|
|
I would like to ask everyone to say a prayer tonight for Blood. No, I'm not talking about jihads, vengeance or vendettas.
There are all sorts of gamers out there... casual to hardcore, with lots of variations in between. There is a subset of hardcore gamers who keep a special place in their hearts for old games. Games made for DOS. There is a collection of classic games that stretches from about 1992, when Wolfenstein 3D was released by id, to about 1998 or so. A handful of games were created in this span of time that somehow became ageless, in the sense that they are still fun to play today, regardless of their relatively poor graphics (as compared to a typical 2009 3D game). In a few cases, the creators of these older games decided at some point to make the source code open to everyone to use for non-commercial purposes. This unselfish and highly intelligent decision paved the way for all kinds of ports of these older games to newer, more graphically impressive engines. The list grows a little more each year, but the current list of porting and retexturing projects is inspiring. A few of the more high profile projects are: The Doomsday Engine, which specializes in Doom engine ports, such as Doom, Doom II, Heretic and Hexen: http://dengine.net/ Risen 3D, which is an advanced version of the Doomsday port: http://risen3d.drdteam.org/ EDuke32, which allows play of the original Duke Nukem 3D, with many advanced features, including support for TCP/IP multiplayer, which the original game did not have: http://www.eduke32.com/ The Duke Nukem High Resolution Pack, which can be used in conjunction with EDuke32, to play with more updated graphics: http://hrp.duke4.net/ There are other projects, but what I'm trying to get across here is that there are many talented fans of these old games out there who would love nothing more than to get their hands on the original source code and create updated versions. These fans don't collect any money for their efforts. The wonderful results of their hard work are all freely downloadable to anyone who wants to enjoy these awesome old games with updated graphics. Back to the title of this blog entry. Ken Silverman created the Build Engine, which was used to create the famous Duke Nukem 3D, as well as a few other memorable games, such as Redneck Rampage, Witchhaven, Shadow Warrior, Powerslave and even William Shatner's Tek War. Silverman followed in John Carmack's (of id software) footsteps, and released the source code to the Build Engine, which made all the updated Duke Nukem 3D ports possible. But the game that sprang from the Build Engine and has become legendary in its status, is a game called Blood. Duke Nukem 3D was more well known, and sold more copies, but Blood has lived on tenaciously in many gamer's hearts, producing nostalgia and melancholy. Why so sad? Because for reasons entirely unknown, Atari will not release the source code. Despite the facts that Blood 2's (Blood's sequel) source code was already released, and the age of Blood's source code insures that there are no "secrets" to be lost if it was released, Atari refuses to allow this source code to be shared by the fans. Blood was never reprinted, so Atari makes zero dollars on it. The source code simply gathers dust in Atari's archives. I recently discovered a website that sprang up with a public petition to Atari to release the Blood source code. It can be found at: http://www.petitiononline.com/bloodsrc/petition.html You can sign the petition, and view the current signatures as well. To date there are 1,569 signatures. Mine is the 1,569th, as I signed it right before I wrote this blog entry. That's 1,569 people who have found and actually signed a public petition. Who knows how many more people would truly love to play an updated version of Blood, but just aren't aware of the petition? Blood cannot be played natively on any operating system past Windows ME, which very few people use anymore, as Microsoft has so mercenarily decided to end support for it. XP, still the most popular version of Windows (despite the craptastic Vista and fledgling "7"), is not able to play Blood without a lot of tinkering, or the use of DOSBox, an excellent DOS emulator that still doesn't quite play the game as seamlessly as it originally played. There is an attempt being made to remake Blood for the open source Quake 1 engine, called Transfusion: http://www.transfusion-game.com/ Transfusion has the blessing of those who own the copyright to the original Blood game (Atari only possesses the source code). However, after a long period of time, only multiplayer is available, with the single player game nowhere in sight. You can't blame the Transfusion people; it's just too much work to recreate an entire game from the ground up, down to every detail, instead of just porting source code. There are people who have suggested to Atari that they release Blood on the Steam network, as other game companies have done with their old DOS titles. They could even garner some revenue in that fashion. One has to wonder how Atari, a venerated game company, could possibly ignore the obvious popularity of this game. I mean, they're not even bothering to license it to Steam and make a few bucks. This makes zero sense. If the game is not on Atari's radar at all, then what's stopping the release of the code? Furthermore, all the free and downloadable ports I mentioned earlier still require the original game files; to play them, you need to already own the original games. In this fashion, if Atari wanted to make even more money, the release of the source code would guarantee the creation of new ports, requiring those who didn't already own Blood to purchase a copy, thus generating even more revenue for Atari. So come on, let's start making some sense here. Atari, stop being jerks and do the right thing. |