[NY00123]

A new video has been uploaded, with Niko and Bart answering questions about BioMenace Remastered. At least a subset of the questions had possibly been answered elsewhere, but this video should be up right now.

Title: "BioMenace Remastered - Questions & Answers Episode 1"

[NY00123]

Let me simply quote Niko here:

lethal-guitar said:

We're releasing a free demo for BioMenace Remastered on Steam this Friday, 11 July! This way you can already get a feel for what our version will be like, while we continue working on episode 4 and other aspects of the full game.
We'll be posting a series of teasers on our YouTube channel until then. Here's the first one:

[NY00123]

The BioMenace Remastered Demo has been released!

https://store.steamp...ace_Remastered/



Bart's last recorded live stream:

[High Treason]

Guy in the left of that Q&A thumbnail looks the type to hang around the kids' pool.

Not at all interested in the remaster, seeing as the original game is a broken piece of trash so I can't find any will to play a worse looking version of it. It looks like they took the tiles in PhotoImpact, pressed "select near color" and used the built-in "special texture" presets on each. Also not even remotely surprised by the cookie cutter music that was posted a while back. All in all it's set to be yet another thing that will come and go without anyone caring beyond YouTubers that probably got a free copy and whatever percentage of their audience will buy it, but probably never play more than five minutes of it. With how low effort it looks, I'm sure the people behind it will pocket a few quid anyway.

Never shared it on the board, but I did a cover of "Sludge" a good while back using gear from the 70s and 80s: (40:05).
You can ignore the rest of the video as I ultimately quite the game after it ran afoul of my 'no softlocks' rule. It sucks because Snake Logan had a lot of potential as a character and I'm sure in some alternate reality he got popular instead of Duke Nukem, or else they both did and now have some weird crossover game.
As for the music, I have a version of that sequence adapted for Duke 3D's sound library, for reasons. Some odd decisions had to be made in it like whether to have a full tom roll, or whether to leave the gaps in like the original has due to the poly limit of the AdLib. Most of the cover is running on PD synths which were the cheaper competitor to the FM technology the AdLib used, though the bassline is just plain old analog subtractive stuff.

[dnskill]

Not interested in the remaster, but interested in whining about skill issues, graphics, music, insulting devs, and self promoting your own video. Imagine if you had formed your critiques into a productive response that could help the dev team improve the product instead of using the thread as an opportunity to rant. C'mon HT, you're better than that.

[High Treason]

Ah, I see, another case of the good old patented "it's perfectly fine... unless DXZeff does it" double standard. How boring.

I can't really say anything more as you didn't refute any of my assertions, although it's quite clear you weren't paying attention to them in the first place, given more than one of your statements is objectively wrong.

[Doom64hunter]

High Treason, on 15 July 2025 - 04:59 PM, said:

Ah, I see, another case of the good old patented "it's perfectly fine... unless DXZeff does it" double standard. How boring.

I can't really say anything more as you didn't refute any of my assertions, although it's quite clear you weren't paying attention to them in the first place, given more than one of your statements is objectively wrong.

Okay, I'll help dnskill out by refuting your assertions.

Quote

Guy in the left of that Q&A thumbnail looks the type to hang around the kids' pool.

Wrong and uncalled for.

Quote

seeing as the original game is a broken piece of trash

Wrong.

Quote

It looks like they took the tiles in PhotoImpact, pressed "select near color" and used the built-in "special texture" presets on each.

Wrong.

Quote

cookie cutter music

Wrong.

Quote

All in all it's set to be yet another thing that will come and go without anyone caring beyond YouTubers that probably got a free copy and whatever percentage of their audience will buy it, but probably never play more than five minutes of it

Wrong.

Quote

With how low effort it looks

Wrong.

Will that suffice?

[High Treason]

I don't think you know how this works. I made a statement and supplied evidence that it is in fact true. Ergo the burden lies with you to provide evidence to the contrary. You have done no such thing. Simply writing "wrong" is highly inadequate. I could say my expectations were higher, but it would be a lie and I'm not at all surprised, to the point I even suspect you may be acting dumb deliberately. Either that or you're on the payroll. If you have nothing to offer, then stay quiet next time, otherwise it doesn't really look good, does it.

I will concede that the person's appearance is somewhat subjective, but that look with the moustache, receding hair and weak stature fits the stereotype, visually. Believe me, he has my sympathies, although he could have taken a few minutes to fix himself up before the photo was taken. It isn't difficult.


Your post stinks of envy.

[Doom64hunter]

High Treason, on 16 July 2025 - 03:18 PM, said:

Your post stinks of envy.

Kung pow penis

[NY00123]

So, I've been reminded of this technical bit about the DOS games. There's another thing that might be brought up in a follow-up post, again not about the remaster itself.

The technical bit in question is a bit disappointing: There's nothing new to find in BM's unused GAMEMAPS.* files from the DOS versions. I brought this up in private with the BioMenace Remastered team before the remaster's reveal from last April - I think that's been more than enough time that I may write in public forums now.

For a bit of a background, Keen Dreams and derived games, including Keen 4-6 and BM, made use of variations of the same map format. Such maps could be created using the Tile Editor v5.0 (TED5), written by John Romero. The editor itself was working with files having not much more than RLEW compression. Such files had names like MAPTEMP.BM1. There were further map header files, but I'll skip these for now.

There was also an option to apply another level of compression. While Keen Dreams used Huffman compression, later games like Keen 4-6 made use of a different form, known as Carmack compression: https://moddingwiki....ack_compression

Applying the extra compression could be done from TED5 itself, starting with the usual MAPTEMP.EXT file and creating a new GAMEMAPS.EXT file. There are again details I'll skip, like the creation of a new map header for a GAMEMAPS.EXT file.

With the version of TED5 distributed by Apogee for ROTT map creation at the time, the menu item "Carmackize maps" should activate that. It's a process that might take a while, especially on vintage hardware.

Now, let's get back to BioMenace. Unlike Keen 4-6, BM as released in the 1990s used the MAPTEMP.* files, not GAMEMAPS.*. Additionally, there were enough files allowing not just the use of TED5, but also the creation of new levels compatible with the existing BM executables.

So, what about these unused GAMEMAPS.* files again? As said, there's nothing new to find. GAMEMAPS.BM3 and the July 1992 beta's GAMEMAPS.BH1 are identical and practically empty. GAMEMAPS.BM1 and GAMEMAPS.BM2 seemed to be partially created from the released MAPTEMP.* files, before aborting the process in the middle.

I tried carmackizing the freeware release's MAPTEMP.* (also matching older versions differing from BH1) with TED5. Outside of bytes no. 8 and 10 (starting from 0), all contents of the unused trimmed GAMEMAPS.* were identical to the new ones created by TED5 as run by me. The reason for bytes 8 and 10 differing seemed to be related to a buffer overread bug in TED5 impacting write of the string TED5v1.0. It's 9-bytes long, including the NUL terminating character, but was copied to a 8-bytes long buffer in TED5's Item_Huffman. strlen was used to calculate the string's length from that buffer. As said earlier, GAMEMAPS.BH1/GAMEMAPS.BM3 is practically empty. Only the TED5v1.0 prefix is present, extended to 11 bytes due to the aforementioned bug.

[Doom64hunter]

On a less shitposty note, I really enjoyed the demo of the remaster.

In my opinion, it removes a lot of the frustrating aspects of the game and makes it an overall more enjoyable experience, at least judging from the first 4 levels.

[NY00123]

Today is BioMenace (Bio Menace) DOS v1.0's 32nd anniversary, which looks like a good opportunity for the following post.

About 16 days ago, within the Rigel Gameworks Discord server, Dark of the PCKF linked to a copy of a May 1993 slide show for the game. Bart (Dosgamert) replied with a screenshot.

I don't think I had ever seen that slide-show until recently, albeit that must (still) hold to other slide-shows of 1990s Apogee titles as well. After inspecting it, I thought it could be a good idea to write more about it elsewhere, say in forums.

According to files' timestamps, the slide show was prepared in May 1993. Also included and used is the IMF (OPL/AdLib) track MENACE.IMF, essentially a renamed BAYOU.IMF. As of writing this, I don't know if it's the first time any original IMF file had ever been out in the public.

The included screenshots show an earlier state of the game. Generally speaking, demonstrated layouts seem to match the game as released in August 1993, but there are at least a few minor differences. I've also referenced the July 1992 beta.

The title screen has been the only instance of mine using ImageMagick's "compare" program for visually locating differences.

MENACE01.PCX: Title screen.
Texts still looked closer to ones from the July 1992 beta's title screen,
mainly in color use for most of them (cyan and gray instead of yellow);
Albeit with black borders fully surrounding such texts and not just
appearing as shadows on the bottom and left sides.
Other minor edits near one of the mutant's eyes, in the fire above Logan
and at two locations in-between Logan and the mutant were made before the May 1993 preview.
The bottommost row and rightmost column of pixels in Logan's outfit had
most bright green pixels made darker, before partially reverting
the changes in the released game.

MENACE02.PCX: E3L8. Machine gun sprite was still matching the (July 1992) beta,
another machine gun was in place instead of a super gun (beta lacked this)
and there were more green grenades instead of red ones (also absent from the beta).
Was any jumping bot present at the time? See screenshot from E1L10, though.

MENACE03.PCX: E3L5. I think it was more-or-less matching.
Note that no guardian (tank) bot is shown, just Goliath.

MENACE04.PCX: E3L11's start.

MENACE05.PCX: E3L12 with Master Cain, near the first moving platform.

MENACE06.PCX: E2L11. Note that the caterpillars' path used to be shorter in
the July 1992 beta. Screenshot looks closer to the August 1993 release.

MENACE07.PCX: E1L1's start.

MENACE08.PCX: E1L2's end. A few map layout differences may be
observed on the right. Exit barrier didn't have its bottom base
(something occurring in E2-E3 levels as released),
and that barrier was located differently.
The room for the red mutant above the exit did not exist, while
the guard mutant and exit lock were positioned a bit differently.
There was also a bit of extra space seen below the exit.

MENACE09.PCX: E1L7 with Skull Man. An additional pile of bones
may be found in the direction from which Logan arrives.

MENACE10.PCX: E1L10. This confirms the presence of the jumping bots, plus the
plasma worms, in addition to the red-colored mutants as previously seen in E1L2.
A gem was originally placed instead of the more familiar plasma bolt.
The plasma bolt had maybe not yet been implemented, as in the July 1992 beta.
The green grenade also had different positioning.
The August 1993 release had one red grenade and one green grenade nearby.

MENACE11.PCX: E1L11, before the barrier that may be unlocked with a blue shard.
There was a green grenade instead of a red one.

MENACE12.PCX: E3L4. There were more green grenades instead of red ones.

MENACE13.PCX: E1L5. Beta machine gun sprite was still used.

[NY00123]

Quoting Niko from about two days ago:

lethal_guitar said:

We're participating in the upcoming Steam Next Fest starting October 13, and we've just released a big update for the demo in preparation! Including brand new bonus levels, per-pixel hit detection, a kill streak system, and many many improvements and fixes.

Here's the full list of changes:

https://store.steamp...77236?l=english

[NY00123]

The BioMenace Remastered Demo should be featured on Steam Next Fest atm: https://store.steamp...m/sale/nextfest

As a reminder, version 2.0 of the demo was released earlier in this month. I'll further quote Niko again:

lethal_guitar said:

As we're getting closer to release with BioMenace Remastered, we want to give more frequent updates on how things are going. So here's our first dev log with an overview of where we're at:
https://lethalguitar...ered-dev-log-1/

[NY00123]

Beta-testing is expected to start soon!

lethal_guitar said:

We're now at a point where we're looking for playtesters for BioMenace Remastered! If you'd like to join our team, apply here: https://rigel-gamewo...omenace/testing

[NY00123]

As the release is getting even closer, a new blog post is available from Niko now. Currently, the primary focus is completing the implementation of episode 4's new bosses. Further discussed is the level editor:

https://lethalguitar...ered-dev-log-2/

[NY00123]

Quoting Niko from about 3 days ago, more-or-less:

Quote

We're now ready to announce the exact release date for BioMenace Remastered: 18 December! Time to get started on your mullet and look for some jeans and green shirt, so you'll be ready to save Metro City!

And here's another dev log with some new screenshots, progress updates, quotes from our testers, and more: https://lethalguitar...ered-dev-log-3/

[NY00123]

Only 2 weeks left before the planned release date!

Episode 4's new bosses are fully implemented now. All contents are in a very close to complete state, but more tweaks are still being done, based in part on input from testers.

In addition to the planned release on Steam, it is also known by now the game will be available from GOG.com:

https://store.steamp...ace_Remastered/
https://www.gog.com/...nace_remastered

You may check social media for more updates, say Rigel Gameworks' YouTube channel: https://www.youtube....@rigelgameworks

[NY00123]

While work on BioMenace Remastered's upcoming release is getting closer to completion, I was checking old audio files from the DOS versions. Turns out two sounds (mostly noticeable for the acid dripping sound) have a few variations across the episodes. Additionally, there's an APOGEESND playing in the July 1992 beta only (albeit not always playing in practice), plus an unused LASERHITSND.

Quote

Sourced game: BioMenace, aka Bio Menace
Sound effects: PC Speaker + FM synthesis via Nuked OPL3
Day of creating output video: Dec 5 2025

This video demonstrates a few BioMenace (DOS) sound effects, including potentially less familiar sounds and variations of sounds.

Several notes:
- All sound effects of the July 1992 beta remained in each of the 3 episodes' audio data from 1993.
- The checkpoint and acid dripping sounds were not originally in the beta. It looks like these weren't exactly copied-and-pasted across the episodes, hence variations may be found.
- Variations might be less noticeable in the checkpoint sound, but they should be for acid dripping.
- The acid dripping mutant was not used in any of episode 3's levels, but may still be inserted into custom BM3 levels. The sounds are demonstrated here.
- Also, for the acid dripping AdLib sounds, starting music may impact their output. For a clearer demonstration or two of this (with different sounds), see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9bJ7UWWItA

,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td3-zGWc5hc

- The names APOGEESND and LASERHITSND were used in K1n9_Duk3's reconstructed sources, based on the sound names from the July 1992 beta's MUSEINFO.BH1.
- The sound APOGEESND plays in the July 1992 beta only, not the 1993 DOS versions. It may play after entering the Apogee room, or upon getting the color sequence in the level "Ant Caves". Due to the implementation, though, if AdLib is used for music and sound effects altogether, the sound will not be heard, due to starting another music track.
- Mistakenly missed from this video is the sound EGGSND, starting to play upon obtaining an invincibility potion. It may be heard clearly in the July 1992 beta while collecting small potions. Like APOGEESND, though, it won't be heard in the 1993 versions if AdLib is used for music and sound effects.
- Also missed is TIMERTICKSND, originally exclusive to BM1. It was used in shareware versions for timer ticking while showing promotional pages about ordering BioMenace, after completing each of levels 5-11. About 32 years later, BioMenace Remastered repurposed that sound for the intermission screen.
- The sound LASERHITSND was not used in any of the known BM versions for DOS.

Regarding the video itself, color palette in common use was an extension of the CGA/EGA's familar 16-colors palette created by ModId for supporting limited translucency/transparency, so there might be a bit of inaccuracies in scaling.

Some programs/libraries were used for preparing the video, including Nuked OPL3 (for OPL emulation), dosbox-staging and modified reconstructed BM sources (for sound playback and initial text printing), Audacity (for sound recording and editing), GIMP (for image editing) and FFmpeg for creating the output video.