[Hexen] Serpent: Resurrection [New version 11/2012]

[chopkinsca]

Dammit why is this so large. DO WANT.

So you want large things?

[SFJake]

Didn't you keep a changelog for the changes since the last version? After all this is the actual release, so I expected some notes! I'm not saying it has to clutter the first post, but if you kept a log of the changes there's people who'd like to see it.

Nevertheless, thanks for your work on this great mod, and oh, thanks for the script sources, it is very appreciated, I really wanted to get my hands on them.

I'm not sure however, why you changed the hud the way you did. Its too small, now. EDIT: Scratch that, puke 809 in the readme. Geeze, you thought of everything.

[Ethril]

So far, through my heroic mode playthrough with the fighter, I made it past D'sparil.

Spoiler:

...Even though I cheesed him with a little trick involving the poison vials

So far, I was certainly enjoying those boss fights... except for D'sparil and that Air Lich; man the latter was a real pain.

When I fought D'sparil as the fighter, I

Spoiler:

spammed protection scrolls and beat the crap out of him with Timon's Axe.

AND YES THE AIR LICH WAS A PAIN IN THE ASS
I ended up having to lure it into a nearby "tunnel" area just so I had cover (and so when I hit it really hard it didn't get catapulted away).

Dammit why is this so large. DO WANT.

So you want large things?

ಠ__ಠ

[Ribo Zurai]

This game is just purely fantastic, but I got some problems to play as Sallazar. Looks like I am almost unable to attack, since I went the 3rd level, I barely can find mana to attack the monsters. Sometimes, a random mana ring, but I rarely have 2 mana points to cast Power. Now, I got a horde of giant spiders, giant rats and minotaurs chasing me. Any tip for this?

[Ethril]

This game is just purely fantastic, but I got some problems to play as Sallazar. Looks like I am almost unable to attack, since I went the 3rd level, I barely can find mana to attack the monsters. Sometimes, a random mana ring, but I rarely have 2 mana points to cast Power. Now, I got a horde of giant spiders, giant rats and minotaurs chasing me. Any tip for this?

Minotaurs!? What the f-

...Oh. You mean Centaurs (Or rather, Slaughtaurs; Those are the ones that shoot at you)
Yeah, those are brutal at the beginning, because you don't have much range and you can't move very fast. Either spend some mana (or a Power scroll) and deal with them quickly, make use of cover and abuse the stupidity of Doom engine AI, or just run until you have better equipment.
For anything without a ranged attack (spiders, rats, fish, etc.), just hit them, take a step or two back, hit them again, and so on. The staff has the longest range of the three starting weapons; Make use of that fact.

Aside from that...
Look for two certain keys, so you can unlock the

Spoiler:

buildings with the slot 2 and 3 weapons in them. (is this a spoiler? playing it safe here)

I'm fairly certain that both relevant keys are in the overworld hub area, but it's been a while so I might be wrong.

Since you're the mage, you have infinite (until you run out of magic) usage of the first few scrolls. Therefore, if you find a scroll of one of those types, make sure to sell it, as they're worth a fair amount of gold. (Similarly for the other classes, if you find a scroll beyond your limit, sell them.)

Don't change maps too often; More monsters will spawn whenever you leave. Of course, this can be a good thing as long as you don't use up too many supplies to get rid of them... (This may have been changed since I last played. Not sure.)

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Yes, that was fixed...it only happens once now for those exits. (it's not advisable to change maps anyway until you've explored the main island map)

For anything without a ranged attack (spiders, rats, fish, etc.), just hit them, take a step or two back, hit them again, and so on. The staff has the longest range of the three starting weapons; Make use of that fact.

You'd be there a while if you did that...I tend to kill the dogs with the staff (since they're weak enough) but the rest I use spells or items on until I have weapons. (the staff has the same range as the mace actually, unless it's powered)

[Vader]

Alright, I've been playing with the Cleric up to the point where you reach the volcano... unfortunately the map lags like hell for me, so I won't be able to get any further without cheating. Anyway, I'd like to share a few thoughts:

First of all; I really like the idea behind this mod and I wouldn't have expected the whole system with gaining experience works so well. It's fun roaming around the island, buying stuff and "leveling up"!
However, there're a few things that kill the atmosphere for me a bit...

Spoiler:

I know it's hard to find suitable sprites when introducing new enemys, but some of them just felt really ridiculous IMO.
One example are the Thugs right at the start... they are just grey-scaled versions of the normal peasants (from Strife?) and even their faces are just grey. Seriously, I'm pretty sure even someone with almost zero art-skill could come up with something better.
Another example are the guard dogs from Wolfenstein... they are called wild-hounds here but still look like german shepherds. Even a simple recolor of the black parts would look 100 times better IMHO.
The giant rats are also somewhat odd, but well, they work I guess. I'd make them just a little bit smaller though.
The Fish (those from Blood) also seem to miss their swimming animation. It's been a while since I played Blood the last time, but I'm pretty sure they're animated there. The death frame also looks somewhat silly, but it's not as bad as the Shark's one.
Really, I'd rather make both of them explode into bloody bits (like it was in Duke3d) than having them just stand still!

It was also a little disappointing to see that you can't really talk to the NPC's, not even the shop owners.
I'm propably just a bit spoiled by the way Stronghold did it, but to say the truth:
Any game that wants to be RPGish has to have a way to talk to characters IMO.

Anyway, there're also some map-design issues that almost made me quit to be completely honest.
The first thing to mention is the Air village (can't remember the name ATM):
While it might be a good idea to have all the monsters flying there (I guess they all grapped some wings of wrath at the entry?), it just didn't look believable to me at all... quite the opposite actually. I first thought this must be a bad joke...
Another issue in that map is the IMO overly annoying tunnel maze. Sure it's not very hard to find the key and exit, but since the tunnel entrances are all at different heights, flying up and down quickly became annoying, especially since I wanted to kill all enemys there to get more experience.

2.The swamp map must be one of the most frustrating maps I've ever played. It is nice visually although maybe a bit repetive but good. What was giving me headaches though were the countless stalkers, causing me to reload every 10 seconds, cause one of those always got me in the back. Combined with the thick fog, that makes those Gargoyles really hard to see, I ended up buying 2 fear scrolls and just rushing through the map as fast as possible.

3. It's propably just a matter of taste, but I hated the music in the earth village!

One final thing;
I was eagerly waiting to get to see one of the new weapons and when I finally got the raven staff, I was quite disappointed I have to say. It looks great, but it just doesn't feel powerful enough... I can't tell if it prooves to be of value later on since I had to quit when reaching the volcano, but the short time I had the weapon available in the swamp, I still mostly used the other weapons.
IMO at least part of the problem is that the tiny projectiles that spawn upon impact of the main one vertically aim towards the player. So when you shoot at some enemys flying above you, the little fireballs will "drop" down instead of damaging the other enemys near the one you shot at!

[SFJake]

I think you should consider some changes to the Snow map and the Volcano map's spawners, or even add options to reduce the lag. The final versions of both is still very laggy at times even on a decent computer.

The Snowspawner has already some decorate code to cut the lag using A_CheckSight, but you removed them with //. Yet they cut the lag a great deal, though I also need to change the spawn to one every 10 tics instead of every 5 to be at its best.

The Emberspawner in the volcano also pointlessly spawn particles ALL over the map constantly regardless of if the player can see them, and it creates gigantic lag spikes.

Adding A_CheckSight to Emberspawner has made a difference that cannot even be described.


-So-, with your permission, I made this very small patch file which more or less replaces both spawner, along with a batch file that will run it properly. (I'm not sure its the perfect way to handle a patch but I didn't find another way to do it, and it works as intended).

Anyone with lag issues in the volcano or snow map might want to try it. I know there's plenty of people without the knowledge to do this simple editing and I thought I'd do it for them, since its a common issue.

Lag Patch: http://www.mediafire.com/?jaaz80cda8d4ipi

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Uploaded to DRD and added to OP, thanks for that. (I didn't understand the code at the time and I don't get volcano lag)

[SFJake]

Mmmh.

I'm stuck in the palace. Its strange, I don't remember getting stuck so easily, but this is getting rather frustrating. I don't know if I just forgot something.

Spoiler:

I got the left eye of calderas, the harp, and the music sheet. Two idols are placed, I know the last one is in that locked door. All 3 floors are cleared of enemies and I'm clueless as to what to do. Everything is explored except 1 room in middle palace and 1 in lower palace, both of which are locked.

[evouga]

I'm playing through the WAD as a mage on ultraviolence; I just finished the Lost Temple and escaped with the weapon part. Here's my feedback so far:

First hub: The fire and water villages are nicely done. The air village is the worst map in the game, though -- visually it doesn't work for me at all, and fighting enemies is super-annoying, especially in the maze when you can't see or aim at floating rats/spiders directly above or below you.

Second hub: The volcano level is the best one of the WAD so far: great atmosphere, some tough but fun fights, and it doesn't suffer from the severe lack of ammo 90% of the rest of the WAD does. The main hub and side maps are all good quality. Thoroughly enjoyable. The side areas in the icefields are great; the main central area... ugh. Best to run into a side area and wait for the Wendigos to come to you.

Third hub: Oh for fuck's sake. Hordes (300+!) of melee enemies with boatloads of HP? Check. Pitiful amounts of mana? Check. Annoying maze and boss? Check. It's almost as if I'm back in the the first hub. On the other hand, the lost temple has been a blast to play through.


There are three problems I have with the WAD as a whole. The first is the lack of mana: even using the staff on everything without a ranged attack, you run out quickly on almost every map. Luckily I've picked up enough gold to keep my Krater of Might supply stocked.

Second, the ring system doesn't really work for me. There's no reason magic points couldn't just be a different type of mana, instead of something I have to (annoyingly) recharge manually by using the rings. Moreover, the costs of the various scrolls don't really work... it's much more ring-efficient to stick to low-level spells (especially protection and power) in a tight spot than to splurge on the high-level attack scrolls. And rings are too rare to rely upon as a primary mode of offense. I would suggest making magic recharge slowly over time (and make the recharge time dependent on skill, since increasing your maximum capacity only isn't that exciting of a use for a skill point), so that the use of scrolls become more commonplace for mages.

Lastly, a pet peeve of mine: enemies spawning out of nowhere when I enter pretty much any building (outdoors) or room (indoors). At least the WAD only seems to spawn these monsters once instead of repeatedly over time, which is something I've always find *incredibly* annoying about some Hexen WADS.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

The first is the lack of mana

If you play on Hard without any prior experience of the mod, you're bound to get that...Hard is designed to require a bit more strategy to manage your firepower. (I didn't say "Normal was for first timers and Hard assumes you know what you're doing" for nothing)

rings are too rare to rely upon as a primary mode of offense.

Holy temples can restore lots of magic points, and they're cheaper than rings once you get enough sorcery.

Lastly, a pet peeve of mine: enemies spawning out of nowhere when I enter pretty much any building (outdoors) or room (indoors). At least the WAD only seems to spawn these monsters once instead of repeatedly over time, which is something I've always find *incredibly* annoying about some Hexen WADS.

That's the dynamic gameplay element, designed to emulate the traditional RPG mechanic of random encounters with wandering parties of monsters. I made sure that a good chunk of each map's mob count comes in this form (with some exceptions depending on the map) so it's different each time you play, but with no infinite respawns like original Hexen.

[Spleen]

I pushed all the barrels into the pens but I'm not getting any response, and if I leave the area the guy just says no job, no pay.

Otherwise this is pretty awesome and inspiring.

[Gez]

Did you put the barrels in the correct pens? There are three different types of barrels, and they're all very racist so that they insist on being segregated in tight-knit communities of identical barrels.

[Spleen]

Did you put the barrels in the correct pens? There are three different types of barrels, and they're all very racist so that they insist on being segregated in tight-knit communities of identical barrels.

Yeah, each pen already had a barrel in it before I did anything, and I placed the other 15 such that each pen only had one type of barrel.


Edit: nevermind, I didn't realize I had to close the doors until I started a new game and played through it again. I wish there was some way to repeat old quest text. Thanks anyways!