Really Creative Blood Bosses

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Really Creative Blood Bosses

Post by Horned King »

Excuse me, Sick Doctors Trodding in the Gigantic Blood Tank,
Has any Blood fan who has developed Blood add-ons or is concieving of Blood add-ons has ever come up with wholly new bosses to make the gameplay interesting? The old bosses are so dull and repetitious in the main Blood games, that an add-on does not feel like a REAL add-on without fun boss fights. Has anyone here have concept drawings or game screenshots for truly original Bosses? Caleb has to have some sort of surprise in the end, after exploding all those creepy humanoids and occult freaks for every seven to ten levels.
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Hellen
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Post by Hellen »

It has been done in the Sect War.This campaign is remarkable for having several brand new bosses. Every one is a tough one.
None of the previously released addons (I can be mistaken though) had such a bright idea implemented.
So far I've seen:

Image

Image

Image

You can actually fight and defeat these creatures!
This campaign is worth playing just because it’s the best stuff I’ve ever played since Bloodlines
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Zardoz
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Post by Zardoz »

I believe The old addon "the Gods" was the first to have new bosses.
It looks as if that last one may have been influenced by that particular add on.

Inherit the earth had a slightly modified giant spider (no spiderlets spwwning).
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Post by Guest »

The level design in Sect_war is just, well, I'll just say that it not in the league of Bloodlines/Carnage or Gods. I guess Helen's idea of gameplay is just large rooms filled with monsters.

It seems to be made by a beginner. However, the crusher boss was really neat and simple yet effective. I liked the disclaimer too.
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Post by Hellen »

Well, in comparison with these guys’ previous work – it’s a great progress. (Their previous work indeed looked like just rooms filled with monsters, nothing more, nothing less). I like this new campaign a way better than Carnage (Sorry, Carnage creators :)).
And the idea with bosses(especially with the giant fish, though the level for it was horrible) is just brilliant.
Hey, and I don’t think a beginner could program this whole street racing level!
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Post by Guest »

Thanks. That teaches everyone a valuable lesson when it comes to developing projects - Never attempt to please. Never think about the audience specifically. Just do what you want to do. In the end, a noobie mapper's addon with just rooms filled with monsters would be considered more fun than a super sophisticated one. :guns:

Helen, if I just wanted to kill monsters and wanted simplistic levels, I'd just go back and play Blood-1, Plasma, Cryptic passage et al. Sect War gives me a headache. But the bosses are cool though. I still have'nt figured out how to defeat the crusher? :shrug:

I don't think you've played Gods though. It has better bosses and tons of monsters.
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Hellen
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Post by Hellen »

I didn’t say I wanted to kill hordes of monsters. To be honest, I’ve always been “anti-hordes-of-monsters-in-Blood”. That’s why LifeKILLED doesn’t like me anymore. I totally didn’t like this “Kill ‘em all” part in his creations.
I’m just saying I liked Sect War, partially because of the bosses. Should I write ‘IMHO’ in the end of every sentence?
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Post by Gila »

sorry to say it, but most of the fan-made maps are pure crap, i'm not talking about anything specific.

you see when monolith developed levels they had artists, level designers and they worked like "hey, i need some grave images because we will do a couple of graveyards and a funeral home" and you almost never see 'exotic' texture usage in blood levels, do you?

blood levels look very "natural" in their own style - all of the episode one levels, and levels like "the siege". the problem is that blood is very limited for modding; you can only use new textures (and only in one unit whole blood without problems) like cryptic passage did - it gave a bit of freshness to blood.

but seriously, this stuff like "the crusher" or whatever while yes it is creative and all that - but it looks fugly and i imagine works fugly too. ;-)

don't get me wrong, the main problems in most newbie and intermediate duke3d/blood/shadow warrior levels are:

- no usage of shading or very little of it. examine blood maps, do you see how much attention is devoted to that? fx lights that go off suddenly, flickers, "room lights up upon opening door", etc.

- just rooms with monsters. nuff said.

- extreme puzzling like the small switch hunts, or i've seen some maps with some bogus "codes", wtf. like you see the "code entry" on the wall and you must enter it, it was in some blood maps or something... while it's a cool idea and all, it was made so ugly i didn't even want to play that.

- trying to "break the rules" too hard. making weird stuff is great, yes, but most of the time it turns out that it's either works bad or looks just foul. i can't think of examples right away but there are many.

- no ambient sounds, no fx in the levels. if you look closely to blood/duke levels at least, there are loads of explosions, collapsing buildings, and other fancy stuff (like that "whisper room" in e1m2 that makes you crap your pants). and stuff.

- repeating the "knicknacks" of the game to death; remember how the crapping alien assault trooper was on the toilet in *every fcking userlevel* for duke3d? that's wrong.

- blood was made to be simple gameplay in the style of "enter room - kill guys - enter 2nd room - got key - go to key door - /loop". the game itself is solely that; they throw in couple of easy and small puzzles now and then (combo switches or something) but not to an extent where you have to crack your brains trying to find how the hell the sequence of five switches works in some userlevel.

all i'm saying that retail blood levels are the stuff that's supposed to be an example and the ideal condition all the user levels are supposed to achieve. bloodlines had some impressive design. but they should've just concentrate on making the addon just of new levels with new textures instead of that "total conversion" crap where they planned to redraw the mosters. in most of the fan made episodes for sprite based games, the enemies looked the ugliest.

i remember how the first fanmade levels for quake were, that was pure crap. the func_msgboard community and known popular legendary mappers are still mapping for quake1, and they make amazing stuff nowadays, try kell's "contract revoked" or tronyn or kona's "rapture".

the first levels for duke were also horrible - most of them were based like "omg i'm gonna make my own house" with "dwarf" effect - huge doors and switches, huge toilet seats, etc.

but enough with the ramblings. just my opinion.
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Post by Guest »

Hi Hellen,

Firstly, I'd like to say that the only professional addons for Blood are Gods, Bloodlines, Carnage and Cryptic passage. Professional map packs are Banzai's Blood pack, Inherit the Earth and another thing by the same mapper.

We should'nt confuse the above with the rest which is but a load of garbage and Sect War is no exception. Like I said, Sect War is nothing more than big rooms with monsters. And you would've noticed that they also cut and paste sectors from the original Blood maps such as E3M1.

We should never call them addons. We should just call them Fanboy attempts. And as always, fanboys who know nothing, should not be confused with professionals and original authors. They like to fantasise and draw and write up some of their own stuff and should not be taken seriously.

The bosses are a nice idea but I doubt that anyone would actually play Sect war all the way through the primitive levels to reach them. So I would suggest that Lifekilled actually act as an assistant to a professional mapper since he may have some neat ideas here and there.

The car ride and bosses look horrible but they have a certain effect which makes them nice to experience. The sequence of napalm shots from the bosses added to gameplay. But in the end, they simply can't be taken seriously.

Theres plenty of text messages in Sect War which makes it seem that a strong plot was intended. But with no cutscenes and dialogue which seems to be a direct translation using babelfish, resulting in nonsense sentances, it does'nt really help. The rock music is out of place in Blood and is irritating.

All in all, it was worth looking at but it is not worth playing. It is certainly not an addon or TC. If the latter are defined by what the Duke, HL, Quake or Shadow Warrior community produced, only the first few mentioned can ever fit the definition of a proper addon. Could you imagine that the gunman chronicles was originally an addon for HL? With so much talent out there, Sect war et al will raise no eyebrows.

I really hate to criticize anything and I'm sure Lifekilled has plenty of hidden talent. With more experience, he should be able to produce better stuff.

Regards
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Post by Hellen »

Carnage’s a professional addon? Hahaha! Now, that IS funny. Is it because of cutscences consisting of photoshopfiltered screenshots? Or because of ‘reskinned’ weapons?
Yes, Carnage has some great levels, but the rest is the same ‘standard usermade s***’. Unfortunately.
I don’t have anything against Carnage. It’s just frustrating…

If you consider Sect War not worth playing then you really need to see its ancestor – Secta. No, wait! You wouldn’t want to see it!
Why am I protecting it? Well, I liked this creation. And I’m just seeing the progress these guys made in less than a year. They deserve a cookie. At least, from me.

Now, name me some professional mappers. I need everything: names, addresses, phone numbers, height, eye color, blood type. ‘Cause I intend to marry one.
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Post by Guest »

Actually, what was truely laughable is that you found a downright primitive level pack to be more fun because it had "bosses" and then you go on to admit your biases. :lol:

Then again, different people have their own preferences so it perhaps should not sound surprising. I should not go around telling people what to enjoy and what not to. But please don't insult our intelligence and try to sidestep the obvious.

Great levels are 90% of the thing because editing Blood is limited to just that mostly. You just shot yourself in the foot. Most of the new textures were photorealistic. They blended. The sounds added to atmosphere. Have you played the Pyramid? (Gila mentioned whispers so I ask him the same question too) I guess you found it frustrtating because it was so hard? I don't know what to call it but it certainly was'nt sh!t.

You call the cutscenes as screenshots but have you seen seen the cutscenes of Ep-2 atleast? Since when did Blood have colored lighting and dynamic lighting? They were obviously rendered using some other true 3D s/w. What does "photoshopfiltered" have to do with anything? I thought PS was standard for image editing? I guess you were expecting video but tell me, which other freeware Blood addon has video cutscenes? The new weapons were purely optional. How the heck do you "reskin" sprites? No offence but you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
If you consider Sect War not worth playing then you really need to see its ancestor – Secta. No, wait! You wouldn’t want to see it!
Why am I protecting it? Well, I liked this creation. And I’m just seeing the progress these guys made in less than a year. They deserve a cookie. At least, from me.
You just admitted your biases. :evillaugh:

Yes, I admire their effort. They deserve a pat on the back. They should learn and gain experience and go forward. But that does'nt make their
product anything worth trying.

What I really liked though was the clean installation of Sect War and their disclaimer which shows genuine responsibility for violent content. That deserves a lot of respect.

All IHMO of course. :)

Regards
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Post by Hellen »

Well, whatchya name, Guest, I’ll tell you why I found Carnage frustrating.
Certainly it’s not because of its difficulty.
Most of the folks here played Nothing But Rain and said “Holy Cow! That’s amazing!”. I’m not an exception. This level is excellent, with a bit of Bloodlines feeling in it.
But not too many played further than that.
I did.
First three levels were good, if not brilliant.
But The Town… The level was so rushed that it had untextured corners, undeleted sprites, this infamous “dwarf” effect and emptiness. This is where Carnage went downhill.

Guardians Of Secrets. I thought “Now I will play some standard temple level”. Uh-huh, this map can’t be called a level even. Very frustrating. Considering the previous map was enormously long and giant, this felt like a rip-off.

I started the third episode with ‘mpkfa’. And so what? I haven’t seen anything worth my attention, worth playing it without cheats. Do I really need to see that Pyramid? I’ve made my conclusions. Carnage has three great, almost flawless levels. The rest is a mediocre usermade.. um, thing I’ve said earlier.

As long as I compare Sect War to Carnage, I want to say I’ve skipped several levels with ‘mpkfa’ in Sect War too. These levels were oldskool theIt style(in other words: zero details, same textures everywhere, copied hordes of gillbeasts, hell hounds, etc.) which I hate. But the rest had bunch of some very clever ideas.
You probably got me wrong; I liked Sect War not only because of the bosses, but because of its level design. Yes, you may laugh at me now. I liked city streets filled with different vehicles, I liked the Tower that had seven floors or so. And of course, Falling City gets its well deserved 10 points out of 10 from me.
Anonymous wrote:How the heck do you "reskin" sprites? No offence but you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
Probably I used the wrong term. Okay, I should’ve said “weapons sprites replaced with other sprites to give ‘em a brand new look”.
And btw, if you, whatchya name, Guest, are a creator of Carnage, you get a personal kiss from me for making Beast’s claws ‘playable’. :P

And what about professional Blood mappers? Do they really exist?
We’ll find out soon. Stay tuned for more “Tales of Interest”!
(This thread really needs to be renamed).
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Post by Zardoz »

I'm suprised no one has tried to make some new bosses with Ken's voxel editor. It must be a hard to use little item. I hav'nt even seen any new voxels. :?: :shrug:
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Post by Gila »

yes it is hard to use.

cmon people, the ONLY worthy addon was bloodlines - it has at least semi-professional feel. the rest varies, but not par up to cryptic passage.
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Post by Anonymous »

Zardoz wrote:I'm suprised no one has tried to make some new bosses with Ken's voxel editor. It must be a hard to use little item. I hav'nt even seen any new voxels. :?: :shrug:
Blood stores the voxel informations in voxel.dat, and since there's no public editor for that, adding new voxel enemies is inpossible.

BTW voxels are ugly. That's the another reason why nobody want to make voxel bosses.
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