Last map you played

Started by Puritan, 02 December 2011, 08:14:26

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High Treason

Drive corruption is a real problem on five different machine with three different (Genuine) installation CDs used (1.0 and 1.21 - 1.21 sucks, use 1.0). So is the simple fact that the game is broken. Bugs and corruption in action - go to 27:43 if all you want is the drive corruption, I have a few other incidents on film too.

Blood at it's heart has the potential to be great, but it lets itself down on so many levels. This sucks because I really, really want to like it, I really should like it... But it just fails. The AI on paper is better, but in reality it is dumb and spends most of it's time walking around in circles. The level designers also loved placing cultists around corners where they fire at you too fast for you to react doing silly amounts of damage. There is no long range vector weapon and the overenthusiastic hitbox (and slow movement) on the flare gun often prevents it being useful at long range. Balance is terrible, the game often has you run out of ammo and will give you nothing but flares or spray cans seconds before meeting dogs or ghosts who are immune to these weapons. The Voodoo doll can not be used again if you switch to another weapon after using Alt Fire.

I have no gripes with the controls, it's like Dark Forces with better mouse look. Though the cultists hitting you that quick is ridiculous, especially when they shoot round corners, through floors and all manner of bullshit.

The level design is good as far as layout goes most of the time, but there are serious visual problems, idiotic things left over from the alpha build and levels like Catacombs that have gone almost unchanged since the alpha that are so clearly test levels (the ending of that one especially) it is unbelievable.

It is common to also jib enemies only to have the game crash and a "too many sprites spawned" appear, reflective shots can also crash the game. The frame rate is piss-poor on anything less than a Pentium II 450.

Best indicator of the broken balance? Play a level starting with no weapons (die, hit space), I dare you. Some levels are also possible to completely break without trying, The Haunting is possibly my favorite level but as far as I remember there's a barrel that can be blown locking you out of the basement.

The last two machines I ran it on also had their boot sector corrupted which was the final straw for me.

I don't know how it runs in emulators, I can only go by what it does on real hardware of the era, granted I have an unusually high level of problems possibly due to my aggressive play style, but if they can happen to me they can happen to anyone and I can show examples of almost everything I said in that series of videos or the ones from my previous attempt. Like it or not, every time I tried to play the game it didn't work and started doing retarded shit; crashing, glitching out or fucking up the hard drive... Wanna know why there's no source code release? Because the programmers are ashamed of the absolute mess they have made.

And don't even get me started on the soundtrack.


This didn't post, so if a double post happens somehow I apologize.
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methy

#556
Actually, I have beat the game (every episode including plasma pak + cryptic passage) doing a pitchfork start on every level, on skill4, and only two levels were impossible to me that way : E1M6 and the boss level of the first episode. Everything else was do-able no problem and actually played great that way.

I keep hearing that about cultists but I don't really have a problem with it. It's a different playstyle, respond fast and effectively to their attacks or back the fuck off or take cover and use your weapons and their secondary fire accordingly. I'm not going to make the list of every situation and of every way you could use this or that weapon, but there are several different ways to do effective long range attacks. Like I said it's all about learning to constantly switch weapon depending on the situation. Never had ammo problem with ghosts, and if you haven't been careful with your ammo enough, you can use the pitchfork against them (it's a bit tedious, but not hard).
The thing is, Blood doesn't play like Doom, or DN3D, or SW; Blood plays like Blood, and it has a bigger learning curve, but also a higher skill ceiling. If you launch Blood and try to play it like you'd play Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, you'll quickly get fucked; and at that point you can either say "fuck it this game sucks", or you can learn to play the game.

Never had any glitch or crashing issue, though I've been using dosbox. The only 2 glitches I know are the two famous ones : if you load a save from skill 1 or 2, enemies will deal much much higher dmg than they should on that skill (personally I've only ever used skill3 and 4); and also, if you load a save during a bossfight, that will replenish its health (but at least that prevents savescumming)
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High Treason

The average player cannot get by on a pitchfork start, you'd have to exploit the game somewhat to do that and it'd be tedious as all hell.

You keep hearing about the cultists because it's a problem, every fan of this game comes out with the same crappy excuses "waah, you just aren't playing it right", no! The only way to tackle the cultists is to know in advance where they are and lob TNT at them (And I'm fucking lethal with TNT)... But even that doesn't work because you can't damage a prone cultist if he hasn't seen you yet.

There are effective long range attacks... With projectile weapons. It shouldn't have to be that way, that's a waste of hard to find ammo if I have to use a napalm launcher on just three cultists on a distant bridge. Again, why should I have to pitchfork ghosts? The game should have proper item placement so I don't have to do that unless I've done something stupid.

It shouldn't play like DN3D or SW, but being under the same engine with similar weapons, physics and controls it should play similarly, I don't know what the dev team were going for but it doesn't seem to work that well sometimes.

There's a more serious boss glitch. If you save just before a wall opens up, it won't open and you have to hope you have a save from earlier or else kill yourself (provided you have any ammo to do that) and start the level over, rendering your save useless. As for enemy damage, this also appears to be mildly affected by the speed of your machine regardless of skill level, saving or loading. I suspect it works better in DOSBox but I don't use emulators and the box says Windows 95 on it... The game runs different code under Windows. So all I can judge is how it runs on the systems it was intended for, try it on the recommended Pentium 75, it'll never work.

Here are some examples of how it will run on real hardware and real DOS with it's many instabilities;
Random Crash, Unfair combat, Major delay on controls, Piss poor framerate on a Pentium II 450, Random Crash, Another, Pintched by the doors happens too often, Derpy AI, Jibs indicating things to come, Controller lag, Problem with the flare gun, Damage from nowhere, Corrupting the drive, Really polished, Spidercultist, Invulnerable cultist... And that's without nitpicking, also the better of the two plays through I still have online.

DOSBox is no excuse, it's good that the game runs better and people get to enjoy it on there, but it did not work with the hardware it was designed for. That time playing through, I actually had to hack the EXE at the end because the game would not load the final level.
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Micky C

HT I thought you liked Blood. Didn't you used to make maps for it?
Wall whore.

Forge

Quote from: High Treason on  31 August 2014, 18:42:25
The average player cannot get by on a pitchfork start, you'd have to exploit the game somewhat to do that and it'd be tedious as all hell.

You keep hearing about the cultists because it's a problem, every fan of this game comes out with the same crappy excuses "waah, you just aren't playing it right", no! The only way to tackle the cultists is to know in advance where they are and lob TNT at them
it may have been awhile since i've played the game on a windows 98 machine, but i call shenanigans. Your tactics stink if you can't handle them.

Quote from: High Treason on  31 August 2014, 18:42:25
Random Crash
Corrupting the drive

I actually had to hack the EXE
things that make you go hmmm
Take it down to the beach with a hammer and pound sand up your ass

High Treason

Quote from: Micky C on  02 September 2014, 15:24:24
HT I thought you liked Blood. Didn't you used to make maps for it?
That was before I developed any standards. As far as DOS goes I still like it's level editor over the one for Duke/SW though... As I said, I like the idea and at it's heart its a great game. If it ran properly it would be awesome but I've tried it on so many machines that I can only conclude it's broken, it runs decently in DOSBox but that isn't what the game was developed for meaning it has no bearing on my opinion.

Quote from: Forge on  02 September 2014, 16:50:29
Quote from: High Treason on  31 August 2014, 18:42:25
The average player cannot get by on a pitchfork start, you'd have to exploit the game somewhat to do that and it'd be tedious as all hell.

You keep hearing about the cultists because it's a problem, every fan of this game comes out with the same crappy excuses "waah, you just aren't playing it right", no! The only way to tackle the cultists is to know in advance where they are and lob TNT at them
it may have been awhile since i've played the game on a windows 98 machine, but i call shenanigans. Your tactics stink if you can't handle them.
Fuck off. I dare you to play Mall of the Dead with no weapons. I've already provided substantial evidence for cultist problems but have another. And another aided in part by the shitty flare gun. Actually the flare gun is the major problem, it's slow and you often end up having to use it against them, they react too quickly for it to do any damage. The game really needs a hand gun.

One thing that sucks worse than cultists.

Quote
Quote from: High Treason on  31 August 2014, 18:42:25
Random Crash
Corrupting the drive

I actually had to hack the EXE
things that make you go hmmm
Rubbish. Try reading it again... I fact I can go one better and add one to the list; Incompetent development team. How exactly do you suppose I should have dealt with that?

This certainly wouldn't happen in DOSBox because it was calling Windows-specific cutscene code. Also trying to imply I somehow broke it makes you look dumb, so by all means continue.
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Forge

Quote from: High Treason on  02 September 2014, 19:39:52
Fuck off.
Also trying to imply I somehow broke it makes you look dumb, so by all means continue.
;D
nope. you're easily antagonized which was all i was trying to do anyway.
(but I have run the game on a windows 95 box, windows 98 box, and a windows xp box - and never once did any of the hard drives get corrupted. Just saying  8))
Take it down to the beach with a hammer and pound sand up your ass

High Treason

Antagonized? Shit, you really don't know me or NE-English dialect very well at all. I fail to see how providing further evidence for my argument is being antagonized so allow me to apologize for disappointing you.

Well, it might not have busted your drives and that's great, but the fact of the matter is it broke most of mine. I suspect it to be triggered by quick timings and certain drive/controller combinations with these configurations, so if you ran your machine stock you'd probably be OK.

Not sure how you got it running in XP, that OS doesn't have direct hardware access so it would have been silent blood at a piss-poor frame rate.
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Forge

#563
Quote from: High Treason on  03 September 2014, 01:25:15
so allow me to apologize
you should apologize
especially for your piss-poor play tactics if the game kicks your ass so bad

Quote from: High Treason on  03 September 2014, 01:25:15
I suspect it to be triggered by quick timings and certain drive/controller combinations with these configurations, so if you ran your machine stock you'd be OK.
things that make you go hmmm
Take it down to the beach with a hammer and pound sand up your ass

High Treason

You really aren't very good at this are you? Then again, if I spent my life indoors playing with other peoples content for a long forgotten game, my social skills would probably degrade too.

The fact that you're not addressing the problem speaks volumes.
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Forge

Quote from: High Treason on  03 September 2014, 02:32:00
Then again, if I spent my life indoors playing with other peoples content for a long forgotten game...
sounds like someone's jealous  :-*
Take it down to the beach with a hammer and pound sand up your ass

High Treason

Now you're not even making sense. I'll try typing slowly to help you understand;

I am unemployed and could easily sit around on my ass all day, but I choose not to.
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Forge

with all that free time one would think you could figure out how to install a game without ruining your computer.
Take it down to the beach with a hammer and pound sand up your ass

High Treason

I think it's the development teams job to make sure their software works properly with different system configurations.

Even Microsoft put more effort in than this - strangely, one of the issues I think of was related to drive corruption and was not their fault (PC-Tech Inc. caused it).

But if that's how you think, then next time I release a map you'd think somebody with that much time would find a perspective to see it through that would earn a 100% score.
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methy

Just checked Final Destination by Shawn Swift (Sunstorm Interactive). Good map with potential but definitly released unfinished. There are hints of things to come in the map though like the room where you find the red keycard looks very similar to the command room in Brown Water from Duke It Out In DC.
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