[Hendricks266]

link credits to oasiz

[Lunick]

Bio Menace episodes 2 and 3 are evil.

[NY00123]

Just the right place for posting this, which I've seen during the last hour (not sure there's much to see here, though):

[Fantinaikos]

You didn't tell us that you made the only complete and available level pack! (at least if no one search specifically on shikadi wiki or your website)
"Mangle is back from the dead" by NY00123
http://www.shikadi.n...120501_0.99.zip

Excluding the Keen themed mod "Crisis Earth", the other abandoned attempt known is "Bio Menace 4: Crisis Dream"

[Hendricks266]

NY00123, on 06 July 2017 - 10:45 PM, said:

Just the right place for posting this, which I've seen during the last hour (not sure there's much to see here, though):

This is such an esoteric joke that I don't quite understand it. Does it have to do with how different Apogee games play the .imf/.wlf music format at different rates?

[NY00123]

Hendricks266, on 08 July 2017 - 02:41 AM, said:

This is such an esoteric joke that I don't quite understand it. Does it have to do with how different Apogee games play the .imf/.wlf music format at different rates?

Well, you can see ChaosEdit being used. I'm not that familiar with it, but it's a multi-purpose Wolfenstein editor (according to the Wolfenstein 3D Dome), so probably no surprise the thing is played back at 700Hz (like Wolf3D) instead of 560Hz (as in Keen 4 based games).

There do seem to be other misc. edits to the IMF data (like muting some channels?), again later in the video.

[Hendricks266]

My morning alarm ringtone be like

[Poorchop]

I was surprised when I found out that this game was already considered pretty dated by the time that it was released because I loved it to death back when it came out and for several years afterwards. I also think this soundtrack is one of Bobby Prince's best works. The City is one of my all time favorite tracks in any game to date and Like It Was used to kind of get me down even though that seems a bit cheesy in retrospect.

I remember some site from a few years back that talked a little bit about Bobby's process of creating music for the game. I could be remembering incorrectly but I remember reading that he was unhappy with how The City ended up sounding. There was a link to his original rendition but I lost the file. To be honest, I think the version that ended up in game sounded perfect and I liked it the best. I would have loved to see this turn into a franchise and evolve over time. Would have been really cool if this made the same transition that Duke made from 2 to 3D.

[MrFlibble]

Poorchop, on 27 December 2017 - 11:16 PM, said:

I would have loved to see this turn into a franchise and evolve over time. Would have been really cool if this made the same transition that Duke made from 2 to 3D.

It seems that heroes with moustaches had faded out of fashion by the mid-90s.

[Doom64hunter]

Poorchop, on 27 December 2017 - 11:16 PM, said:

I was surprised when I found out that this game was already considered pretty dated by the time that it was released because I loved it to death back when it came out and for several years afterwards. I also think this soundtrack is one of Bobby Prince's best works. The City is one of my all time favorite tracks in any game to date and Like It Was used to kind of get me down even though that seems a bit cheesy in retrospect.

I remember some site from a few years back that talked a little bit about Bobby's process of creating music for the game. I could be remembering incorrectly but I remember reading that he was unhappy with how The City ended up sounding. There was a link to his original rendition but I lost the file. To be honest, I think the version that ended up in game sounded perfect and I liked it the best. I would have loved to see this turn into a franchise and evolve over time. Would have been really cool if this made the same transition that Duke made from 2 to 3D.

If anyone's interested in these, here's a download link that includes both the imf and the recreated midis by Bobby Prince:
http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php/Bio_Menace_(DOS)

They really don't sound as good as the ones that were used in the game though.

[Poorchop]

25th anniversary tomorrow. I know that I'll be celebrating by playing some. I don't recall ever finishing episodes 2 and 3 so maybe it's finally time.

[MusicallyInspired]

I went through it a couple years back. Straight through all 3 episodes. A blast, of course.

This is kind of off topic, but playing these games I've often wondered what the soundtracks would have been like had Bobby Prince (and whoever else) had composed with an MT-32 instead of FM synth. Don't get me wrong, I love Adlib and Bobby used it wonderfully. But I wonder what they could have accomplished with a programmable Linear Algorithm synth like the MT-32. Might be a neat project to try to convert (read: record from scratch) Apogee soundtracks with an MT-32.

[Poorchop]

That would be cool to check out. I'm not a fan of modern remakes of some of these old tunes because they just slap distorted guitar over everything but a proper 1:1 remake with a synth could sound nice. I'm a big fan of the SC-55 music pack for Duke 3D. I'm kind of attached to the Bio Menace music as it currently stands but maybe the right kind of remake will do the soundtrack justice.

[MusicallyInspired]

Yes, most just slap badly distorted guitars on top and play very badly to boot. Some are decent players but have no concept of dynamics nor understand mixing at all. Just blaring lead guitars and power chords all the time in a muddy mess. You're crafting an experience not just showing off how well you can play. That's boring.

Anyway..../off-topic

[OpenMaw]

[gemeaux333]

No one here, professionnals visiting this forum, want to do a remake or reboot of this wonderfull game ?

Voidpoint ? Slipgate ? 3D Realms ?

[gemeaux333]

Jim Norwood really did the entire game (asside from graphic engine) single-handledly in 2 years ?

He could work on another Bio Menace project (he worked on shadow warrior too it seems)

[Ninety-Six]

So after playing Keen and going through Duke Nukem 1 again, I ended up finding myself on a bit of a DOS platformer kick. Since this was free I decided to try this too.


I originally set out just to do it on easy, since despite the name the game seemed balanced for Easy mode first. Especially since, after watching civvie's video on the topic, the game did seem to suffer from some particularly bullshit level design at times.

Still, I was armed with the knowledge of some of those traps thanks to the video, and was confident enough to even play using only lives and no saves (outside of quitting the game and coming back later).

And then I beat it and decided "eh, I'll play it on normal too."

And then, even knowing that Normal was unbalanced and that hard would be even more so, I went for Hard.



As of ten minutes ago I just killed Master Cain for the third time.

I'm honestly just kinda shocked, to be honest. Not at the game, but at myself. I really don't care for bullshit design and yet I went through the game three times, even suffering through hard. But even when I was playing on hard, I found myself getting into a rhythm where I would make some attempts at a level, quit, do something else, and then come back like an hour later and just repeat until I beat the game (I did not play based on lives for Normal and Hard. Given how the bosses are completely unfair, all but a few basically devolve into you throwing your corpse at them until they die. As a result, I saved up the lives for those encounters).

Just something about this game kept making me want to come back right away and have an excuse to play through it again. The part that really gets me is that I can not for the life of me figure out why. I can not pinpoint what about this game kept me coming back for more. It honestly kind of bothers me because by most accounts I should either hate this at worst or think it's alright at best. And yet, here we stand.

It was just...fun. And I don't really know why.

[NY00123]

After not finding a complete play-through of the Bio Hazard (Bio Menace) prototype build from 1992, I decided to record one and upload it.

I don't get to upload videos to websites like YouTube a lot, and I've had some technical difficulties. Right now, it is available as two unlisted parts:

https://www.dailymot...etsbt7z4enxSTsW
https://www.dailymot...4hNueRnSZDxT7iw

[Morpheus Kitami]

There's a new levelset for this game? Interesting, does that mean there are tools for it around? How hard is it to do anything with that?

I don't think I ever really fully got the opinion that it was this super hard title. Never seemed to hard a game to me, at least compared to other DOS platformers of the time. The final boss was bullshit though. I remember Monster Bash being worse, especially in the first episode, and a lot of non-Apogee/Epic/Id side-scrollers just kicked my butt. Perhaps its just because I actually played a lot of those titles on original hardware and thus was grateful if a game could actually freaking run? Eh...

[Ninety-Six]

Morpheus Kitami, on 18 April 2022 - 08:25 PM, said:

I don't think I ever really fully got the opinion that it was this super hard title.

I wouldn't necessarily describe it as "super hard." It just has some unfair moments.


And then hard mode is just Carpal Tunnel Fasttracking. Do not recommend.

[NY00123]

Morpheus Kitami, on 18 April 2022 - 08:25 PM, said:

There's a new levelset for this game? Interesting, does that mean there are tools for it around?

I admit that I'm unsure if this is a reply to my most recent post or not. If it is, and thus refers to the Bio Menace beta, then it actually doesn't consist of new levels. They're an earlier revision of what eventually became Bio Menace's 2nd episode. While certain collectible pickups were replaced and checkpoints were added, the level layouts otherwise remained mostly the same.

Maybe you rather asked about "Mangle is back from the dead". This is indeed a pack of new levels. It also has patches to behaviors in the EXE, plus a few relatively small graphical additions and edits. As far as I know, this is still the only complete level pack available for download.

I used the original TED5 editor for building levels and editing tile properties, but other programs can be used as well; The freeware release of Bio Menace actually has all files required by TED5, so simply having TED5.EXE in a copy of the game's directory should be sufficient. For exporting and importing the EGAGRAPH data I used Keengraph, but ModId might work better these days. To be specific, Keengraph (at least the version I used at a time) has a bug impacting sprite clipping rectangles, if I'm not wrong. What can be more tricky is changing behaviors in the EXE. See shikadi.net's Modding Wiki for examples of Bio Menace patches. To finish, I made no change to the audio files, but they can be edited as well.

In addition to what was listed earlier in this thread, there's "BioMenace 1 Gold Edition" from 2020, consisting of the original levels, two additional levels and other edits, along with EXE patches as needed.

Even earlier, in 2014, there was an attempt to edit existing levels; It mostly seems to consist of edits to the boss levels, turning them into less of boss levels and, I guess, more of experiments with changing maps. The original videos don't seem to be available, but it looks like the level edits have been archived: https://web.archive....bmenace_mod.zip

Outside of this and the unreleased "Crisis Dream" mod, I think that they're all listed in this page: https://moddingwiki....Bio_Menace/Mods

Quote

How hard is it to do anything with that?I don't think I ever really fully got the opinion that it was this super hard title. Never seemed to hard a game to me, at least compared to other DOS platformers of the time. The final boss was bullshit though. I remember Monster Bash being worse, especially in the first episode, and a lot of non-Apogee/Epic/Id side-scrollers just kicked my butt. Perhaps its just because I actually played a lot of those titles on original hardware and thus was grateful if a game could actually freaking run? Eh...

Ninety-Six, on 19 April 2022 - 02:30 AM, said:

I wouldn't necessarily describe it as "super hard." It just has some unfair moments.And then hard mode is just Carpal Tunnel Fasttracking. Do not recommend.

I think this depends on multiple factors as usual, including (but not limited to) experience with the game's mechanics and skills. From my own experience, Bio Menace's first episode is the least difficult, albeit there can be its more challenging segments, like the 9th (No Man's Land) and 11th (Compute Core) levels. There can be tricks which may greatly assist you, like sneaking behind dangerous enemies or using land mines to your advantage. Episode 2 might feel more difficult at earlier stages, say the ant levels. Episode 3 feels like the most difficult one for me, especially with the land mines and other hazards right in the first level.

To finish, I might not really use them, but Bio Menace has a few secret weapons that you can take advantage of, like the fireball Attack. They're considered an integral part of the game, rather than cheating.

[Morpheus Kitami]

NY00123, on 21 April 2022 - 01:59 AM, said:

I admit that I'm unsure if this is a reply to my most recent post or not. If it is, and thus refers to the Bio Menace beta, then it actually doesn't consist of new levels. They're an earlier revision of what eventually became Bio Menace's 2nd episode. While certain collectible pickups were replaced and checkpoints were added, the level layouts otherwise remained mostly the same.

Maybe you rather asked about "Mangle is back from the dead". This is indeed a pack of new levels. It also has patches to behaviors in the EXE, plus a few relatively small graphical additions and edits. As far as I know, this is still the only complete level pack available for download.

I used the original TED5 editor for building levels and editing tile properties, but other programs can be used as well; The freeware release of Bio Menace actually has all files required by TED5, so simply having TED5.EXE in a copy of the game's directory should be sufficient. For exporting and importing the EGAGRAPH data I used Keengraph, but ModId might work better these days. To be specific, Keengraph (at least the version I used at a time) has a bug impacting sprite clipping rectangles, if I'm not wrong. What can be more tricky is changing behaviors in the EXE. See shikadi.net's Modding Wiki for examples of Bio Menace patches. To finish, I made no change to the audio files, but they can be edited as well.

In addition to what was listed earlier in this thread, there's "BioMenace 1 Gold Edition" from 2020, consisting of the original levels, two additional levels and other edits, along with EXE patches as needed.

Even earlier, in 2014, there was an attempt to edit existing levels; It mostly seems to consist of edits to the boss levels, turning them into less of boss levels and, I guess, more of experiments with changing maps. The original videos don't seem to be available, but it looks like the level edits have been archived: https://web.archive....bmenace_mod.zip

Outside of this and the unreleased "Crisis Dream" mod, I think that they're all listed in this page: https://moddingwiki....Bio_Menace/Mods

No, just about the existence of these mods. I find messing around with the modding tools for these games to be an interesting experience, even if I never seem to do anything with them. I appreciate the info, thanks!

[NY00123]

[NY00123]

The 30th anniversary occurs today, for this one use of the Keen Dreams (and 4-6) engine in the 90s.

- What I still haven't seen since 2020 is new user-made contents, but I know it was never as commonly played as Commander Keen games.
- Also, I wonder, are all names of in-game creatures/enemies known at this point?

This also marks 5 years for the 25th anniversary, and thus, the public release of the July 1992 beta, still titled "Bio Hazard" at the time. As mentioned elsewhere, the graphics were partially corrupt, so restoration work had to be done. Luckily, most graphics were (probably) the same as in the game's final release, so not much (if any) was lost.

Due to technical problems, I previously uploaded a full play-through of the beta which was split into 2 parts; I actually posted the links here back in April 2022.
But actually, just about 4 months later, I managed to publish the play-through as a single video here:

[NY00123]

Found these remixes. While the "Rockin' It" remix is acknowledged to be simple, the remixes show different takes on melodies as found in the originals.

https://www.youtube....vBVZHoj2Jj1Kdhm