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Blood: Fresh Supply - remaster by Nightdive Studios, published by Atari

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
BloodGDX used alpha build + reverse engineered things added in the release while NDS got no source code?
This gonna b gud... in a shit way.

Oh and hope they don't implement ice sliding in the game, making that cool (heh) level into nightmare.
 

soulburner

Cipher
Joined
Sep 21, 2013
Messages
809
No source code access? How do you reverse engineer a game like this and make it work 1:1 with the original? I heard about such things being done, but it still blows my mind.

So.. what happened to the original source code?
 

Goi~Yaas~Dinn

Savant
Joined
Nov 25, 2018
Messages
786
Location
A derelict.
So.. what happened to the original source code?
Atari being fags. That's assuming it wasn't lost by a previous "rightsholder" years and years ago.

No source code access? How do you reverse engineer a game like this and make it work 1:1 with the original? I heard about such things being done, but it still blows my mind.
Decompile the executable. Run a copy in a VM with debugging functions. Start commenting your decompiled code as the copy runs in the VM. Get hooked on a drug of your choice to retain sanity. Weep bitter tears late into the night anyway.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/12/18138389/blood-reboot-rights-atari-warner-nightdive

How do two companies own the rights to Blood?
Gory ’90s shooter is owned by both Warner Bros. and Atari

Earlier this week, Atari announced plans to release a new version of ‘90s shooter Blood. Some industry-watchers have made the germane point that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment owns the rights to Blood, not Atari. So what’s the deal?

It looks like Warner Bros. owns the intellectual property rights to any new games based on the Blood franchise. The company has not announced any plans to create a Blood game. Polygon contacted a representative of the company to ask about the franchise’s status, but did not receive a reply.

Atari, however, owns the digital distribution rights for the original game, which came out in 1997. The terms of its ownership includes limited provisions for updating the game.

Atari chief operating officer Todd Shallbetter emailed Polygon with the following statement: “We are not changing the game. We have distribution rights and this version is just being updated and optimized for modern operating systems and hardware.”

These limitations are the basis for developer Nightdive Studios’ work on the re-release. Bloodis best remembered as one of the more successful games released under 3D Realms’ Build engine, which came to prominence in 1996 with the release of Duke Nukem 3D. Blood is a gory game that makes extensive use of occult, horror imagery.

The game was originally developed by Monolith Productions and published by GT Interactive, which owned the publishing rights to the game. GT was subsequently acquired by French company Infogrames. Later, Infogrames rebranded as Atari. Monolith, which retained ownership of Blood’s IP, was acquired by Warner Bros. Interactive in 2004. It is best known for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, Middle-earth: Shadow of War.

Although unrelated to the specific issue of Blood, Atari and Warner have a long and storied history. Warner bought the original console company, Atari Inc. from founder Nolan Bushnell in 1976. The company presided over the notorious 1983 crash of the console market. Atari was split between a home computer company called Atari Corp., best known for the Atari ST, and a smaller console / coin-op concern called Atari Games. That company was bought by Time Warner in 1993, but later sold to Midway, which later sold all its assets to ... Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Developer Nightdive is best known for updating games from the 1990s, such as Forsaken: Remastered and Turok. It is currently working on a crowdfunded reboot of the originalSystem Shock. The company recently posted an update that System Shock has “entered full production.” That game is due to be released early in 2020. No release date has been given for Blood.

On the bright side:

 

Goi~Yaas~Dinn

Savant
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Messages
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Location
A derelict.
Only experience I have with Kaiser's work is DOOM64EX, which actually made me love old-school DooM (never was too impressed with vanilla DooM and DooM II). If he can do that for me, I have hopes he won't fuck up Blood.
 
Joined
Mar 30, 2012
Messages
7,044
Location
Elevator Of Love
Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Billy Drago would be perfect as Caleb. Sandler could play JoJo.

5031094680_35f31016b3_b.jpg
 

Goi~Yaas~Dinn

Savant
Joined
Nov 25, 2018
Messages
786
Location
A derelict.
I remember the times when Monolith was awesome. Someone remind me again what happened?
Screwed by Microsoft, then all their talent slowly left over the next decade to found their own studios, then one or two titles bombed. In the highly dysfunctional market that is the "modern" gaming industry, that's all it fucking takes to get bought out. In this case, their founding CEO is actually an egotistical faggot and encouraged them to shoot for being acquired by Warner Entertainment. A few years ago he tried to buddy-buddy up with the lingering traces of the Blood fanbase on The Postmortem (dead now, I think?). Said he was trying to buy back the IP and all that jazz. The good vibes promptly dissipated when the Community figured out he had no intention whatsoever of releasing the source, even if he could get the rights. After that he got kinda cagey and quiet. Reported failure a few months later. Can't say I was too broken up over that one.
 

Zenith

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 26, 2017
Messages
296
Microsoft? Thought it was simply: bought by WB in 2004, haven't released anything worthwhile since 2005, do the math. With talent leaving afterwards, not beforehead. A husk by the time of FEAR2 release. Am I wrong?
 

Goi~Yaas~Dinn

Savant
Joined
Nov 25, 2018
Messages
786
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A derelict.
Microsoft? Thought it was simply: bought by WB in 2004, haven't released anything worthwhile since 2005, do the math. With talent leaving afterwards, not beforehead. A husk by the time of FEAR2 release. Am I wrong?
Microsoft screwed them on LithTech. As far as why the talent started to leave, I couldn't say. But the majority of them seemed to be founding their own studios or joining those of acquaintances.
 

Avonaeon

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 20, 2010
Messages
593
Location
Denmark
Looking forward to this. Spent too much time trying to get mouselook working with DOSBox only to have the game crash when I got to the train. Not having to deal with that will be nice.
 

schru

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2015
Messages
1,131
I'm not sure about the standard DOSBox, but mouse-look works just fine in the SVN Daum version without having to make any adjustments.
 

Astral Rag

Arcane
Joined
Feb 1, 2012
Messages
7,771
Gdx is the way to go in the current year. Nightdive have their work cut out for them if they intend to release something even better.

The original always had horrible mouse support. I made a post about it in our official Blood thread iirc.

Edit:

screenshot_20181214-1x0e3d.jpg
 
Last edited:

soulburner

Cipher
Joined
Sep 21, 2013
Messages
809
The original build games never worked with the mouse right. Horizontally, it's pretty much fine, but vertically... it's like the engine fights with the player not to let him/her screw with the world stretching.

I am kind of sad the old Monolith is no more, pretty much all of their games rocked - the NOLFs, Shogo, Fear 1 & 2 were both pretty good, even if very different to each other. Then they suddenly seemingly disappeared... Some of the developers formed Blackpowder Games and released Betrayer, but I think they disappeared too.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,869
Finally switched to this from BloodCM (I was weary of installing JRE) and it's great so far. Blood is such a great game. Is there a way to take screenshots directly through BloodGDX?
 

JDR13

Arcane
Joined
Nov 2, 2006
Messages
3,930
Location
The Swamp
I loved Blood back in the day. It was easily on par with Duke 3D and maybe even better in a lot of ways.

Blood 2 was crap though.
 

mwnn85

Savant
Joined
Aug 14, 2017
Messages
210
About sodding time!
We've been able to play Wolf3D, RoTT, Doom, Quake, Duke, Redneck and Shadow Warrior for years without DOS limitations.
I've been playing this recently - get the bugfix master branch (changes are merged now) as there was a slight issue with loading the extra levels.

An accompanying source code release would be even better - reverse engineered or not - but it seems unlikely if Atari & Warner still own it.
Absurd really given it's age.
Night Dive did release the code for System Shock (Mac) which is getting some attention.

Still think it's a shame that the work on the XL Engine stopped.
It was great to play Dark Forces in HD and was virtually finished... :(
No idea what happened to the author. An older version of the source code was released and is being worked on here.
 
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Goi~Yaas~Dinn

Savant
Joined
Nov 25, 2018
Messages
786
Location
A derelict.
No idea what happened to the author
He's one of those perfectionistic faggots that promises more than they could ever hope to possibly deliver and still devote time to a sane or normal life. Once you also add in a dash of "DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH MUH CODE-BABBY!!!", and microwave the whole sorry mess on high power once every year-and-a-half to a delusional "Done when it's done", you get XLengine.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,269
Location
Massachusettes
Oh, how I so vividly remember playing the original Blood on MS-DOS the year it came out, and how it would chug and choke and play like ass on my old 586 cpu, and how I would take 3 steps in the game, die, take another 3 steps, die again, then another 3 steps... repeat, rinse and DIE. But damn it, one time I was able to take FOUR steps before I died, and that was when I realized it was all worth it. I loved this fucking game... hit scan enemies with 10X normal hit scan abilities and all..
 

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