Blood Development Update - November '96

## BLOOD DEVELOPMENT - NOVEMBER 1996

#### Update: 11/25/96

Dan spent the week (and weekend) working on putting in creature sounds. AI work continues for the HellHounds, Cerberus and the Gargoyles. The cultists are the next object of Dan's scrutiny. Bloodbath testing continues with Dan starting to show signs of life against the regular beatings of Jay and Craig. He actually can manage a righteous kill or two. (Nearly out of ammo too, eh Dan? Good kill!)

Nick pulled a few magic tricks out of his hat this week. The new explosion/concussion processing code is tons faster. Added a bunch of gimmicks to weapon animations. Began adjusting and normalizing sound effects for the entire game. The 3D audio system got some mods this week and everyone loves the war zone feel in BloodBath games.

Jay worked on his mine level for Episode 2. He also did a fair amount of work testing, optimizing, and tweaking the shareware levels.

Craig continued work on Kevin's alpine hotel level and started a war-torn city map tentatively titled "The Siege" for the registered version. While he declines to reveal any details about the latter level (lest they be "borrowed" by less deranged and creative minds), his frequent bouts of maniacal laughter guarantee that you'll be in for a treat. Hmmm, no wonder Soundgarden's "Blow up the Outside World" is his theme song.

Kevin created more textures and sprites to populate levels with. Kev also added some "interactive body parts" for the player and zombies. Some weaponry art touch-ups were also done.

A bunch of us went on a game buying spree this week. Top on the list of purchases were Tomb Raider and Red Alert. Both are pretty cool games. Despite the lack of network play and a somewhat glitchy renderer Tomb Raider seems to be a late-night favorite. Red Alert had the network play advantage, but some players maintain that, except for Mammoth Tanks, the Russians are incredibly weak. Kind of like the Nod having an advantage in the original C&C. Of course, during work hours we all play Blood and Claw...

#### Update: 11/18/96

Kevin has been adding various textures for Jay and Craig to polish off the shareware levels. The player character is just a few actions from being completely in. We might have some in-game player screenshots as early as tomorrow.

Craig took over two of Kevin's old maps, expanding on them and making them even spookier and deadlier than before. The first, Rest for the Wicked, is a winter-bound resort where Tchernobog's minions can be found enjoying some R&R. The second, unnamed level will take you to a hotel suspiciously reminiscent of the Overlook from Stephen King's The Shining. Kevin will probably keel over when he sees what Craig has done to it (if he does, rest assured we'll take pictures of him lying unconscious and post them on our website).

Jay has been compiling the list of shareware textures and touching up some of the shareware levels. He also worked on the mines level for episode 2, as well as testing the nearly complete episode 2 levels.

Dan has been taking a regular beating from Jay and Craig in BloodBaths. He's now extracting revenge by making the enemies his own little minions of death. Craig can now be heard cursing the enemies as their AI is much improved. Dan continues his work on the AI for the HellHounds and Cerberus. More work on the Gargoyles and some new Cultist maneuvers are next.

Nick is polishing off the programming for the remaining shareware elements. Bugs are falling right and left, squashed under the heels of a very determined coder. One particularly nasty memory corruption bug had Nick cursing through the night, but it was rooted out and destroyed after an intense debugging session.

#### Update: 11/11/96

Jay worked on "Thin Ice" a new registered level map. A lot of action takes place either underwater, on ice flows, or on high icy ledges. This larger deathmatch map makes for some really nasty back-stabbing kills to humiliate your opponents.

Craig finished up the lumber mill, but he still can't get through it on the hardest setting--primarily because he tends to panic and blow himself up whenever he runs into spiders. Since he's not afraid of spiders in real life, one can only presume that Nick (who IS afraid of spiders) is in big trouble on this level. Craig also completed the lair of Cerberus, which turned out to be a fast and furious deathmatch map.

Dan worked on more AI. The bats are smarter and even more annoying. He started on Cerberus' AI and tweaked code for some of the other opponents.

Kevin continued his work on player animations, the stone gargoyles attack, and a really twisted painting of the player character for cover and/or magazine art.

Nick added more player-to-player interaction code, burned a new Blood beta CD for GTI and 3DRealms, and moved to larger quarters with Craig's help. Thanks Craig! Last but not least, Nick spent most of the week reading documents from the lowest form of life in the universe (and we don't mean used-card salesman)...that's all we have to say about that.

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