What is Blood and Gore, really?

What is Blood and Gore, really?

Blood and Gore – one of the more carnal aspects of this generally kid-friendly block game. Most of us know "gore" as those NPC sprite fragments that spawn and fade away shortly after killing most enemies. Gore adds to the flavor of the Terraria murder experience, playing a pivotal role in the satisfaction of mowing down hordes of goblins or sniping the last bit of life out of the Empress. But, what is Blood and Gore, really? What it is isn’t familiar to most Terrarians. It certainly isn’t a projectile like the arrows you shoot or minions you summon, nor is it an NPC like that Zombie or Slime over there, so what is it? Well, if you’ve watched my previous Dust video, you probably know where I’m going. Gore is its own type of entity in Terraria, with unique behavior, limits, and toggles. It’s certainly a non oft-talked about subject, even lacking a wiki page beyond the list of Gore IDs. So, in this video, let’s talk a bit about Gore, Blood, and the interesting nuances of the Blood and Gore setting. Blood and Gore, as a mechanic, is made of two things – Blood, and Gore, respectively. Blood, put simply, is basically just dust particles. It’s a particle effect. Dust IDs 5, 227, and 273 are considered to be types of "blood" for certain enemies. Whenever you hit a fleshy kind of enemy, blood particles will spawn, and when you kill them, blood will gush out too. That’s blood! Gores, meanwhile, are those big lumps of dismembered enemy that spawn after killing an enemy. Unlike Blood, Gore is its own unique type of object created for this purpose. Gore acts very similarly to dust particles, but it is scaled up to support much larger sprites, so it can be used for more than just particle generation. Blood dust particles and Gore objects are spawned upon killing most enemies as an effect. For example, when I kill this zombie, you can see the blood particles gushing out and the gore spawning on top. That’s Blood and Gore working in tandem! While Blood dust is a pretty small and insignificant flavor effect, the Gore object goes far beyond just enemy carnage. Gore is an incredibly versatile tool. It’s a essentially a sprite effect with custom behavior – basically like the Dust particle generator, but with larger sprites. As such, the Terraria devs use Gore for far more than its named purpose. It permeates pretty much every aspect of the game, in places you’d never imagine. For example, the Star Cannon. When you fire the Star Cannon, little yellow and blue stars appear in the pathway of the shooting stars. Those are gores – types 16 and 17 respectively. Confetti, like those from the Party Bullet and Confetti Gun, are also Gores (although some Confetti Dust is mixed in too). Bubbles from the Bubble Machine are gores, as are the water drips from underground lakes, pot fragments, the crowns of the Slime Princes, the falling leaves from trees on a windy day, the Cloud in a Bottle, Echo Mist, or the blue music notes coming out of an activated music box. Oh, and the shit coming out of a toilet is also gore. Before we end, we should also cover the Blood and Gore toggle setting. Internally called ChildSafety, whenever this setting is toggled off, any dust or gores not marked as "safe" will be replaced with clouds. All three "blood" dust particles are not marked safe – in fact, they are the only dust particles not marked safe – so with Blood and Gore toggled off, they are replaced with dust particle 16, or Clouds. There are a lot more unsafe gores, as pretty much any enemy carcass fragments are marked "unsafe", but they work much the same. When Blood and Gore is toggled off, any unsafe gores are randomly changed to type 11 – 13, which are the same clouds that come out of the Cloud in a Bottle, masking the effect. This part of the Blood and Gore toggle is fairly unremarkable, but what is more interesting is what gores are marked "safe" and which ones aren’t. Now, non-death gores like the ones we mentioned earlier are all marked "safe" as they are simply visual effects, but when it comes to death gores, what is and isn’t "safe" can sometimes seem a bit inconsistent. For example, mechanical object fragments are typically marked as "safe" gores because they aren’t bloody. Despite this, Retinazer and Spazmatism’s gores are not marked "safe", unlike the rest of the mechanical bosses. I guess those blood vessel wires were too much. Similarly, Santa-NK1’s face, carapace, and machine gun are are not considered "safe" gores, but his treads are, for some reason. This means if you kill Santa-NK1 with Blood and Gore toggled off, you get a bunch of shredded treads, but no body pieces. Looks quite strange. King Slime’s crown is considered a "safe" gore, but Queen Slime’s isn’t, even if both of them are equally tame and sparkly. All of Golem’s broken fragments are considered "safe" except for this single black fragment gore for some reason. I don’t even know what this is. Only the Skeleton Merchant’s bag is considered a "safe" gore, while his skull and bones aren’t, even though most of the time, other skeleton’s dismembered bony bits and skulls are considered "safe". And lastly, perhaps the most puzzling one. This is the Wall Creeper. I’m sure you’re all familiar with him. Wall Creeper legs and abdomens are considered "unsafe", which seems reasonable. After all, it is a spider, which can sometimes be a bit creepy. However, its big brother, the Black Recluse, which is basically the same enemy, has its legs and abdomens considered "safe". They do show up with Blood and Gore turned off. This one truly boggles the mind. Why is this different? Hell, I don’t know. Both of them are even next to each other in the Gore ID table. You think they’d be set the same way. Re-Logic, please fix. Hello! If you enjoyed this video, consider subscribing, as only a quarter of you are. Similar videos are on the left and right. Either way though, thank you for watching, and good day and good bye. See you next month, or something, I dunno.

What is Blood and Gore, really?
dust v2 -adventurer32
pointless and dead land: https://discord.com/invite/yJrCt9YFz5

icons in the video are discord emotes from the server made by v2sauce, a.k.a. corn
:terraheart:

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:02 [1] What is Blood and Gore?
1:08 [1] Blood: type of dust particle effect
1:27 [1] Gore: unique object class used for sprite effects (including gore)
1:46 [1] Blood and Gore in Tandem
1:59 [2] A deeper dive into Gore
2:23 [2] Non-“gore” uses of the Gore sprite effect
3:01 [3] What does the Blood and Gore toggle do?
3:41 [3] Inconsistencies in my gore designations? Impossible!
5:29 Outro

Music:
Terraria – Crimson
Terraria – Corruption

Mods and Packs:
Foundry & Alchemy (Pack) – https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2440505684
Stanberry Font (Pack) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2559652586
Stormdark UI (Pack) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2448259079
DragonLens (Cheat Mod) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2939737748
Better Zoom (QoL) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2562953970
Character Stats (QoL) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3033200611

What is Blood and Gore, really?