[Doom64hunter]

PikaCommando, on 02 April 2016 - 06:10 AM, said:

What was their original alt-fire in V1.0 then?

It had none. The Voodoo Doll altfire was changed to consume the entire doll with the Plasma Pack expansion, and the Life Leech drops a sentry turret that barely does any damage and depletes ammo too quickly.
Additionally it's pretty glitchy and sometimes you can clone the thing as well.

I'm pretty sure they also broke the "leeching life" mechanic on the Lifeleech itself (which is a pretty incredible thing to fuck up considering the name of the gun).
Thus the weapon becomes pretty useless since you can't plow through hordes of enemies anymore, as ammo is too scarce so it will start killing you quickly.

[Lunick]

https://twitter.com/...400089397198848 Jace no

[MetHy]

No, I will not help Atari make a fuckton of money under the reason they're assholes.

Edit: Besides, as far as I understood, Jace's vision was not opensource, it was he would do the port. Let's assume crowdfunding happens, and Atari says yes, what happens when they've used up all that time and money? What if we end up with a closed source port of the quality of Megaton ? Don't let people fool themselves into thinking this is a solution.

Also I have a feeling that if Atari asked so much and turned down everybody was because they didn't want to do anything with Blood. Surely they must know it's not worth as much as they're demanding.

Finally I also don't believe Blood has enough fans willing to invest so much money to meet the demand.

[deuxsonic]

I keep hoping it just leaks somehow. Crazier things have happened.

[Daedolon]

Since the leaks of the TekWar and Witchaven sources gave us all these source ports to play them on?

[MetHy]

Are you saying Blood would never get a non professional sourceport ? In which case Jace's way would be the only way.

You may be right, but then again there has been such a huge fuss around it that some people who are not active in Blood's community might have a go at it if a sourcecode would ever been released somehow.

[deuxsonic]

Blood is not TekWar or Witchaven. Rise of The Triad was largely buried under the attention that DOOM got, but it still has a decent source port. I know I'm not the only person with lots of fond memories of Blood.

[LkMax]

Daedolon, on 09 April 2016 - 10:04 AM, said:

Since the leaks of the TekWar and Witchaven sources gave us all these source ports to play them on?

TekWhat and WhatAven?
Please, because two obscure (at the very least "questinable" quality) games didn't get attention you think Blood wouldn't? Even ROTT got a source port (albeit not a very good one).
There's at least 3 attempts at making a Blood port without the source ever being released.
Also, fuck Atari.

[Lunick]

Yes, keep disagreeing with the person that possibly runs the last popular Blood fansite

Also let's not just keep it to "Fuck Atari", Warner Brothers is just as much in the wrong here.

[leilei]

deuxsonic, on 09 April 2016 - 05:00 PM, said:

it still has a decent source port.

Win/GLROTT is anything but decent. I've been wanting a brokencruft-free chocorott for years, shame no one has taken up the effort to do one.

[Lunick]

leilei, on 09 April 2016 - 06:14 PM, said:

Win/GLROTT is anything but decent. I've been wanting a brokencruft-free chocorott for years, shame no one has taken up the effort to do one.

I'm sure Blzut will have one done by 2020

(Not a jab at him, just that I know he has a lot of things he likes to work on)

[leilei]

That would make it a zott port

If I had more time I'd start with the original 2002 SDL port and backport some Chocolate-Doom glues and doodads to keep that up (nuke opl3, scaled 320x200 buffer, textmode stuff, tcp-ip multi).

[deuxsonic]

It works. I would love to have a nice ROTT port because it's such an underappreciated game, but the game seemingly has no community to develop one. I can't even use GLRott with my native screen resolution because you have a tiny selection of resolutions and if yours isn't in it, then you can't use it. Also a lot of the added settings can be adjusted both from the launcher and inside the game, but there seems to be some kind of conflict between these 2 ways of setting things as sometimes changes will stick and sometimes they won't.

Also fuck Jace, Atari, Warner Bros, and anyone who has ever stood in the way of a source code release of a game.

[MetHy]

LkMax, on 09 April 2016 - 05:47 PM, said:

There's at least 3 attempts at making a Blood port without the source ever being released.

You mean like 20.
Edit: but how many of those were done by competent people who'd be able to make a real sourceport and would actually take the time to?

[deuxsonic]

Are you including remake projects like Transfusion in that? 20 actual attempts at reverse-engineering Blood?

[MetHy]

No, he said "port".

DN3D on Saturn is a port but it's an entirely new recreation, and probably only used the original game's code for behavior references.

[icecoldduke]

Lunick, on 09 April 2016 - 04:01 AM, said:

https://twitter.com/...400089397198848 Jace no

I wonder what the logic is here for charging a bunch of money for almost a 20 year old codebase, I am curious what the asking price is.

MetHy, on 09 April 2016 - 04:11 AM, said:

Edit: Besides, as far as I understood, Jace's vision was not opensource, it was he would do the port. Let's assume crowdfunding happens, and Atari says yes, what happens when they've used up all that time and money? What if we end up with a closed source port of the quality of Megaton ? Don't let people fool themselves into thinking this is a solution.

That makes more sense, the community would riot if there was a port done and it was closed source.

[MetHy]

Whatever the price is, it wouldn't mean much to most people. Unless you're able to estimate the cost of a professional sourceport, as well as estimate the profit possible on short and long term, it doesn't mean anything.

It could be 100,000 or 500,000, it doesn't mean anything unless you know the kind of money that goes around ports like Megaton, Redux, Strife: Veteran Edition, etc and we don't.

[deuxsonic]

Every port Kaiser has worked on has been excellent. I bet you if he was interested in the game, of anyone he could do it. Since he does some ports for Night Dive, perhaps if Night Dive became interested in it they could make it happen. I bought Strife: Veteran Edition after all...

I have a hard time viewing the Saturn version of Duke3D as a "port" because it is genuinely not the same game. It's a different engine and the whole game had to be remade and the end result only vaguely resembles the game it is purported to be. Same thing for the Saturn version of Quake where sprites were used in places where meshes were in the real Quake. They share music and textures, some raw materials, but the maps and practically everything else had to be redone. That's more remake than port. I think Slavedriver was an actual 3D engine, thinking of some of the map layouts for the console versions of Powerslave.

[Daedolon]

Do we need another demake on the DOOM engine?

[Hendricks266]

deuxsonic, on 09 April 2016 - 11:44 PM, said:

Every port Kaiser has worked on has been excellent. I bet you if he was interested in the game, of anyone he could do it. Since he does some ports for Night Dive, perhaps if Night Dive became interested in it they could make it happen. I bought Strife: Veteran Edition after all...

I have a hard time viewing the Saturn version of Duke3D as a "port" because it is genuinely not the same game. It's a different engine and the whole game had to be remade and the end result only vaguely resembles the game it is purported to be. Same thing for the Saturn version of Quake where sprites were used in places where meshes were in the real Quake. They share music and textures, some raw materials, but the maps and practically everything else had to be redone. That's more remake than port. I think Slavedriver was an actual 3D engine, thinking of some of the map layouts for the console versions of Powerslave.

It's funny that you don't call Saturn Duke a port for those reasons, but don't realize that most of them apply to Kaiser's projects too. He reverse-engineers the file formats but then reprograms the rest of the game, including enemy behavior, from scratch.

[Doom64hunter]

Daedolon, on 10 April 2016 - 12:53 AM, said:

Do we need another demake on the DOOM engine?

Funnily enough I just saw someone on Zdoom work on one yet again.
The vicious cycle of ZBlood.

[deuxsonic]

Hendricks266, on 10 April 2016 - 07:29 AM, said:

It's funny that you don't call Saturn Duke a port for those reasons, but don't realize that most of them apply to Kaiser's projects too. He reverse-engineers the file formats but then reprograms the rest of the game, including enemy behavior, from scratch.

His... Remakes are really good. The Saturn versions felt so different to me.

So we just need a really good remake of Blood then?

[t800]

This is question worth of a hell of discussion - should we always strive for perfectly accurate application of source code at all cost or do remakes/reverse-engineering suffice when there is no other option?

EDIT:

deuxsonic, on 10 April 2016 - 10:22 AM, said:

So we just need a really good remake of Blood then?

Blood CM?

[Hendricks266]

My thought is, why not both?

And that's all I have to say about that. For now.

[deuxsonic]

Kaiser uses his own game engine and I hadn't realized was rewriting games from scratch. He's apparently good enough at this that I don't even notice the differences, or the differences lead to better gameplay anyway and I don't think about them? If this is true, then maybe we don't need to get the original Blood behavior exact, but remaking it close enough to where it feels like the original game without all the bugs the original game has (perhaps this is reason enough to not worry so much about trying to hit original behavior?)

[t800]

No offence meant, but I just cant shake off fealing, that lot of people have elitist disposition to remakes/reverse-engineerings even when there is no access to source code.
It would be nonsesical to just close eyes and dont admit that source port is the *best* thing you can get, but just as close minded is writing off remake/reverse-engineering when there is no other option. Than it is *the second best* option.

[Daedolon]

When it's done with a driving passion and ceaseless study of the source material, then, maybe.

[MetHy]

We've discussed this a thousand times already. Or at least in two other threads.

I just don't see the point of approximate remakes. The point of sourceport are improvements on the original, but they are something else entirely.
So if you want to play Blood, why play an approximative remake, instead of just playing Blood ? It's not like you can't play it at all anymore.

[t800]

To MetHy:
Have you ever played Strife in any source port? What do you think of it?