[Hexen] Serpent: Resurrection [New version 09/2017]

[Frozenwolf150]

And I spoke too soon, apparently there's an incompatibility with GZDoom 3.2.5. During the boss fight with Korax, it boots me to the console and I get this:

vm execution aborted: tried to read from address zero. in function parameter "targ"
called from actor: angleto [native]
called from korax.spawnkoraxmissile at gzdoom.pk3:zscript/hexen/korax.txt, line 321
called from korax.koraxfire at gzdoom.pk3:zscript/hexen/korax.txt, line 306
called from korax.a_koraxmissile at gzdoom.pk3:zscript/hexen/korax.txt, line 264
called from state skoraxf.25 in skoraxf

It happens whenever Korax tries to use a particular type of attack, which can be at any time in the fight.

[worldendDominator]

Does it always happen when he uses the 6 fireballs attack? Or only sometimes?
Can you check if it happens in vanilla Hexen?

As far as I can tell, Korax tried to shoot while having no target (i.e. not chasing anyone), or the engine didn't pass the target to the function correctly.

[Frozenwolf150]

Does it always happen when he uses the 6 fireballs attack? Or only sometimes?
Can you check if it happens in vanilla Hexen?

As far as I can tell, Korax tried to shoot while having no target (i.e. not chasing anyone), or the engine didn't pass the target to the function correctly.

It doesn't happen in vanilla Hexen. I warped to Map40, put on god mode, and stood there for several minutes letting Korax shoot me, and it didn't crash.

I finally did get through the fight with Korax in this mod, through sheer luck. I'm playing as Darahu the shaman, so I let a summon take him on. I'm not sure if this might have something to do with it, assuming it's a matter of choosing targets, as Korax will target the summon if it's closer than the player. Yet on plenty of other occasions, I've seen him switch targets from me to the summon and back again without any problems.

I tested the Korax fight with a different class, specifically Salazzar the mage, and put god mode on and let Korax shoot me. There was no crash. I added a summon scroll to my inventory and used it, and Korax targeted the summoned serpent and shot it until it was dead, then switched back to shooting at me. Still no crash. The crash only seems to happen with Darahu the shaman for some reason.

[worldendDominator]

I guess Korax tried to attack your elemental right after it died from another attack. Elementals don't leave corpses and are removed from the game entirely, so the attack had literally no target.

Does it happen randomly or reliably? I.e. whenever Korax uses that attack, or when he uses it on the elemental, etc.

[Blue Shadow]

I reported this as a bug, by the way.

[Frozenwolf150]

I guess Korax tried to attack your elemental right after it died from another attack. Elementals don't leave corpses and are removed from the game entirely, so the attack had literally no target.

Does it happen randomly or reliably? I.e. whenever Korax uses that attack, or when he uses it on the elemental, etc.

That has to be it. It did not happen with other summons, and every time I entered the fight with Korax I would immediately use an elemental summon as part of my strategy. So there would indeed be a direct correlation between this crash and the use of the elemental summoning.

I reported this as a bug, by the way.

Thanks, it wouldn't have occurred to me that it's an engine bug. I can't remember if it happened in previous GZDoom versions.

[Blue Shadow]

I can't remember if it happened in previous GZDoom versions.

It should. Although, if we're talking about versions of the engine prior to ZScript, you'd get an engine crash instead of merely being sent to the console.

[Frozenwolf150]

Incidentally, I have to complain about the way the final battle is handled. I don't mean the difficulty, otherwise I wouldn't have been playing on the hardest setting. I mean the friendly AI and the weapon targeting.

I was playing through the final battle as Sallazar, and things started to go wrong as soon as I reached the palace. First my Bloodscourge accidentally killed all the palace guards, which triggered Banedon, Selenus, and the king to enter the fight. Then as I was trying to beat back the monsters, I repeatedly got shot in the back and killed by the idiots with the Seeker Wands. 90% of the deaths were due to Banedon shooting me in the back. The only way around this was to engage the monsters away from the palace entrance so my attacks wouldn't kill the guards. Hellstorm helped a lot.

At the very least, the Seeker Wands wielded by friendly actors shouldn't be able to home in on the player.

[Frozenwolf150]

Unrelated bug report regarding one of the new classes. If Herian uses a Power Scroll while the Firemace is equipped, the weapon turns invisible and cannot fire. Sometimes it will fire about 7-8 invisible shots that don't seem to do anything, before the game switches you to another weapon (usually the Hellstaff) as if the Firemace had run out of ammo.

[worldendDominator]

Unlike Herian's other weapons, the firemace actor derives from Heretic mace, and inherits its SisterWeapon property. So with Power spell (which acts exactly like a Tome of Power) it switches to FiremacePowered from vanilla Heretic. It doesn't have sprites, and you can't get ammo for it.

[Frozenwolf150]

Unlike Herian's other weapons, the firemace actor derives from Heretic mace, and inherits its SisterWeapon property. So with Power spell (which acts exactly like a Tome of Power) it switches to FiremacePowered from vanilla Heretic. It doesn't have sprites, and you can't get ammo for it.

Thanks for looking into this. And yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. The weapon impacts look as if it's trying to fire the powered up mace balls.

It's a shame this isn't an actual feature though. I recently finished a run as Herian, and found him to be lacking in crowd control abilities, unless you want to spend tons of gold on high end scrolls. The original Heretic didn't have an equivalent to Doom's BFG, and the Firemace is somewhat limited in effectiveness by comparison. This was balanced out by the Tome of Power, which gave several weapons area effect modes. As it is, Herian's arsenal is better suited to taking down individual enemies, but even then it seems to take forever to kill boss creatures.

[theleo_ua]

Unlike Herian's other weapons, the firemace actor derives from Heretic mace, and inherits its SisterWeapon property. So with Power spell (which acts exactly like a Tome of Power) it switches to FiremacePowered from vanilla Heretic. It doesn't have sprites, and you can't get ammo for it.

Thanks for looking into this. And yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. The weapon impacts look as if it's trying to fire the powered up mace balls.

It's a shame this isn't an actual feature though. I recently finished a run as Herian, and found him to be lacking in crowd control abilities, unless you want to spend tons of gold on high end scrolls. The original Heretic didn't have an equivalent to Doom's BFG, and the Firemace is somewhat limited in effectiveness by comparison. This was balanced out by the Tome of Power, which gave several weapons area effect modes. As it is, Herian's arsenal is better suited to taking down individual enemies, but even then it seems to take forever to kill boss creatures.

Agree, unpowered firemace is useless (both in heretic and hexen_serpent), and better to spent red and yellow mana to hellstaff and phoenix. "Powered by default" mace would be nice feature for next versions of serpent imho

Even powered mace is hard to use properly, but unpowered is 100 times worse (lets remember, that both of them cannot damage ghosts)

[Emmanuelexe]

Hello, sorry for the big up, but how can i take the music mp3 of the last version? I listened some OST on youtube but couldn't find the music i listened....
I don't know if there is different versions but i used this target for the game: "D:\GZDOOM 3.5.0\gzdoom.exe" -file serpent.wad serpent.pk3 serpmus1.wad serpmus2.wad
I'm at the lava part, nice mod, the beginning was a bit long and a bit flat but the level design start to be really interesting since i killed the first big "boss"! ^^

[SallazarSpellcaster]

You have to use either Serpentmus1 or serpentmus2, not both. The first one is the more action fantasy themed music, while serpentmus2 is more atmospheric.

[Emmanuelexe]

Ah ok! But since i did that, is it the first file who is used? I removed serpentmus2 and i can't launch my save. Have to reuse the same target, will it bug the game?
I wanted know where are some musics from. Like the castle where we fight D'Sparil and the Disciples and the swamp part.