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

[674412c540eb5voodoo47]

the guy also did Redneck Rampage (available at the same place), so I won't have to suffer through DOSbox or previously available quasi-ports once I finally find some time to give the game a go. not bad, I say.

[674412c5410c3voodoo47]

and the NDS Blood port/engine clone is out, as Blood: Fresh Supply, five bucks on GOG if you already own the DOS version.

open for business?


//maybe not, lets get into the bad stuff first;
- below average performance. almost feels like it's forced to run at 30FPS, or even lower (settings say it's locked at 60). disabling vsync helps marginally.
- if you thought NBlood mouse is a bit laggy and awkward, then you are in for a treat.
- no texture filtering. booo.
- nauseating geometry warping effect when looking around while looking up. //enabling full 3d aim look under gameplay options fixes it. thank whatever dark entity you believe in.
- no main menu music. //this is actually correct.
- ingame music seems slow, weird and wrong.
- bad awkward software mode looking lighting, probably trying to look as vanilla as possible.
- texture shimmering caused by the renderer emulating the software mode (I'm assuming).
- takes ages to start.

there are some good bits too;
- the redone hud is nice.
- skylines changed to skyboxes, avoiding some major ugliness.
- some mapping errors seem to have been fixed.

but I don't really see any reason to go for it if you already are a happy NBlood user, unless you are into MP.

[674412c5412dbZylonBane]

Frame rate seems perfectly smooth in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaRQK5ThKlU

There do seem to be some bugs with decal flooring that I don't remember ever happening in the original.

[674412c5413favoodoo47]

yeah, the decal issues have already been reported (among other things).

I'm on a decade+ old computer here so that's probably a factor, but NBlood does run smooth(ish), so who knows. anyway, be aware that FS, just like SSEESP, does require a fairly modern and fast computer (and a dx11/opengl3.2 gpu, plus a 64bit os).

[674412c5414feZylonBane]

I wonder if this version even has the option to do full 24-bit lighting. The obvious banding on surfaces as they go from light to dark is really distracting.

[674412c5415e0voodoo47]

NBlood does that too if you disable texture filtering. the main reason why I keep it on.

[674412c541724voodoo47]

Blood: FS vs NBlood, you be the judge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s2OJAWsYow

the lower performance and muffled/sluggish audio of the first part of the video should be noticeable. //looks like other people don't have the sluggish audio problem, so it might be something on my side (KEX really doesn't like win7, it seems).

[674412c5418d1voodoo47]

continuous patching, things are getting fixed (the audio sluggishness is gone for example, but sounds still are muffled when compared to NBlood - it's a feature it seems). it doesn't look like they are planning to do anything with the sw lighting and all the attached ugliness though.

what I don't like very much is that it looks the goal of this port is to make it run just like the last DOS version (which is, for the lack of a better word, dumb, because as soon as you have higher resolutions and mouselook, any authenticity goes down the drain in 0.68 second to begin with) instead of just taking over as the new devs and continuing to fix bugs, imbalances and issues of the original.

this might get a few purists rock hard, but will result in a lesser experience for everyone else, imho.


//also, they are not modifying the vanilla maps directly, looks like they have a system of external patches/hacks similar to dmls that are used to fix map issues (such as clearing invalid object props that caused no harm in DOS, but break things in the quasi-port).

[674412c5419fbvoodoo47]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRkXNe09K4I

one of the original Blood devs is present, 21:58 states that original bugs are still present in Fresh Supply, implying NDS are going way too strict on this (also, 11:25 - as opposed to regular rocket launchers, which use non-explosive rockets to impale their targets).

[674412c541b7bvoodoo47]

yaay, user fix for the Blood: FS muffled audio.

anyway, finally got to start playing Redneck Rampage (a proper port from the NBlood guy making it really easy), and yeah, it isn't a bad game, but it's nowhere near the Big Trinity - with this type of game, everything pretty much boils down to whether shooting things and blowing stuff up is fun (a trait all the bigshots share). and with RR, the answer is "no, not really". and I'm officially too old to find pig farts funny.

but still, with a proper source port out, there is little reason to not go for it, if you crave your Build fix, and want something else than the Big Three.

[674412c541c70ZylonBane]

So basically the defaults were doing the equivalent of bilinear filtering when scaling the old low-bitrate audio data up to 16-bit/44Khz instead of just doing nearest-neighbor. No wonder it sounded muddy.

[674412c541dbavoodoo47]

from what I understand, yeah, pretty much.

also, RR has ladders (and climbable pipes) - ugh, lets just say there is a very good reason why the Big Three has none of that. I'm also playing with autoaim off, avoiding a whole lot of awful, it seems - definitely not going to check, I don't hate myself enough.

and prepare for a handful of ok, f*ck you, dev moments, like this one.

[674412c542017voodoo47]

well then, done with the main game.

- the hitboxes are atrocious, hitting certain AIs with some weapons is next to impossible (the dogs are all the bad you can have in one package, extremely hard to hit, the animation is choppy making it glitch all over the place, has a pea-sized hitbox, and is a total bullet sponge. oh, and their chomp attack is pretty much ranged, and kills you in two hits. whoever designed this needs to burn in hell).
- little variety in AIs. you have your scrawny hick (clone, as they are all clones) with a pistol, and a fat one with a shotgun. then a sheriff and a dominatrix, which both have an insta-kill attack that is impossible to avoid (the heck?), and that's it. oh, there is also shitmonkeys, but you don't want to know about those.
- it's impossible to hit anything with the dynamite crossbow unless the AI stands dead still, no matter how large it is. sorry, hitbox not registering, call again later.
- every pickup sound in the game is the sound of a cork being pulled off a moonshine bottle. this is kind of cute for the first five minutes, after that, not so much.
- trying to blow something (other than oneself) up with the dynamite is an exercise in futility.
- managed to get the game into an unwinnable state about two times by either doing things a bit out of order, or thanks to a quest object not appearing/disappearing.
- again, shooting things and blowing stuff up isn't all that great. this is kind of important.

so yeah, just like mentioned earlier, sort of a bastard child in the Build family (the GMan video nails it). not completely awful, but not something I would return to (I can play the Big Three any day and all day, until the day I drop dead). I may have a look at the expansions later, but don't hold your breath.

[674412c542264JDoran]

I bought the Redneck Rampage collection a few years ago, from GOG (I think), tried it and didn't like it at all. It just wasn't enjoyable. I tried it a short while back, and still really didn't like it. Someday I mean to give the original PC version of Powerslave/Exhumed a real try, as that's another build engine game (there's an unofficial fan patch available from https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PowerSlave that fixes problems with the mouse-look, strafing, etc), but lack of time, too many other games to play, etc, always gets in the way.

[674412c542380ZylonBane]

I've never played the first Redneck Rampage, but did play one of the expansions, Suckin' Grits on Route 66, many years ago. It wasn't bad. Probably helped that I was of the age where I still found fart noises funny.

[674412c5424bbvoodoo47]

I wouldn't call it outright bad, but lets say the quality is nowhere near the Big Three. basically, if you found Wang's railgun annoying at times with its shots not going where they should, you are not going to be happy with Leonard's dynamite crossbow.

I'd say it's people who really like Build games with all their kinks and quirks only.

[674412c54270cJDoran]

Speaking of Build games, sort of, the upcoming 3D Realms game Ion Maiden has changed it's name to Ion Fury, because the heavy metal group Iron Maiden decided to sue Ion Maiden's makers because, the music group's lawyers said, the game Ion Maiden was based partly on the heavy metal group's I.P. and was selling on the group's name. The game isn't, and it doesn't, but since modern day court cases are often won by the side with the most money (in this case a decades old very popular heavy metal group), rather than who is morally in the right (in this case 3D Realms), then changing the game's name was probably a wise decision, even it was unfair.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjnhRz_GP3c



https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/ion-maiden-is-now-ion-fury-launching-in-august/

[674412c542832voodoo47]

well, lets hope whoever owns Nick Fury nowadays won't get the same idiotic idea.

anyway, still a bit too expensive to my taste, and I would reeally like to see the minsysreqs before considering a purchase - last time I've checked, the game was not too optimised (for hw rendering).

[674412c54297fvoodoo47]

Ion Maiden/Fury should be out in a couple of hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKV8gr57Pps

funnily enough, the shotgun actually is a grenade launcher. anyway, I'm quite sure I'll agree with everything in that video once I have shot at the game (definitely waiting for the first couple of patches, and for a $10 sale).

[674412c542af4icemann]

LGR did a review of it as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBNHb236X6Y

[674412c542c2cvoodoo47]

still not liking the facey face (and the Resident Evil "you died" screen), but do notice that unfiltered textures WITHOUT shimmering and crappy lighting are apparently doable. ya hear me, BloodFS?

//ok, the 12:50 3Dfx reference would melt my heart, if I still had one.

[674412c542d41voodoo47]

looks like the original PowerSlaveEX is not dead. https://github.com/BehemothProgrammer/PowerslaveEX/releases

[674412c5430d5JDoran]

looks like the original PowerSlaveEX is not dead. https://github.com/BehemothProgrammer/PowerslaveEX/releases

A bug fix update to Kaiser's PowerslaveEX, programmed by a third party? That's great (since unfortunately Kaiser abandoned it for whatever reason), thanks for the link.

I do intend to play through this someday, it's supposed to be really good.

[674412c54341eJDoran]

M210 (the genius who brought us BloodGDX, BloodCM, and now BuildGSX, which incorporates several Build games in one modern Windows/Jave front-end and game engine) has added another Build engine to the list; Powerslave (also known as Exhumed). It's not yet available to download, he says:

"I'm working on this project since 13 September 2019 and now I can show something At the moment, there are bugs with sector lights, spider animation, weapon aiming...maybe something else. I have written all of the game code except sound code, enemy code, palette code. My port also doesn't have a menu and change level code, so I still have to make a lot "

You can see a video of it's present state at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHxdze1SAQ4

This is really good news, as the PC version is a pretty different game to the Playstation and Sega Saturn versions (and the PSX and Saturn versions are different from each other too, but much less dissimilar than the PC version), so being able to play the PC version of Powerslave/Exhumed via BuildGDX, and the PSX version via Kaiser's PowerslaveEX will allow us to play two of the three versions of the game with modern quality of life improvements (higher resolutions, better mouse support, etc) and without using an emulator for the PSX version of the game.

M210's website is at:

https://m210.duke4.net/

which is where you can download BuildGFX from.