Monolith Productions' 1997 Build Engine Classic "Blood" Getting Nightdive Remaster

The_Spaniard

HOLY FLURKING SCHNIT! My favorite game of all time "Blood" is being remastered by Nightdive Studios!

I am indescribably thrilled and overjoyed by this news as it has been a long time coming. The game has been languishing for years due to the new rights holder sitting on the IP, declining to license or sell it out for anything less than a quoted, "Insulting amount of money", and outright refusing to allow the creators to release the original source code so that fans could more easily mod, preserve or modernize this classic title. It seems that Nightdive Studios has finally cracked that nut and come to a business agreement with Atari to allow them to remaster Blood. Hopefully this can be the start of something of a revival of the franchise, and a simple remaster of the original game can lead to a full remake a la System Shock, then on to the sequel and potentially new games!

Do we have any other Blood fans in the house?

News article: https://www.pcgamer.com/1997-horror-shooter-blood-is-coming-back/

Game Wiki: https://blood-wiki.org/index.php/Blood

Steam link to check out original game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/299030/Blood_One_Unit_Whole_Blood/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RluZuxrIh7A



*Craps pants and the pants of the person next to him in excitement*

Edit: IT'S OUT!

https://twitter.com/NightdiveStudio/status/1126544470822965248

BloodySloth

Oh shiiiiiit! Blood is fucking great, and easily my favorite Build engine game. Like it's not even close. Do we know any details about the remaster? Because honestly all I need are some QoL improvements for modern computers and control schemes. The game looks perfect for what it is.

Edit: I was so excited I didn't even stop to read the article. I'm one of those people now. It sounds like their intention is exactly what I was hoping for.

KoopahTroopah

Oh hell yeah, I loved this game. Awesome.

The_Spaniard

First batch of screenshots have been released!

https://gematsu.com/2019/03/blood-remaster-screenshots

Prohass

I don't really use a pc anymore for gaming I know it's weird but I hope it comes to consoles like the duke remaster did

The_Spaniard

Prohass wrote: »

I don't really use a pc anymore for gaming I know it's weird but I hope it comes to consoles like the duke remaster did

Frankly I hope it is released far and wide. I would't mind owning multiple copies of the remaster across platforms. I'd probably get it on PC and Switch.

Golden Yak

The_Spaniard wrote: »

*Craps pants and the pants of the person next to him in excitement*

"It appears as if someone has pooped your pants."

TelMarine

Might get this again because playing it through DOSBox was annoying. Depends on the price.

The_Spaniard

Golden Yak wrote: »

The_Spaniard wrote: »

*Craps pants and the pants of the person next to him in excitement*

"It appears as if someone has pooped your pants."

Stormwatcher

I think this is the hardest FPS I ever tried to play

The_Spaniard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da8x89BBjI8

IT'S OUT!

Looks like it's time to buy this game for the 4th time...

Buy it NOW!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1010750/Blood_Fresh_Supply/
https://www.gog.com/game/blood_fresh_supply

The_Spaniard

I just got home, bought it, and downloaded it. The install size is less than half of the install size of the One Whole Unit version of the game. Wonder why that is, may be more efficient file structure?

Prohass

Please please please come to consoles. I don’t game on my pc anymore

Undead Scottsman

Man, having never really played Blood before, this feels way harder that Doom or Duke. I'm only on the third hardest difficulty too.

august

Prohass wrote: »

Please please please come to consoles. I don’t game on my pc anymore

Unfortunately I don’t think any of the other doom-era ports they’ve done have gotten console releases.

Undead Scottsman

Duke, like Doom, is thrown up on everything. That's about the only one I can think of though.

Stormwatcher

i sincerely think Blood is far too fast and difficult for a controller
it should run on ANY pc or laptop, though.

Zek

Prohass wrote: »

I don't really use a pc anymore for gaming I know it's weird but I hope it comes to consoles like the duke remaster did

It's not weird, the rest of us are just fossils.

BloodySloth

A couple of handy things about this port I didn't notice at first: You can activate Full 3D rendering in the display options to prevent perspective distortion when aiming up and down, and you can turn on the CD music in the audio options to replace the MIDI files. I have no idea why the first thing isn't default; maybe they wanted to default settings to best represent the original release? Also apparently it has a custom difficulty option, but I haven't checked that out yet.

This is a beautifully full-featured release.

Undead Scottsman

Ooh, didn't realize there was higher quality music. Totally turning that on tonight.

Might also mess with custom difficulty to make those hitscan bastards less accurate. Even the lowest level monks can chew you the hell up.

The_Spaniard

I ran through the first 4.5 levels (including first secret level) after buying it last night, and man default difficulty is WAY too easy. I was hovering around 200% health almost the entire time. I'm going to restart on a higher difficulty later. I know the original game had optional voxel weapon pickups, but all the new voxel stuff is really appreciated. Speaking of music, since it just loops over and over again, I'd like a third option to swap between CD and midi version of the stage track to mix things up. Basically play the CD stage track, then the midi stage track before starting the CD one again. I don't know if it's just me but jumping feels a bit off in this release. Anybody else that has played the original as much as I have feel the same? Also, I can't wait for mods and mission packs to start getting ported over. Though I'll crap if a full blown EDuke32 level mod can now be made off the basis of this remaster.

BloodySloth

I guess crouching affects the hit percentage of the hitscan enemies. My entire mind is blown.

august

BloodySloth wrote: »

A couple of handy things about this port I didn't notice at first: You can activate Full 3D rendering in the display options to prevent perspective distortion when aiming up and down, and you can turn on the CD music in the audio options to replace the MIDI files. I have no idea why the first thing isn't default; maybe they wanted to default settings to best represent the original release? Also apparently it has a custom difficulty option, but I haven't checked that out yet.

This is a beautifully full-featured release.

What's this option called? I think I already have it turned on but I'm not sure.

august

Undead Scottsman wrote: »

Duke, like Doom, is thrown up on everything. That's about the only one I can think of though.

Unfortunately, there's no Doom ports for any of the current-gen consoles. Duke gets around though.

BloodySloth

august wrote: »

BloodySloth wrote: »

A couple of handy things about this port I didn't notice at first: You can activate Full 3D rendering in the display options to prevent perspective distortion when aiming up and down, and you can turn on the CD music in the audio options to replace the MIDI files. I have no idea why the first thing isn't default; maybe they wanted to default settings to best represent the original release? Also apparently it has a custom difficulty option, but I haven't checked that out yet.

This is a beautifully full-featured release.

What's this option called? I think I already have it turned on but I'm not sure.

Whoops, I misremembered and it's actually in Gameplay Options (for some reason) as Full 3D Aim Look.

Undead Scottsman

august wrote: »

Undead Scottsman wrote: »

Duke, like Doom, is thrown up on everything. That's about the only one I can think of though.

Unfortunately, there's no Doom ports for any of the current-gen consoles. Duke gets around though.

Well, its bc on xbox one, but yeah, no native port.

Undead Scottsman

What sadists gave the basic ranged enemies hitscan shotguns AND dynamite.

This is effed up man.

Uselesswarrior

It is absolutely amazing that after years of not having the source some clever programmer put the work into reverse engineering the game to give us an open source port, https://github.com/nukeykt/NBlood.

Original thought this was the same as Fresh Supply but it turns out we are getting two awesome ports at the same time.

https://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php/NBlood
https://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php/Fresh_Supply

BloodySloth

Undead Scottsman wrote: »

What sadists gave the basic ranged enemies hitscan shotguns AND dynamite.

This is effed up man.

The dynamite is actually sort of a bonus occasionally, since it gives you a break from their hitscan weapons, and sometimes they'll throw in a bad direction and end up exploding themselves or their friends.

After beating the first episode on Lightly Broiled I decided to start over on a custom difficulty, ramping up the number of monsters, but reducing their aggression and aim. I'm not absolutely sure what every setting does, but I've been having a really good time with it.

TelMarine

The difficulty definitely seems a bit higher, but I haven't played it in close to 10 years when I played through One Unit Whole Blood. I started on the 2nd-to-last difficulty, and the shotgun fanatics where pwning me instantly. The beginning was always hard since ammo and weapons are scarce, but it gets easier once you built up a decent arsenal.

Undead Scottsman

The problem is you can turn a corner and lose half of your life to a conspicuously placed monk with a tommy gun. It's like this game was made for savescumming.

Uselesswarrior

Undead Scottsman wrote: »

The problem is you can turn a corner and lose half of your life to a conspicuously placed monk with a tommy gun. It's like this game was made for savescumming.

I mean I have a lot of found memories of Blood but the abundance of hit scan enemies and turn the corner your dead design is maybe not the greatest.

The_Spaniard

Here are two very different takes so far on the remaster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2GLB-rhttk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkG29e-nE-A

Stormwatcher

well Civvie just pointed out it's buggy, not bad.

The_Spaniard

Stormwatcher wrote: »

well Civvie just pointed out it's buggy, not bad.

Well yeah. I was telling a friend earlier that I can deal with buggy, that can be patched, it's better than there being fundamental issues with the remaster. I've only noticed a couple of bugs in my playtime, so I've been happy so far.

Uselesswarrior

The_Spaniard wrote: »

Here are two very different takes so far on the remaster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2GLB-rhttk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkG29e-nE-A

Ggmans review is mostly him talking about the original game. Civvie’s is more directed at the port work done by Nightdive. I’ve heard more extreme versions of the this is broken review echoed on other forums.

Undead Scottsman

Update #1 (1.8.8) is available now!

Hello Everybody,

We have been working hard over the last week or so, listening to your feedback and comments and, today we are happy to release our first patch for Blood: Fresh Supply!

Steam users don't need to do anything to receive the update. You will receive the update automatically through Steam.

Below is a list of the following fixes and alterations:
Fix video crash when switching from OpenGL to other renderers,
Fluidsynth now loads MIDI internally, resolving some instances of user crashes depending on the user's directory name,
Fix CD audio music not being present when reloading a level,
Fix MP monster settings not being respected,
Change "Show Player Weapons" to "Show Player Weapons Overhead",
Fix armour being affected by friendly fire if friendly fire was switched off,
Remove the three extra recoil SFX for Cultists,
Tesla blast projectile now renders as flat - adding custom definition entry for making it always pitch towards the viewer,
Bug fix with TNT/Spray can disappearing when exploding in hands while on the last ammo,
Removing the run glitch feature,
Fixed incorrect negative shade for candles, causing the sprite effect to appear brighter,
Removed the pre-fire animation for tesla weapon,
Removed the morphing animation for gargoyle statues,
Stone gargoyle now uses the correct recoil SFX,
Lightly Broiled is now always the default selected menu item when entering the difficulty menu,
Akimbo Napalm weapon now plays the correct firing animation as seen in DOS version 1.21 (was using the old 1.0 one),
Fix taunting when killing enemies with TNT not working,
Stop players using power ups when dead,
Disallow Quickloading if no saves are available to load,
Fix a bug that caused a crash at the start of Death Wish E2M1,
Autorun state is now saved between sessions,
Fix the FoV slider being uncapped when using the arrow keys or controller,
Key sprites now default to full shade values,
Importing updated extra voxels,
Major revision to virtual vram system and shaders. Height is now only padded for wall textures now. Fixes tiling issues with non power of 2 texture widths,
Padded textures and normal textures are now treated as separate virtual vram entries. Fixes issue with the monolith logo in the save game menu being distorted while in E3M2,
Concussion damage is now scaled against tick scale, making gibbing to occur more easily,
Changed jump height for getting out of water back to the original height. This broke E2M2,
Shade value for walls with back wall swap flag is now accounted for,
Proper shade and palette values are now inherited from sprite to voxels (they now appear correct in DWE3M1),
Texture UV mapping fixed for E1M1, E1M2, E1M3, E3M2, E1M8,
Fix a bug that would allow loading in multiplayer,
Fix issue when moving between menus if the current selected menu entry is too high or low,
Players are now always respawned with 100 health, regardless of what the level start has,
Spraycan and HellHound missiles now deal correct damage type and burn time,
Tesla weapon now fires one extra projectile at the end of its firing animation,
All TNT/Prox/Remote/dynamite explosions now play the correct sprite if not colliding with the floor first,
Fix players being able to cheat to acquire the E3M1 no-civilians-killed achievement,
Add support for private and friend lobbies,
Add missing Cerberus electrocution state,
Jumping boots now negate all pummel (includes fall) damage,
Make sure zombies are changed into dead actors on death, restores knockback force in the DOS version,
Add load screen messages when loading fails; allow loading from specific older versions. If, in this case, you want to load saves from the previous Fresh Supply version please type `developer 1` in console, load, save over your old save, then type `developer 0` in console.
Fixing timing of burn damage,
Enemies now correctly avoid water,
Fixing DWE2M1 bug with player start spawns,
Duplicate addon paths are now checked for,
Key 7 is now defined,
Remove a specific voxel on E2M2,
Scale voxels at the same ratio as sprites,
Show extra info in lobby list,
Pressing use now performs a standard hitscan operation. This resolves some issues in DWE1M9.

We hope you enjoy the update!

Keep Spillin'
Daniel G
Nightdive Studios Production Team

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1010750/announcements/detail/1620645290559247391

BloodySloth

The patch is appreciated, but it broke a bunch of saves and also introduced some new bugs.

As much as I love the heart of this release, it does seem like it needed some more time in the oven. I wonder what pushed them to release earlier than it should have been. I would have been bummed at a delay, but a late game is better than a broken game. It's a testament to the original game's imaginative and open level design that I was still able to finish the level in which I actually couldn't use a main path, because an explosion entity didn't disappear for some reason, and kept pushing me away and damaging me.

I'm still having a ton of fun revisiting Blood with Nightdive's QoL improvements, though, and if I were to introduce someone to Blood, it would be through this, for sure. They probably wouldn't even notice a lot of this port's jankiness. With how quickly the game was updated, I'm sure that the remaining kinks will be worked out in good time, too.

Undead Scottsman

The port wasn't rushed, it was always going to end up like this on initial launch, the logistics of porting an entire game from disassembly without documentation is quite complicated, especially when the code base had a lot of arbitrary dead code. We are only human and can only do so much with what we have on hand.

Quote from Edward850, a Software and Netcode engineer at Nightdive, for what it's worth.

BloodySloth

I don't mean to diminish the work that has been done, and obviously other attempts to resurrect the game have been met with their own problems on initial release. It's a tough job.

Anyway I'm still really excited about Fresh Supply's prospects and I'm still booting it up multiple times a day just to get a few minutes of carnage in when I can. The game is in the right hands, even if it has rough spots right now.

Stormwatcher

Civvie is pretty happy about the game now, btw.