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GOG have now made Blood: One Unit Whole Blood Linux compatible on their store using DOSBox. It's an old sadistic FPS, and I took a quick look.
About Blood (Official)
You carved your soul to shreds in servitude to a dark god, but false promises and betrayal were your only reward. Now you have a score to settle and it will be measured in blood! Experience the madness in one carnage-soaked package! All the gore, all the unholy war! Zombies, gargoyles, hellhounds and blood-crazed hordes of horrors await! Crush loathsome evil of the mighty Tchernobog! Or condemn yourself to eternal damnation in this leviathan of unhallowed gaming action!
Includes the original Blood and addons: Plasma Pak and Cryptic Passage
Various, often crazy weapon types like a pitchfork, flare gun or a Voodoo doll
A grim atmosphere with an abundance of graphical violence, offset by dark humor and cheesy one-liners
I’ve tested it out as usual for you! Thanks again to GOG for supplying a key to make sure it’s in working order.
Some thoughts
It’s another rather retro release for us, and a popular one too.
As usual GOG has it nicely setup with DOSBox so you don’t really need to adjust anything, I’ve tested what I can and it seems to all work pretty nicely without any issues.
The control scheme is pretty bad though, and shows hold old the game is! It does play very similar to the old Duke Nukem games, but looking up what people think about it, the experience is quite different.
I haven’t been able to get very far, as even on the lower difficulty level i seem to get my ass kicked pretty early on.
What I can tell you is that it’s grim, really bloody grim. There’s mutilated bodies everywhere, blood flowing, really creeping looking dudes coming after you, and to top it off it has really creepy music. The atmosphere in my opinion is far darker than Duke Nukem, so I am sure that will appeal to plenty of you.
Check out Blood: One Unit Whole Blood on GOG for Linux, and play a bit of gaming history. One to check out for FPS fans of retro games that’s for sure. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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20 comments
Full Disclaimer: I am the co-founder and head moderator of the Blood Wiki.
http://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php/Main_Page
So of course I am going to bristle a bit at the suggestion that the "control scheme is pretty bad". For what the game is and how it plays the control scheme is perfectly suitable, you just have to break out of the mouselook paradigm ingrained in your head by playing too many modern shooters. Same thing with the difficulty curve. Blood does take some investment, but if you do take the time to take it seriously it really does deserves its place as one of the greatest shooter games of all time. It is better than Duke Nukem.
Honestly though, I am still a little surprised that it showed up for Linux, considering how difficult it was to get Blood onto GOG.com in the first place.
http://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php/Main_Page
So of course I am going to bristle a bit at the suggestion that the "control scheme is pretty bad". For what the game is and how it plays the control scheme is perfectly suitable, you just have to break out of the mouselook paradigm ingrained in your head by playing too many modern shooters. Same thing with the difficulty curve. Blood does take some investment, but if you do take the time to take it seriously it really does deserves its place as one of the greatest shooter games of all time. It is better than Duke Nukem.
Honestly though, I am still a little surprised that it showed up for Linux, considering how difficult it was to get Blood onto GOG.com in the first place.
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For what the game is and how it plays the control scheme is perfectly suitable, you just have to break out of the mouselook paradigm ingrained in your head by playing too many modern shooters.
So, does that mean there is no proper mouse look support? If that is the case, it is a huge shame. Cause unlike Doom 1 (not 2), Blood has many vertical enemy placement which required precise mouse look to kill; at least for my gaming style... I played BloodCM (eDuke32 port) for a while; it perfectly recreates original Blood with proper mouse look and widecreen support.
http://m210.duke4.net/
http://www.moddb.com/games/bloodcm
I cannot even play Star Wars: Dark Forces because of lack of vertical mouse look support...
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Crazy Penguin May 19, 2015
I've been waiting for this. :D
Honestly though, I am still a little surprised that it showed up for Linux, considering how difficult it was to get Blood onto GOG.com in the first place.
Why? All DOS-Games from GOG working fine on Linux, after some smaller adjustments to the DOSbox config file. Or if you are lazy run it with wine *cough*.
I'm only surprised that they haven't rebundled all DOS Games yet. As they work fine on Linux with DOSbox too.
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I've been waiting for this. :D
Honestly though, I am still a little surprised that it showed up for Linux, considering how difficult it was to get Blood onto GOG.com in the first place.
Why? All DOS-Games from GOG working fine on Linux, after some smaller adjustments to the DOSbox config file. Or if you are lazy run it with wine *cough*.
I'm only surprised that they haven't rebundled all DOS Games yet. As they work fine on Linux with DOSbox too.
Because, if it were merely a matter of technical matters, GOG would have most of their catalogue on Linux, either via DOSBox or Wine, by now. (After all, they have no problem making Wine bundles for OSX and they demo'd proof of concept by making Wine-based Linux releases for Flatout and Flatout 2.)
It's standard practice for publishers' lawyers to explicitly list what is allowed in a contract with a company like GOG so they can't be unpleasantly surprised. That means that GOG can't release anything for Linux until they renegotiate the contract to add "and Linux" to the list of allowed platforms.
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I sure love Blood, such a great classic FPS! Nice to see official support for it rather than the pain of doing it yourself.
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Cyba.Cowboy May 19, 2015
In an attempt to "grab headlines", GOG.com made such a big song-and-dance about supporting Linux-based operating systems a while back... And yeah, they hit the 100 games they claimed they would offer.
But the trickle of games since has been just that - a trickle.
I had high hope of GOG.com, considering I've been a happy customer since the start... But I take their claims of enthusiasm for Linux-based operating systems with a grain of salt.
But the trickle of games since has been just that - a trickle.
I had high hope of GOG.com, considering I've been a happy customer since the start... But I take their claims of enthusiasm for Linux-based operating systems with a grain of salt.
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In an attempt to "grab headlines", GOG.com made such a big song-and-dance about supporting Linux-based operating systems a while back... And yeah, they hit the 100 games they claimed they would offer.
But the trickle of games since has been just that - a trickle.
I had high hope of GOG.com, considering I've been a happy customer since the start... But I take their claims of enthusiasm for Linux-based operating systems with a grain of salt.
It's not that bad, they had ~170 Linux games in January, and have about ~260 now (some of those 'games' are special edition upgrades, but I didn't want to go through and count them individually). That's 90 games in 5 month. More than 20% of their catalogue is on Linux.
My main gripe is that there are a number of games that have Linux versions on Steam but not on GOG. But in many cases, there doesn't seem to be much GOG can do. For example, I think Age of Wonders 3 developers (Triumph) said that managing different builds on GOG isn't currently feasible for them.
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In an attempt to "grab headlines", GOG.com made such a big song-and-dance about supporting Linux-based operating systems a while back... And yeah, they hit the 100 games they claimed they would offer.
But the trickle of games since has been just that - a trickle.
I had high hope of GOG.com, considering I've been a happy customer since the start... But I take their claims of enthusiasm for Linux-based operating systems with a grain of salt.
If the publishers are dragging their feet on authorizing an amendment to the contract to add Linux to the list of allowed distribution platforms or the indie developers aren't willing to let them use a port from a Humble Bundle, there's nothing they can do.
(Note things like Bastion where not even Humble Store is allowed to sell the DRM-free Humble Bundle build to new customers despite it already being in their CDN)
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was hoping more for a source release, like we have with doom, i mean, who doesn't want to see a new Brutal Blood mod?
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Avehicle7887 May 19, 2015
While this is good news, people shouldn't shy away from buying DOSBox based games on GOG if they don't have an official Linux package.
ssokolow already said it all so no need to add anything else :)
ssokolow already said it all so no need to add anything else :)
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So mixed feelings so far using the Linux tarball.
The good news: the game launches fine, with cutscenes and music, and seems faster than my own custom configuration.
The bad news: the CD Music tracks only play once and then stop, and it does not have a selection screen for Cryptic Passage like Shadow Warrior does for its expansions. It does not seem to provide me with any easy way of launching it.
The latter is actually pretty bad. I honestly was expecting better than this, based on my previous experiences with some of their other Build engine game wrappers.
The good news: the game launches fine, with cutscenes and music, and seems faster than my own custom configuration.
The bad news: the CD Music tracks only play once and then stop, and it does not have a selection screen for Cryptic Passage like Shadow Warrior does for its expansions. It does not seem to provide me with any easy way of launching it.
The latter is actually pretty bad. I honestly was expecting better than this, based on my previous experiences with some of their other Build engine game wrappers.
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and it does not have a selection screen for Cryptic Passage like Shadow Warrior does for its expansions. It does not seem to provide me with any easy way of launching it.
The latter is actually pretty bad. I honestly was expecting better than this, based on my previous experiences with some of their other Build engine game wrappers.
I tend to get mad at GOG games for defaulting to fullscreen mode, seemingly whenever I've just forgotten that they do that, (Openbox can't preserve window placements across resolution changes to save its life) but that's about the only complaint I generally have with them.
Everything that would be exposed via Start Menu icons on Windows is also exposed on Linux... the tarball just doesn't advertise it very well.
1. "./start.sh -h" will show you all of the sub-commands within a given game.
2. "./start.sh -a" will run Cryptic Passage (It's just listed as "addon" but it runs CRYPTIC.EXE)
3. GOG .deb files just unpack and run the undocumented "./start.sh --install-deb" command
4. There's nothing magic about "./start.sh --install-deb" and it should work on any distro.
5. The undocumented "./start.sh --uninstall" does remove everything "--install-deb" adds.
6. The command that gets installed to the PATH is just a "CD and run" wrapper for start.sh
7. start.sh is well structured. It's easy to use "shlex" from the Python stdlib to extract metadata.
8. It's not too difficult to programmatically rewrite and install their .desktop files with non-system-wide paths.
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(Note things like Bastion where not even Humble Store is allowed to sell the DRM-free Humble Bundle build to new customers despite it already being in their CDN)
That is quite interesting. Cause, I grabbed Bastion with one of the Humble Indie Bundles and now I have access to both Steam and DRM-Free versions of the game. But I guess that may be expected; DRM-Free GNU/Linux built of Metal Slug 3 was offered by one of the Humble Bundles and there is no way to buy either DRM-Free or the GNU/Linux version right now...
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That is quite interesting. Cause, I grabbed Bastion with one of the Humble Indie Bundles and now I have access to both Steam and DRM-Free versions of the game. But I guess that may be expected; DRM-Free GNU/Linux built of Metal Slug 3 was offered by one of the Humble Bundles and there is no way to buy either DRM-Free or the GNU/Linux version right now...
That's what I'm saying. Humble Bundle Inc. is allowed to offer the Bastion binaries to people who bought the Humble Bundle but they're not allowed to offer those same binaries to people who bought it after the bundle was over.
(So it's basically similar to those copies of Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics that GOG can allow me to redownload but isn't allowed to sell to new people.)
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Cyba.Cowboy May 19, 2015
If the publishers are dragging their feet on authorizing an amendment to the contract to add Linux to the list of allowed distribution platforms or the indie developers aren't willing to let them use a port from a Humble Bundle, there's nothing they can do.
The thing is, there are plenty of games available for Linux-based operating systems in other stores (such as Steam), but those same games are only available for Microsoft Windows-based operating systems on GOG.com...
I've contacted GOG.com at times and I get the same answer every time - "The publishers only allow us to sell this for Microsoft Windows-based computers".
But are GOG.com really trying?
You could argue that Vavle Software have a lot of buying power - but not talking about a handful of games, one or two publishers... We're talking about a lot of games and many different publishers, not to mention the fact that GOG.com is the smallest of stores out there.
I find it pretty unlikely that if GOG.com are really trying, they'd be so far behind with Linux releases... Particularly given that many of these are older titles that aren't going to fund a quarter of the staff christmas party, let alone make a publisher wealthy beyond their widest dreams.
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Sometimes publishers cause a delay (they don't care about old games much), sometimes developers are too busy (inXile only recently released Linux version of The Bard's Tale on GOG, while Windows one was there for a long time already). Plus GOG focuses more on the new releases, and backlog of already released games has lower priority. So it's coming when it's possible. But don't hesitate to remind them, they often explain the reason for delays.
For instance Metro Last Light didn't get the Linux version because Deep Silver didn't give it. And Deep Silver said it's still TBD.
For instance Metro Last Light didn't get the Linux version because Deep Silver didn't give it. And Deep Silver said it's still TBD.
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But are GOG.com really trying?
You could argue that Vavle Software have a lot of buying power - but not talking about a handful of games, one or two publishers... We're talking about a lot of games and many different publishers, not to mention the fact that GOG.com is the smallest of stores out there.
Keep in mind that, often, one of these two things is in play:
1. For the native ports, "Steam holds about 70% of our market and GOG won't accept our Steam builds. Making and bugfixing two Linux builds is too much work. We just won't let GOG sell it on Linux." (I can't remember where I got that number but I seem to remember various figures saying in the vicinity of 70%)
2. For older stuff, "Stop bugging us until the contract is up for renewal."
Also, at least in the case of Defender's Quest, GOG was the only significant non-Steam download store other than Steam. (Direct sales aren't a "store" and, last I heard, Kongregate didn't do downloads )
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Thanks for the information ssokolow. That does help alleviate the issue somewhat.
I have gone to the trouble of creating two distinct custom launchers for the GOG.com version. One is a command-line prompt using BASH and the other is a graphical launcher using Zenity.
http://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php/Installation#Custom_GOG.com_Launchers
I can't help but feel that I have been doing a lot of their own work for them though.
I have gone to the trouble of creating two distinct custom launchers for the GOG.com version. One is a command-line prompt using BASH and the other is a graphical launcher using Zenity.
http://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php/Installation#Custom_GOG.com_Launchers
I can't help but feel that I have been doing a lot of their own work for them though.
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I should also probably mention that we have a gallery of high quality Blood screamshots over at the Blood Wiki for anyone who wants take a more expansive look at the game:
http://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php/Blood_Screamshot_Gallery
http://www.blood-wiki.org/index.php/Blood_Screamshot_Gallery
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