Blood:6th Anniversary

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Introduction (By Gideon)[edit]

AWAR
Kathryn Akkaraju
Blood shovelware
Shogo painting
Shogo ad
Blood Alpha
Ted D'Arms?

First off, I just want to say sorry to anyone hoping to have seen more individual Blood mod articles over the past year, as I did previously with Death Wish and Rage Against the Machine. While I did indeed enjoy going through both of those, as well as playing through the short but pleasurable It's A War Out There, I found my efforts hurdled by the intricacies of BARF.EXE (strange title...) and the custom media requirements of Bloody Pulp Fiction, BloodLines, The Carnage Continues and others. I am sure there is something obvious here that I am missing, and really should give it another crack, but it was enough to set me off course, especially as other more pressing matters piled up on top of me (farm troubles, graduating from high school, learner's drivers license, programming projects, etc). True, I could play through Dwayne Anderson's Scourge of Humanity, the first in his re-vitalized Legends of the Iconoclast, but I must admit the necessity (at least in my eyes) of keeping tack of his elaborate .txt files story arcs proves a little daunting, even if intriguing to say the least. Still, I did deliver a new Blood fan game article of sorts (and User:Tchernobog did a write up for Extra Crispy) in the form of Halls of Stonehenge - a mod which, although it would be ten times better with Caleb as its protagonist, still proves a fascinating look at what Blood might have been like if it was released a mere four to five years earlier (actually, looking rather nice!).

Which brings me to what my gaming this year actually looked like - no, not just Wolfenstien 3D mods (though they have been fun) but retro shooters in general. Throughout the month of September I engaged in a quest to collect all ray-traced, and particularly simple corridor, shooters I could find: the good (not much of those I had not already found), the bad, and the ugly (actually, the latter two typically ran together), as well as a pet, though somewhat masochistic, hobby of mine in the form of the Pie in the Sky game engine (I would certainly recommend Continuum though, as well as the seminal Terminal Terror). Most pleasurable however has been going through the entirety of what was my first ever first-person shooter: Bad Toys 3D, a tremendously challenging, and just plain bizarre, 16-bit Windows shooter from the Czech Republic. Add in also the marvellous work of the people behind the short-lived JAM Productions: the tremendously innovative Blake Stone series, as well and the earlier Catacomb Adventure Series they worked on after taking over Gamer's Edge from the id Software founders - adieu John Carmack! One may have noticed in how much detail I described the similarities between Catacomb and Blood in our ever popular "Blood in Other Media" article; as well as the much over-looked Killing Time, another gem I discovered that sadly refuses to WINE, forcing me to play it on an old Windows XP laptop. Finally, I have also been playing around with the varying versions of the game that lead to the Build engine we all know and love: Ken's Labyrinth.

Anyhow, back on topic, my most notable effort wiki side has been the creation of proper copyright templates for media uploads (Template:Fair Use, Template:Copyleft, etc), and then the massive effort of properly tagging prior uploaded media. I also added some model screenshots for the Shogo Characters article, as well as general clean-up and tweaks to articles such as "References in Blood" and associated level articles, finding some new retro game video reviews, the discovery of the Archive of Our Own (and their Blood fan fiction section), creating the Akimbo article, as well as, through learning more about anime, extending the "References To Other Media" section of "Shogo Elements" (as well as finding some retrospective comments by Craig Hubbard, and Tchernboog found sound new images). Oh, and I also found out about two collections of Blood shovelware during my questing. Finally I would just like to thank User:Tenpazen for his in-depth analysis of the Blood Alpha, as well as thanks to User:Ishmael for his edits, and also to express the sadness of all of us here at the Blood Wiki for having learned of Ted D'Arms passing in 2011. Gideon 20:01, 12 January 2014 (CST)

Introduction (By Tchernobog)[edit]

2013 Halloween Bloodbath

Another year goes by, and the Blood Wiki continues moving forwards just as it has ever done. The biggest change over the past year with regards to the Wiki was our decision to remove unverified account creation, something I took no pleasure in doing but was made necessary due to the increasingly prevalent problem of spam bot accounts and their associated vandalous actions. I am pleased to report however that our effort to curb those actions has been for the most part successful - since removing the ability for guests to create their own accounts my workload has been greatly decreased, and I have still been able successfully welcome at least one new user into the fold through the proper use of our new account creation policy. It was a hard decision but in the end it was the right one; if anyone is reading this and is still unfamiliar with the new procedure for joining our team, please read about it in full here.

This past year also saw a greater interest in the Blood rights than has been shown in years. Both Jason Hall and Devolver Digital looked into bringing the game back in some form, and while neither were successful in their attempts, with Atari either rebuffing them or asking for such a ludicrously large amount of money to make any such attempt not be financially prudent, it does at least demonstrate that interest is still alive for Blood and that we are not alone in our continued devotion to the franchise. As far as the fan community is concerned, it has been an admittedly quiet year but still with a few notable highlights; the one I enjoyed the most was the large Halloween Bloodbath organized by Joe Volante to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the release of Blood II: The Chosen. It was great to finally be able to play the game online, and see so many old and new players show up throughout the course of the night.

Hopefully the new year will bring even more news on the rights front, and we will see more out of the fan community again. I myself am planning to get more involved in a part of fandom I was once quite active in previously, once I get a few other outstanding items resolved. I can also say that, while not actually directly Blood related, I do know of some good news that is still forthcoming for classic Monolith game fans, although for the moment I can not speak of it directly either.

Regardless, I am hopeful for a positive new year at this point going forward. Tchernobog 17:24, 12 January 2014 (CST)

Contributions[edit]

The Blood Wiki (January 30, 2013)
The Blood Wiki (January 12, 2014)

Below is a list of contributions by user up to January 12, 2014, sorted from greatest to least. This is a rough number however, since it includes edits to talk and user pages as well as submissions to articles. Also, Gideon and Tchernobog have used each other's accounts on occasion depending on which computer they were using at the time. This also includes edits from 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, and contributors who have not made an edit in the past year.

For more statistics see the "See Also" section!

See Also[edit]

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