List of Source Ports and Recreations

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List of attempted Blood source port and recreation projects.

Source Port Projects[edit]

The source code to Blood was never released; however, source ports have been attempted using released Build engine, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, or the leaked Blood Alpha code, as well as original programming using reverse engineering. Based on original or already free software source code and only reading the original game's assets, these projects are considered more clear legally speaking (although issues can still persist).

The exact definition of what is a source port is debatable however, in regards to the lack of official source code, and methods of reverse engineering will vary. Our working definition here is any project that works with the game's native files and formats. As such, they should also be able to run custom content such as Bloody Pulp Fiction or Death Wish. Some alternative definitions in the community require at least the use of original Build engine code, which would exclude releases such as the official Fresh Supply alike to efforts like ZBlood, but potentially still accept projects such as BloodCM (which can not open original maps without conversion).

Released[edit]

Fresh Supply[edit]

An official remaster of the game by Night Dive Studios using their in-house Kex Engine. Single and multi-player. Closed source and commercial.

BloodGDX[edit]

A project to port Blood using the libGDX framework for Java. Single and multi-player. Merged into a broader open source effort called BuildGDX.

NBlood[edit]

A project to port Blood using EDuke32 as a base. Single and multi-player. Full source code released.

Raze[edit]

A project merging the various Build ports, including NBlood, in a single package; with a back-end based on GZDoom. Full source code released.

Comparison of source ports[edit]

BloodGDX NBlood Fresh Supply Raze
Renderer Polymost, Software, custom PolyGDX renderer (beta) Polymost, Software Proprietary Kex Engine renderer Raze3D
Render backend OpenGL OpenGL DirectX11, OpenGL, Vulkan OpenGL, Vulkan, OpenGL ES
Palette emulation options Enable/Disable (since v1.14) Enable/Interpolated/Disable Enabled Enable/Interpolated/Disable
MIDI playback Gervill

System Midi
fs2 soundfonts

System Midi

OPL3 Emulator

Fluidsynth with TimGM6mb soundfont Fluidsynth

System Midi

Custom difficulty settings Yes Yes Yes No
Controller support Yes Yes Yes Yes
FMV format Smacker Smacker OGV (Theora) Smacker
Cryptic Passage support Integrated in episode select In launcher Through addon menu In launcher
Multiplayer Yes Yes Yes No
Demo Playback Yes Yes No No
Operating System support Windows 64-bit (using own or system Java runtine)

Windows 32-bit, Mac and Linux (using system Java runtime)

Windows 32-bit, 64-bit (automated builds),

Mac and Linux (building from source code)

Windows 64-bit Windows, Mac and Linux 64-bit only (official builds)
Indexed Hightiles No Yes No Yes
Source Code available Yes Yes No Yes
Other features

Crouch Toggle
Texture filtering
Adjustable HUD size
Revive mode for co-op
Ability to run user content without restarting the port
Overlay map
Vanilla mode (re-enables original bugs)

Crouch toggle

Optional v1.0x weapon balance toggle
NoOne enemy extensions

Crouch toggle & auto crouching

Ambient Occlusion
Anti-aliasing

Crouch toggle

Texture Filtering (incompatible with palette emulation)
Resolution scaling
Tonemaps
NoOne enemy extensions
Lifted mapping limits

  • Palette emulation applies the software lighting model to hardware renderers.
  • Indexed hightiles allows high res textures to do palette swapping in engine.

Discontinued[edit]

Discontinued Source Port Projects

Blood 32[edit]

The first ambitious port, started in 2005 and last updated in 2009 by Justin "icecoldduke" Marshall, also known as WinBlood. It first attempted to port the game assets to the Build engine port hosted on icculus.org before later being restarted from scratch based on JFDuke3D, releasing a few screamshots and four public alphas.

OpenBlud[edit]

Registered by Jacob Moorman on April 12, 2010 and last updated on April 11, 2013, OpenBlud attempted to create a basis with the original Shadow Warrior source code while also porting to 32-bit Windows systems.

BloodXL[edit]

"The XL Engine is an engine that runs the 'XL Games', which are enhanced remakes/ports* of the classic games. Essentially they are remakes in the spirit of a port, or to put it another way, they emulate the original games and then provide optional enhanced features on top in order to improve playability and visuals. All these games will be able to use the 'Pure Renderer', which is a software renderer that can support the original 8 bit rendering and resolutions. Basically this means that you can play the games as they original looked and played or play in higher resolutions and color depths with a variety of enhancements. You choose how close to the original you want the games to be." — ModDB

The XL Engine, a reversed engineered port of the Jedi Engine used in Star Wars: Dark Forces and Outlaws, was attempting Blood support since first announced on December 22, 2010. Pursuant to this, support for the original Shadow Warrior had also been prototyped. No news had been posted in years, and the main website is no longer online. The source code for the XL Engine (predominately for Dark Forces and Daggerfall) was released in April 2018 however, with updates on creator Lucius' status.

"Lucius has been doing well. Life has been busy for him over the last few years, though it's settled down a bit these days. He's still expressed interest in continuing work on the XL Engine, but I get the distinct impression he's recovering from the years of having incredible demands on his time. There's no telling when he'll finally decide to return to XL Engine development, but when he does he'll be focusing on the decompiler, which should help result in more accurate gameplay reproduction even for other people's existing projects. But of course, that's at some indeterminate point in the future, and I can't blame anyone for concluding that it may never happen."Klasodeth

In May 2020 the project was confirmed to have been ended, although support for Dark Forces and Outlaws has been continued by the Force Engine project.

"Truth be told I went through some rough times several years ago and was unable to continue developing the XL Engine. I should have communicated that but for a long time I thought I would just go back to it, so why kill it? But time moves on. I just didn't feel that DaggerXL (or even the XL Engine as originally envisioned) was still needed with projects like this and various Blood-related projects taking up the slack. Regardless I apologize to any fans that were holding out hope for DaggerXL, though fortunately, you have this project to fill that need."Lucius

"I am sure the few people who have looked at this repository have noticed that I have not made any commits in quite some time. The XL Engine, as it was previously known, has been retired. Development of the XL Engine had dropped off due to other "real life" commitments and a lack of time (and sometimes ability) to continue. Fortunately Daggerfall and Blood have high quality ports/projects that have carried on and given people a much improved experience, similar to what the XL Engine was trying to achieve. To be clear, this project has not been updated in years and will not be updated in the future - though some of the code will find its way elsewhere." — Lucius

Build Sharp[edit]

"BuildSharp is an application, currently in development, that can read from and utilise assets from Build games and be used to generate games via a scripting language. Developed in C# and using XNA (but planning to move to MonoGame when able) The primary focus is on the Build game Blood as it is currently one of the main three Build games (the others being Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior) that has not had it's source code released. This site is still quite new, so please check out our Facebook page for details of our development so far." — Cosmo

A project aiming to reverse engineer Blood onto the .NET Framework; first announced May 22, 2014 and last updated on June 13, 2015. Announced on Facebook as in "hibernation" as of August 14, 2017 and the webpages for it are no longer online.

Blood EX[edit]

"EX moves away from BUILD in terms of mechanics and basically reproduces the original game in a modernized engine, which means floating point math instead of fixed point and timing/speed/movement etc has to be scaled down to match the original game, so theres bound to be some minor flaws here and there. Though despite of that, EX will have a more dedicated focus on modding and customization... The way I handle it is anything regarding to damage values, health, etc is reverse engineered, because that's the most important things that needs to be done right. Anything regarding to player weapon swaying and object momentum speeds (such as how far you throw dynamite, or how much an explosion knocks you back) is entirely empirical, though I do rely on the assembly as a guide. AI behavior is 100% identical and taken directly from the disassembly. Though I do add a bit more to it so it can be easily customized by modders. The only thing I am concerned about is how the enemy aims at the player. Build engine games uses a fixed-point slope value while Kex uses atan2/angle pitch to determine the aim.... which results in the AI being a tad more accurate even while the player crouching. I have some ideas to emulate the fixed point slope behavior though. Everything else (renderer, collision, resource management, etc) is done from scratch." — Kaiser

A project that was "under tight wraps", started sometime after May 2015 by Samuel "Kaiser" Villarreal based on his prior Kex Engine ports. Superseded once it was announced that Kaiser was working on an official remaster of the game using this work as a base. This was developed by Night Dive Studios under license from Atari and was released under the final title of Blood: Fresh Supply on May 9, 2019 (although Kaiser himself has still referred to the project as Blood EX during its development; a similar but more protracted development path occurred for PowerSlave Exhumed).

BLEED[edit]

"The premise of REing a game to a new engine is fundamentally flawed. I have a better idea but it's low priority right now."Hendricks266

"BLEED is easily the most ambitious project I have ever undertaken, and I have to reinvent several wheels to make it happen."Hendricks266

Mentioned in a number of Duke4 forum threads since at least 2014, Voidpoint programmer and Duke4 administrator Evan "Hendricks266" Ramos has had his own port for Blood in the works. Rather than straight up reverse engineering, it would be based on reading directly from the original BLOOD.EXE to avoid any legal issues, while utilizing EDuke32 as a base. It was meant to be part of a larger framework that will work with every Build engine game. He has been tight-lipped when it comes to further details, and stated on August 12, 2019 that NBlood has diminished its usefulness and would probably scale back the project's scope.

"My port will sidestep the legal issue entirely, while achieving 100% accuracy from the start--of any version of Blood you choose... Making modifications will be harder but still doable."Hendricks266

"My [Blood port] will work with every BUILD game, so don't worry."Hendricks266

"With NBlood around I haven't felt the need to think about it much and it's no longer as important a goal for me. If I work on it, it will be mostly as a research hobby because NBlood serves players' needs that much better."Hendricks266

"In the absence of being a copyright puritan it's vastly more efficient in terms of development effort to render source code as output instead of engineering a runtime interface and also expecting to patch it to meet modern user needs such as high-precision mouse aiming. I would still like to write a decompilation tool as a complement to NY00123 and Nuke.YKT's efforts, similar to what I did for the 64 and TM CON files."Hendricks266

BloodBox[edit]

"This is a modified version of DosBox v0.74 called BloodBox, that will serve as the platform for a reverse engineering effort of the classic first person shooter Blood. Specifically version 1.21 (The GOG version should work) After loading the main executable of the game, BloodBox injects calls to a special interrupt at the start of certain functions. These functions were then reverse engineered and implemented in BloodBox itself. In this way, instead of having to reverse engineer the entire game, only code useful for speeding up, bug fixing, modding and adding features will have to be considered." — Psycho87

A modified version of DosBox v0.74, that would serve as the platform for a reverse engineering effort of the classic first person shooter Blood (specifically version 1.21). Instead of having to reverse engineer the entire game, only code useful for speeding up, bug fixing, modding and adding features would have to be considered. Not updated upon since July 1, 2016.

Recreation Projects[edit]

See Also: List of Mods

Most of these take the form of total conversions for other games, sometimes with attempts to imitate the Blood game logic as well as its aesthetics. Others are better classified as original fangames. As with all fan made projects using copyrighted assets, there are questions as to their legality; Transfusion received a quitclaim license however. As opposed to source ports, our working definition here is anything that rips assets out of Blood and outright re-constitutes them on their own engine and systems, rather than working with the original files and formats, or simply uses its own original assets. Curiously, the official Fresh Supply is a bit of both, supporting the original maps and files but still being re-constituted onto the Kex Engine. Under our working definition however, we still count it as a source port.

Released[edit]

Transfusion[edit]

A project to recreate Blood under the true 3D DarkPlaces engine which is a modified Quake engine. Supports multi-player.

Halls of Stonehenge[edit]

A total conversion for Wolfenstein 3D that borrows from Blood so heavily it is a de-facto demake. Single-player.

Blood TC[edit]

A total conversion WAD file for Doom II: Hell on Earth with seven levels. Had its own story, but mostly recreated original levels. Single-player.

ZBlood[edit]

A modified and enhanced version of Blood TC which runs on the ZDoom engine as well as its derivatives. Single, cooperative, and multi-player.

Re-Blood[edit]

A project to create an expanded experience from the original Blood transplanted onto the GZDoom engine.

Q3 Bloodbath[edit]

A project that converts Bloodbath maps from Blood and Blood II to Quake III Arena.

Blood Reborn[edit]

An attempted recreation of Blood built using Game Maker 7. Single-player.

Blood: Refilled[edit]

A mod for the Gamebryo based Fallout: New Vegas which recreates areas from the original game. Single-player.

BloodCM[edit]

A Blood total conversion for EDuke32. Currently considered to be the most accurate recreation. Single-player only.

Discontinued[edit]

Discontinued Recreation Projects

Blood - Fan Revival[edit]

A Unity game engine project by Amateur Hour Games, which released a one level demo on August 11, 2018.

Links: IndieDB, ModDB, YouTube

Blood Fan Remake[edit]

A project to recreate Blood atop of the Unity 3D engine first announced on April 23, 2017 by OrdinaryFpsFan789. Currently hoping to complete a full remake of E1M1: Cradle to Grave. A demo was released on May 22, 2017. D!rt, formerly of both Blood Evolution and Blood Source, was listed as a modeller.

Blood Evolution[edit]

A project to replicate Blood atop of Unreal Engine 4 by D!rt, an Irish 3D artist who worked on the 2013 remake of Rise of the Triad and the earlier Blood Source project. The first news post is from January 7, 2015. Once seemingly being merged into the Blood Fan Remake on Unity 3D, a video of the current state of the project was released on March 15, 2018.

Blood: Infuscomus[edit]

"This has been an ongoing effort to recreate the single player campaign of the original Blood game by Monolith Productions, powered on the Build Engine back in I believe was 1997." — Readme

A project to recreate the Blood single-player experience in the DarkPlaces engine (using the X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse codebase) separate from Transfusion. Alpha version from May 26, 2016 by Chillo aka Ruin.

Blood Reimagined[edit]

"My team and I are very proud to show you our take on Blood, a PC game from the 90’s. Blood was a First Person Shooter, we imagined it as a twin-stick shooter centered around the use of TNT. We also completely redid the visuals with a semi-stylized art direction. We really wanted to capture the tone of the original game, which is over-the-top, satiric and packed with horror clichés. We also seized the opportunity to explore the destruction capabilities of Unreal 4!" — Announcement

A student project at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi arts department circa late 2015 through early 2016 "re-imagined" Blood as an isometric third-person shooter atop of Unreal Engine 4 focusing on twin-stick dynamite usage. Completed as part of a course, and no doubt also due to copyright concerns, it was never properly released beyond images, screamshots, and video such as on artist Gabriel Fleury's portfolio. It has also been called the Blood Fan Reboot.

"This was only a student project : a short playable sequence done in 7 weeks for an assignment. We never intended it as a full game. We won't release anything more than this video!" — Violane

Blood Source[edit]

A project to port Blood to Valve Corporation's Source Engine by The Chosen; superseded by Blood Evolution. The first news post was released on February 24, 2009 and the last on May 27, 2012.

Cradle to Grave[edit]

Similar to the later finished BloodCM, Cradle to Grave (or C2G) was another project to add Blood enemies, objects, and styles to EDuke32. It was worked on by Daedalus, Dimebog, Daedolon and others from The Postmortem going under the title of Bunch of Butchers. First announced on June 23, 2008, it received its last news post on March 23, 2011 and has remained dormant.

Bloodmod To Duke[edit]

An early attempt at doing a Blood total conversion for Duke Nukem 3D, announced on August 17, 2005 by TheChosenOne.

Plasma-Plus[edit]

An attempt to succeed Transfusion using the X-Real engine derived from id Tech 3.

Dead Reckoning[edit]

A project by Justin "icecoldduke" Marshall, creator of WinBlood, attempted to port Blood assets onto id Tech 3, announced on June 2, 2009.

See Also[edit]

External Links[edit]