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Halfblind

Hexen Issues With Zdoom

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Here are some common issues and nuances, which I have found, with using the newer versions of Zdoom to run Hexen and with the newer Zdoom (Hexen) setup.

1. Prior to beating the Heresiarch at the end of hub 4 the script gets broken resulting in the walls not opening. It does fix itself, however after multiple times reloading from a previous save game. This never broke with older versions.

2. The game music no longer works. It did work in previous versions though. *

3. CD music no longer loops anymore. Again it did function normally in previous versions. *

4. Korax scripting is broken. Every time Korax uses his lightning attack Zdoom reports an unknown script and nothing happens. This does not affect gameplay though. I am unsure if this still worked on older versions.

5. CLUS32MSG and WIN32MSG messages no longer work. Zdoom reports an unknown message. Again this worked in previous versions. **

6. Hexen and Zdoom Hexen formats are completely different now. While map specials and how they are triggered remain relatively the same their setup differs slightly. For instance if I wanted to hide an object in a pot I used to be able to put its spawn ID into one of the value boxes in the editor in the properties dialogue box. Now I have to define the action of the pot as a script and then include the item name and not the spawn ID in the script instead.

• * In Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel the music works normally due to the SNDINFO including scripting for the music tracks in the IWAD. Hexen: Beyond Heretic does not include this info.

• ** In Hexen DK these messages work because they are included in the IWAD. In Hexen they are not.

Does anyone else have noticed these same issues and does anyone have a fix for them?

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Halfblind said:

• * In Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel the music works normally due to the SNDINFO including scripting for the music tracks in the IWAD. Hexen: Beyond Heretic does not include this info.

• ** In Hexen DK these messages work because they are included in the IWAD. In Hexen they are not.

I think your problems come from your weird version of the Hexen IWAD, not from ZDoom. Are you using the beta demo version or some other oddity?

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Gez said:

I think your problems come from your weird version of the Hexen IWAD, not from ZDoom. Are you using the beta demo version or some other oddity?


Nope. I am using an unedited version of the Hexen: Beyond Heretic IWAD that came from the full Hexen CD ROM published back in the 90's. I am assuming that the track information and the cluster messages are found in the original Hexen .exe file and not in the IWAD itself. I have looked through everything in the IWAD and there is no scripting for the cluster messages and the music information.

This information is included, however, in the Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders IWAD.

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If you have the version directly from the CD, you have IWAD version 1.0. ZDoom requires the patched 1.1 version to work correctly.

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Graf Zahl said:

If you have the version directly from the CD, you have IWAD version 1.0. ZDoom requires the patched 1.1 version to work correctly.


That could be the reason why it does not work properly. I had a couple of issues when trying to patch the game with the one found in the DK disk in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Do you know of any windows installers that could patch it?

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No. There's only the old DOS patch. If you got a 32 bit Windows you can run it as-is, otherwise you have to use DosBox.

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Halfblind said:

1. Prior to beating the Heresiarch at the end of hub 4 the script gets broken resulting in the walls not opening. It does fix itself, however after multiple times reloading from a previous save game. This never broke with older versions.

There are ways for even vanilla Hexen to break in the final room of hub 4: the most common problem is that there must be exactly three Green Serpents in the room when the script checks to open up the walls to the Bishops. Having spent a decent amount of time running the game and entering/executing that room in weird ways, I've also seen other freaky stuff happen, like the Green Serpents pop out one at a time, or Serpents spawning in before killing all the Afrits, or killing a single Bishop to cause the Heresiarch walls to open up.

In other words, if it's breaking then it might end up being IWAD-related and not engine-related. That it worked in an older version of the engine and not in a newer one is likely the byproduct of other changes.

Halfblind said:

5. CLUS32MSG and WIN32MSG messages no longer work. Zdoom reports an unknown message. Again this worked in previous versions.

This is definitely a case of using the Hexen 1.0 IWAD and not 1.1: those messages were hard-coded into the executable (rather than the IWAD) in 1.0 but were part of the WAD lump in 1.1. Chocolate Hexen also requires the 1.1 IWAD for (roughly) this reason.

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CapnClever said:

There are ways for even vanilla Hexen to break in the final room of hub 4: the most common problem is that there must be exactly three Green Serpents in the room when the script checks to open up the walls to the Bishops. Having spent a decent amount of time running the game and entering/executing that room in weird ways, I've also seen other freaky stuff happen, like the Green Serpents pop out one at a time, or Serpents spawning in before killing all the Afrits, or killing a single Bishop to cause the Heresiarch walls to open up.

In other words, if it's breaking then it might end up being IWAD-related and not engine-related. That it worked in an older version of the engine and not in a newer one is likely the byproduct of other changes.


That particular script is just buggy. It contains several bad checks that can break, depending on what the player is doing. The 3 serpents thing is the easiest one to trigger.

This wasn't fixed in 1.1, btw.

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Graf Zahl said:

No. There's only the old DOS patch. If you got a 32 bit Windows you can run it as-is, otherwise you have to use DosBox.


Hexen was the only Doom engine game that I got working in vanilla, on my old XP box, with sound and without any slow down. Doom was very slow and laggy, and later I played it with the Doom 95 executable. Heretic I bought years later and by then I was already running Zdoom on my PC.

If you had to manually configure the IRQ and DMA channels on a windows box the games would be slow in vanilla because many of those channels were shared between multiple resources and windows virtually manages them. DOS does not.

I tried running Hexen with DosBox over 7 years ago but it was again very slow and laggy and I did not know how to make it go full screen. For that reason I started having a distaste of DosBox ever since. I guess if have to install the patch in windows vista and windows 7 that is the only way to go.

Thanks for your suggestion.

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Keep in mind that all we're telling you to do with DOSBox is run the patch program, just once, to update your IWAD. After you've patched the IWAD you can uninstall DOSBox, you won't need it anymore.

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Gez said:

Keep in mind that all we're telling you to do with DOSBox is run the patch program, just once, to update your IWAD. After you've patched the IWAD you can uninstall DOSBox, you won't need it anymore.


Thank You.

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