blood pre-alpha screenshots?

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pomornik
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blood pre-alpha screenshots?

Post by pomornik »

First I want to say hi to all bloodphiles there...

Checking my old computer magazines I found blood screenshots I never seen before - I tried to cut them out best as I can and I know about their poor quality. If those were already seen on this forum then I am sorry - I tried to find them before posting. In this newspaper developer is stated as Apogee and US Gold as publisher - screenshots are circa december 1995.

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Phantasm has a completely different sprite - I dont know if that skull fireplace made it till retail.

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Nothing unusual - some monks and the beast claw, I think monks have much cruder looking sprites than in the retail version.

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This one is the most interesting for me - some spiders and fat zombie plus very ugly status bar, check also the crude level design - looks more like IDTECH1 not like BUILD.

Hope I added something interesting into forum. I personally think that those screnshots were fabricated by Apogee when they were still developing it as Horror3D or Blood3D for some press materials (the same way it was done for Shadow Warrior and Ruins aka Powerslave/Exhumed) - it was not a working game just some graphics put together - status bar looks like a placeholder and overall screens look primitive, with very simple design, no lightning effects and ugly textures.
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DustyStyx
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Post by DustyStyx »

Welcome to the forum Pomornik

It's always cool to see old screens of Blood in predevelopment. Thanks for posting!

You can always try to find the location of the screen shots in the alpha itself

http://files.deathmask.net/alpha/
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zZaRDoZz
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Post by zZaRDoZz »

@ pomornik

Those pics look definitely post alpha (alpha=1994). I don't think they had a phantom or butcher of any sort in alpha and that one looks like they were toying with a slightly scarier, more stylized game.

Some of the difference might be due to the smallness/ graininess of the magazine pics themselves rather than artistic differences.
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I Live...AGAIN
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Post by I Live...AGAIN »

Welcome to the forum Pomornik.

Those are some nice screens. Do you remember which magazine they were from?
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Post by pomornik »

@zZaRDoZz

I am sorry for the confusion - by alpha I meant this leaked version with development texts inside. I thought this version on screens is a predecessor of the leaked one since it just looks more primitive - I played leaked version around august 1996 (at that time I thought it was some sort of a shareware demo) and I didnt recall from my memory this status bar on the third picture. I also remember opening some art editing program inside and I didnt saw nor those graphics of the status bar, not this phantasm sprite.

I have a feeling that this FOES counter shows the number of kills to do before entering beastmode. Again sorry for the confusion with the name - maybe someone can change topic name to more appropiate?

@I Live...AGAIN

Sure thing - those pictures where from polish magazine Secret Service issue 31 January 1996, published by ProScript (both magazine and publisher are long dead from 2002) here is the cover:

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As a fun fact other polish magazine called Top Secret in issue 50 May 1996, published by Bajtek (again both magazine and publisher are long dead since 1996) made a review of Blood from leaked alpha version pretending it was retail - it was a typical situation for polish magazines at that time to make reviews on alpha and beta versions (sometimes they even created their own screenshots and false reviews for games that never came) just to poke fingers into other computer magazines that they had reviewed this game before them.
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I Live...AGAIN
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Post by I Live...AGAIN »

Wow, that is a great find. I cant find much information at all about that magazine.
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Post by leileilol »

January 96 would make the screenshots dated around mid November 1995.

The spectre looks pixel arted, prior to clay model or so, might even be a remnant from 1994 before they started to clay it up.

The screens aren't fake though. The renders look very real, and very Build. That's the working procedural fire behind a masked wall in shot 3, there is shading in shot 2, and the fire is in shot 1. The statusbar is also real, the numbers are the same as the final, and i'm GLAD that stupid blue hair caleb head is gone. That would just wreck the atmosphere if they had retained that.
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

Neato Torpedo. Thanks for the post.

@leileilol: yes. blue hair caleb is corny. and what is that blue?? An armor bar? :-P
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Post by Wrim »

Well... I do declare I'm fangasming quite a bit!
Good find! You made my Christmas.
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Gila
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Post by Gila »

awesome find, thanks!

the fat zombie and cultist look the same, phantasm however is different sprite!
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Post by pomornik »

Thanks everyone for Your feedback! I am really happy that I bring something new about Blood to You guys. Tried really to cover everything I could about the source of those screenshots - just ask if any other info is needed.

But I am also a bit concerned - I was really shocked that no one (I mean people from all over the world) here besides me saw those screenshots before - even Gila who is like Russia`s Blood God (I was counting thet those screens where published somewhere in eastern europe also). I mean those screens came from a polish newspaper that didnt have best reputation (and I mean ONLY one polish newspaper - I saw the third screenshot with axe zombie in another magazine but it was propably photocopied from this I scanned - the quality is really bad and screenshot is pretty small). I dont want to say that Poland is some backwards village, but seriously it isnt the major market also.

The highest propability would be that some major US or UK magazine would print those shots, as they are propably the first ones from Blood (but I am not sure about that) - and having a screenshots of the incoming game is something pretty high regarded. I am suprised that it didnt happen - instead they are published in some computer magazine from eastern europe. But it would be rather impossible for the magazine to manufacture those screenshots without original graphics - numbers and most of the textures and sprites are from the released version.

If someone here maybe knows personally or has contact to original Blood developers, then maybe the nature of those shots could be unfold (and I bet that it would a be pretty interesting story). Propably contacting them would be extremely difficult - once I tried to contact polish developer from a old video game company he just blacklisted my email without even saying anything.
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Re: blood pre-alpha screenshots?

Post by alex512 »

Hi guys, i have two of these screenshots in better quality, but i never seen that screen with phantasm it's pretty cool!

Image

Image

I also have more interesting screenshots like these

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Image
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I Live...AGAIN
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Re: blood pre-alpha screenshots?

Post by I Live...AGAIN »

WOW AWESOME!
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Re: blood pre-alpha screenshots?

Post by TheCultist »

Can someone reupload the polish magazine pictures please?
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