code into a separate module, in a effort to "protect your engine code"

I suggested the DLL method not because M210's code requires "protection", but to hopefully avoid possible problems with the actual Blood code owners. I suppose that there's a no-reverse-engineering clause in the applicable Blood EULA. It is my understanding, from M210's blog posts, that some of the code he produced is essentially "generic" Build engine code that is already public knowledge. Releasing the code of the port with the actual reverse-engineered parts encapsulated in the DLL(s) would - at least, as far as I understand the problem - alleviate the entire reverse-engineering issue (as in, its results are not actually disclosed to the public) while allowing further development of the port (e.g. moving it to a non-Java platform).

I think this is what LuciusDXL intended to do with BloodXL and other XLEngine projects.

[MrFlibble]

Lunick, on 07 May 2017 - 05:48 PM, said:

Reading through M210's FAQ and there are a few things that irk me.

How is Blood 1.0 more "readable" than Blood 1.21 after reverse-engineering? I'm not a Blood Expert by any means but was there any significant improvements that are going to missing due to the "port" being based on 1.0 instead of 1.21? As well as any incompatibilities?

This got me interested as well and I asked your question in a Russian forum, and apparently there are offsets in v1.21 code which complicate matters, while v1.0 has direct byte addresses instead. According to M210 because of this it is easier to decompile and analyse v1.0 and then compare to the decompiled v1.21 to "update" the code to the latest version.

Also M210 dropped a link to what is a quite detailed development log in yet another Russian language forum:
http://www.bloodgame...pic=241&start=1

There are some interesting titbits of info there, like engine.obj from the leaked Tekwar source was used to determine names of global vairables. Also Blood apparently keeps the feature of HUD lights that indicate run/auto run mode as shown in pre-release Duke3D screenshots:

In Blood, the skulls' eyes in the HUD perform this function.

[axl]

Almost the 20th anniversary of the best FPS of all time... well after Duke Nukem 3D and Doom off course.

Let there be a god and the release of the source code so the fine people on this forum can create EBlood32...

[Romulus]

Tekedon, on 20 May 2017 - 01:40 PM, said:

Does not work for me.. It complains that blood.ini is missing in c:\windows\system32\ whut??

Install 32 Bit Java Runtime, and it should work fine. I had the same problem too.

[icecoldduke]

MrFlibble, on 24 May 2017 - 05:20 AM, said:

I suggested the DLL method not because M210's code requires "protection".

He actually added decompile protection to his exe....lol why would he waste his time doing that?

[Psycho87]

axl, on 30 May 2017 - 11:19 AM, said:

Almost the 20th anniversary of the best FPS of all time... well after Duke Nukem 3D and Doom off course.

Let there be a god and the release of the source code so the fine people on this forum can create EBlood32...

A source code release would be the best outcome, but a remastered version would be good too. When I tweeted Jace about it a few weeks ago I got no response, so I'm hoping for some news tomorrow.

Oh, and Blood > Duke Nukem 3D

[icecoldduke]

Psycho87, on 30 May 2017 - 12:32 PM, said:

Oh, and Blood > Duke Nukem 3D

Wrong.

Sw > Blood > Duke Nukem 3D .

[axl]

Psycho87, on 30 May 2017 - 12:32 PM, said:

A source code release would be the best outcome, but a remastered version would be good too. When I tweeted Jace about it a few weeks ago I got no response, so I'm hoping for some news tomorrow.

Oh, and Blood > Duke Nukem 3D

It's definitely a close one, but I find Duke a more polished game... for example I use all Duke weapons, where in Blood the lifeleech and voodoo doll aren't very useful. The first 3 episodes in Blood are also fantastic whereas it seems they were running out of ideas in the fourth one, Dead Reckoning.

[HulkNukem]

Doom >>> Blood > Duke3D >> Doom 64 >>> Most other similar FPS games of the era

For Blood vs. Duke, I simply think Blood has a lot more variety and fun levels more consistently, while Duke3D has the first two of Episode 1 and a few sporadic highlights like Raw Meat or Dukeburger IMO. I hadn't even really played through Blood until several years ago but I still haven't tired from most of those levels and the hilarity of the TNT. They both have good and useless weapons; I find the shotguns are on par, the machineguns are on par, the RPG/napalm launcher are about equal even though the RPG in Duke scares the shit out of me from fear of accidentally shooting something right in front of me, and I typically don't use the rest as often as I probably should.
Shadow Warrior I just can't ever get into; I think it's the difficulty being higher than the others and getting lost more in the levels, however I want to eventually give it a true playthrough sometime in my life.

[Mark]

Probably because I played lots of Doom and Doom2 before I knew about Duke3D I give them first place. I'll give Duke3D second place because of the wild multiplayer fun back in the late 90's. Blood a very close third. Redneck Rampage 4th. SW fifth, I don't think I ever finished all levels.

[Fantinaikos]

The real challenge in Blood is represented by the longrange hitscan instant reaction enemies even at the easiest difficulties. You have insta-kill flares (and dynamite if you aim well) since the very beginning that works flawlessy on low/medium rank foes, for the rest all the other weapons act like a common FPS arsenal and the cultist in particular are so precise and rapid that you probably get hit and most of the times your target don't die immediately. In Doom sometimes you can avoid the projectile at least.