DEATH WISH • Add-On for Blood: Final Mission Completed!

DEATH WISH • Add-On for Blood: Final Mission Completed!: "Final mission completed. No spoiler preview for this one — you'll have to see this for yourself. Now I just have to finish up the walkthroug..."


HaHa! A question mark for the screenie. What a Monolithian way to inform us of that last boss! Great work Bloatoid!

Hyper calls it quits.

1. Hypertension is no more. Corbin, lead developer for HT, has decided to suspend all work for now. A Blood recreation is out of the question although a future shooter with entirely new content is still a possibility . The situation is fluid, stay tuned.
   

Just what the internet needs- another dead blog.

Well, what can I say. This blog has been dead for over a year and a half now. In all honesty I've been feeling a little glib about the future of this game for a good portion of 2010 and the first few months of this year. Things have changed for the better of late though, and there's way more news in the community than this quick post will deal with. To give a severely simplified recap:

There's a new kid on the block. It's called BloodXL and like a bat out of Blood heaven it's hit the cultic gamers' scene with a force equal to 5 burning TNT barrels. BloodXL is old news to be honest, nearly a year old and just months away from a beta release. The the team leader, luciusDXL plans to backwards engineer Blood for use on a modified Dark Forces engine called BloodXL. This team plans for a compatibility with the retail version so tight That you'll be able to run old user made blood mods created with mapedit. More on this one later. Here's a link

http://xlengine.com/

Cradle to grave, a Blood mod for Eduke32 had been on hiatus now for so long that I wasn't certain Dimebog and crew were going to continue. The team members are still fielding questions as recently as June so chances are they've got something in the works. We'll hear more from them soon hopefully.
First, the bummer news concerning Hyper.

Hypertension has gone without a proper level designer for quite some time. To make matters worse, the maps Fiend left us with are of a very high quality, so much so that 2 Doom mappers have been intimidated out of the job after joining. Right now we need a mapper at Boom level competence or greater who's into fairly detailed level design. If there are any contenders for Fiend's throne, please drop us a line.

Now for the good stuff.

We've added 2 new script coders to the team. These folks are doing highly specified tasks, one is focusing his efforts on cleaning and perfecting the RTS programming and will join the team formally if the code becomes stable enough. The second is a return coder Tyler Jessilynn, who specializes in COAL script. COAL is a LUA base script that can do a few things RTS can't so look for even more Blood like gaming in the future.
Finally, Corbin, the lead developer and creator of HT, has moved into C++ Doom source for HyperEDGE which is now a separate branch of the EDGE source port. His accompleshments thus far (with help from some old hands in ther Doom community) are:

MD3 model support .

GL fog

Split screen mode, a must for U console gamers out there. Here's a video of the new split screen feature

The war is over!

After close to a year of nearly non-stop combat, Kurt Fuhr, sole creator of the Blood2 Resurrection mod, has had his account deleted over at the Transfusion forums. I do not for the life of me understand how one human being could devote so much time and energy into smearing another modders work. I for one am glad this situation is finally at an end. An almost constant barrage of accusations has weathered every Bloodite's soul and patience alike.

I cannot speak knowledgeably of some of the other mods. They are either progressing silently or are on some form of hiatus. Hypertension however has quickly risen to become the jewel in the Blood modding community's crown. Corbin, along with a greatly reduced staff, has created one of the most promising mods for Blood in the last 12 years. It will be extremely multiplatform, supporting Dreamcast, PC, Linux, Mac, and now even the Sega x32 gaming platform. This is as close to having Blood's source code as we can hope to have folks. I only wish others within this community could get beyond personal issues and see the potential of what Hypertension is.
To paraphrase Kurt Fuhr;
"It didn't have to be this way."



In other news, Postmortem has gotten an a new web home.
http://forums.the-postmortem.com/

I make no pretense about my relations with the staff there. Still it is the most active Blood forum and with all animosities aside, there is a wonderful thread about the work of Kevin Kilstorm stickied up in the main Blood section. It is a "must see" as far as I'm concerned.

http://forums.the-postmortem.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1181

Oh, guess what? I'm slapping together another slovenly fanfic.
All of you fans of profound grammatical retardation (PGR disorder) will have a huge treat in store. It's stuck at 19,000 words for now. If I can get some time off, expect a release this February.

Happy new year to all, friends and foes alike.

Attack of the killer egos!

The turmoil hinted at in March is now the norm within the world of Bloodites. I cannot separate myself from what has happened. It's probably for the better that I write about the contortions I've been having to endure because of a controversy that could not be defused. I've been writing about Hypertension in most of my updates, posts and even an interview since January. I will continue to do so. While not a strict recreation of Blood, the Hypertension team has every right to do what they are doing. What engine they choose to use or the degree of faithfulness to the original game cannot be offered as valid excuses for attempting to sabotage someones mod.

I'm sad to report that just such actions have been committed by prominent members of the Blood community. I intend continued support for this mod as long as they try to make a game based on the Blood universe.


There, I needed to say all that. I've had my account at postmortem deleted over this issue (by my request) and the accusations of stealing ideas or game concepts is a baseless one as far as I'm concerned.

Cradle to Grave...This looks, incredibly good

The giant stone gargoyle in the room has made its presence known with a deep, throaty roar! May the Blood universe never stop reverberating from that unhallowed bellow! Cradle to Grave has finally gone public. For all 3 of you robed fiends out there, this is the news unlike any other I've yet posted. C2G is the only TC with the potential to replicate Blood in a truly representational way. By using a modernized Build engine (eduke32), C2G will capture "the feel" of Blood in ways no 3d engine could hope to follow. To hell with trying to describe it, the C2G team have their own snazzy blogger page:

http://playmoreblood.blogspot.com/


There's no way to ascertain the effects of Daedalus working on RATM while C2G is under construction although my best guess would be that it might slow things. We'll see.

I have no cultist youtubes for you so here's some gargoyles instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojP3kKG3DrQ&NR=1

Damage Control

Things have gotten rather frantic in the last week as accusations and anger became the norm over at the postmortem. I wasn't the only one in a blue funk concerning the closing of Blood2 Resurrection. It was, quite frankly, a low point in Blood modding history and friendships were strained to say the least. Fortunately the worst is over. Kurt Fuhr has pulled B2R from the brink and put it in hiatus lite. B2R's creator followed up with a commitment to continuing work on the B2R project at a later date. Kurt has also made it clear that the number of updates will be dramatically reduced.

No word yet about Cradle to Grave, Although longtime bloodite Final_Caleb has produced several high resolution sprites of a latex/silicon Tchernobog model that can be articulated. Modders Dimebog and Daedolon have been in contact with him concerning these sprites. What this team is planning hasn't been publicly released .

http://postmortem.edgegaming.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1066

The Hypertension team is approaching a sample alpha release of their TC using the EDGE engine. This mod has undergone rapid development in the short time span it's been around. Some of the effects would be ground braking for the Edge/doom community if they work.

http://tdgmods.blogspot.com/2009/03/site-update.html


I've been looking and looking for this commercial for some time with the intention of posting it here. This is a parody version of the commercial in question but it will do. Now kick back and enjoy a highly concentrated dose of cultic mania... AND STAY WARM!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWHlvtWhum0