Hexen Rebalanced - A subtle balance mod for Hexen [Beta 7]

[ReaperAA]

5 hours ago, MaxRideWizardLord said:

Then I guess you never played that wad professionally. Try the archmage difficulty, the ripper was essential part of the weapon that allowed me to clean the whole map full of Reviers IF you manage to organize them well enough and carefully collect them up away from map's terrains, so one shot is enough to clean them all without it actually hitting a terrain or map's surface. Without rippers, they're just a stupid boring heat seeking rocket launchers that won't damage multiple enemies unless they are up close, which is already limits on how much you can hit\damage\kill. The ripper is also the only somewhat crowd control\big weapon of the mage that is meant to be for mass killing in slaughtermap-like HeXen mappacks. Besides, even in vanilla DOTDC the rippers are the necessity of the weapon if you want to use it effectively without actually runing out of ammo just after few Reviers clean ups; it feels as if in archmage difficulty the enemies also spawn more often, but I'm not sure about that.

 

I actually played it on Archmage difficulty (Skill 5) :p

 

Also enemies don't spawn more often on Skill 5. They have they same spawn time (enemies spawning every 4 minutes).

[Azuranc]

Somebody actually kills all the Reivers in Locus Requiescat? I always thought the intent of the excessive mob spawning in hexdd was to essentially time limit the maps. In that sense, also in the sense of a speedrunner, this mod is good. I can see vanilla Mage being better in some situations for a completionist run, however.

 

As for the mod itself, I suggest moving the brightmaps to a separate pk3 file. I don't think gzdoom has a toggle for brightmaps, and I don't play with them.

[ReaperAA]

5 minutes ago, Azuranc said:

As for the mod itself, I suggest moving the brightmaps to a separate pk3 file. I don't think gzdoom has a toggle for brightmaps, and I don't play with them.

 

There is a brightmap toggle at GZDoom startup. What happens if you disable that?

[Azuranc]

That only disables loading brightmaps.pk3, the one that comes with gzdoom.

[ReaperAA]

Just now, Azuranc said:

That only disables loading brightmaps.pk3, the one that comes with gzdoom.

 

Hmm. Okay I will consider providing an alternate non-brightmap version when I will release the next version of the mod.

 

For now, if you want to disable brighmaps, you can use SLADE to edit the .pk3 file. Delete the brightmaps folder and the hexndefs.bm from the pk3 file and you will be all set.

[Azuranc]

Already done, but I just renamed it to zip for editing :)

 

Ohh, the hud changes aren't documented, but that's minor, great mod imo!

[ReaperAA]

13 minutes ago, Azuranc said:

Ohh, the hud changes aren't documented, but that's minor, great mod imo!

 

By hud changes, do you mean the change to the statusbar? If so, those are part of the widescreen graphics which I have already documented/credited.

Quote

Graphics/Miscellaneous:
- Included Neoworm's widescreen friendly graphics.

 

[Azuranc]

Understood, I assumed that was only for the weapon gfx

[Azuranc]

I figured out the confusion for the status bar! "Neoworm's widescreen friendly graphics" uses the deprecated https://zdoom.org/wiki/SBARINFO . The new format is https://zdoom.org/wiki/ZScript_status_bars . By using the old format, it inherits the outdated fullscreen hud that is missing AC.

[NeoWorm]

I am pretty sure my widescreen patch included just graphics with correct offset since I don't know SBARINFO

Edited March 15, 2021 by NeoWorm

[ReaperAA]

39 minutes ago, Azuranc said:

I figured out the confusion for the status bar! "Neoworm's widescreen friendly graphics" uses the deprecated https://zdoom.org/wiki/SBARINFO . The new format is https://zdoom.org/wiki/ZScript_status_bars . By using the old format, it inherits the outdated fullscreen hud that is missing AC.

 

Actually Neoworm's widescreen graphics have nothing to do with SBARINFO. I implemented SBARINFO because when I modified (basically created new weapon actors that inherit from) quietus, wraithverge and bloodscourge, their weapon pieces also had to be modified (create new pieces that inherit from the originals). These new weapon pieces wouldn't show on the status bar unless I made a modified SBARINFO lump.

 

Now I know that GZDoom can use ZScript for that, but Zandronum can't. And my mod is Zandro compatible so that's why I am forced to use SBARINFO.

 

I will see if I can work around this.

[Azuranc]

It could also maybe be viewed as a bug in zdoom, if he updated the zscript fullscreen bars but not the sbarinfo, leaving sbarinfo in for compatibility.

[Lippeth]

Still enjoying this mod!

 

I'm not sure if you're interested but an issue I always had with Hexen was the mana pickup radius being way too precise. I doubled the radius in Tempered Arms and slightly raised the height to pickup mana more easily when flying over lava without getting hurt, and thought it might be an appropriate feature for this mod as well. Keep up the awesome work!

[ReaperAA]

9 hours ago, Lippeth said:

I'm not sure if you're interested but an issue I always had with Hexen was the mana pickup radius being way too precise. I doubled the radius in Tempered Arms and slightly raised the height to pickup mana more easily when flying over lava without getting hurt, and thought it might be an appropriate feature for this mod as well. Keep up the awesome work!

 

I can definitely consider this. It sounds like a good thing to experiment with.

 

Also I am gonna punch myself for not knowing that you also made a gameplay mod for Hexen. Definitely gonna check out Tempered Arms.

[Lippeth]

3 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

Also I am gonna punch myself for not knowing that you also made a gameplay mod for Hexen. Definitely gonna check out Tempered Arms.

 

It does seem like it flew under the radar, I'm terrible with the way I release things. Still I hope it's enjoyable! I just updated the link to 1.4.0, and planned to wait a while until after making a few more changes, but things like the mana pickup radius won't be in older versions, so I suppose it's as ready as ever.

 

I really enjoy using your modified bosses with Tempered Arms as well. Last I checked it was compatible with the main part of your mod as well but I've since changed everything to ZScript and haven't tried them together since then.

[Somniac]

Just took this mod for a spin with Shadows of Cronos (my favourite set of maps of HeXen) and this is very good work! Subtle but still makes enough of a difference to make the game feel fresh. Nice job.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Cool stuff. I love HeXen for it's incredibly grim atmosphere (one of the darkest and most surreal games ever in my opinion), but I have always found its gameplay/combat to be the weakest out of all the Doom engine games. Anything is an improvement!

[NotTheTime]

Is it worth using Modified_Bosses for Deathkings?

[ReaperAA]

15 minutes ago, NotTheTime said:

Is it worth using Modified_Bosses for Deathkings?

 

Sure it is. In Deathkings, the only changed monster will be the 2 Heresiarchs, which should play fine.

[Caco is PAIN]

Hello, is there a version of this that is available for vanilla/chocolate hexen? I’m not a particular fan of GZDoom and it would be great if there is.

[purplerihno83]

Gone are the days I have rely on Hexercise. Thanks for this. Would be cool to have a version compatible with Tempered Arms to reach the sweet spot of balance and new stuff.

Edited December 25, 2022 by purplerihno83

[liPillON]

somebody's posting about Tempered Arms in the wrong thread ;)

[Blast98]

How come Korax's HP still remains the same at 5000 even as the notes said his HP was increased?

Edited August 13, 2023 by Blast98

[ReaperAA]

5 hours ago, Blast98 said:

How come Korax's HP still remains the same at 5000 even as the notes said his HP was increased?

 

A bit of clarity. Korax's health is technically still at 5000. However his resistance against damage types/ weapons has been increased. So it basically "feels" as if Korax has much higher health.

This was done because normally increasing his health resulted in exit teleporter opening before he died. It opens when Korax loses 5000 hp.

 

[Red Recluse]

Corrective creative some mistakes and even improving the physics itself game compared to conventional. 

[Flytrap]

This is really good and very 'vanilla like'

In fact, i'd go as far as to say this is how hexen should have been like when it released.

 

For the sapphire wand, i really dont know.

For the bosses, the heresiarch seems to constantly want to have atleast 2 minions alive at any point now, not sure if thats a bad thing, and is very minion spawning happy.

Although im probably not going to use this because it makes the easy combat even easier

[Flytrap]

On 8/13/2023 at 8:44 PM, ReaperAA said:

 

A bit of clarity. Korax's health is technically still at 5000. However his resistance against damage types/ weapons has been increased. So it basically "feels" as if Korax has much higher health.

This was done because normally increasing his health resulted in exit teleporter opening before he died. It opens when Korax loses 5000 hp.

 

You should indicate that in the text file though.

[XanSaibot]

Hello.

 

I noticed that while using this mod and also using widescreen modes, such as https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=63863 or https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=51918 , status bar doesn't show collected segments of ultimate weapons. Am i doing something wrong or..? Just a minor issue, but still. I tested - and it definitely has something to do with your mod, since game shows segments just fine without it.

[ClumsyCryptid]

Does this rebalance prevent slaughtaurs from blocking damage from crushers as well?

[ReaperAA]

5 hours ago, Flytrap said:

You should indicate that in the text file though.

 

Hello there. Regarding the Korax's health, I agree. When I'll make the next version, I will add this bit in its readme.

 

5 hours ago, XanSaibot said:

Hello.

 

I noticed that while using this mod and also using widescreen modes, such as https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=63863 or https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=51918 , status bar doesn't show collected segments of ultimate weapons. Am i doing something wrong or..? Just a minor issue, but still. I tested - and it definitely has something to do with your mod, since game shows segments just fine without it.

 

It's an issue with my mod. Hopefully I would be able to fix it when I move the mod to ZScript.

 

3 hours ago, ClumsyCryptid said:

Does this rebalance prevent slaughtaurs from blocking damage from crushers as well?

 

Nope. The mod does make them hold their shield for far less duration though (from 45 tics in vanilla, down to 25 tics in my mod), which should make them much more likely to get caught by crushers with their shields down.

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by ReaperAA