Hexen launched in GZDoom through Steam won't play title music FIX

[Sound The Horn]

This post started out as a call for help, but with some last-ditch experimenting, I've come across a temporary fix to the issue below. EDIT NOTE: This issue only happens when you keep Hexen.exe in the folder, as pointed out by PKr.

 

I've been going through my idtech1 games on Steam to launch them through Steam into GZDoom instead of using the DosBox installation that comes with them. For whatever reason, launching through Hexen: Beyond Heretic's library page causes Hexen's title music to not play. Every other track works, but not HEXEN.MUS.

 

I've tested the Hexen page launch with every other idtech1 game I own through Steam (doom.wad, doom2.wad, plutonia.wad, tnt.wad, and heretic.wad), and all their title music plays, just not Hexen. Because Hexen.wad and Hexdd.wad 1.1 share soundtracks, launching Hexdd.wad through Hexen's page still has no music, but launching Hexen.wad through Hexen: Deathkings's page plays the title music (and so does every other idtech1 game's page, for that matter).

 

The only clue is that the console shows "Unable to load : Unable to identify as music" after launching Hexen through Steam, but nothing else. It just seems that running Hexen.wad through app2360 breaks GZDoom's playback of hexen.mus, for absolutely no reason.

 

The fix for this is a little bit strange, but works 100%. After replacing DosBox in common\hexen\base with GZDoom as normal, go to Hexen's library page, and in Properties>General>Launch Options, type "-iwad hexen.wad -file hexen.wad game_widescreen_gfx.pk3"

 

I don't know why loading Hexen as a pwad into Hexen as an iwad works but it does. I also don't know why I spent so much time figuring this out, but hopefully it helps someone else and perhaps it'll be fixed in some update, whether it's by Valve or the ZDoom team, but this will have to do for now.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Sound The Horn
New information brought to light, needed clarification.

[PKr]

This made me curious, so I've checked it out myself. I have deleted everything from \SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Hexen\base folder except for hexen.wad, copied gzdoom there, and renamed gzdoom.exe to dosbox.exe. That's what I assumed you did. But the menu music was still playing normally.

 

So, then I have restored the contents of the base folder except for dosbox.exe, and simply moved gzdoom with renaming gzdoom.exe to dosbox.exe. This way the music stops playing in main menu indeed.

 

Long story short, it's hexen.exe being in the same folder as gzdoom.exe that's causing the issue. Delete the file and the music will play normally (or better yet delete everything except for hexen.wad). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Sound The Horn]

1 minute ago, PKr said:

It's hexen.exe being in the same folder as gzdoom.exe that's causing the issue. Delete the file and the music will play normally (or better yet delete everything except for hexen.wad). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I did not think of that, although I do leave all of (what I assume to be) the original game's files in the directory, in case I ever wanted to play them through my own installation of DosBox 0.74-3 with proper settings. Tested it with just "-iwad hexen.wad" in launch options and, sure enough, it works just fine. I suppose I should caveat that.

[PKr]

To be more precise, it's hexen.exe being in the same folder as gzdoom.exe (renamed to dosbox.exe), and the Steam's launch options that cause this issue.

 

For some reason, if you create a .bat file with just ".\base\dosbox.exe .\base\hexen.exe", this will break gzdoom's music playback. Interestingly enough it's only "hexen.exe" that's causing this problem. If you'll rename hexen.exe to anything else (for example "hexenn.exe") and try launching the game with ".\base\dosbox.exe .\base\hexenn.exe", it will work perfectly fine. 🤔🤔🤔