Blood Development Update - December '96

## BLOOD DEVELOPMENT - DECEMBER 1996

Update: 12/16/96

Kevin is pumping out lots of new detail sprites for Jay and Craig as well as the new Voodoo Death for the FatBoy zombie. He also created an incredibly detailed and lifelike map of Monolith buildings 11/12 which is pretty much entirely destructible. Once Kevin has finished the upstairs area he'll pass the map off the Jay. Maybe he will add the other Monolith buildings and parking lot too. (Whaddya say Jay? Oh yeah, and about my office...)

Nick primarily fixed bugs and added features. The coolest feature by far is the new team scoring system that Jay uses in his BloodBath Base map (see below.) He further optimized the explosion code which now allows tons more gibs and debris. Next stop -- Gib Munchies so we can get rid of those nasty giblets all over the ground.

Dan continues work on the enemies. His work mainly was on AI bug fixes and features for each of the characters. He also helped Blood's Sound Engineers by putting most of the new sounds into the game for them.

Craig spent the week improving various levels for Episodes One and Two, slightly expanding an area of the train station and adjusting the ship level as a tribute to a true horror classic -- we'll see if any of you can figure it out when the registered version ships. :-) He also finally discovered the unparalleled space-sim joys of Tie Fighter Hi-Res Collector's Edition and vows his service to the Empire (at least until X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter ships this winter.)

Jay worked Iceflow into shape for the second episode. He also finished an awesome, team-based level and scoring system for the BloodBath Episode. Players feel the ground shaking beneath them when they activate all of their base's PURGE defenses and annihilate everyone in their base! The power and defenses of a destroyed base automatically reset and the BloodFest continues. Scoring in Blood is currently based on two teams which seems to be the most popular in capture the flag and clan-style matches.

From the Last But Not Least Dept. -- Monolith had a visitor this weekend. Bowelgrin (aka. Shawn) is the first outsider to see and play the beta version of Blood shareware. Dan, Nick, Craig and Jay were here and played against each other and Shawn in one of the bloodiest BloodBaths to date. Shawn managed to get in lots of kills with every weapon in the shareware game and proved himself a worthy keyboard player. Up against us mousers(mostly three-button) he didn't have much of a chance. In the end Craig (aka. Croweater) defeated everyone on the Blood Team -- but not by much. Next time Croweater pays...in Blood!!

Update: 12/09/96

There's been a lot of in-house debate about the awesome power of the Voodoo Doll in BloodBaths. Once Jason got a hold of Blood, he just started tearing up the ranks. Jason is our CEO and one hell of good Duke player -- he's beaten everyone he's played at 3D Realms, including George Broussard. Now that he's found the sweet spot for using the Voodoo Doll, he claims that it just takes skill to use it. Kind of like the BFG in Doom; it's a bad-ass weapon that requires skill to master against good players. The debate continues...

Dan spent the week and weekend adjusting when sound effects are played for the enemies. He also spent time adjusting the movement of the HellHounds and Cerberus. The attack of Cerberus should be completed this week. Work continues on the GillBeast and the Innocents. Dan actually won a game of C&C Red Alert last week realizing his goal of world domination.

Nick is wrapping up bugs and finishing up network code for the shareware version. Started work on some of the feature requests made by Blood's level designers.

Kevin is still working on extra art for Craig and Jay. He started work on the Blood intro, working out storyboards with Craig. He also said something about working on A.J., but he wouldn't tell us who or what "A.J." was. Hmmm...

Jay finished the work on his mine level, as well as redoing parts of Phantom Express.

Craig wrapped up The Overlooked Hotel for episode 2. It's a huge level, but it's still a lot of fun in BloodBath. Basically, everyone ends up fighting over the registration desk, which is the tactical nexus of the entire level. Many hilarious war stories came out of Sunday night's playtesting session -- always a good sign. Craig also spent more time going through the shareware and other episode 2 maps making improvements to lighting and item and monster placement.

Update: 12/02/96

Craig improved shareware levels and continued work on the various nearly completed registered maps for the second and third episodes. He also did some more R&D work and research for The Siege. He spent most of the long holiday weekend moving to his new apartment, but still managed to get in some work, six or seven extended BloodBaths (which he won, for the most part), and even a game or two of Red Alert (which he lost, for the most part).

Jay continued working on Episode 2 levels, including the mines, mansion, and ice flow levels. Lots of small tweaks to "Cradle to Grave" and some of the other shareware levels. Internal testing continues on the shareware levels. (Jay actually spent most of the week eating turkey over the Thanksgiving holiday. He did have some lovely Bar-B-Q chicken too. Work was difficult for him after being squashed by Jason 25-22 in a Bloodbath match that has since been talked up to epic proportions.)

Kevin added and tweaked textures for the levels Jay and Craig are working on.

Dan put the finishing touches on the Cultists and Cerberus. Cultists now swim and can actually put themselves out in the water when they are burning. Next on Dan's list of AI tweaks are the GillBeast and Innocents. Dan's sinister plan of world domination was thwarted when Jay launched a vicious Mammoth Tank assault in C&C Red Alert.

Nick began fixing bugs from bug reports and implementing features collated by our internal beta testers and BloodBath players. The shareware weapons and some of the registered ones are play balanced while each retains advantages and disadvantages in BloodBath games. Nick also worked on the net game startup menus and related game options, which are almost finished.

In order to keep loading time to a minimum, only the current month's entries will be on this page.
You can get older months pages via this index.

1. December 1996
2. November 1996
3. October 1996
4. September 1996
5. August 1996
6. July 1996
7. June 1996