Poll of the Day > Been playing Hexen...

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sahuagin posted...

generally don't really like quake engine games in general though.

I feel the same way about the Unreal engine... everything looks like a terrible potato-marshmallow if not done perfectly

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i ought to play Hexen since I love build engine type FPS games like blood, shadow warrior, and Duke Nukem.

I need to also play Ion Maiden, Dusk, Amid Evil, WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, and Prodeus.

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deoxxys posted...

i ought to play Hexen since I love build engine type FPS games like blood, shadow warrior, and Duke Nukem.

I need to also play Ion Maiden, Dusk, Amid Evil, WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, and Prodeus.

ever try the original alone in the dark and jack in the dark?

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VioletMassacre posted...

Sounds rough. Is this on normal difficulty? Because if I remember correctly the harder difficulties add lots of enemies.

I think Hexen is almost too nice with the reach of melee attacks, it's something I thought about even as a kid.

Yeah I played both Hexen and Deathkings on the equivalent to "Ultra Violence" in Doom.

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Currently doing a Priest run on the default difficulty (the middle one).

Hexen also did something smart with the difficulty settings; on higher difficulties weapons are placed in different places, and unlike doom - monster that respawn don't always respawn as themselves, they can respawn as a basic Ettin instead.

I missed a few secrets already 'cuz I forgot you can jump in Hexen.

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Also, not sure if it's just ZDoom, but the particle effects in Hexen are exceptional! All the little fireballs and stuff have a lot of, idk, personality? to them

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BlazeAndBlade posted...

ever try the original alone in the dark 1&2 and jack in the dark?

No, cant say I have.

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papercup posted...

Like fighting spiders is annoying

You can kill spiders by jumping up and down on them. Makes a very satisfying noise too.

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Ok, Hexen damage

Yes, Iceshards does have an alternate melee attack.

For reference, the damage I have is based on Fighter Punches, which do 40~50 damage, with the 3rd punch dealing 80~100 (so it's a 2punch).

Iceshards, by comparison, does about 7 damage per shard... pitiful. BUT, the melee attack deals 90~100, so ice in melee is about equal to the Fighter's 3rd punch. Likewise, if the fighter is using the Axe, he does about 35~50 damage if he has no mana, or about as much as a regular punch... and 80~120 with mana... or a 3rd punch. 80~100 is also the damage of a Firestorm impact

Data isn't exact since I'm going from a garbage wiki and not .WAD data.

Sapphire Wand is 24~36, or about half+ of a punch, and the Cleric Mace is garbage doing 25~40 so it's only a token stronger than the wand, but at best can tie a punch at worse.

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yeah the numbers I was using don't really add up (even though those are the numbers I was editing in some config file). the wand's base damage number was 2, which was only reducible to 1. but an ettin having 175hp doesn't take 175 hits. so something else magnifies it afterwards. (might have been specific to the doomsday engine too.)

(actually, I forgot doom has random damage. looking it up "1" point of damage means 1-8 damage, depending how it rolls. so frost shards by default do "1" damage per shard, which is 1-8 damage per shard. sapphire wand does "2" damage, so 2-16 per shot. (though that still seems off since would mean an ettin would take like 15-20 hits? I don't remember them taking that many hits.))

for the cleric mace, it's probably the worst weapon by far, but the thing to remember (IIRC) is that it does attack fast. so it has almost passable dps if you get used to the way it attacks and focus on getting repeated hits. (it's still terrible though.)

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Doom works on a weird d3 system. A "bullet" does randomy either 5, 10 or 15 damage

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Lokarin posted...

Doom works on a weird d3 system. A "bullet" does randomy either 5, 10 or 15 damage

I can't remember if it applies to the player's weapons, but it's more complex than that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq3x1Jy8pYM

yeah ok, it's 1-8 * base damage, just like above. what you're thinking of I think is that a lot of attacks (bullets) have 3 base damage, so do 1-8 * 3 damage, or 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, or 24 damage. but that's just weapons with 3 base damage.

that means that for example the sapphire wand, with 2 base damage, is doing 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, or 16 damage, randomly. (I guess; still don't remember ettins taking that many hits. I need to try playing again.).

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The damage in Hexen has very small ranges of variance, so it's possible it's d8 or 2d8 plus an offset.

The sapphire wand is certainly small enough to be base damage 3 or 4, but stuff like Fighter Punching is like 2d8+30

Not sure

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yeah fists do (from wiki) 40-55 which doesn't exactly fit. it's approximately (1-8)*2 + 38. (note that the calculation is slightly different than 2d8, which implies two dice rolls. really it's 1d8 * base damage. one dice roll, multiplied by base.)

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It's also possible the person from the wiki was just generating an average. If the base damage is 10 (10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80), then you'd generate an average of 45 assuming no weight... which is roughly consistent with the numbers.

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Been kinda busy for a couple days and haven't had time to play more, but I will tomorrow!

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Well I beat the first act or hub or whatever of hexen 2. idk if I'm crazy about this game? I was running around for ages before I figured out what to do.

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papercup posted...

Well I beat the first act or hub or whatever of hexen 2. idk if I'm crazy about this game? I was running around for ages before I figured out what to do.

Wait until you get to the Egyptian level.

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Lokarin posted...

Currently doing a Priest run on the default difficulty (the middle one).

Hexen also did something smart with the difficulty settings; on higher difficulties weapons are placed in different places, and unlike doom - monster that respawn don't always respawn as themselves, they can respawn as a basic Ettin instead.

I missed a few secrets already 'cuz I forgot you can jump in Hexen.

I think Doom supports weapons appearing in different places based on difficulty but it might not be as obviously done in the maps.

The respawn thing is different though:
Raven (the developer) added scripting to the game. So the respawning enemies tend to be a script popping in enemies in specific locations. They usually, but not always, check how many are up before doing so. I'm not sure if the highest level difficulty in Hexen also does the respawn thing, but the scripting factor is a huge change.

Got to the Egyptian level. The Aztec level imo was better laid out/designed. At the very least it felt more like a Hexen level than the medieval level did. I never really felt lost, and I understand exactly what I was supposed to be doing. But, the werejaguar enemies were quite annoying. Kinda like the centaurs in Hexen 1, but worse.

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Voxwik posted...

I think Doom supports weapons appearing in different places based on difficulty but it might not be as obviously done in the maps.

The respawn thing is different though:
Raven (the developer) added scripting to the game. So the respawning enemies tend to be a script popping in enemies in specific locations. They usually, but not always, check how many are up before doing so. I'm not sure if the highest level difficulty in Hexen also does the respawn thing, but the scripting factor is a huge change.

Ya, the main difference is that Doom's Nightmare mode ALSO enables -respawn and -fast (monsters). So if you play Hexen with -respawn and -fast on, it would be like Doom's Nightmare mode.

Apparently there IS indeed a category for Ultraviolence Fast, which is considered the hardest "fair" difficulty setting.

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Yeah I ran around Egypt for like an hour and finally gave it and used a guide. idk if I'm gonna continue

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I had to buy the strategy guide for Hexen 2, and even that wasn't always very helpful.

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I only played through Hexen 2 once. The only things I remember (other than vague level details) is enemy projectiles being extremely fast and annoying, and relying on a stock of invulnerability items to beat the final boss.

Fun trick for Clerics.

Gas Clouds from flechettes are well known to be the best of the 3 flechettes, but it has an even better function...

In order to keep enemies in Gas Clouds, since it counts as an entity, is has a weight value... this typically has no effect, but if you use a Disc of Repulsion to push your Gas Cloud it will OHKO any enemy except those immune to impact/fall damage (IE: Bosses)

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That's crazy I had no idea.