Blood Addon: The Carnage Continues

Discuss and hash out the Blood universe here.

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Cruo
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Post by Cruo »

After playing a bit tonight I can see a major flaw in the first level. Too many monsters, not enough weapons or powerups. Cerberus spawning after entering the room to get the key isn't that bad because you can sit at the end and let him kill himself. But then you have to go through a bunch more cultists and ghosts, and then you get into that one room with 4 gargoyles and a couple more cultists. You have to dispatch them with no weapons and less than 20 health. So it's a lot of crawling backwards and charging with a pitch fork as soon as they lower.

After 15 minutes of that you get to leave that area. And immediately a Stone Gargoyle spawns with a whole horde of cultists to back him up. Now how are you supposed to get by that with no health and no weapons? Is there some hidden stash somewhere? It's literally not possible to beat this level legitimitely unless you are good enough to completely ignore the enemies without getting hit by their attacks. There has to be something I'm missing here, because the way it is now, the level is just about throwing more and more enemies at you until you die, since you never get any reinforcements.

Is it meant to make you want to cheat? I like the way the level was mapped, I just don't agree with the way the level was designed to play. Repeatedly going through the map again gets boring, and the wave after wave of enemies gets annoying. It could have been a lot better done. Not to discourage you or anything, it's nothing personal. I'm very glad that someone actually took the time to make a new add on for the original Blood. I hope you find the time to make more. I'll just skip the first level unless I find some secret stash of weapons and powerups to make it possible to get by the monsters.

Seriously the only two weapons that spawned the entire time were the Shotgun and Life Leech. 0 ammo for the Life Leach the whole map, and to get Shotgun ammo you had to be lucky and have a cultist drop it. I'm obviously not lucky as I got a total of 8 ammo from cultists. There were a few places with more shotgun ammo, but it doesn't last with the number of enemies thrown at you. There was also a small ammount of dynamite, but that also doesn't last long when you have nothing else to use. But hey, there was a life pouch in that one room heh.

Overall, I loved the map, very well put together. I liked the way the map played out, and how you had to use something other than your fragging skills to get through the map.. the first time. After that it went downhill. The ammo/powerup to enemy ratio was way off. It's like old time atari games where instead of completing a series of objectives to beat the game, the levels just keep getting faster and harder until you die.

Can't wait to see how cool the rest of the maps are now.
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RedFanatic
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Post by RedFanatic »

Hey Harry or indeed anyone who knows, how do you make a gib effect
generator as in a button that lets of sparks of electricity or an exposed
cabel theres quite a few times these pop up in your first level and
i would really like to be able to make em
Gandhi[ofDOOM]
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Post by Gandhi[ofDOOM] »

Cruo, it's possible to beat the first level without cheating. I've done it, and I had to ignore only the last Stone Gragoyle and some wraiths. You can get some extra ammo if you're lucky enough for a gray cultist to drop the tommy gun (or patient enough to reload saved games until that happens). Anyway, I think a lot of other people here managed to finish that level without cheating.

What I'm wondering is why everyone's complaining so much. It's not like we have all that much new Blood stuff to choose from, is it now? Personally, I think it's absolutely fantastic that this got released and I love the campaign, especially because it's so insanely difficult. There's a tremendous feeling of satisfaction you get for every bit you advance.
Harry

Post by Harry »

Thanks dude. The enemies in Blood can kill you easily if you charge them head on but the slightest use of tactics makes it easy. It aint like Quake-I or Doom-3. Hence the toughness and amount of enemies.

As for gib effects, just get an invisible sprite (gib object) to gib continously through connection with a looping sector that starts on level start.
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RedFanatic
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Post by RedFanatic »

Thanks Harry but unfortunately i appear not to be as good at mapedit
as i would have hoped :oops: and so far haven't found anyway to activate a gibObject
with a sector :?: , i can only do it with explosives and then only once.


could you indulge me in a slightly more complex description of the system you used :D
Arch-Vile
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Post by Arch-Vile »

How does this Add-on work with BloodXP? I have Blood with Plasma Pack v1.1...I wanted to know where I could patch up to 1.21.
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Post by Arch-Vile »

NVM got it to work...Played a few seconds, looks pretty neat. Ill be playing it more once I beat Cryptic Passage :)
Harry
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An explanation

Post by Harry »

Response to oBe
People seem to like to set their goals very high every time. Which is a shame because a whole episode with a mood as strong as in 'after the rain' would've been an instant classic.
On the contrary, the reason why a map like "The Town" makes a rude intrusion into the flow is because I did not set my standards high. It was in fact, one of the earliest maps I did, aiming simply to be something like a traditional Blood level. I included it because it took a long time :oops: and was'nt really that bad compared to most user maps out there. The rain level is the result of setting extremely high standards, to beat everything out there, and so are some other levels like TC3M4 and TC3M5, which unfortunately do not seem to be played at all. If I had more time and more importantly, known that an audience was still alive, I could've worked on more atmospheric levels.

Personally, despite the frustration value, I was pretty satisifed with all levels except the Town and Evil Intentions which were very early developments and the only experience I had in level editing was a few crappy and useless levels in Duke3D.

Eventually, what I really wanted to do is customise Blood on Quake mod levels but Blood did not offer that flexibility. Heck, I was'nt even aware of palette.dat for Blood or Sounds.rfs which allowed new textures and sounds. If you look at Duke's "The Birth" episode, they've added and integrated new elements beautifully. The result of that disappoinment was a temporary switch to the Unreal engine and not much attention devoted to the current project at hand. In addition, I wanted to finish the previous one fast and move on to the next becuase the new engines were just filled with irresistable potential which a lot of modders were exploiting. Unreal was specifically tempting because the engine had been underutilized.

Gods, Bloodlines and all were a rude wake up call and a slap in the face. While I was giving this Blood addon, stepmotherly treatment (thus heavily compromising quality), these guys were giving their projects full attention. Bloodlines especially is a wonder of project management even though it never released fully. Those guys had all their ideas plotted out from day one, before they even started or Blood even released, set very high standards, assigned individual roles to team members and worked towards a set goal, full time. Its a terrible shame since Bloodlines could have potentially been the best (or at least most creative) addon for a game ever, if they had acheived everything they wanted to.

Eventually I realised that Unreal was not to be, and that the Blood addon needed full attention. Afterall, I can't afford to let both crash! The result of that was some of the better levels and content in the addon. Even though TCC never released fully as intended, I'm just happy to have gotten the existing stuff out instead of letting it rot on my HDD forever and letting all the effort go to waste. Indeed, I only had a few days to put everything together and upload it before I shifted country.
But I can imagine it costs just too much work and time, especially with no positive feedback when you're making it.
Precisely.

At the time, the Blood community was pretty much dead except at Bloodlines forum which was getting spammed left right and centre by two guys called the Psychos. They claimed to be making an addon which would kick Bloodlines's ass and some of their screenshots were indeed pretty impressive. Of course, their levels never saw the light of day. :rip:

(Oh and one level showed a huge "KKK" artwork)

Yes. TCC is 95% a one man effort and such a thing can be overwhelming. With an entire team of experienced artists, Bloodlines themselves found their project overwhelming. Now, at that time, the only real feedback anyone really got on Blood levels was from comparison with Gods and Bloodlines and gameleader ratings. No one really picked out certain features or levels and gave specific and detailed feedback. Even though a designer will outright disagree with the preferences of some players, feedback would at least get the designer's thought process going and force him to raise standards in his own ways. At the very least, he knows that there are people who will play his stuff. Sh|t, I would've been happy if just 10 people downloaded TCC because at the time, I thought that the Blood-1 community was pretty much dead and gone. Thus, motivation also dies out, because your efforts seem pointless.

Feedback regarding the frustration surrounding puzzles, I can never agree with. With other games extensively making the player do some innovative thinking, I think that it would be a great waste to not include puzzles when you a) Have the experience and b) have been given a very flexible and simple mapeditor. TCC as such, is and was intended to be puzzle intensive and I have no regrets. The Pyramid level is designed specifically to get you thinking and try all sorts of things. It is THE most puzzle intensive (though not vague) level in Blood's existance but it is designed to be super atmospheric as well. Feedback on Gods gave the impression that people were actually cracking those vaguer puzzles with no effort. So it was assumed that the average Bloodite was a super experienced player. Hence, also the general difficulty in TCC.

I've run out of ideas for now. If I ever want to make a Blood-1 level again (and I won't), I want it to be something really different and ultra exclusive. Something that is really difficult if not impossible for others to come up with, yet be universally appealing. A spooky atmosphere is highly desirable but not absolutely neccessary. A level to satisfy all that, I can't really think of right now. Hence the replication of levels like "Nothing like the Rain" is not possible by me, for now. In a level like that, a major element like the weather plays a big part. A player must be put in such a unique situation. He must also find pride in defeating something he did not prepare for.

If I ever get into modding again, I want to try making atmospheric levels and but atmospheric in a positive and enigmatic way.
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oBe
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Post by oBe »

I'm glad to finally hear some background information around your work.

Perhaps I should clarify that with 'high goals', I meant the entire project as a whole. Big storyline, the choice of including new art and sounds etc, not every level on itself.

I can only say I find it sad it didn't end up as it was supposed to be. Because the skill and vision are obviously there.

As for the puzzle thing, like I said, it's rather subjective. Perhaps I should mention I'm far from the best Blood player out there. Hell, for me finishing on pink on the inside is hard! That and I don't want to try too hard either, as I like things pretty straight-forward.

That being said, I still think the communities should pull their resources together and gather every Blood-add on in one place, along with serious background information.
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RedFanatic
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Post by RedFanatic »

Hey Harry is there anyway of getting at your levels so i can look at them
in Mapedit, with your permission i would love to use some of your ideas.
Harry
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Post by Harry »

I guess duke tools could be used?

I've posted the gib stuff in the other thread.

For reimplementation of ideas, please mention credit.
Just a guest

Post by Just a guest »

How do you get past the part with the small train and rocket launchers on top in the first level ... I tried jumping and grabbing the ladder and I succeeded, but I couldn't get any higher.

Also Blood on DOSBox 0.65 with 35000 clock cycles and dynamic CPU core is very playable... I strongly suggest you guys to try it!
No problems with ANYthing anymore ... it's just like good ol' dos! =)
Just a guest

Post by Just a guest »

Don't forget to set resolution to 320x200 and memory used (in DOSBox) to 64 MBs.
Just a guest

Post by Just a guest »

Nevermind, I found out how to pass the broken rail part.
Just as a side note my system info is: P4 2.4 GHZ with 512 ram and GeForce 6600 GT graphic card. Blood with DOSBox .65 and the above config works fine for me! :P
Guest

Network play

Post by Guest »

Hey, does anybody know how to play Carnage over a network / modem / Kali? Because my friend and I are dying to play this Co-op! Since you have to run Carnage.com to play, it doesn't seem to work as usual.

Thanks,
RedWolf
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