The Doom sprites were 100% used as placeholders until the intended graphics were finished, I've seen that kind of thing done before with games of this era.
They also show up in corrdoor 8 alpha the build sequel to the horrible Wolfenstine 3D based game. Also softcore porn is surprisingly common in build betas
@@MP-qq2js Yeah, that one comes to mind. That game had barely any work done to it before being cancelled, so one wonders what they'd have done for monsters.
@@huru2guru you're right! I found the skinny zombie repurposed as a hanging zombie while researching for this video. I was very close to putting it in the video but just ran out of time unfortunately.
Thank you for this! Blood is great, one of my favorite games ever. Many of alpha content was used in add-on, the name of which I, sadly, forgot. At least most of the bigger maps that made sense saving.
"The beast" would have been a cool mechanic if it acted like a combination of Doom's Invulnerability Sphere and Beserk Pack: making you invincible and able to one-punch most enemies into gibs for a limited time.
I agree, Doom's berserk is just really fun, high risk, but high reward. Quake for instance should really have had a powerup like that so as to make the axe serve an actual purpose.
Painkiller (2004) had this mechanic, where if you collect enough souls you transform for a short time and use a powerful psychic blast instead of your guns. It's sad they did all the work for that beast mode only to give up. Really easy fixes would have been for the claw attacks to cause stunning and let the player lunge forward with the alt attack.
The presence of Doom sprites is likely placeholder art, but it is worth noting that Doom used the same method as Blood to create it's enemies: physical models that were photographed and then transfered to sprite form. To be honest, I find their presence even more interesting, as out of every Build engine game, Blood far and away was closest to capturing Doom's style, with marble encrusted levels and living dead/hellspawn as enemies.
They very much share that same horror movie craft quality with the monsters. The monsters in Blood are actually more consistent, just because they were all made in the same way by the same artist, whilst Doom's monsters were made in a variety of ways by three different artists.
It would be cool to see a modern boomer shooter with physical puppets used for sprites again. Always loved the look. Makes me think of Richard Corben art.
1:58 in the 2.5 years that I played Blood, UNTIL this moment I've ALWAYS heard this phrase as "DWANGO balls". Like some kind of magic spell or something
Awesome job! Love this kind of content that shows all the differences between the midway vision of the game and the finished product. As a little contribution, I'd like to mention that the "alternate death sprites" for the Gill Beast at 11:18 are indeed used in the final Blood version, it's just really difficult to see because it's their fire death animation and for some reason fire is really ineffective against them. Factor in also that, watched on real time, it's practically the same as the regular death animation and it's understandable if it goes unnoticed for most.
@@revenantevil a good place to experiment is Breeding Grounds (E4M2). There's a healthy supply of Gill Beasts just before the pool where you exit the level. You can herd them and use the flare pistol ALT to light 'em up. I just did that in Fresh Supply to make sure the sprites are still there and indeed they are. Happy Fish BBQ!
I know the voice actor Stephen Weyte in real life! Really nice guy, and a very prolific actor. He improvised a lot of the songs and one liners in the booth.
I messed around with the alpha for a bit back when it got "officially' released for lack of better terms. I was surprised by how far they came in development from it. Even a refined version of the alpha wouldn't shape up to something I would really want to play. Ditching the werewolf mode is certainly respectable; not every idea is going to be a winner.
@@revenantevil you 'll definitrly have a lot of content since shadow warrior's development is even better documented and radically different than Blood's and even Duke's
I love Blood. Throwing dynamite into hordes of zombies and blowing cultists away with a double barreled shotgun never gets old. What I like the most about the Blood alpha is probably the atmosphere. It's very dark and gothic even compared to retail. It's a shame that the series pretty much died with Blood 2. Hopefully someday we'll get a Blood sequel or a reboot of some sort. Until then there's always great fan projects like Death Wish, Marrow and the new What Lies Beneath.
Agreed. It's such a blast, I especially love the explosion physics. Our poor Build engine heroes are all sitting on a shelf waiting for their next games. Hopefully one day we will get something.
The scrapped zombie is actually mentioned in one of the text files included in the alpha, by this point it was already scrapped. It was initially a separate enemy from the axe zombie known as the Earth Zombie, and was meant to be the zombie that comes out of the ground while the other would be for ones already beyond the grave. The text file says something like “do we really need separate art for basically the same guy?”. Though, you can still see this zombie in the final game. He’s been reused as the chain hanging dangling zombie you see in some maps.
0:414:58 those are the scans I uploaded to transfusion forums around 10 years ago from polish video game magazine Secret Service - recently this shot was presented on discord in source quality
the shareware also has some sounds unused like "why are you in such a hurry, we have eternity to know your flesh" and a bunch of other sound clips some caleb unused sounds too
The "scrapped zombie" sprites where made by the community of fans, most specifically made by "Dzierzan" who Is a well known sprite/voxel artist in the scene
Oh you live again... I feel a step closer to Shadow Warrior beta now that you brought this, but again, if you plan to do Shadow Warrior, please, reach out to me, again it's all rather cryptic and not well enough documented, there is a lot for me to show and explain to you.
I heard somewhere that Life leach could heal you up by harming others, which it does in sequel whose name shall not be mentioned, in retail version I used it just as stationary since ammo for it is almost nonexistent I think they should've kept speargun aswell, it fits the atmosphere and maybe if spears were faster, stunlocked for longer, threw enemy far away even sticking them to walls, it could be a valuable lomg range weapon which Blood lacks that Voodoo altfire is more interesting than just spending all your ammo and doing less damage than primary combined I will forever miss pitchfork's fireball, would be iconic! Lastly, that beast mode could be fun to, imagine most enemies start to run away from you screaming and you get let's say 3 kills where you get animations of ripping them aparr in front of your face - that would be metal!
12:33 I still remember that animated scene at least I think it's animated. It doesn't resemble Caleb for some reason LOL. I also noticed in the game they have these mushrooms called "Shrink Shrooms" which sadly don't shrink you. Which I thought could have been an interesting mechanic. Maybe, you need to eat a shrink shroom to go through a hole in the wall for a secret. Or a zombie would squish you when you shrunk to that size. Maybe, even being able to put it in a gun and infect an enemy to shrink it than crush it.
How the ectoskull weapon is actually supposed to work, you can see in the weapon mod, as some of the guys from Monolith shared this information with us at the time.
Were-Michael could've been like Doom 4's Berserker Pack but then again, the game would be easy and the hard difficulty is part of what makes Blood a cult classic. Maybe if we ever get a third game...
There is source code but no assets for a few months after the beta in July 22, 1996 that got leaked like only a year ago by the people who leaked duke forever. It has code for voxels and stuff
I never got past level 3 BUT I have the unofficial Vita port and its great to play this game anywhere. Another crazy thing is the Minecraft Blood texture pack that includes some of the sound fx from the game
9:38 I think the reason they scrapped out the gargoyle statue change animation is due to bug… I used to play a shareware version of Blood (only contains 1st episode) and whenever i approached those statues that turns into gargoyle the whole Game freezed and make fatal error and send me back to DOS screen..it’s my assumption but yeah back then it was extremely annoying. Glad they get rid of that animation..!
Glad the Beast is seen as a final boss in Cryptic Passage, I can't take off the image of me dying and watching it's grey ass while I'm laying on the floor.
Blood is one of my favorite build engine horror game. The setting, enemies, weapons etc. Love the CD soundtrack a lot more than the midi. Glad to see the Blood Community still up and going. Playing the custom campaigns is fun. I wonder what other things were unused for the civilians and for both Plasma Pak and Cryptic Passage. Blood is one of those special games that makes horror come to life. Sad we never got a Blood movie or anything like that, yet it would be interesting to see
@Dr.W.Krueger I don't know about that but you have yo Admit Waiting for The End and Father Time were great tracks. I had to hear the midi soundtracks a lot while playing ZBlud (The poor man's Blood) mod for Doom 2. Dark Carnival was the loudest song on the CD soundtrack which would fit perfectly for a haunted house
The Doom sprites were 100% used as placeholders until the intended graphics were finished, I've seen that kind of thing done before with games of this era.
They also show up in corrdoor 8 alpha the build sequel to the horrible Wolfenstine 3D based game. Also softcore porn is surprisingly common in build betas
Corridor 8 from Capstone did that also.
@@MP-qq2js Yeah, that one comes to mind. That game had barely any work done to it before being cancelled, so one wonders what they'd have done for monsters.
Even Stalker used Quake 3 assets as placeholder
Heck it's done in games of the current era too.
Wish you could do the same with Shadow Warrior's unused and cut content and especially the unreleased Deadly Kiss expansion
Blood extra crispy implemented a bunch of these ideas ...the skinny zombie is there, the werewolf transformation is there, and a new enemy as well....
If I am not mistaken - skinny zombie is already included in original game. But in form of animated hanging corpse...
@@huru2guru you're right! I found the skinny zombie repurposed as a hanging zombie while researching for this video. I was very close to putting it in the video but just ran out of time unfortunately.
The development between Blood Alpha and the final build showcases the value of refinement really well.
Thank you for this! Blood is great, one of my favorite games ever. Many of alpha content was used in add-on, the name of which I, sadly, forgot. At least most of the bigger maps that made sense saving.
Blood extra crispy?
Blood: Plasma Pak, right? 'Unholy Rituals' was one of the alpha maps that were used for the add-on, packing it with enemies.
I love Spook Nukem!
"The beast" would have been a cool mechanic if it acted like a combination of Doom's Invulnerability Sphere and Beserk Pack: making you invincible and able to one-punch most enemies into gibs for a limited time.
I agree, Doom's berserk is just really fun, high risk, but high reward. Quake for instance should really have had a powerup like that so as to make the axe serve an actual purpose.
Painkiller (2004) had this mechanic, where if you collect enough souls you transform for a short time and use a powerful psychic blast instead of your guns.
It's sad they did all the work for that beast mode only to give up. Really easy fixes would have been for the claw attacks to cause stunning and let the player lunge forward with the alt attack.
Those alpha bone eel sprites seem to be less for burrowing out of the ground and more for leaping out of the water.
The presence of Doom sprites is likely placeholder art, but it is worth noting that Doom used the same method as Blood to create it's enemies: physical models that were photographed and then transfered to sprite form. To be honest, I find their presence even more interesting, as out of every Build engine game, Blood far and away was closest to capturing Doom's style, with marble encrusted levels and living dead/hellspawn as enemies.
They very much share that same horror movie craft quality with the monsters. The monsters in Blood are actually more consistent, just because they were all made in the same way by the same artist, whilst Doom's monsters were made in a variety of ways by three different artists.
It would be cool to see a modern boomer shooter with physical puppets used for sprites again. Always loved the look. Makes me think of Richard Corben art.
10:06 I imagine this would be the fish jumping out of the water and back in, letting you know where they are.
1:58 in the 2.5 years that I played Blood, UNTIL this moment I've ALWAYS heard this phrase as "DWANGO balls". Like some kind of magic spell or something
That's actually hilarious haha. I'm happy you learned something from the video! Thanks for watching :)
I think it's much more likely the fish were planned to jump out of the water than burrow in the ground.
yeah my bad, you're probably right on this one.
wow i really wish the gargoyles transitioned from statue to living gargoyle using that animatino
Awesome job! Love this kind of content that shows all the differences between the midway vision of the game and the finished product.
As a little contribution, I'd like to mention that the "alternate death sprites" for the Gill Beast at 11:18 are indeed used in the final Blood version, it's just really difficult to see because it's their fire death animation and for some reason fire is really ineffective against them. Factor in also that, watched on real time, it's practically the same as the regular death animation and it's understandable if it goes unnoticed for most.
Thanks for pointing this out! I will have to go burn some Gill beasts and see if I can spot these sprites. Cheers!
@@revenantevil a good place to experiment is Breeding Grounds (E4M2). There's a healthy supply of Gill Beasts just before the pool where you exit the level. You can herd them and use the flare pistol ALT to light 'em up. I just did that in Fresh Supply to make sure the sprites are still there and indeed they are. Happy Fish BBQ!
Can't wait too! Love the Build Engine stuff, and it made me pick up programming 20+ years ago.
I know the voice actor Stephen Weyte in real life! Really nice guy, and a very prolific actor. He improvised a lot of the songs and one liners in the booth.
I keep finding you in comments sections and I think that is neat. I love your fanmade trailers for movies that don't exist.
I actually used Doom sprites as test entities when I was working on a 3D engine. I used the cacodemon as a crude tester baddy AI as well.
I messed around with the alpha for a bit back when it got "officially' released for lack of better terms. I was surprised by how far they came in development from it. Even a refined version of the alpha wouldn't shape up to something I would really want to play. Ditching the werewolf mode is certainly respectable; not every idea is going to be a winner.
They put alot of work into refining blood and it shows.
Bro i fucking love you for doing this Video !!
One of my fav Games of all Time it doesnt get the flowers it deserves
You're welcome man! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Oh YES, a video bout BLOOD in Halloween, this PROMISES TO BE FUN!
I loved loved loved playing this game back then
great video _!!_
I love your in depth coverage of this. Please do something like this about Duke Nukem: Zero Hour!
they really need to bring Blood back in some way.
Hi Rev, nice to hear from you again. Would you also consider maling videos about Shadow Warrior Classic?
For sure! :)
@@revenantevil ah sweet. I'll see you at the première.
@@revenantevil you 'll definitrly have a lot of content since shadow warrior's development is even better documented and radically different than Blood's and even Duke's
Surely the diving bone eel sprites were intended for it to pop out the surface of waters they were infesting.
Awesome content Rev, as always
Cheers mate :)
I love Blood. Throwing dynamite into hordes of zombies and blowing cultists away with a double barreled shotgun never gets old. What I like the most about the Blood alpha is probably the atmosphere. It's very dark and gothic even compared to retail.
It's a shame that the series pretty much died with Blood 2. Hopefully someday we'll get a Blood sequel or a reboot of some sort. Until then there's always great fan projects like Death Wish, Marrow and the new What Lies Beneath.
Agreed. It's such a blast, I especially love the explosion physics.
Our poor Build engine heroes are all sitting on a shelf waiting for their next games. Hopefully one day we will get something.
Except Lo Wang, bizzarely.
@@grahamwilson4053truly, I am most perplexed that out of Build trinity, Shadow Warrior is doing best in recent times
I had no idea they used physical models for the graphics. Very cool.
The scrapped zombie is actually mentioned in one of the text files included in the alpha, by this point it was already scrapped. It was initially a separate enemy from the axe zombie known as the Earth Zombie, and was meant to be the zombie that comes out of the ground while the other would be for ones already beyond the grave. The text file says something like “do we really need separate art for basically the same guy?”. Though, you can still see this zombie in the final game. He’s been reused as the chain hanging dangling zombie you see in some maps.
0:41 4:58 those are the scans I uploaded to transfusion forums around 10 years ago from polish video game magazine Secret Service - recently this shot was presented on discord in source quality
Can you share that?
@@grahamwilson4053 look on tcrf wiki article about blood
this is amazing! blood is one of my all time favourite games!!
Thanks man!
the shareware also has some sounds unused like "why are you in such a hurry, we have eternity to know your flesh" and a bunch of other sound clips some caleb unused sounds too
This promises to be fun!
thanks :) I hope you enjoy!
Yep, you will enjoy 😊
I'm never ever going to unsee the zombie as a power ranger
Yes, please another Video about it. Maybe some info about the soundtrack, soundeffects or the voice acting? I love Blood. Almost perfect game.
Definately do a video about the level differences! Thank you!
My computer is struggling with these videos tbh but I'll definitely get it done eventually! Thanks for the comment!
The "scrapped zombie" sprites where made by the community of fans, most specifically made by "Dzierzan" who Is a well known sprite/voxel artist in the scene
It's strange that shotgun sprite in alpha looks better then in final Version
Oh you live again...
I feel a step closer to Shadow Warrior beta now that you brought this, but again, if you plan to do Shadow Warrior, please, reach out to me, again it's all rather cryptic and not well enough documented, there is a lot for me to show and explain to you.
You on the Duke4 Discord?
@@revenantevil No, i wasn't aware there really was one, but i just joined it now.
Blood I remember playing the hell out of the Demo game of this back in the day 😂
Great video man ❤
I heard somewhere that Life leach could heal you up by harming others, which it does in sequel whose name shall not be mentioned, in retail version I used it just as stationary since ammo for it is almost nonexistent
I think they should've kept speargun aswell, it fits the atmosphere and maybe if spears were faster, stunlocked for longer, threw enemy far away even sticking them to walls, it could be a valuable lomg range weapon which Blood lacks
that Voodoo altfire is more interesting than just spending all your ammo and doing less damage than primary combined
I will forever miss pitchfork's fireball, would be iconic!
Lastly, that beast mode could be fun to, imagine most enemies start to run away from you screaming and you get let's say 3 kills where you get animations of ripping them aparr in front of your face - that would be metal!
12:33 I still remember that animated scene at least I think it's animated. It doesn't resemble Caleb for some reason LOL. I also noticed in the game they have these mushrooms called "Shrink Shrooms" which sadly don't shrink you. Which I thought could have been an interesting mechanic. Maybe, you need to eat a shrink shroom to go through a hole in the wall for a secret. Or a zombie would squish you when you shrunk to that size.
Maybe, even being able to put it in a gun and infect an enemy to shrink it than crush it.
How the ectoskull weapon is actually supposed to work, you can see in the weapon mod, as some of the guys from Monolith shared this information with us at the time.
great video!
Thanks :)
the voodoo doll has unused sprites in the shareware of the voodoo doll falling apart too
7:41 That sprite actually appears in the final game. It’s on the Dark Carnival level.
Can't wait for more Blood Alpha content 😊
Awesome!
Ususual sprites
Were-Michael could've been like Doom 4's Berserker Pack but then again, the game would be easy and the hard difficulty is part of what makes Blood a cult classic. Maybe if we ever get a third game...
I wish Nightdive would upgrade their older remasters like Blood, and Turok 1&2
there is also unused alpha bloated butcher fire sprites of him burning to a skeleton
There is source code but no assets for a few months after the beta in July 22, 1996 that got leaked like only a year ago by the people who leaked duke forever. It has code for voxels and stuff
I still have yet to beat this game, it's hard af!!
I never got past level 3 BUT I have the unofficial Vita port and its great to play this game anywhere. Another crazy thing is the Minecraft Blood texture pack that includes some of the sound fx from the game
More BLOOD please!!
9:38 I think the reason they scrapped out the gargoyle statue change animation is due to bug… I used to play a shareware version of Blood (only contains 1st episode) and whenever i approached those statues that turns into gargoyle the whole Game freezed and make fatal error and send me back to DOS screen..it’s my assumption but yeah back then it was extremely annoying. Glad they get rid of that animation..!
I love this game
great game 🤩🤩
Where do the sounds come from?
12:17 For the sake of research, huh?
Melee werewolf mode would have been amazing. Sadly melee in older shooters usually sucked
Love the game a lot!
ohhhh CUT content? blood? get it? hahaaaa…
10:22 I actually got scared lol
Wait! You're not Civvie!
Glad the Beast is seen as a final boss in Cryptic Passage, I can't take off the image of me dying and watching it's grey ass while I'm laying on the floor.
Blood is one of my favorite build engine horror game. The setting, enemies, weapons etc. Love the CD soundtrack a lot more than the midi. Glad to see the Blood Community still up and going. Playing the custom campaigns is fun. I wonder what other things were unused for the civilians and for both Plasma Pak and Cryptic Passage. Blood is one of those special games that makes horror come to life. Sad we never got a Blood movie or anything like that, yet it would be interesting to see
The CDDA tracks were overproduced cr*p. Don't fit the game very well.
@Dr.W.Krueger I don't know about that but you have yo Admit Waiting for The End and Father Time were great tracks. I had to hear the midi soundtracks a lot while playing ZBlud (The poor man's Blood) mod for Doom 2. Dark Carnival was the loudest song on the CD soundtrack which would fit perfectly for a haunted house
Blood is still really fun to play and my favorite of the Build engine games. Duke3d comes close though.
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AOOOOOW!