Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

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I Live...AGAIN
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by I Live...AGAIN »

I've been skeptical about this from the beginning, but have kept my mouth shut because I truly hope I am wrong.

First, i found it peculiar that he chose to make an announcement before knowing anything.
Second, he chose to announce those plans on a fringe forum where he already knew what the response was going to be.

It was like someone going to a shark tank and saying "HEY GUYS! I know you haven't eaten for a really, really looooong time but, I have a bag full of bloody dead seals for you to eat. So you think you might be interested?" What did he think the response was going to be? I just find the whole thing strange.

Early on Jason said that he had a verbal agreement with all parties and that it was a done deal.
I certainly will be able to and will get all the support I need from all/any parties that may have legal interest in the game. You guys don't have to worry about that. There is no problem there. Handled.
Later he says that the above statement isn't actually the case:
I have reached out to all the necessary companies/rights holders to verify that previous conversations that I have had with them in the past are still valid and so I am waiting to hear back on the status of that before I can come to any final conclusion in the matter.
and his last statement about anything was more than 2 months ago:
I'm in the process of trying to figure this out with Atari. We will see how it goes.
Well, at least there is talk (according to him)

Like I said, I REALLY hope I am wrong and he gets something done but I will remain skeptical for now.......
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by Tchernobog »

We at least know that it is him - and as I said in a PM to you, his character does seem to be a bit like John Romero in a way: hyperbolic, excitable, and overly confident in his amount of pull. Still, we will have to wait and see what happens, and I guess hope (but not necessarily expect) for the best.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by da_weezle »

Yeah, after those first two or three posts from Jace it seemed like it was already a done deal and he was just asking the community what they wanted included in the package. Then it turns out that things aren't quite settled at all and now it suddenly seems far from actually happening.

I agree with the skepticism. I was just trying eduke32 out for the first time earlier and thought this Blood port has to happen. It is imperative.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by Tchernobog »

da_weezle wrote:I agree with the skepticism. I was just trying eduke32 out for the first time earlier and thought this Blood port has to happen. It is imperative.
Yeah, I was just playing through the first episode of Blood with Dosbox at 320x480 and having a good time. Then for kicks I tried upping the resolution to my native resolution of 1280x1024. And then I cried. 2012 and I still can't do it. :(

Still, even if Jace does not come through (and he still can, Linux gamers like myself are used to long waits with little information) there is still the hope of BloodXL. That guy is extremely talented. :)
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by I Live...AGAIN »

Yes, I've been watching BloodXL for awhile. I think it's awesome.

I was afraid for a bit when he announced he was going to stop working on it almost immediately after Jason Hall posted. It seemed as if he was looking for a reason to stop. But I think maybe he was caught up in Jason's original post like many people thinking it was already a done deal.
I'm glad he has started working on it again.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by N0t_mINe »

Did something happen that I am unaware of? Suddenly posty's down, at least from my box.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by Tchernobog »

I actually do not know whether he has started working on it again yet, but here is his official statement on the matter:
So I'll clear up some things first and then talk about my plan for BloodXL. The first thing is that BloodXL is something I'm still interested in and haven't given up on completely - its just on hold right now. It is clear from the Blood community that something like BloodXL will be generally ignored if there is an alternative that uses the original source code. Just look at the commotion caused by the barest possibility presented by Mr. Hall compared to the luke-warm response for BloodXL.

Of course once actual versions of BloodXL came out and were playable, assuming a pure source port didn't exist, then I think this would all change - so this by itself isn't a problem. So I'm going to let the fervor die down a bit and see what happens.

My plan is to continue with DaggerXL, DarkXL and OutlawsXL until they reach Beta. The next DarkXL release, which will be soon after the DaggerXL release coming up, will probably be the Beta for that project with DaggerXL and OutlawsXL following fairly closely behind. At that point I have already decided on what I'm going to work on next with one exception.

At that time I will re-evaluate the progress of Jace Hall's source port. If there has been no tangible progress then I will add BloodXL to those plans I mentioned above. Looking at the excuses you mentioned above and the lack of solid commitment by Jace, I think that this is the most probable result - however by then the fervor will have died down and the community as a whole should be more receptive again.
http://xlengine.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4185#p4185

A bit disappointing that he finds us to have given him a "lukewarm" response though.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by da_weezle »

BloodXL seems like a very good start. I can imagine that he feels the response from the community to be a bit underwhelming. I mean, looking at the one demo I've seen I would say that a lot of effort has gone into getting to that point. We (the silly, silly people) all just see what's not there yet. And on top of that we've seen several projects fail over the years (including........ :cry: ).

I wonder if BloodXL would benefit at all from using some of the eDuke32/BUILD source. I'm not sure, but I think he's not using any of it for the XLengine. And I wonder to what extent he's using the data that's in the original Blood maps. There are quite a few "extras" encoded in the map format that is not publicly documented (afaik).

All through this I just keep thinking "We need the source"...

PS:
Yes, posty is down; it doesn't render past the opening body tag.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by N0t_mINe »

M210's BloodTC couldn't be more useless to Lucius. They're going with that TROR stuff, as opposed to Blood's portals-over-portals-leading-to-ever-more-portals stuff. Mirror stacking only existed JonoF if I'm not mistaken, and that used Shadow warrior's technique for mirror stacking. Lucius claims that his engine would literally be a wrapper sitting in the blood game folder, reading blood.exe's output. Zdoom can read build's output for geometry, Tim's stuff could read Blood's for quake, but nothing I know of can read all the output of blood's exe. unless it's a hex editor, and that doesn't "read" anything but raw addresses.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by N0t_mINe »

Jace Hall said:
"I'm in the process of trying to figure this out with Atari. We will see how it goes."
There is absolutely, positively, undeniably, no excuse for this. I mean, not for this being the current state of affairs, but having to seek a second license from Atari to use blood assets. They could simply ask why he's not making use of the license currently available, to which he responds... what? What do you say to that? "I need my own?" I know people's life work are represented in the code and materials developed for QBlood. I know it was hard work and it isn't easy to let go of that work. But we can't claim to be maintaining a license for the good of the gaming community as a whole and then turn around and deny the one person who' has a real chance at putting together a blood recreation because of territorial nonsense. There are enough of the old Transfusion devs around to make a statement on this. Why not just draft Jace into the position of lead dev for Tfn (don't ask him) and let that be the end of it.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by Tchernobog »

I am not sure what you are referring to N0t_mINe, but if you are talking about the tacit support from Monolith that Transfusion received I do not think that is really suited for what Jace was proposing. First of all, that was not a very legal agreement but rather a voice of support from someone at Monolith (was it Jason Hall himself?) that I doubt could be extended here. Secondly, he will need redistribution rights and source code access, things that Transfusion does not have. Maybe I am misinterpreting you?

If you are suggesting for him to instead invest his time in actually bringing Transfusion to completion, I would agree that it would be an interesting idea but kind of out of scope of Jace's original plans.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by I Live...AGAIN »

Two things I believe:

One: Contrary to what he says, Jason Hall he is not doing anything out of the kindness of his heart or for the good of any community. He either thinks he can make some money now with Blood, or he thinks he can make some money in the future. Possibly with a sequel or something similar.

Two: I believe he is now finding out what many of us have already known for years. That this source code ownership thing is a huge clusterfu_k with no easy solution.

I really think that Jason thought his idea was going to be a quick, easy thing and he could be a hero to some people, and now he is finding out different and that it will take a great deal of work and probably money to make something like what he wanted to happen. I don't know anything for sure, I'm just making an educated guess but it sure seems like it from afar....

As far as being involved with Transfusion and it's license? I don't think it would ever happen. He has already stated that he wants it to be his project. Like I said earlier, I don't think he is doing anyone a favor or doing anything out of the kindness of his heart. (why would he?) He thinks he is going to gain from it somehow, someway.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by N0t_mINe »

I Live Again said:
Like I said earlier, I don't think he is doing anyone a favor or doing anything out of the kindness of his heart. (why would he?) He thinks he is going to gain from it somehow, someway.
Which is the exact same reason he played a role in creating Blood in the first place.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, does it matter what his motives are? I mean if we got a complete replica of Blood out of it, one that was a thousand times more mod-able then what the community has now, what does it matter? He may care more than you realize, seeing as Blood was the game the put his name in lights so to speak. It is unusual for people to not become attached to what launched there career.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by I Live...AGAIN »

At the risk of sounding pedantic, does it matter what his motives are?
Absolutely not. I hope he makes a bazillion dollars weather he actually gets something done or not. I've said it a few times now, I don't want him to fail. There isn't many people on the planet that I think could do a better job of getting something done about the source problem than Jason.

His arrogance just rubbed me a little bit the wrong way (now don't get me wrong, his arrogance is probably a good thing for him. It probably got him to where he is today)

To me he sounded like "I'm, Jason Hall. I know I ignored this game for years but now I'm back. I will just wave my magic wand in front of everyone and this will all fall into place in about 15 minutes. DONE DEAL! Because I'm Jason Hall!" Now I'm afraid he is finding out it's not going to be that easy. I hope he sticks it out.
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Re: Jace Hall's Blood project at posty.

Post by ZedSlayer »

Honestly, I wonder why it would be so hard to get the code. To me, no one is using the license or anything, except maybe the GOG copy, it's just sitting there on a piece of paper. If Jace were to do something, would any of the companies that *might* own a fraction of the license really care or even press charges?

I guess it's just publishers in general but I never get how so many titles just sit there with the only thing tying them down is a document saying that such-and-such company owns them and is the only one who can ever say anything about the title's future.

I don't see Atari/WB/Monolith making any efforts to even talk about Blood, how would Jace doing anything really rub against them? If anything, he could just pay some royalties or something.

Though that's just my opinion, I don't know a thing about business so I could be very wrong about everything.
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