Hexen: Edge of Chaos Update

[Caffeine Freak]

Ichor - all the remaining switches you need are IN and around the moat in front of the locked fortress.

Quasar - the main menu has a bit of a bug where the music sometimes doesn't play. I think hitting Escape usually resets it.

[Ichor]

Oh, so I guess I can fall down into that water. I thought it was instant death if you fell off, since there was all that fencing around the edges like with those cliffs.

[Caffeine Freak]

With the cliffs yes, with the water, no. I'm trying to think of what would make it more apparent that you can go down there without getting harmed(aside from there being an easy-to-miss ladder on one of the bridges.)

[Ichor]

Maybe a random, easy to see item like a crystal vial could be put down there to let people know that you can go down there without dying (else why would there be an item there in the first place?).

[Ichor]

Ok, I finished it, and except for that disappearing item bug and a couple of really vague puzzles, I quite liked it. There were lots of ettins, but they had variety of weapons, including tridents and scythes (longer range means it's harder to melee them without getting some damage). The afrit fireballs could do to be a little faster, as they aren't much of a threat now. Those jumping...whatevers can be a real pain because they can dodge your shots. A good idea is to shoot at them while they're in mid-air, since they can't dodge then. I noticed quite a few familiar textures there (steel doors around the port down, certain ceilings, that fortress near the end, etc.), but one thing did kind of bother me (probably because I've been playing Hexen for so long). The serpent staff uses 2 mana per shot instead of 1, which means I can't use it all very often before running out, and those gremlin things can really drain your ammo as they hop around dodging your shots.

[kristus]

The dog/gremlin/whatever is best take care of by backing away from them. They will charge you straight on and you can line up shots at them easily.

Though they will dodge if you try and fire consecutively. So you need to fire one shot and let the do their dodge, then fire another.


As for the moat, yeah I was very convinced that was instant death trap. Only reason I figured it out was because I was clambering the edges around that fortress trying to find the last of the 3 switches opening the bars behind said unknown door.

[Caffeine Freak]

The item suggestion for the moat is what I'll do. Simple and easy.

The dog thing (It's called a Hellion) has always annoyed me in that it's hitbox is off center somehow. And I remember bringing up the issue about the Serpent Staff a LONG time ago with the team, but I think it was pushed aside.

[Quasar]

OK I finished up the hub. Definitely a worthy use of some of my precious free time :) Can't wait to see what direction this takes in the future.

[Zeroth]

Quasar, And anyone having bad bugs -

you can email me the savegame file and an explanation of what the bug is or (preferably) how to repeat it once loading your save game. I can debug from there and hopefully squash these bugs for the next release.

hexen.eoc.team at gmail dot com

[Zeroth]

also, enemies don't have hit-boxes in doom3. you actually have to hit the model of the creature with your projectiles. I suppose a hit-box type dealie could be implemented because hellions (the 'dog' things) really are hard to hit..

[kristus]

Yeah, all you need to do is add a box around it and give it a different invisible material from the rest of the model.

[Quasar]

http://eternity.mancubus.net/pics/balance_issues.jpg
After a quick second playthrough, which was mostly quite a blast since I knew what to do, I have still to say the single biggest issue is balance. That's my total inventory in the pic, and I'm at the end of the game there. No flasks, no urns, and hadn't seen any of either for a very long time - and this was AFTER skipping absolutely everything unnecessary, and running from a large number of enemies during the return trip from the swamp and during the trip to/from the senate back to the tower. If I had stopped to fight any of those creatures I'd have been dead meat, no question about it.

Even Hexen 2, which I find a tough game, had more health pickups, so that's my advice - just add more flasks, urns, and vials, especially in the Upper Echelons and perhaps in the Port City. The Ravaged City is actually doing fairly well so long as you don't waste, IMO.

Mana is less of an issue but only if you never use any of it on Ettins. Just a few Hellions and Afrit can cause me to have to use up my entire supply, so I've found it necessary to always melee all Ettins, even ones with longer range weapons - which is one thing that contributes to some of what I'd call unavoidable health loss.

IMO it'd be nice if there were armor items other than the Dragonskin Bracers too.

[kristus]

I disagree. Once I turned off the Hellion pits (which I had turned on by accident as I had no idea what it was at the time) the game turned out to be very easy.

The Afrits only take two direct hits from the serpent staff and the hellions take 3. I did melee most of the ettins. But that was mostly because they were so easy to kill that way. Sometimes when there were many I would use flechettes or the serpent staff though.

At the end of my playthough I had a shitload of inventory left. For instance, two tomes of power that I never felt I had any use of. Several kraters of might and lots of flechettes etc. I think I had a few mystic urns too.

[Quasar]

kristus said:

I disagree. Once I turned off the Hellion pits (which I had turned on by accident as I had no idea what it was at the time) the game turned out to be very easy.

The Afrits only take two direct hits from the serpent staff and the hellions take 3. I did melee most of the ettins. But that was mostly because they were so easy to kill that way. Sometimes when there were many I would use flechettes or the serpent staff though.

At the end of my playthough I had a shitload of inventory left. For instance, two tomes of power that I never felt I had any use of. Several kraters of might and lots of flechettes etc. I think I had a few mystic urns too.

I guess you're just a lot better at it than I am then >_> I waste a lot of ammo on Afrits, but like I said, ammo wasn't a big problem for me on this second run (as you can see I had two kraters of might stored up that I didn't end up needing which would have went a long way). But I was totally drained on health to the point I had to use god mode to get back out of that tower - the arrow traps kept killing me no matter how careful I tried to be :< Every time I found a flask after the initial part of the swamp, I had need for using it immediately, so I never could build up a supply of them. I can't remember having that problem in either of the extant Hexen games, or even in Death Kings of the Dark Citadel, which is notoriously tough :P

And consider those games had some nasties far worse - brown Chaos Serpents, Slaughtaurs, and *grimace* Reivers. If this mod's gonna have any of those eventually, I dread the damage they'll be capable of x_x

[kristus]

I just ran past the arrows. I think I got hit by two arrows out of all the times I ran up and down those stairs.

[printz]

kristus said:

At the end of my playthough I had a shitload of inventory left. For instance, two tomes of power that I never felt I had any use of. Several kraters of might and lots of flechettes etc. I think I had a few mystic urns too.

This holds true for actual Hexen as well, especially on skills lower than 5.

[Quasar]

kristus said:

I just ran past the arrows. I think I got hit by two arrows out of all the times I ran up and down those stairs.

They can do 15 damage at least and I only had 29 health. 2 arrows == dead.

[kristus]

Yes but out of the maybe 10 times I ran up and down I got hit by two arrows in total. I just ran.

[Quasar]

kristus said:

Yes but out of the maybe 10 times I ran up and down I got hit by two arrows in total. I just ran.

Well, this is why I miss difficulty settings >_>

[ducon]

Just before going out in the first level, I got stuck between the walls and the stack.

[Quasar]

ducon said:

Just before going out in the first level, I got stuck between the walls and the stack.

You should make a screenshot and post it on their forum. That's what I did for a "secret world" I accidentally fell into, which they noted had already been fixed in their dev version.

Oddly they don't seem to be hanging around here ATM. :P

[printz]

It was all swell until those Prince-of-Persia-like ground spears near the Barracks keydoor insta-killed me :( I thought they'd just heavily damage me and that all.

There are a few bugs/imperfections in the game, but I'm assuming you don't intend to fix them at this point:

- barrel shards are mere paperthin meshes.
- the rotating doors are non-solid when open!
- fountain water is completely transparent, aside from having refraction, so it looks more like hot air than liquid
- the splash generated by you falling on water also looks odd. But kudos for making the footsteps consistent all around, and even adding a wet duration when out of water.

Except for that deathtrap, the mod looks lovely and takes good bits both from Hexen 1 (all that piece-of-puzzle thing, doors everywhere) and Doom 3 (the all-grievous mood, journals everywhere).

Do you plan on fixing the aforementioned aesthetic bugs and the admittedly poor sounds, or are they decisive?

[kristus]

That deathtrap is easy as pie to get by.

[Caffeine Freak]

printz said:
It was all swell until those Prince-of-Persia-like ground spears near the Barracks keydoor insta-killed me :( I thought they'd just heavily damage me and that all.

That trap is a joke. The spikes need to be re-scripted. Either that, or we'll just use something different.

- barrel shards are mere paperthin meshes.

I will bring this to the attention of the team.

- the rotating doors are non-solid when open!

Trust me, it was the best possible way to incorporate them. Those doors have been such a headache to work with, it's not even funny.

- fountain water is completely transparent, aside from having refraction, so it looks more like hot air than liquid

Indeed. Noted.

- the splash generated by you falling on water also looks odd. But kudos for making the footsteps consistent all around, and even adding a wet duration when out of water.

It's being worked on ATM.

Do you plan on fixing the aforementioned aesthetic bugs and the admittedly poor sounds, or are they decisive?

Not at all. We began fixing things on the day of release(I re-worked the bone puzzle probably within two days of our release), so we are taking all feedback into consideration. Expect a lot of fixes in the next release. (Which shouldn't take nearly as long, now that we have another half-dozen team members.)

[printz]

Caffeine Freak said:

Trust me, it was the best possible way to incorporate them. Those doors have been such a headache to work with, it's not even funny.

Is it feasible to do like in Wolfenstein 2009, to make the doors pushable in any direction, so that you're always pushing to open them? (unrealistic but acceptable)

[DenisNinja]

Wonderful mod, I'm looking forward to the final version.

[Caffeine Freak]

Not gonna happen. (Though I'm flattered you apparently think highly enough of this to bump an 8 1/2 year old thread. Seriously, how far did you have to dig?)

[printz]

On 4/14/2019 at 8:28 AM, Caffeine Freak said:

Not gonna happen. (Though I'm flattered you apparently think highly enough of this to bump an 8 1/2 year old thread. Seriously, how far did you have to dig?)

What? Are you saying this project is dead? In indefinite development hell? Was this cancelling announced anywhere? 

 

Why do so many Doom 3 projects get abandoned? So what if Doom 3 got superseded by Doom 4? We still play Doom 2 which itself got superseded by many id games... 

Edited April 22, 2019 by printz

[Caffeine Freak]

5 hours ago, printz said:

What? Are you saying this project is dead? In indefinite development hell? Was this cancelling announced anywhere? 

 

Why do so many Doom 3 projects get abandoned? So what if Doom 3 got superseded by Doom 4? We still play Doom 2 which itself got superseded by many id games... 

 

The project was never *officially* cancelled, and it was never announced anywhere, but at this point I'd assume most people came to that conclusion, after more than three years with no updates. 

 

And it has nothing to do with Doom 3 being superseded by 4, or the Doom series in general. (We long ago converted our internal EOC build to standalone with the D3 GPL release, so Doom 3 wasn't a factor at all, even if we were to do another release.)

 

The project halting had more to do with the fact that everybody gradually left, one by one. And when I say 'everybody', I mean every single person aside from myself and deadite, who was hosting the build and website. The project attracted a fresh batch of attention and talent with our demo release in November 2010, and we made some good progress for a while. Most of the new talent ended up being on the project for less than a year. They would do some work, add a few things to the project, and leave after maybe a max of six months. Which was fine, that's basically what you deal with in the modding world. We also had a (not peaceful, but needed) transition of ownership of the project from BR to deadite at the end of 2011. Anyway, coders and artists would join the project(also an awesome musician named MysticRealmz), but at the end of the day, I was still doing the majority of the map work. We had 4 additional maps planned for the second release, and as time went by and more mappers either departed or failed to commit any usable level work, I took on more and more responsibility for the levels, until we reached the point (I wanna say in late 2012 or maybe sometime in 2013) where I was in charge of ALL of the maps. That's seven maps total, when you count the stuff that needed to be revised on the first release. Keep in mind, I was working on Phobos as well, which I had joined in mid-2010, so it wasn't as though EOC was all I had on my plate. I seem to remember that by mid-2014, the team was down to myself, deadite, and a badass coder named Calavera. That was it. And I'm pretty sure that by the end of 2014, Calavera had left as well. I kept working on the project more or less on my own for another couple years.

 

Here's the thing, though: the more skilled I became in design over the years, the more I realized how generally dissatisfied I was with so much of what was in the demo release. And that didn't just apply to level design, either. There was so many things about the monster animations and designs that I wanted to change but couldn't, simply because I'm not a creature modeller/animator. The weapons also needed to be entirely re-done, as they were egregiously over the reasonable limits of the engine. That was beyond me as well. With where I was in my design abilities back in 2010, I was fine with many of the things in our demo. Seven years later, hell no. But a lot of it was stuff I couldn't change. With all that in mind, coupled with the other things I had on my plate, I made a conscious decision sometime in 2017 to simply call it quits.

 

So there you have it. I realize maybe you didn't ask for this detailed of an explanation, but it occurred to me that I don't think I've ever said publicly what happened, so I figured why not now.

Edited April 22, 2019 by Caffeine Freak

[printz]

3 hours ago, Caffeine Freak said:

Here's the thing, though: the more skilled I became in design over the years, the more I realized how generally dissatisfied I was with so much of what was in the demo release. And that didn't just apply to level design, either. There was so many things about the monster animations and designs that I wanted to change but couldn't, simply because I'm not a creature modeller/animator. The weapons also needed to be entirely re-done, as they were egregiously over the reasonable limits of the engine. That was beyond me as well. With where I was in my design abilities back in 2010, I was fine with many of the things in our demo. Seven years later, hell no. But a lot of it was stuff I couldn't change. With all that in mind, coupled with the other things I had on my plate, I made a conscious decision sometime in 2017 to simply call it quits.

When I played the demo (and stopped as soon as I was instakilled), my impression was that it tried too much to reproduce Hexen 1, instead of being something original standing out by itself (but still based on Hexen), like how Hexen 2 is to Hexen 1. A cool mod idea -- or why not a COMPLETE GAME idea -- would be making a fantasy mod of Doom 3 (or whatever) with similar themes as Heretic/Hexen.

Edited April 22, 2019 by printz