Music and Ambiance

Music and ambiance for this project is one area in which I've been fortunate enough to find talented volunteers.

Last year many remixed Blood 1 tracks were donated to Resurrection by DoomLancelot, and his contributions were certainly appreciated. Later, Nicola "Neurological" Capecci joined the project and he has since contributed some fine work, including the excellent sample track included on this page. I'm not really sure where Neurological has disappeared to recently, since I haven't heard from him in awhile. Hopefully though he hasn't gone into the black hole that volunteers to this project often seem to disappear into.

There have actually been a number of volunteers that have come forward offering to help with the artwork, modelling, and coding. Unfortunately though they all eventually disappeared without ever actually contributing anything.

But I'm proud to announce that Håvard "Hoby" Felberg has now also volunteered his abilities to this project. He'll be contributing his talent in providing some excellent atmospheric ambiance that will be sure to add some life to all of these levels. I'm impressed with what I've heard so far, and look forward to anything that Hoby may wish to contribute in the future.

I'd also like to thank Marek "Nivo" Boguta for recently volunteering his talents to this project as well. It's great to see such creativity being used in music and ambiance, and this project can only benefit from the fine efforts of those who wish to contribute to it any form.

I'm certainly appreciative of any musical and sound contributions that are donated to this project, because that's one area in which I'm sadly lacking in any talent. It would be nice to receive some help in the other areas as well, but I've accepted that I'll most likely continue everything else completely on my own.

Work will be ongoing for quite awhile yet, and if anyone happens to find Neurological wandering around out there, tell him to keep away from that black hole before he disappears completely like all of the other volunteers have done.

Experiments in Coding

I've been experimenting lately on all of the coding for Blood 2, and looking for ways in which to improve the actual game play. Unfortunately the Blood 2 code is a lot like a house with a bad foundation. Things can be added to it and built on top of it, but at some point the whole thing might eventually come crashing down.

So I've been looking into using the lithtech 1.5 code that was used in the game, Psycho Circus. I was given the game code to Psycho Circus earlier this year by one of its developers, Jonathan Wright, and it's never been publicly released so I feel rather fortunate in having the opportunity to study it. The code itself is superior to Blood 2's, with the advantage that existing models and levels could work well in this environment. The code could be built on and used to improve the actual game play of Blood 2, however it's still old technology, and the process of creating new levels is a little more complicated then simply using lithtech 1.0.



So far preliminary testing has been positive, and I've been able to successfully get the souldrudge and cultists into the game quite easily. It's a bit surreal at the moment though as large groups of souldrudges and cultists attack me without any weapons, and I then send them flying across the level when I kill them. The physics are more Blood like as well, and the pathfinding is quite impressive. Enemies always seem to be able to find me no matter where I'm hiding!

But there are negative aspects to using lithtech 1.5 as well. It's doubtful that anyone will ever build any new levels for this game using the lithtech 1.5 editor because its possessed with evil. The Blood 2 editor does work well for the actual level construction, but then the 1.5 editor still needs to be used for the final processing of the level. I think this would probably be too inconvenient for most people.

Aside from the possessed editor, the lithtech 1.5 engine is still old. For people that enjoy shiny, flashy eye candy that comes from more recent engines, lithtech 1.0 or 1.5 might come across as somewhat disappointing, in comparison. But some of its negative aspects can be used to its advantage, since these levels can be built much larger and the number of enemies in a level can be far greater then most modern engines could realistically deal with.

It may not be as flashy as a modern engine but I think the visual look of the game can still be improved with a little effort.





I haven't made any final decisions on the coding yet as these experiments in madness continue. But seeing the improvements in the enemies behavior first hand does give me hope that the game play can be dramatically improved eventually, whether through using lithtech 1.5 or continuing with lithtech 1.0. Work is ongoing....

A Bit of Fun

Occasionally while working on all of this, I've created a few parodies and other bits of humorous nonsense simply for amusement. I've had a few requests from people that I should consider adding them to the site somewhere, and maybe eventually I will create a section devoted to all of them...

But in the meantime here's a few random images, just for fun.