I Live, Again…

Today I thought about writing about Blood and it’s remakes, freegamer already did it first (yesterday) but I hope I could add some new stuff he didn’t write about.

I’m a huge fan of Blood, yeah that old 3D shooter from 1997.
I think that Blood is the best game that used the BUILD engine, and even today with it’s outdated graphics it is one of my favorite 3D shooters of all times.

Luckily I am not the only fan of this great game and there are several fan made games/mods inspired by blood.

1. Blood: The Flesh Game :
As you can guess from the name this is a flash version of blood which runs on all OS’s.
Although it’s just a demo of what never became a full length game due to lack of time, it was praised by the fans.
Blood : The Flesh Game is an adventure game based on Blood and Blood 2 in which you are play the role of Caleb at a 2d platform shooter.
The game is closed source but I think that if you would like to finish developing this demo into a full game you can contact Tamás Tóth (at adatjoe [at] vipmail {dot} hu) and he will help you in your quest and maybe even release the source (who knows).

2. ZBlood :
ZBlood (sometimes spelt Zblood or zblood) is a game that runs on the ZDoom engine, which is a modified version of id Software’s Doom engine aka id Tech 1 . ZBlood itself is a modified version of the Doom II WAD, Blood TC. However ZBlood includes many new weapons, levels and features and is currently being updated while Blood TC is no longer being worked on.
As id Tech 1 was released under GPLv2 and works with GNU/Linux, this mod should also work on GNU/Linux.
The original BUILD engine is more feature heavy then id’s 1 engine, so I consider it a downgrade in terms of technology.

3. Transfusion :
Transfusion uses the DarkPlaces engine in order to recreate Blood in full 3D.
Darkplaces is a very modified and improved Quake engine.
Currently Transfusion is a death-match game like Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament (but with much less impressive graphics), but it’s a Free software (FOSS) and still under heavy development.
The goal is to recreate Blood so there is much work to be done still.

As you can see the first screenshots is the death-match and the second one is the actual (still incomplete) single player levels.

4. HYPERTENSION :
Now we finally came to the last recreation or even reincarnation of our beloved game Blood.
HYPERTENSION is based on the GPLed Hyper3dge which is was developed from the EDGE engine which was based on id tech 1.
HYPERTENSION is feature live-action videos with amateur actors, changing soundtrack based on events in the game, many new and old weapons and enemies, classic levels a brand new campaign and much more features !

While the game itself is not yet FOSS (this could be discussed) it will be out very soon and will have a native GNU/Linux client !

There is much to expect…

Links :
Blood
Blood Wiki
Blood: The Flesh Game
ZBlood
Transfusion
HYPERTENSION
Interview with TDGMods on Hypertension