XL Engine Merger and BloodXL Update

[luciusDXL]

I've posted another XL Engine merger update on the blog. While I'm working towards the merger in-general, some of the work was also Blood specific and I show screens of the current state of the Blood support. When the merger release happens, there will be more Blood support - including working levels, at least one enemy and weapon, surface palettes, etc.

[luciusDXL]

You'll be able to look around in BloodXL when the next release happens, but in the meantime I'll update this thread with WIP screenshots.

The first batch are from the latest blog post (see the first post), but I'll post even newer shots later today. I also put notes in italics talking about what I'm showing in the various screenshots.

Thumbnails are shown, click on the images to see the full size.


Shows off slopes, vertical adjoins (i.e. SOS or ROR) and per wall/floor/ceiling light values.


Texture scale and horizontal alignment is correct. Vertical alignment is sometimes correct (have to fix a bug).


More slopes and properly overlayed and working UI using the UI scripts.


Another vertical adjoin.


Again showing off slopes and texture scale and alignment.

[Panoptic Blur]

Very nice to see some external work on Blood!

A quick question though, to illuminate my ignorance... Is XL Engine a completely fan-made engine? Or have there been official commercial games released on it? I ask because I've never heard of it before and I wonder if it's because I missed an official release, or if it's a fan-made product.

[luciusDXL]

Its the engine I built to run certain types of old games. It started as DarkXL and DaggerXL but has become a single project with support for multiple games.

The engine uses the original data to reconstruct the original game behavior - basically like a source port but without the original source. This means that the engine will also support expansions and player mods as well as the original game content. But it also means that you still need the original game to play.

[luciusDXL]

More progress. I fixed some issues with vertical adjoins, turned all the "teleport" water (Duke Nukem 3D style water) into vertical adjoins with translucent surfaces (optional, can be displayed as opaque) and added support for the surface palettes. This will turn the grass and some of the leaves gray in the first level, make the water textures look blue, allow for yellowish lighting around light sources and so forth.


Vertical adjoin issues fixed.


Slopes and surface palettes.


Translucent water and sloped vertical adjoins.


The entire first part of this level is covered by translucent water.

Next up - proper sky textures, depth cueing/fog, sprites and voxel models.

[Daedolon]

I don't know why, but I still find there to be some minor palette mishaps. Maybe you should look into those before depth cueing and other stuff.

[luciusDXL]

I don't know why, but I still find there to be some minor palette mishaps. Maybe you should look into those before depth cueing and other stuff.

Thanks for the feedback, the more constructive feedback the better. I'll go over those areas in comparison to the original and make sure that the palettes are correct. Just to be sure, can you point out a case where you see a specific problem?

Also I realized that I have to fix some floor texture offset issues as well (second screenshot for example).

[luciusDXL]

Wall oriented and floor oriented sprites are now working. There are still some tweaking to make the light levels look correct and occasional sorting issue - but the oriented sprites are pretty much complete. Next up are camera oriented sprites, sprites with multiple sides (like enemies) and transparent/translucent adjoin textures (for things like the windows). And of course skies (which is pretty obvious looking at the last shot I'm sure).

After that I'll get to tweaking overall lighting/palettes and enabling depth cueing. I have a method that should allow the lighting to match the original pretty well even with OpenGL rendering. (There will be a software renderer later to allow for a more exact match if desired).

Click on the images to see the full size version.

[Le Babe]

Wow, it's looking awesome !

Still, I'm doubtful about the transluscent water. The effect looks nice but I don't think it's a good idea to have the water that transluscent since it would allow the player to see enemies underwater and thus prevent every trap a map maker can make in a way. Perhaps you should make it less transluscent so that the effect looks good but the vision isn't that clear.

[luciusDXL]

Thanks for the comments, Le Babe.

As for the translucent water, since it is an extended feature, you'll be able to disable the effect. It works well in the vanilla levels and is something that would probably have been enabled in the original game if it wasn't for engine limitations. They actually did create the same effect themselves using stacked sectors in some areas - but that only works in constrained circumstances (i.e. no complex shapes or "islands") - which means they couldn't use the effect universally. But I can see where it might be a problem in some user made levels like you mention.

Anyway I'd like to mention that any extended features that I add will be optional.

[Dimebog]

Please make it so that the water is translucent only where it used to be in the first place.

I am wondering whether your translucent water is not based on the sector stacking effect (as you will be implementing it for other purposes) and if not, does that mean that water sectors have to be built or placed in a different way?

[luciusDXL]

The translucent water works with either sector stacking - like the original did in some constrained cases - or optionally with teleport water. Sector stacking in the XL Engine doesn't have the same limitations as Build, so the shape or combination of sectors doesn't really matter.

As for the translucent water, as I said it's optional. If you want translucent water only where it existed in the original game that will be an option. It works well with the rest of the water in the original levels in my opinion, but like all extended features you're not forced to use it.

In other news: sky support and mask/translucent wall support.

[luciusDXL]

And finally the "camera oriented" sprites are working.

[wangho]

EXCELLENT! I'm glad that SOMEONE has finally come through for Blood to actually get this done after all this damn time. I'm sure this means that the perspective and scale on widescreen monitors is finally going to display Blood in a natural manner?

[luciusDXL]

Yes the XL Engine has proper widescreen support, it has worked on DarkXL for ages.

You'll also have the option of using the warped look up and down effect that the original used or normal perspective. The original effect has the advantage that it works well with the sprites whereas the later has less distortion.