REDUX CRUO mod for Blood 2: The Chosen

Greetings, Bloodites!

First of all a heartfelt thank you for all your comments and overall continued support! It's been a joy to see there's still interest in Blood 2 and this project. It really means a lot, so again - thank you!

A lot of work has gone in the past weeks (summers in Finland can get...rainy)!
Progress has been so good in fact that I'm now confident to announce a release date for the first version.
Blood 2 was released October 31st, 1998 (24 years already, yikes!) so it feels fitting for REDUX CRUO v1.0 to drop Halloween 2022.

I'm calling it v1.0 as there are things that likely won't make the deadline. For example trying to improve the level textures in any way has proven to be very time consuming, for several reasons. Still - there are are several improvements in the current build already when it comes to audio, animations and overall gameplay feel.

Here's a list of things you can look forward to in v1.0 (most of these are already in, and there will be more):

Weapons:
- Faster weapon switch
- All new weapon-specific unholster SFX
- Retouched the fire rate of some of the weapons
- Adjusted weapon animations to get rid of the akimbo weapons firing at the exact same time
- All new or retouched weapon fire sounds
- Retouched the weapon placement to avoid having them cover the view too much
- All new explosion SFX
- Removed the long variant of the normal knife attack

Enemies/NPCs/Player characters:
Fanatic:
- Cleaned up and color corrected the Fanatic skins with minor changes to some of the character details
- Updated model collisions for better AI pathfinding
- Clipped and retouched the speed of the animations (faster and more aggressive AI reactions, less "dead time" before/after animations, no unrealistic slow animations)
- Replaced some of the more basic death animations with more dynamic ones for added dramatic feel
- Changed the walking animation length to match the character movement speed in-game
- Added reverb to screams, slight room tone adjustment to all voice lines
- Removed custom limb gibs (they had the tendency to stick to walls and simply vanished when damaged, which did not look good)
- Additional sounds for specific animations - for example now the Fanatics keep screaming/groaning as trhey're rolling on the floor, dying
- Added SFX when the Fanatic performs an evasive roll
- Replaced some of the longer voice lines with shorter ones
- Added a new idle SFX - Fanatics breathing inside their gas masks
- Reduced voice line repetition (a voice line was played every time the enemy attacked, which was too much)
- All new foostep SFX
- All new body fall SFX
- Added and syncronized footstep SFX to play during the death animations, whenever the character is stepping around

Soul Drudge:
- Cleaned up and color corrected the Soul Drudge skins with minor changes to some of the character details
- Updated model collisions for better AI pathfinding
- Increased the speed and clipped the animations (more reactive and aggressive AI, no awkward slow animations)
- Increased the speed of attack animations
- Replaced some of the basic death animations with more dynamic ones for added dramatic feel
- Changed the walking animation length to match the character movement speed in-game
- Removed custom limb gibs (they had the tendency to stick to walls and simply vanished when damaged, which did not look good)
- Replaced some of the death SFX with ones that weren't used before
- Added reverb to footsteps
- Added reverb to screams, slight room tone adjustment to all voice lines
- All new body fall SFX
- Added and syncronized footstep SFX to play during the death animations, whenever the character is stepping around

Drudge Lord:
- Cleaned up and color corrected the Drudge Lord skin with minor changes to some of the character details
- Updated model collisions for better AI pathfinding
- Increased the speed and clipped the animations (more reactive and aggressive AI, no awkward slow animations)
- Removed the long damage reaction animation that was making the enemy unreactive while it was playing
- All new blade attack SFX
- All new fireball attack SFX
- All new footstep SFX
- All new body fall SFX
- Added and syncronized footstep SFX to play during the death animations, whenever the character is stepping around
- Added reverb to screams, slight room tone adjustment to all voice lines

Shikari:
- Cleaned up and color corrected the Shikari skin with minor changes to some of the character details
- Updated model collisions for better AI pathfinding
- Increased the speed and clipped the animations (more reactive and aggressive AI, no awkward slow animations)
- Added reverb to screams, slight room tone adjustment to all voice lines
- Reduced the chance of the Shikari landing on your head when you're on the same level (currently this can still happen if they jump on you from above, but will try to tweak it more)
- Replaced some of the sounds with ones that weren't used before
- All new body fall SFX
- Added SFX to rolls
- Added SFX to jumps
- All new SFX for the spin attack

Zealot:
- Updated model collisions for better AI pathfinding
- Increased attack animation speed
- Removed the laugh SFX as they were being constantly repeated
- All new flame attack SFX
- All new bolt attack SFX
- All new healing spell SFX
- All new death SFX
- Added more electrical SFX to the "death explosion" event

NPCs:
- Cleaned up and color corrected the NPC skins (citizens, scientists etc.)
- Changed the walking animation length to match the character movement speed in-game
- All new body fall SFX
- Added and syncronized footstep SFX to play during the death animations, whenever the character is stepping around

Caleb:
- Cleaned up and colorized the Caleb skin for him to have a dark coat and overall appear closer to the Blood 1 version.
- Changed the walking animation length to match the character movement speed in-game
- Replaced some of the basic death animations with more dynamic ones for more dramatic feel
- Added body fall SFX for death animations
- Replaced the "getting weak" line with a generic damage reaction sound to avoid miscommunicating low health

Items/powerups:
- Retouched item/powerup pickup sounds for more oomph
- Upscaled and cleaned up item/powerup skins
- Corrected the weapon rotations to have them lie flat instead of floating upright
- Corrected the item/key/keycard rotations to have them lie flat instead of floating upright

Blood & gibs:
- All new blood decals
- Replaced vanilla gib s with bigger models with new skins
- New SFX for blood and gibs

Level props and textures:
- Upscaled and cleaned up skins for some of the level props (soda machines, signs etc.) - along with a color balancing and contrast improvement pass
- Upscaled and cleaned up some of the level texture sets - along with a color balancing and contrast improvement pass
- New replacements for some of the level textures for a more up-to-date look
- Retouched animation speeds for some of the animated props
- Removed SFX for some of the prop gibs (only one sound file was being used, leading to annoying repetition)

Level audio:
- All new ambient soundscapes in selected places
- Added "speaker" effect for audio sounding through speakers
- Retouched the audio in the cinematics (appropriate reverb for voice lines, more voice lines where they would fit, additional foley SFX to communicate what's happening on the screen and add more cinematic feel etc.)
- Adjusted volume of enviuronmental audio
- Added reverb to voice lines and SFX where appropriate

Interface:
- New "objectiveupdated" sound to replace the vanilla bell ding
- New game menu music
- Retouched game menu SFX (cleaned up, tweaked levels, added reverb)
- New game menu background
- Updated portraits of the Chosen for the level loading screens

II've definitely forgotten something, but this gives you a high-level look at what's to come. Before release I plan to improve the rest of the enemies (base Cultists and some of the enemies encountered later in the game - like the Behemoth etc.)

Last but not least - take a look at this quick weapons demonstration. My own favourite is tthe improved Life Leech :) Now it feells like the weapon it should have always been. Other things to note on the video: The retextured tree replacements, new level textures and new location ambience. Some crickets always give a place that warm and fuzzy Blood 1 feel...)



Later!
LaserGrilledTurkey