Heretic and Hexen

[HavoX]

MaxED said:

It worked fine on my Win7 x64 PC, in 1080p. You just need to patch it.

Thanks, just what the doctor ordered! :D I'll keep it in hand should I ever decide to install the game again.

[Darklordrobert]

The first time I played Hexen was on the Playstation. I didn't really notice it was such a crappy port until I played it on the Nintendo 64. The Playstation version was slow, had one-sided monsters and I believe some levels were a bit simplified too. I still liked the game but the PC and Nintendo 64 versions are much better.

[Lila Feuer]

It was largely identical to the PC version save for one or two somewhat simplified areas architecture-wise. But yeah the lack of rotations and the fact all green chaos serpents were replaced by regular centaurs was a strange decision. The game also demands your entire memory card for one save game!

[Pencil of Doom]

The Saturn and PSX ports are garbage, stick to PC or N64 instead, the framerates on PSX and Saturn are awful, plus the fact that to save on PSX you have a memory card empty as it occupies the whole space.

[Master O]

Does Heretic, when run in DOS, have freelook? I know in modern source ports, it does. I'm merely curious.

[Gez]

Yes you can look up and down in vanilla Heretic. Though by default you have to use the page up and page keys, IIRC; binding view pitch change to "vertical" mouse movement wasn't the standard yet.

[Ichor]

But it doesn't have mouse look. You press a button to shift the view up or down or to center it, which worked well enough back then I suppose.

[xttl]

It is possible to have "Quake-style" mouselook in the original DOS versions of Heretic and Hexen via their external control driver API without modifying the executables and retaining demo/netgame compatibility. Looking up/down cannot be made as smooth as turning sideways due to limitations in the API and ticcmd format (ticcmds are what's recorded in demos or transmitted between players in netgames) but I think it's still better than having to use the separate keys.

Some time ago I made such an external driver for Heretic and Hexen, ravmouse.exe (source). It works pretty well, except sometimes when you change levels, die & respawn or start a new game, you might find that you can't look up or down fully anymore. In this case, move your mouse up or down enough in the direction opposite the way you can't look and it should start working again (if you can't look down after exiting a level, try moving your mouse up until you're looking as high as possible and then some more). Maybe I'll try to fix this some day if possible.

Place it into the same directory with Heretic or Hexen, disable the game's internal mouse support in setup and then run ravmouse instead of the game. Use -hs and -vs from the command line to adjust horizontal/vertical sensitivity (defaults are 70 and 2). ravmouse -? to see a few more options. Also, you can use -game to make it launch something else than "heretic" or "hexen", for example "ipxsetup" or "sersetup".

[Fonze]

That's pretty cool man; I'll have to look into it when I have the time!

[fraggle]

xttl said:

Some time ago I made such an external driver for Heretic and Hexen, ravmouse.exe (source).

Interesting - your links are broken though.

[xttl]

Well, I have no idea what's up with that because the links work for me. You'll get a 404 if you try to change http:// to https:// though so maybe that's the problem?

(edit: removed the source code dump from this post, I think it belongs to this thread if anywhere)

[Cerebrate64]

On a similar note, is the discussion of Build Engine games allowed? Like Duke3d, Shadow Warrior, or Redneck Rampage?

[Jon]

Cerebrate64 said:

On a similar note, is the discussion of Build Engine games allowed? Like Duke3d, Shadow Warrior, or Redneck Rampage?

Everything Goes in Everything Else

[Lila Feuer]

Just started going through Heretic again after 4-5 years, on the UV equivalent and blasted through episode 1. Game still holds up well, even if it is an easier, more gimmicky Doom. Hexen was definitely more realized and stood out like Strife did.

[Fonze]

Heretic was not meant to be played on Thou Art a Smite-Meister.

[Lila Feuer]

I take it back, it can get rough at times in the later episodes, thanks to the amount of projectile spam, just finished the second one. I find this game's maps are mostly solid all-round whereas some of Doom's can be weak (if we're talking D1). Great use of color, and the little touches like ambient sounds and a somewhat interactive environment flesh things out more than Doom's world.

[Master O]

Question for anyone who's played "Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel" in DosBox:

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=17083&p=121383&hilit=hexen+deathkings#p121383

According to the above thread, Linux has a weird issue with timestamps when attempting to install this add-on in Dosbox. Does Windows 7 have the same problem in Dosbox .74 or the later SVN builds?

Before anyone tells me to test it for myself in Windows 7, I do not own Deathkings, so I can't do that. I also already asked on Vogons, but no one would give me an answer there. I simply want to make sure I don't run into this issue after buying Deathkings.

[CapnClever]

I have the Hexen 1.0 CD version and I had no trouble patching it to 1.1 using DOSBox 0.74 on Windows, so I can confirm that there's no patching issue with that case specifically. Haven't tried Deathkings in DOSBox, though, so I can't say for sure it's sufficient to solve the issue.

[Gez]

The Deathking patch is minimal. As explained here, the only difference is the presence of a SNDINFO lump.

If you edit HEXDD.WAD in SLADE 3 (turn on IWAD editing by unchecking iwad_lock in advanced preferences), you can patch it manually in the unlikely case the patching program fails. Between MAPINFO and CLUS1MSG, add a lump, name it SNDINFO, and paste in it this content. Then if you want it to be exactly the same, add at the end eleven carriage returns (which pastebin cut off) until you reach line 409. Save the lump, save the wad, and verify the checksums if you want. It should be that of the 1.1 version.

[BuuBee]

I love Hexen! too bad there isn't a gameplay mod that isn't just a bad elderscrolls clone :C

[nxGangrel]

Hey! Two games that I have just started playing recently. (No, I've never finished any of the games)
I really like the series. Heretic one is actually my least favorite since it's too much like doom without much change. I'll tell you one thing though. I like Heretic's level design better than Doom's. (yeah I'm a Heretic, pun completely intended)

[HavoX]

nxGangrel said:

I'll tell you one thing though. I like Heretic's level design better than Doom's. (yeah I'm a Heretic, pun completely intended)

Welcome to my world :P

[Palax]

Speaking of Heretic level design... I'm going to show you guys my project:




This is actually a nostalgia level to guess what level from Heretic.
I included it in my own work in progress project: Heterodox.
It will be FPS much like the old Heretic/Hexen, but with better graphics, sounds, AI and whatever other domains I can master for this game in my spare time.
You can check it at http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=812064112
I also encourage you to vote it if you like it.
The engine that powers this project is Unreal Engine 4.
Tell me what you guys think.

[Fonze]

Sweet E1M1 goodness, that looks nice! I'll have to poke around that link a bit more when I get home.

[Doom64hunter]

Personally I really like Hexen and its sequel, but something about Heretic just feels off to me.

Something about the maps is really drab and boring, and I get sick of it just by playing the first episode alone. Maybe it's the textures, maybe it's the music. And the weapons also don't really feel very satisfying to use, much in contrast to those of Hexen.

It just has an overall taste of "meh" that's really hard for me to ignore.

[chungy]

Master O said:

Question for anyone who's played "Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel" in DosBox:

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=17083&p=121383&hilit=hexen+deathkings#p121383

According to the above thread, Linux has a weird issue with timestamps when attempting to install this add-on in Dosbox. Does Windows 7 have the same problem in Dosbox .74 or the later SVN builds?

Before anyone tells me to test it for myself in Windows 7, I do not own Deathkings, so I can't do that. I also already asked on Vogons, but no one would give me an answer there. I simply want to make sure I don't run into this issue after buying Deathkings.

DOSBox doesn't touch files' timestamps at all. All files are copied/installed with the current time, and that's whats messing up Hexen. NORMALLY, on a real DOS system (or emulators that implement it, like NTVDM and DOSEMU), the files will be installed with a 1995 timestamp. If you installed it in DOSBox right now, you'd get 2016.

[Vermil]

The HeXen 1.1 patch has always claimed an error for me, regarding the timestamp of, IIRC the readme file.

However, the patch installed correctly.

[jute]

I've been thinking about replaying Hexen. Are there any gameplay mods that incorporate enemies or items from Heretic (and/or Shadowcaster, I suppose) into the game? It's been ages since I played Hexen but I remember disliking how few weapons were available.

[BigDickBzzrak]

Palax said:

Tell me what you guys think.

If we wanted to find photographs of some castle, we'd google them ourselves
think about that

[Wagi]

Here's a fun little expirement that makes Heretic a little easier on the eyes -- Heretic's TINTTAB can be (ab)used to create super-sampled column and span drawing without having to resort to making a truecolor port. I expected a lot of artifacting due to the innacuracies involved but it actually doesn't look half bad.

BEFORE


AFTER