XRpg - Simple Hexen RPG mod [v2.3.1 Released] New GUI inventory system with full mouse support

[peewee_RotA]

Did some experiments with quietus and it looks like a sweep attack works out. Having a powered swing didn't seem to work because the ranged attacks are so draining. In my testing I just avoid using the melee attack if it uses too much mana.

One note on sweeping attacks. If you keep the "AdjustPlayerAngle(t);" call, it works more like a chainsaw. Your view turns towards the first target and the next attack tends to favor them, even if at a wider angle.

That's ok, and it pairs well with thrusting the monster towards the player, or the player towards the monster.

If that is removed, the swipe is easier to aim at multiple targets. If the swipe thrusts monsters away, this is good for melee crowd control, but terrible for flying monster and ranged monsters. Especially slaughtars.

Removing both thrust and AdjustPlayerAngle makes for the most damaging swipe, and feels more natural. It should be mentioned that lineattacks can still cause thrust to pushback a monster, but some attacks, like the hammer, originally had added thrust to push back enemies.

I tried to use this to add some variety to combat. The sword doesn't AdjustPlayerAngle or thrust, the axe doesn't AdjustPlayerAngle but does thrust (like a baseball swing), and the cleric's smite'd mace can do both AdjustPlayerAngle and negative thrust.

It makes the weapons unique and interesting.

I'll have a new version out soon. I've been able to track down a lot of crashing bugs, and fix a game breaking issue for the fighter when fighting korax. (Other mods have this bug too, if you kill him too fast, the doors don't open). Need to get some more done before the next version is released.

[Crudux Cruo]

Glad to see you're still working on this! can't wait to try the new version!

[peewee_RotA]

Thanks. Thought I'd be a little further than I am so no release yet.

After another mage playthrough, I've got a lot of updates for the spell list, some commands for managing spells, and a redo of all the bloodscourge spells.

Freezing rain is SO MUCH FUN!

[Vanille987]

Hello!

Recently got into the treasure trove of that are doom wads and decided to start with something I always loved the idea of, Hexen but with RPG systems
Anywhow, gonna try this later in the day with probably the cleric, since i'd love to help playstest this. Anything specific to keep an eye on?

[peewee_RotA]

Glad to hear you are interested. I am not done with the mage changes yet, but I am putting out a current 1.2.1a version so you can at least test out cleric and fighter if you want. Mage is playable but there's a few spells that aren't ready yet so they default to simpler versions at the moment.

Here's the download link for the v1.2.1a PK3: https://github.com/cabbruzzese/xrpg/rel ... ag/v1.2.1a

[Vanille987]

Thanks for the preview build!

Played with the cleric in the first hub (and cheated at the end to try out his ultimate weapon), everything seems to be working fine for starters! as for my specific experience gameplay wise starting with the weapons.

The maces alt fire where it 'rubs' against the enemy is fun but not sure what it's merit over the standard attack is? Especially with smite active it seems to be weaker then the normal attack?
Smite mace though, is really good and actually makes it worth using outside of it being a 'out of ammo' weapon, the bolt even gives it a small AoE.

The serpent staffs life drain and projectiles being separate attacks is a petty nice change, you don't always want to drain when close to an enemy. The smite attack versions are great, I'm not 100% sure how the smite normal fire works? But it does wonders in groups at close quarters. And the smite alt fire gives it a very good long range fire.

The flame hands mellee attack is pretty hilarious but also a good addition to the clerics load out, the idea of charging an attack also works out splendidly. The smite seems to be a straight upgrade on both of these with more AoE if I'm not mistaken so not gonna talk about that specially.

And finally his ultimate weapon, I love love love it's ability to brainwash enemies. For the rest it seems to function like in vanilla with smite making more ghosts? Good stuff.


Overall really liking the new changes gameplay wise, though I played at the hardest difficulty and level up extremely quick due the huge amounts of enemies, it may be a good idea down the line to make it so you earn less exp on harder difficulties to even things out? Otherwise I feel the smite imbued mace should use magic, not too much but I feel it's a bit too powerful even if it uses 15 blue mana to to cast smite beforehand.
(didn't reach the wraith spell and beyond yet, only smite and heal) will update once I do!

Keep up the good work!


Edit: Okay managed to try out the protection spell. Works but a bit too well imo, I felt like I took 1 damage from anything and even standing in the middle of some gargoyles getting shot at, my HP went down so slow. Especially now that I have more then 100 MAX HP.
If possible I think a temporary increase in base AC would be better?

[peewee_RotA]

Protection reduces damage by 10% for most hits, and 50% for every 4th hit, which causes a pushback.

You gain base armor equal to your armor / 10. So as a starting cleric you have 1 armor, and around level 10 you should have around 3. So that would mean naturally you protect 15%, and a 10% bonus from the spell normally, with 50% for the big charge.

Regular monsters do very little damage in the normal game. It's brown serpents where it ramps up, and then slaughtaurs, stalkers, and wraiths that pack big punches. A regular hit from an afrits (gargoyle) does roughly 1-5 damage per bolt in the normal game.

In the mod, poison and stone monsters have very big damage increases, and "brutes" do a ton of pushback. So the damage is upped a lot as you level. I was testing with a 250 health mage (level 30) that was killed in about 4 shots from some wraiths. After reloading, I was knocked into a pit by some brute afrits and killed.

If you want to see how deadly the monsters are, try the Deathkings expansion. In the 2nd level, and the horn level, you get absolutely swamped with slaughtars.

[Vanille987]

I see, that what the green emerald icons next to the spell meant.

yeah, gargoyles are pretty weak so I'll leave the judgement for the later stages and monsters. Didn't cross my mind to try the mod the the expansion, but will definitely do and see how it fares with the higher overall difficulty.

Talking about the monster variations, they do add a lot of fun challenge to the game while also spicing things up! The ice variation actually made me use the jump to dodge the counter attack which is something I never did in vanilla Hexen.

[Crudux Cruo]

So i played this new push, I think i can get behind all of the changes to the warrior class so far, but there's a little more to go...

Quietus primary should be chargeable for a mana wave, like i was saying. I don't mind the homing blades or the piercing ray as secondaries, but this weapon really bites for melee combat, and the primary should use some mana and do at least twice the damage of the axe (for using both manas), and if thats a held primary attack and the quick attack remains as it is now, (maybe a LITTLE beefed up), i think i would be happy with that.
There's also the leveling requirements to consider and the general lack of area control and damage to warriors that other classes have, which makes this class inferior to the others.
I don't know exactly how to explain it, but really the cleric is better at everything the warrior tries to do, and the mage out damages the warrior at a distance and has many more defenses...

With this mod, the warrior needs more love. I made suggestions before, and I still hold to the idea that the warrior needs to be a melee ranged badass but limited at range, but beyond that, maybe after your cleric and mage "overhaul" you can take a look at the warrior side by side and find some ways to beef him up, if you see what i'm seeing.

Cleric...

I really love the cleric. I do believe more general balance could be had, but i find all of the cleric's weapons useful (except the mace alt is pretty wonky) and smite is a gamechanger. truthfully i need to play with this more to give a better opinion, but as it stands i really have no major critiques of this class. It seems like the most well rounded, best balanced class, followed by the mage, followed by the warrior. If anything, this character feels perhaps just a little TOO powerful. but ultimately, i'd have to get back to you on it.

Mage...

I really feel like a third attack per weapon, maybe just a charged primary, would really make the weapons a little more interesting.
Magic missile staff - holding releases a spread shotgun burst.
Ice - holding shoots ice clouds in a fan in front of the player
lightning - holding shoots a lightning beam
bloodscourge - holding releases flamethrower?

I know you're working on the mage and some of these attacks will change on the spells (which are almost all terrific by the way AS IT IS NOW) but consider these other changes...
And consider once you have a generally good balance going back and smoothing/cleaning up effects and animations, possibly documenting more spells and effects and weapons.

I love this mod. it's a great HEXEN RPG LIGHT mod. i prefer wrath of cronos or walpurgis generally, but i feel like this mod does more like what parkour did to doom... and I like that.

[Vanille987]

Decided to try the cleric in the DLC to see how he fares against the high difficulty of it, still want to play more before I pass more feedback but at this point I'm fairly sure they will be close to crudex' opinion. I definitely overestimated the protection spell, it helps but high tier monsters can still eat through you if you attempt to facetank, and the knockback is a really clever way to balance it further. The maces alt if still weird to me but I do start to see some use in it, still prefer the main attack but the alt seems to be able to more damage against a single target but most importantly, much easier to trigger pain in enemies. Especially useful on the hardest difficulty where enemies shoot at you non stop, particularly slaughtaurs as the alt basically garunteees they start guarding instead of shooting you.

One thing I find weird in the DLC tho, as you can see on the pic the first level seemed to spawn in a lot of reivers, I'm sure there were like 20 in total and at that point you can't really take them all on so I just dodged them while clearing the level. Is that normal?

[peewee_RotA]

The Death leaders raises bodies as reivers (wraiths) as they move around. They are purple. Getting them to spawn at low levels is not super common. Meant to come out later. Your level makes the higher difficulty monsters more common.

At level 1 it's really low chance to get any elemental Leaders, but you should see brutes and spectres often. The random chance is done at spawn, meaning wandering monsters tend to have a higher chance since you level as you go, and entering new maps has a higher chance since you are usually higher level when you get to the next one.

Leaders and spectres can also be brutes. Leveling makes the combination more common too.


I understand the confusion on the mace, I don't like it either. I wanted something that spins and animates like the fire mace in heretic so it can do a chainsaw like attack, but ended up with the swipe. I'm going to add in some animations so it can do that spin, and let you hold it in like a chainsaw for a little.


I appreciate all the feedback. Getting to a much better experience for sure.

I started looking at the suggestions for tertiary fire for the mage, and I couldn't think of a good scheme yet. Charging the wand will be tough because it's expected to shoot quickly. The original gameplay was that it is lower damage so that if you get swamped you are in trouble and need an escape route. So hexen players will be used to holding in the fire button.

The frost shards are timed exactly with stalker's coming out of water. So you can freeze them when they pop up. It's the only attack a mage gets in the original that can deal with them properly. Adding charge up kills the timing. I experimented a bit with what spell alt-fires can replace this. There are some but they are really hard to time. I might experiment with the wand having a wind up and shooting extra bolts after the windup (like a chaingun) but not sure yet.

Something I had extreme success with in the quake engines is giving a weapon extra functionality depending on whether it hits a floor (pounding the ground), is shot straight, or is shot while jumping. Those things are a little more complicated in 2.5d engines, but it's a possibility. I'm thinking that might be a way to give the fighter more versatility.

[peewee_RotA]

I was thinking about a few details that I didn't explain well. I like the nuance to be more discoverable than explicitly stated, but it may help explain some numbers.

Fighter attacks consist of Weapon Damage, Strength Bonuses, and Magic bonuses. Weapon damage is rolled randomly just like the vanilla game, but with some modification on how attacks average out over time. Strength and Magic bonuses statistically make a flat boost to that average because they increase the max AND min of weapon damage rolls.

The fists and hammer only add strength to attacks. The axe adds magic (with a calculation to boost the damage) when powered. As you level the fists and hammer increase damage with strength. The fists increase slightly more because the same bonus is added more often. So they do the most strength damage in DPS overall due to the faster attack rate.

The axe scales with strength, and scales faster than the hammer because of the faster attack rate, meaning more DPS from strength. When it is powered it also scales with magic, and the faster attack rate makes that scale as a higher DPS overall. For every level, more damage is boosted to a powered axe than hammer or first overall.

The axe swipe attack does more weapon damage on average, and slightly higher strength damage overall, and much higher magic damage. It does knockback but usually gets a few hits in before pushing, and hits multiple targets easily.

The hammer has the highest single hit weapon damage. It's actually almost exactly the normal game's damage + strength. It's DPS for stat bonuses is lower, but many enemies need single hits and then back away. Slaughtars, Stalkers, and lightning leaders are good examples. That's on purpose, so it is useful as a utility weapon, but not as useful during berserk as any of the others.

That explanation is important because the sword gets many of these properties. It has the highest average weapon damage, it adds about 1.5 times strength per swipe, and it adds a big magic boost to each hit. So it boosts from stats significantly higher than any other weapon. It doesn't do knockback to maximize damage on a single target, but is also able to hit multiple targets.

You won't get strong hits from the sword at low level, because the gap of adding both magic and strength will not be noticeable. Around level 25 it steps ahead of the rest of the weapons.

[Vanille987]

Ah I see, I didn't know they get revived as reivers (thought they just get back up basically), that makes it much more preventable. Although I have a grip with how fast they can revive, it seems they can revive any corpse instantly. I had a lot of times where a purple enemy was hiding behind the others or came out of the corner and then proceed to revive 15-20 corpses at once which is basically a death sentence. I feel they should have some limit, like being able to revive one corpse per second.

Chainsaw mace definitely sounds fun, I was always slightly disappointed you can't use the firemace like that in heretic.

On that shoot while in the air idea, that could perhaps be used for stuff like a ground pound or jumping leap? Just some ideas.

Another thing I was thinking about, with both you and the enemies becoming stronger and stronger I feel the majority of combat items get more and more meh. Do they have any scaling with your stats?

[Crudux Cruo]

I didn't realize you were planning so far down the road with levels and weapons like that, so i guess i'm going to have to really level up before i can say what is really balanced! I just figured everything leveled up with your level up and it all balanced out, like most RPG mods. my critique is at level 10 ish or so, idk. so by the time you actually are supposed to get quietus, it actually is better then? ok. but before that, certainly not in MELEE. all the other attacks, yes.

for the charge attack i was thinking since most of the mage's attacks are single fire anyway, just keep them single fire, or perhaps use the reload key or a weapon state key if you have to. i've also seen mods where you can hold the fire and altfire for an effect, but i'm not sure how they do it.

IDK exactly what sort of attacks should be done either, i'm just throwing out ideas for you, but every other character has a third attack and idk, i think that the mage could benefit, but i'm not sure how i would balance it out.

[peewee_RotA]

That's genius. I think it's easy to support holding both buttons. But it may be more sensitive to see which one was held down first.

I have two crazy ideas for the fighter that should help.

1st, no weapons have powerups until earn Runes which power them up with different elements. Right now elemental leaders are resistant and weak to certain damage types. Fighter only has fire and normal so he doesn't get to participate much.

The other classes get more options. The Mage has all of the elements as options, but gets ice, lightning, and fire just by default in his normal weapons. As for spells, he's the only one with water and the only one who can stunlock the lightning leaders with it. The cleric gets poison and fire by default, and gets lightning and a special "holy" type(reivers and death leaders are weak to it, and nothing can be resistant to it. It emulates divine smite in D&D 5th edition). Giving the fighter more options to participate might be fun.

2nd, make monsters drop some new pickups for the fighter.

I experimented with a "mortal wound" style item in Heretic RPG, but I was trying to avoid that in this mod. Instead some kind of new weapons and armor would be fun!

Both ideas will mean a lot of new assets to make, but I'll experiment and see how it goes.