Of bugs and features...

General discussion relating to the Transfusion project.

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Daedalus
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Of bugs and features...

Post by Daedalus »

Greetings, team. I have a question which I think requires a lot of thought.

When does a feature become a bug? Who here, in this Transfusion project has the authority to decide if something from Blood is a feature and should be included, or a bug and should be removed? Here's a small list of examples :

- Dynamite bouncing off opponents' heads
- Opponents 'running around on fire' forever
- A potplant in E1M2 'Wrong Side of the Tracks' is floating
- Voodoo doll was overpowered in v1.00 and too weak in v1.21

There are hundreds more that I could think of and mention here, but I'm not here to bore you gents. I'm here to help out as best I can (and am allowed to...). The big question here is this; does Transfusion aim to surpass and 'correct' Blood? Or are we creating a carbon copy of the glorious Blood, to every exact detail?

Who here decides what stays and what goes and who gives said person the right to decide this? Would this require a poll of sorts? Would every minute problem in the game need a debate, or should we just remain 100% true to Blood? This is a deep question. Of course you know which I would choose, but this is not about me. This is about the community, Tchernobog and the great experience that is Blood.
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Jethro
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Post by Jethro »

I must say that was the same thing I was wondering about. On which wersion of Blood is Transfusion based? Because I can remember a lot of things that changed significantly during patches too.
Also, I wondered will there be bug allowing anemies to run on others head (I remember zombies doing such "pyramides").

And for the forever burning enemies - I think that this bug is too unpredictable to be converted in the way it was in the original game.
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DustyStyx
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Post by DustyStyx »

There is something you’re not considering. Aside from the fact that we are but mere mortals and we probably won’t be able to make Transfusion a 100% recreation of Blood to begin with, the Quake engine itself is fundamentally differently from the Build engine making some of Blood’s “features” incredibly difficult if not impossible to implement.

Take for example the room over room clipping bug. In Quake the whole map architecture is full 3D space. To recreate the clipping we would have to implements silent teleporters that would only teleport the character if they were to touch it at a specific degree/crouch hight/speed etc. Yes it would work at the basic level but in the end it would more than likely be far to easy for new players to stumble upon, and face it as a veteran Bloodite you’re really more interested in showing off what you know about Blood than the actual game play.

My thoughts on bug reproduction are this. We should reproduce Transfusion as close to Blood’s statuesque as we can. The Quake engine is fairly well suited to accomplish this. Any extra “features” that do not significantly affect game play as it was intended I feel should more or less be left up to the user base for mod development. Killing doors may be an exception as there are events in Blood that lead to suggest that Monolith intentionally used killing doors as actual traps. Transfusion will more than likely have more than it's own share of new bugs for users to explore/exploit.

Weapons damages & enemy abilities may be up for debate; I tend to lean towards Blood 1.11 for most things, other than how hard it is to get the choking hand off. I do think it should be a little harder than it is in 1.21 but not as hard as it is in 1.11.

Just my thoughts.
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

Excellent points. Here are a few:

** The flare weapon projectile is a bit too large/hard to shoot near corners of walls and edges of floors, but it should remain this way somewhat. I think we should make the projectile radius/hitbox a bit smaller than it was in blood.

** Autoaim SHOULD still be an option, and should be available just as it was in Blood. This is not impossible to implement in DP, tho not sure who would have to do the coding.

** Flares would stick into hellhounds, but would do no fire damage, only physical on impact. (I have killed a hellhound with flares, but it took forever.) Should they still stick in? I guess so, since they stick into the stone gargoyle.

** Damage is constantly dealt to a monster/player that Caleb(or any player in Multiplayer) stands upon. Good? Bad? Needs tweaking?

** Monsters CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING YOU DO, even gunfire. A stupid "thing" in blood is that they can see you when you are behind them.
Etc. :shrug:

-Slink
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Post by Caleb_2k »

about that standing on folk, i jumped on my friends head in Blood V1,21 and all he lost was a bit blue armor :shrug:
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Post by Daedalus »

Of course gameplay is of paramount importance, but I feel that many of Blood's little errors and exploits give it character and each are dear to me. Many of the errors in Blood would be a mission to recreate, I'm sure, but don't a person's flaws define them, as well as their strongpoints?
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da_weezle
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Post by da_weezle »

I say we discuss this again when the game's nearly finished. :twisted:
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

Ðædalu§ Ðeathmask wrote:Of course gameplay is of paramount importance, but I feel that many of Blood's little errors and exploits give it character and each are dear to me. Many of the errors in Blood would be a mission to recreate, I'm sure, but don't a person's flaws define them, as well as their strongpoints?
Yes.
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Willis

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Post by Willis »

Ðædalu§ Ðeathmask wrote:Of course gameplay is of paramount importance, but I feel that many of Blood's little errors and exploits give it character and each are dear to me. Many of the errors in Blood would be a mission to recreate, I'm sure, but don't a person's flaws define them, as well as their strongpoints?
You must also look at it from the prospective that after the initial retail release, it became GTI's job to contract patches, not Monolith's.... had Monolith retained the rights, I'd like to think many 'obsure features' would have been fixed.

In my opinion, Transfusion is not a verbatim copy of Blood, never can be, and never will be. So some things will be different, but we will never stray from the true intent of Blood or what is felt to be, what Blood would have became under continued developement (No, Blood 2 doesn't count...).

So with that said, nothing is decided by any single person. Initially, points are discussed between the 3 project leads (Kazashi, Cruaich, and myself) and if we are indecisive, the team and or the public will be polled on what should be done.

Now keep in mind, that there may be some things certain people may not like about Transfusion (I'm not saying I know there are things already, but rather that its just bound to happen) and that does not mean it will be like that forever. Some of the other options we have down the line would be to have multiple game paths (IE, one TFn ruleset, one 1.11 rule set, one 1.21 ruleset, etc...) but until then, We're staying focused on one thing, Transfusion, and what we (and specified user input) want it to be.

I can assure you that I will not stop working on the game when Transfusion is released in its final format... I'm definatly interested in the idea of different game play, ranging from strictly Blood to new gamemodes and mod ideas... But like I said, one step at a time! :)

If anybody else has anything to add, or any objections to anything I have said, please speak up, nothing I say is 100% official.
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Post by leileilol »

hey while we're at it let's have that corpse "re-die" bug on reloading saves and the stuck flames/explosion sprites too
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da_weezle
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Post by da_weezle »

As coder #2, I second Willis' post.
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Post by scar3crow »

Keep in mind some bugs are, just that, bugs. They are errors in the coding, inconsistencies that were not foreseen. Some make for gameplay elements, some make for problems.

Things like enemies never dying or dynamites touch function not being triggered are errors in the intention of the functions (namely dying, and killing). Floating plant pots are an oddity in physics/collision. These things dont add anything other than "hey I remember that!"

Personally such things take me out of the game moreso, even if Im familiar with a games innerworkings and how they do things, it still pulls me out.

Some bugs do bring character to a game, others are just broken pieces of code that dont do their job.

Not every bug is a rocketjump or bunnyhopping (though I find the latter visually and audibly irritating) which is not a failure of programming but an unexpected use of the game world because they didnt think to prevent such.

Personally floating plants, entities forgetting to just die, and various other bugs have never made a game for me. What has made the game has been the ferocity of its beasts and the numerous ways in which I could defeat them while trying to escape this immersive environment.

Heres a question to keep in mind: Does it make the Blood run red, or does it make the Blood run nostalgic? I want Blood, not a trip down memory lane of when I got stuck in that wall, or saw that entity stuck in the floor, so on and so forth.
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Willis

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Post by Willis »

mind you, some of our entities currently love sticking in the walls and floors :oops:
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Post by Daedalus »

I see. So we're out to improve things. Now this changes things for me...
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Post by da_weezle »

The aim of this project has always has been to create a version of Blood that is as close to the original as possible (only using models instead of sprites). Once again, it will be hard enough to get the general 'feel' of Blood into Transfusion. The issues supplied in this topic are just a couple of suggestions of which it is quite pointless (from a developer's view) to work them out at this point. Furthermore, if I remember it correctly, this type of issue has been discussed before.
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