Tempered Arms: A weapon mod for Hexen [v1.6.2]

[Lippeth]

A lot of weapons are exact clone of Hexercise, I don't quite yet understand the purpose of this mod so far.

However, you made both wraithverge and quietus is quite op, while blood scourge weaker than vanila. Wraithverge now consumed 15 ammo of each instead of 18, yet ghosts just as strong as even, and alt fire consumes 5 ammo YET it does still spawn ghosts that do everything exactly the primary attack does so it cleans whole map in one shot yet barely takes any ammo. The ripping made quietus inherently overpowered and it can kill Korax in just a 2-3 hits, same for it's primary attack that is simply too overpowered in damage. Bloodscourge, on other hand, lost it's ability to pierce through enemies, which was the primary niche of bloodscourge, without it it's just an weakened rocket launcher.

Well the purpose is to implement ideas I had for a few of the weapons, and let it all evolve based on feedback. And to pass the free time.

Balancing issues are still being worked out, hence the "0" in v0.7.0. If I got to version 1 and the balancing was still this bad, then yes that's a problem, but feedback like yours is vital at this stage, so thank you!

That being said, I just went through and tweaked all the piece weapons based on the Korax fight and updated the download link if you want to have another go, though I still need to update the changelog to note the specific changes.

I'll also keep updating indefinitely, so feel free to keep checking back to see what's new.

Very well made weapon mod, simplistic yet so much fun.

The Cleric's secondary firestorm attack is contingent on sector height which means there is a delay - can you make the attack near instantaneous or begin from a fixed height?
What about a chargeable, primary slice attack for the Quietus that can be used similarly when it runs out of mana too, but deals less damage?
Would you consider making this mod work with DOOM to make it compatible with monster mods and map packs?

Thank you for the feedback!

I tried a few things that didn't work out to give the firestorm a more consistent timing, but I'll keep trying.

In regard to the quietus working without mana, it would be more consistent with the fighter's other weapons, but it would need to be different enough from the starting sword to make any sense. I'll try a few things though.

I'll definitely think about making a patch to work with Doom and Heretic, though I don't want to put the assets in the mod itself in order to keep the file size low.

[Lippeth]

Another update. This time I decided to show the fighter some love. I went back on my whole philosophy and made the shield block like the cleric's, though it's a little more weighty, and feels great with the axe, which has somewhat new animations. I still feel the same way about the fighter not worrying about defense, but the shield makes the axe much more energetic, and fits with the fighter's overall speed.

I've also Increased the refire speed for the hammer's melee attack. I'm still coming up with ideas to make the hammer more exciting overall.

The quietus has been recreated from the ground up, though it works fairly similar to how it did. Main fire is one of two close range slashes with exploding puffs, altfire is vanilla but will also swing from the left, with matching beam patterns. If the quietus is out of mana, the green flames stop and it's altfire works similarly to the starting sword, only stronger. After four or five successful slashes, the fighter thrusts forward with a stab. The main fire is a strong gauntlet jab that will turn into the long reach hook after one successful hit and if held will continue the long hook until the key is unpressed. I have unused code and sprites for an attempt at making an attack similar to the gauntlets from Heretic, but I was underwhelmed by the result.

Anyway, enjoy the update and feel free to come at me with any ideas or feedback!

[Neccronixis]

Nice work - the flaming gauntlet is a nice touch to the Quietus.
If you press secondary fire on the Quietus and it swings from left to right, you can follow up with a faster than usual primary attack - not sure of this is intentional.

If you want an idea for the hammer; it's secondary mana attack can spawn a 360 degree fire/heat wave upon ground impact. When it has no mana it behaves the same way, except it just repels enemies without dealing damage - useful if you are overwhelmed with enemies at close range.

Also, I found that if you add the +BOUNCEONFLOORS +BOUNCEONCEILINGS flags to the the Bloodscouge homing projectile, it makes it a much more enjoyable weapon to use - don't know if that kills the balance though.

[Lippeth]

Good catch, that was not intentional, though I like the idea of it. I fixed it to be able to swing a primary attack faster just after a secondary attack, both left and right, though it's only half as fast as the unintended missing flag.

Excellent idea for the hammer. I was debating whether or not to add a shield to the hammer and nix the ground quake thing altogether, but two weapons with shields might be monotonous. I like your idea better, I'll see how it feels after implementing.

The bloodscourge projectiles are way better with those flags, it's almost on par with the wraithverge at this point. I'll do a few tests for balance, but good call! I'll add you to the credits for these ideas, thanks a ton!

[Captain J]

I think i got more feedback to share. You're doing a great work:

- First of all, Timon's Axe has some choppy animation if you're swinging it sideways.

- Not sure if it was intended, but the Hammer of Retribution's Secondary Attack plays two grunt sounds of fighter. One is being damaged and other one is touching the wall.

- Quietus is nicely balanced, but i think the primary attack needs some graphical improvement. Like generating a big slash projectile instead of one small explosion.

- Cleric Mace's side swing animation is the same with Timon's Axe's, but only if you're swinging it to the right.

- Is it me? Or Cleric and the Mage's weapon drawing animation is slightly choppy than Fighter's? Especially the Cleric one.

- The Secondary attack of Mage's Sapphire Wand generates A LOT OF puff. And would generate more and more if you allow Particles.

- The Secondary attack of Mage's Thunder Spell generates smoke for some reason.

- The Primary projectile of Mage's Bloodscorge leaves no decal.

- You know, it would be so much convenient and helpful if Mage could destroy the frozen corpse of the enemies while only holding the Ice spell tomb. The Secondary attack would do the trick.

[Lippeth]

Excellent feedback! I'll look through and test each issue and suggestion within the next few days and determine what I want to change, how to change/fix it, and what I want to leave alone. Several issues are due to blind spots when testing, as I usually turn off decals and don't enable particles.

I'll most likely leave design choices alone for now, like the mage's secondary attack generating smoke, and focus on fine-tuning animations and general fixes and cleanup, like adding decals and addressing the double grunting. Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

[Zaratul]

First time seeing this mod, i dont know how do i miss this stuff?! Walpurgis and Wrath of Cronos are great but i always wanted subtle gameplay mod for Hexen.
Trying new weapons and all is so far really great but i have a couple of suggestions:

-basic sword for fighter could use some recoloring, i mean its edges are too white and this clashes with the background
-im also for adding few more animation frame for Timon axe
-frost spell for mage: imo separate "shotgun" mode and accurate mod, remove current alt fire(its meh for me) and accurate firing to this

As for more suggestions and bug reports Captain J nailed it! Waiting patiently for the next version, Your mod is great!

[Lagi]

very good taste with weapon. I really like the alt fires.

cleric shield cover is too good. its complete invulnerability. You could not make it any more OP.
serpent wand with green mace swing is nice touch.
Mage sapphire wand staff poke is a great addition. However its not smooth enough to reliably use it.
Fighter hammer alt strike is great. Its mega fun to use it as double jump.
I miss option to throw axe.

[Lippeth]

I'm still slowing tweaking and thinking about improvements, but I'll address a few suggestions and criticisms to help guide the ideas along.

The reason that some weapons raise at different speeds is to reflect the class and power of the weapon. The fighter is generally faster so I made his raise states faster, but I'm thinking now that everyone's could be a little more even.

I have gone through so many ideas for the ice shard alt attack, and nothing has struck that balance between being cool and useful. I may switch it up and revert to an idea I had earlier this year and have the main attack shoot bats and the left hand shoot ice shards or vice versa. The reason I didn't go this route was because I spent weeks learning Photoshop just to do the tome graphics that neoworm made and I thought the tome was cooler than frost bats at the time, and wanted to keep the ice theme.

Timon's Axe has some choppy animation if you're swinging it sideways.

The fighter's axe has been bugging me for a while as well, mainly because I'm very happy with it, but it's the target of most of the criticism. So there's something that I'm not seeing that's obvious to others. My solution is to just keep tweaking it and adding frames until everyone seems to like it. I could also remove the swing right animation because I think that's the biggest offender.

basic sword for fighter could use some recoloring, i mean its edges are too white and this clashes with the background

I don't really want to change neoworm's design too much. I could lower the sword for the ready state so it doesn't take up as much space.

Mage sapphire wand staff poke is a great addition. However its not smooth enough to reliably use it.

I totally agree. I'll try and see how fast I can get away with the animation before it no longer looks like it's turning around. I might even remove the charge time and just go for the attack, with balanced damage.

cleric shield cover is too good. its complete invulnerability. You could not make it any more OP.

I thought it would be overkill at first as well. But the key was to make it impossible to attack while the shield is up. So you are invulnerable yes, but do no damage so it's a stalemate situation until you open yourself up again while attacking. I could shorten the time that the shield is up, but my main goal for it's functionality is to walk through poison clouds after setting them down. That may kill the vanilla strategy but I thought it was cool.

I miss option to throw axe.

I don't think this mod ever had the option to throw an axe, and I think that throwing the axe would make flechettes pointless. Plus combining a long range attack with the shield would be too op. Throwing axes is definitely cool, but I don't really think it fits well in this mod. I've actually dialed back a lot of features in general because I do want to keep this mod fairly basic, and not divert too much from vanilla Hexen. The main goal here is to not feel like a mod per se, but just spice up the original combat and amplify the action and kinetic flow of what was already there. That said, I'm open to trying new ideas and want to hear any suggestion you can think of, even if it's outside the vision I have for this!

Everything I haven't addressed only means that I haven't fully collected my thoughts on it yet. I'm balancing several projects at the moment but I plan to improve this one continuously, and all your feedback really helps! If there's a feature that you want and it seems like I don't want to put it there, there is a chance that I'll change my mind if enough people want it, or I think about it long enough to figure out a way to make it work.

[Lagi]

mage shooting with left and right hand is cool AF. Not sure if its worth to trade the book graphic for that though.

But the left hand bats are completely out of context, plus they behave like ice shards, just different projectile graphic. HexArcana from 4page utilize the bats perfectly IMO, its great fun, because this bats flying around you, and its part of character... here not so much, especially if you aim to "just spice up original combat".

Cleric shield remove the danger from the game. Its a hiking simulator (vanilla hexen levels are an autistic puzzle anyway, so maybe its a pros). This attack trade off make more sens, if hiding behind shield prevent from running, and player could be hit in the back.

===scoring
fighter
sword +
axe -
hammer ++
Green-sword 0 "again sword?"

cleric
mace -
serpent - green mace outline looks ugly, and is copy paste of 1st attck, still its fun add on
fire spell 0 fire ring is okish, but still its the same
wraithverge + nice option for close charge, and alt classic ghost release

mage
sapphire wand + alt melee is natural upgrade, feel like part of game
ice spell + only for nice looking book
lighting spell -
blood-scull 0 slow bouncy balls sound annoying/tricky to play, but thats good, hit scan is boring

[Lippeth]

Another year, another update! Read OP for all relevant information. Seidolon's Afterlands rekindled my interest in continuing, and I've been having a lot of fun!
Serpent Staff Demo

Tempered Arms v1.1

[Lagi]

tasty vintage mod.

new serpent staff alt fire fit very well.
Ice spell is interesting in play for the mitigation of frozen corpse penalty

[Lippeth]

Thanks, Lagi! I like to imagine this mod existing around the time the game was released, so the graphics need to stay nice and chunky. I still want it to be Hexen, just more combat-centric.

The serpent staff's mace attack was a bit redundant, especially since weapon switching is done so quickly, so I got creative and started thinking of cool AoE attacks.

The Frost Shard alt-fire is still being thought about, I like switching to the wand to break frozen enemies but other players have insisted that you should be able to break ice with the same weapon. Also, In hindsight I realized that the mage's left hand has a silver ring on the ring finger , but I obviously didn't notice when making the sprite. After all the attention I'm giving to the cleric is done, I'll go back and add a ring, it's only a few sprites that need it and new brightmaps are easy enough to make.

I've been working on the cleric non-stop for the past few days and have been updating the file nearly every day, just adding additions to the same versions. I'm playing through all of Seidolon's maps and have been tweaking this mod as I go, so it should be nice and balanced by the time I'm done replaying all of them. Not that it's imbalanced now, I just inevitably notice little things that I want to change here and there. I like testing with maps by Seidolon because they're absolutely packed with monsters.

Anyway, thanks for checking it out, there may be a few more updates before I call it good for another year!

[Zaratul]

Played the newest verstion: great stuff. This mod is in great place, something in between Hexen Rebalanced and Walpurgis. Not so many gamechangers like in Walpurgis and changes to classes are just a little above subtle Hexen Rebalanced mod.
So far im 2 nitpicks, warrior sword+gauntlet swinging is a little bright\out of place. And Timon Axe side swinging is wierd, its just dont fit the rest of the animations.
But there are only 2 minor things, im having a really great fun with Your mod! Good job mate!

[Lippeth]

Played the newest verstion: great stuff. This mod is in great place, something in between Hexen Rebalanced and Walpurgis. Not so many gamechangers like in Walpurgis and changes to classes are just a little above subtle Hexen Rebalanced mod.
So far im 2 nitpicks, warrior sword+gauntlet swinging is a little bright\out of place. And Timon Axe side swinging is wierd, its just dont fit the rest of the animations.
But there are only 2 minor things, im having a really great fun with Your mod! Good job mate!

Thanks for checking it out! Yeah it sort of fits in the middle ground, and both of those mods are excellent.

I have been working on that damned axe for so long, and can't seem to get it right. I recently changed it and was pretty happy with it, but you're only confirming that it still isn't quite there yet. It's hard to see the problem because it feels good to me, but the axe seems to be this mod's biggest target with criticisms. I'll keep working on it and hopefully make it feel just right. Maybe you can help actually: Get the axe and run out of mana, and let me know if it still looks weird without the glow. I may have to edit some of neoworm's axe sprites to get it looking better with mana. Or is it the animation itself? Luckily there are several routes I can take.

Anyway, I'm glad it's enjoyable overall! I'm currently looking into creating an inventory menu that opens like old Zelda games, pauses the game and allows you to select items with the arrow keys, but this is either outside GZDoom's functionality or my own ability. I've created the graphics for it, and if it's possible to implement with zscript then I still may come up short. I would love to get some help with this if anyone is interested.