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The Ultimate DooMer

[Hexen] Serpent: Resurrection (Final Beta on p1)

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Now...after all this time...the 21st century Hexen adventure known as Serpent Resurrection is finally ready for testing!

Beta 3 download - unzip and click the bat file.
Latest GZDoom - I tested it with r825 but newer ones should be fine too.

If you're not familiar with the mod, it's a Hexen adventure for GZDoom with 25 maps, 7 weapons for each class (with 2 new mana types), a magic system, a monetary system, lots of new monsters/items and an RPG system to make the 3 classes a lot more different to each other. Screenies below (although some are out of date now):

http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/3959/screenshotcata.png
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/4083/screenshotfire.png
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/1715/screenshotmon.png
http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/4706/screenshotmarsh.png
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/6128/screenshottemple.png
http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/3910/screenshotvillage.png
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/5066/screenshotice.png
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/5938/screenshotmonout.png
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/6804/screenshotshore.png
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/5843/screenshotcastle.png

Some noteworthy notes to take note of:

Read the text file - I cannot stress how important this is...I know it's uncommon to require it, but if you don't read it you won't have a clue what's happening when you start, or what anything does etc.

This mod is loooooong - in fact it could be one of the longest ever...make sure you set aside plenty of time to play.

This is not a classic-style mod - it has a world, a story, and the first 2 maps in particular are designed to set the scene etc. so please don't be put off by them. The gameplay is a bit different too...weapons, keys & puzzle items have to be found, rather than just being put in front of you. Features such as jumping, crouching and even trading will be required to progress. There are help features available if you get stuck, but try not to use them before that point.

Hard skill is not the benchmark - Normal skill is the one aimed at first-timers, Hard assumes that you know what you're doing (and Heroic is for experts only!). I'd prefer it if everyone tested it on Normal for that reason, plus I've been testing & balancing on Hard (as I'm the only one who knows the mod well at present) so I don't exactly know how Normal will play.

I'm mainly interested in balancing the gameplay, but any comments, suggestions etc. regarding anything in the mod are always welcome.

Changelog since beta 2: (if you've played it before it's recommended to read it)
----------------------------


Scroll down to the bottom of this post.

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Okay i walked through the city a bit and it seemed like you have invested a lot of time and effort into this project. It looks really good! But unfortunately, my it was lacking all the time and everything was really slow, its propably the fault of my computer hardware which is not the best ;) and while the graphics looked really cool i had my problems with the music, it was a bit too happy, too funky and too party-like ;)

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This looks like it has a lot of potential and reminds me of those early 90's RPG games, and as Fenris said, you've worked hard on what you've done so far, and that's awesome. :)

I played on the second highest difficulty with the mage and it was pretty cool being able to summon a monster that could defend me. But, running around everywhere with just a mages staff really gets annoying by the time your on the 4th area. And while the serpent was awesome, sometimes it'd spot an enemy creature behind the bars in the small houses and keep firing at it even though none of it's missiles can penetrate the wooden bars you've set up, but he'd keep trying to shoot the same enemy that's in the bars rather than focusing on the ones that were close.

And it'd be pretty cool if you could work on contrasting the brightness in areas to make it seem more varied, especially the more open ones in that open land you travel to by boat.

And for some reason my computer was slowing down as well in the game, and there seemed to be a delay in sound, when I hit a wall with my staff, it'd sometimes wait a up to a second to make the hitting noise. Anyway, the slow down damaged gameplay to the point where everything felt cumbersome.

Have you ever thought about respawning creeps everytime you revisit a central area to create some replayability?

Anyway, I really love the feeling of exploration this wad has, and the fact that you added RPG elements, like leveling up and stuff. :)

Good luck man, I really look forward to full version of this.

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Since you both complain about slowdowns, how about posting the specs? These maps are obviously more demanding of processing power so it'd be more helpful if one knew on what kind of system it doesn't work well anymore.

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Heh, well... too be honest I don't keep track of my specs (just get my brother to buy me whatever I need). But I'll read them off my Properties.

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU
3.25GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT

It might be because I haven't gotten all the latest drivers for my card yet, or something. Reformatted last week. Anyway I'll try tweaking the graphics and stuff. :)

The slow down wasn't too massive, just enough for it to not run smoothly though, and I could almost feel the pain that would be inflicted onto garden variety machines.

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That one's as good as mine. As for drivers, if the ones you currently have are from before 2009, upgrade! I don't know when exactly but around that time NVidia made an optimization that gave a 50% speed boost on my GF 8600 GT.

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I played on the second highest difficulty with the mage and it was pretty cool being able to summon a monster that could defend me. But, running around everywhere with just a mages staff really gets annoying by the time your on the 4th area. And while the serpent was awesome, sometimes it'd spot an enemy creature behind the bars in the small houses and keep firing at it even though none of it's missiles can penetrate the wooden bars you've set up, but he'd keep trying to shoot the same enemy that's in the bars rather than focusing on the ones that were close.


Unfortunately that's the nature of the monster AI...they tend to stick to one target unless provoked by another. I used Thing_Hate to solve those issues on boss fights, but in open play it's not practical.

(btw you only need to run round with a staff in map 03...a combination of exploring and using the help features should ensure it)

And for some reason my computer was slowing down as well in the game, and there seemed to be a delay in sound, when I hit a wall with my staff, it'd sometimes wait a up to a second to make the hitting noise. Anyway, the slow down damaged gameplay to the point where everything felt cumbersome.


Sounds more like a system thing...mine is 3 years old (2.13GHz Core 2 Duo/2GB RAM/ATI Radeon X1300 Pro) and I do get slowdowns in a handful of areas later on but otherwise it runs smooth enough.

Have you ever thought about respawning creeps everytime you revisit a central area to create some replayability?


No need for respawns here, you'll notice why once you've played it for a bit ;)

Good luck man, I really look forward to full version of this.


This is the full version, save for changes that arise from the testing.

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DeathevokatioN said:

Have you ever thought about respawning creeps everytime you revisit a central area to create some replayability annoyance?


Fixed!


Daedalus did constant respawns and it essentially destroyed gameplay in that mod.

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Graf Zahl said:

Fixed!


Daedalus did constant respawns and it essentially destroyed gameplay in that mod.

At first I thought you fixed a ZDoom bug about which a user had yelled.

But doesn't vanilla Hexen use the respawning concept repeatedly? The only time it got annoying and bad was in the Dungeon level; they were coming like flies.

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Hexen does some time based respawning but it's only a few Ettins per wave so it was more or less harmless.

Deathkings already increased it to proportions where it negated the fun factor.

Daedalus, however, managed to take the concept to an extreme that I found intolerable: Each and every time you switched maps in a hub new monsters get spawned - and not just the small ones, no - among those were even Arch Viles and other biggies. So if you forgot something and had to go back - bad luck!

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printz said:

At first I thought you fixed a ZDoom bug about which a user had yelled.

But doesn't vanilla Hexen use the respawning concept repeatedly? The only time it got annoying and bad was in the Dungeon level; they were coming like flies.

That's because they spawned as fast, if not faster than you could kill them. After a few minutes, the map is teeming with ettins. Other maps only spawn a couple of ettins every few minutes. I usually just ignore them as I run around the maps. It's as if that was just thrown in as an afterthought.

Then there's Deathkings. I actually enjoyed that one. They used spawning like Hexen, but it wasn't insane like in the dungeon, but not almost pointless either. Also, it isn't just ettins that spawn. It chooses from a random type of monster and spawns a few of them every few minutes. Sometimes, it can be rough, especially in the early maps. Another down side is that ammo doesn't spawn, so it's possible to run out if you stick around for too long.

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I'm glad there are no respawns. As much as I loved the Eternal Doom IV demo, and I both like and frustrated with Daedalus, having to kill enemies over and over again in places I've already been in was very annoying.

Anyways Steve, so far I love this wad. The atmosphere, and themes are very impressive. As I get farther into the game, I'm sure I'll have more to say

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printz said:

At first I thought you fixed a ZDoom bug about which a user had yelled.

But doesn't vanilla Hexen use the respawning concept repeatedly? The only time it got annoying and bad was in the Dungeon level; they were coming like flies.


Don't you mean the Sacred Grove?

That map is a special case. You are suppose to kill all the Ettin's on the map in a certain ammount of time to reveal the switch in the middle.

However, after about a minuite, a few more Ettin begin spawning in about every 40-30-20-10... seconds (the spawning get's quicker), with text message's saying how many Ettin's are currently present.

If the number of Ettin's reaches 20, the level exit closes off and the Ettin's along with an infinite number of Choas Serpents start spawning. In other words, your dead.

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No, the dungeons have ettins spawning like crazy on that map, but only after (I think) you open all of those cells in the circular area near the beginning.

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Yeah, Hexen's wasn't very effective at creating dynamic gameplay, and Daedalus's made me use god mode throughout most of hub 1. My method is a lot more complicated but it only produces a fixed number of mobs (even if it doesn't appear that way to start with).

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Took out the first major boss thus far. Playing on Normal with the Cleric with the r786 build of GZDoom.

So far...this is amazing. The areas look pretty slick, new enemies are cool, music is catchy (Eastern Isles or whatever the first major enemy filled area is in particular), difficulty seems just right for Normal (Although trying to retrieve the Ruby Key...fun times).

Then again, not having to worry about running short on Potions of Life that much, if ever, due to the Serpent Staff's close range life leech capabilities makes things less stressful on the Cleric.

Only real bugs I've noticed...fire elementals in the village of prometheus do not give any xp (Maybe the water elementals in the water village too, not sure) and using the power spell via a hotkey seems to consume the spell points and a scroll, but not give you the effect it should.

Aside from that, this is a blast to play. Can't wait to see what lies ahead in the marshes and beyond.

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I've played it a bit.
Some issues arose for me.
The mission in the docks where I were supposed to store barrels. If you close the doors before you store the barrels, then you're fucked.

The story/talk from people are quite hard to follow because they can be hard to read against the background, go by too fast, and you can't look back in the console (which you usually can in Zdoom wads with these issues)

During the sail trip to Caldera or whatever Morrowind city it was, I lost track of who was who in the conversation. But it didn't matter because I wasn't paying attention much by that time anyway since missing a parts of sentences made me give up on following it. Besides, it didn't appear to be anything all that interesting said anyway.
The writing on the parts I did pick up wasn't terribly good.

I mean, he deducted that something was going down because there was fog? And then all that happens is that a gray death Wyvern comes.

After that I ran around grinding a bit. Then I did some stupid shit and I died.

Something visually that really caught my eye was the pointy rocks (grassy knolls, very tall grassy knolls) coming in with the ship. By the water level, they were leveling out against the water surface, that really doesn't make any sense. But the ship didn't have any tall masts or sails either for that matter, so I suppose it doesn't matter.

I'll play more when I get the time and see how it holds up game play wise. Hopefully the RPG elements are great. :)

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Anima Zero said:

...and using the power spell via a hotkey seems to consume the spell points and a scroll, but not give you the effect it should.

I always wondered what that did. I thought all it did was increase the amount of damage each weapon did. Instead, it sounds similar to the tome of power.

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Well...it looks interesting.But,there are issues.
1)not very important stuff:
-Weapon sprites for weapon 5 and 6 for mage look pretty bad;
-Skippable cutscenes would be nice.

2)more important stuff:
-Player speed is way too slow,the action is sluggish and boring;
-The player can't jump without the boots,which is unrealistic and very,very lame.

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killer2 said:

The player can't jump without the boots,which is unrealistic and very,very lame.

You can jump without boots, but you need a Dexterity score of about 15+ before it really starts to be perceptible as a jump, rather than just a weird camera shift.

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killer2 said:

2)more important stuff:
-Player speed is way too slow,the action is sluggish and boring;
-The player can't jump without the boots,which is unrealistic and very,very lame.

LVL up those abilities.

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About an hour and a half past the second major boss of the game. Everything is still awesome and the new weapons for the cleric are pretty slick and useful (still have the final one to assemble).

Hopefully can find the final piece of the Wraithverge somewhere in the Dauthi Mountain Pass or nearby soon.

Have not seen any real huge bugs either.

Also...one secret I ran across was quite the laugh.

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