So what's up with all the Build games re-releases?

[673f61a6054f3voodoo47]

the artifacts can fill up half the screen at occasions. looking at the rest of the stuff, I can safely say that BloodCM is nowhere near perfect - but it does the job, no doubt there.

[673f61a60587cvoodoo47]

nearing the end of the last Blood episode, so maybe it's time for a mini review of the Big Build Trinity (and their respective ports);

- all three games are about equal fun to play, so if you liked one, you'll most likely like them all. all three voiceactors nail their respective character perfectly, and if their one liners won't manage to make you laugh every once in a while, nothing will.

- Duke3D/EDuke32 is definitely the most polished one, courtesy of it being developed much more actively than the other two. if having the least amount of annoyances (such as bad hitboxes, annoying puzzles, hitscan AIs that never miss, shots that miss when they shouldn't have, shots that didn't miss when they should and similar) is your criteria, Duke is your guy.

- Shadow Warrior/SWP 4.3.1 has a few annoying bits, like some small enemies that are almost impossible to hit with autoaim off, hitscan enemies with deadeye accuracy, a few annoying traps that are impossible to dodge at the first attempt, that dumb thing with camera swaying when walking on sloped surfaces, and clunkier hitscan weapons (as mentioned, it's somewhat difficult to place damage where you want with the shotgun), but it's nothing major. and old Wang delivers the funnies in just the right way - even though he goes easy on the dick jokes (unlike the new Wang). add extra points if you are into old kung-fu movies and anime.

- Blood/BloodCM, while fully playable, is, and will probably stay a beta, as it's essentially Blood resources that have been hammered into running under EDuke32. a few bugs and crashes here and there, some mechanics will work slightly differently (zombie resurrection seems wonky). some hitboxes are not too great, and hitting things that are down below or higher up seems to be a problem. a couple of really annoying puzzles that made me look for the solution on youtube, and the bosses are kind of underwhelming - as long as you have enough tesla ammo, all you have to do is toast them from far away enough and you'll be fine. playing on hard, there are absolutely no medkits around (didn't check other difficulties so not sure whether this is exclusive to the higher difficulties or not), so you have to rely on a quite rare doctor's bag and random AI life essence drops, making the game slightly more difficult than it should be - you'll probably be save scumming a bit to compensate. a few weapons feel really useless, like the voodoo doll and life leech. and way too much of key hunting sometimes (up to six per level). but despite all of these minor annoyances, the game is still fun to play, blowing things up with Caleb laughing on the carnage is satisfying as hell, and most levels are well designed and interesting. again, extra points if you are into the horror genre. also, I'm pretty sure that a proper source port would get rid of most of the mentioned bad stuff, so lets hope the legal stuff will get sorted sometime in the future and the source code will get to see the light of the day.


I'll probably have a look at Redneck Rampage sometime later this year, though I have to say that I'm not looking forward to the whole dosbox deal.

[673f61a6059f4voodoo47]

also, there is some talk going on in the comments of this ZBlood review video about another attempt at getting the code out being in progress, if you want to believe random people on the internet with no sources linked.

[673f61a605b9bvoodoo47]

looks like BloodGDX (the java port/loader of Blood from the author of BloodCM) is coming together nicely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DljHb1gyTUI

the java part still weirds me out, but if it works, then it works, I guess.


there's also this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44WF5xXyU3U

but I don't know, the whole charm of a build game seems completely lost and it looks just generic.

[673f61a605d66ZylonBane]

Fan-made textures almost always look generic. Professional graphic artists get the big bucks for a reason.

[673f61a605ed3voodoo47]

I suppose they do. anyway, seems like BloodCM also got one more update since I've played it one year ago (bloodcm_finished), no changelog and the room-over-room problems are not fixed, but that weird thing with windows switching to the basic theme when starting is gone now, and music finally works, so some improvements have definitely been made.

also, just noticed that proper skyboxes are actually included, you just need to enable autoload in the launcher. very welcome, as the original simple skyline looks really bad with full mouse look enabled.

[673f61a6060dcJDoran]

BloodGDX is really good. I'm hoping that when it's finished, the author will make it open source, so people can port it to other machines.

Regarding 'generic' textures and graphics in fan remakes, someone on a different forum a while back said [I'm paraphrasing] "Good graphics that aim towards realism are very often boring to look at, unless they have an identifying art style", and that is really true - I've started to replay Prey (2017), and the graphics are mostly great, but even though the space station and it's contents are well drawn and convey a realistic (ish) atmosphere, they are boring. I can't help thinking when playing it that I really wish the space station had a style like Bioshock's Rapture, for example, something unique that makes you instantly feel like you're there.

[673f61a60621cvoodoo47]

on a slightly related note, Shadow Warrior Classic Redux is on sale (GOG), so I've nabbed it and had a very quick look - the sloped surface camera wobble is fixed, there's less graphics glitches on 2d sprites, new menus, and both expansion packs are included. no proper skyboxes though, meaning things will get ugly if you look up.

still, it's a no-brainer for $2.5, so if you want to play the classic in the best possible way, I'd say go for it now.


//giga wasps are still pain.

[673f61a606317JDoran]

Does Shadow Warrior Classic Redux work with the skybox you linked to (in your 18th December, 2016 post)?

[673f61a606429voodoo47]

nope, that was the first thing I've checked after purchase - Redux is not loading resources like SWP and a quick search yielded nothing, so no idea whether it actually is capable of loading 3rdparty resources at all.

I'm planning to investigate once I have a bit of time.

[673f61a606516JDoran]

Ok mate, thanks.

[673f61a606704voodoo47]

been playing Redux for a short while (Wanton Destruction, never played it before. it's good btw), and seems like they did something weird with the railgun - looks like there is some sort of horizontal autoaim going on despite autoaim being off. I'm guessing they wanted to make it less annoying to use (it kind of is if you disable autoaim, as you need to have deadshot accuracy to actually hit something), but ended up doing the exact opposite //hmm, maybe not, I think SWP behaves that way as well. and yeah, mouse is definitely better in SWP - it's hard to explain, you need to play both to understand.

but not complaining too much, just the sloped surface camera fix is worth the $2.5 I've paid for Redux as far as I'm concerned. also, I'm very sure I'll be doing proper skyboxes for SWP (and hopefully Redux) sometime in the near future.

also, I really have no idea why it's always so much fun to just blow stuff up and listen to all the one liners in the Big Build Trinity - it seems like no matter how much I play, it just never gets old.


//and yaay, I've accidentally made Redux load skyboxes. bad news is that the texture placement is completely different, so everything that works with SWP will have to be converted. // aand nope, looks like skybox support is broken. basically, only the bottom texture is loaded everywhere, no matter what. we'll see.

[673f61a6069bavoodoo47]

ok, I can safely say that they shouldn't have released this without fixing the skyboxes - I mean having hires hud and menu music is nice, but the amount of sky garbage happening on the screen is almost unbearable sometimes, and fixing that should have had top priority.

https://youtu.be/Eo2iHjwND7Q?t=5194
https://youtu.be/Eo2iHjwND7Q?t=5358

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUe5KEAf4hg

ah well, still worth $2.5, I suppose.


//done with both expansions. definitely liked Wanton Destruction better, a few AI reskins and more Wang talk kept things fresh, so no complaints apart from two maps looking slightly unfinished (Airplane and Skyline, no skylines at all). Twin Dragon felt more like a collection of user maps (and the ingame planetquake ads were a bit WTF), and the lazy enemy teleports were getting old real fast. still ok for the price though (both expansions are free for everyone).

[673f61a606b28voodoo47]

looks like Redneck Rampage also has a working quasi-source port;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCcS_LZHM6A

last update was years ago, but the game and its main expansions should be fully playable.

[673f61a606cbdJoin2]

I played the non-redux version of Shadow Warrior on Steam which surprisingly was free at the time, and probably still is. Didn't have these issues. Had some weird mouselook issue which I forget the specifics on, but there was a fan patch so all was good.

Fantastic. Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior and Blood are such great games.

[673f61a606de4voodoo47]

Shadow Warrior DOS is still free on both GOG and steam - maybe you mean Shadow Warrior (Classic), which is (according to wiki) a windows port by 3D Realms and was available on steam circa 2015?

[673f61a606f05Join2]

Ion Maiden, the new build engine FPS game, goes into early access:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcAwzusZUrQ

[673f61a607408voodoo47]

might be interesting to see whether such a game works when one has no nostalgia for the character, levels, weapons and stuff.

// ouch, 20 buck range? we are not off to a good start. also the minsysreqs are a bit nuts, aand checkpoints are mentioned, dunno about that. also not liking the facey face near the health meter, that should be reserved for id games.

// ah, now I realize that's actually supposed to be the chick that got kicked outta DNF - she's already got a mediocre 3rd person action game;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4Ztp5Vw7Hk

she definitely looks less emo in Ion Maiden, so bonus points for that.

[673f61a6077b7Join2]

might be interesting to see whether such a game works when one has no nostalgia for the character, levels, weapons and stuff.

Huh? some of the finest shooters to date is how build engine shooters (and most old school 90s shooters in general across the board) work. Primarily because of the fantastic level design and overall gameplay design.

[673f61a60791avoodoo47]

just wondering what playing a Build game without the nostalgia glasses would do. guess I'll find out once the game goes on sale sometime.

also, anyone jumping the buy now bandwagon should buy directly from 3DR, the devs will get more money this way.


//a (p)review is up;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp7FvJcoINE

[673f61a607a8aicemann]

The plot thickens .

[673f61a607bd5voodoo47]

watched a few LPs on youtube - looks mostly allright, but not liking the enemies being so fragile, and the homing bombs feel kind of cheap. the facey face feels misplaced as mentioned. also no idea why the shotgun looks like a grenade launcher, but guess Wang's shotgun kind of looks like a minigun, so whatever.

extra points for the poster.

[673f61a607d40icemann]

For those interested in build engine related stuff, you may want to have a read of this article that popped up on RPS today. It appears that Ken Silverman’s long-lost BUILD2 engine has been released that he'd been working on from 2007 - 2011.

Or just watch this video that comes with the article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qtmkkdND6M

[673f61a609c58voodoo47]

snooping around real quick, it looks like it's nowhere near fully usable in its current state.