Thoughts on Witchaven?

[Grungo]

Me think Witchaven is one of the best games, unironically. It is prolly the first FPS mideivl fantasy game with actuall sword combat and melee, sure it has spells and wizardry, but grungo think it is ahead of time. It had potions of different effect, powerups, durabilty, level up system, and scrolls, glitchy yet ambitious.

 

Grungo have guilty pleasure softspot for capstone games, and me have hot take... Witchaven better than Hexen.

[OliveTree]

witchhaven on sale for less than three USD! olivetree also think they hear witchfire is witchhaven spiritual successor, but olivetree not sure where they heard that or if it true.

[ducon]

I own Witchaven (found in a second hand shop) and played it 30 seconds.

[BeachThunder]

It's not terrible...

 

Alright, well, the ghost thing that randomly appears out of nowhere just to shriek at you is terrible. But, okay, other than when the game is actively trying to give you a heart attack, it's not terrible...

 

Let's just say it's a solid 2 stars out of 5 game.

 

[roadworx]

makes sense that the only one who likes witchaven is a literal troglodyte

[bobstremglav]

I pretty like Witchaven too. Some choices are bad, like deadly traps and not working arrows, but overall ideas and execution are fine

[yakfak]

witchaven owns in a sword and sorcery fashion. I don't really think its fun to play (and I think not a lot of game tweaking really took place, its just a stack of unrefined ideas and D&D dungeon layouts which is kinda what I'm in to!) but its wonderful to be inside and the game can be... ahem... vanquished!!! reminds me of a more FPS Might and Magic 6 with its hostility, its haphazard command of 3d and its general uncanniness.

[Gez]

My impression of Capstone Games is that they had passion for their craft, but not, you know, skill. So they made bad games, but with a lot of heart and effort poured into it. They just were bad games anyway. And that makes them kinda endearing, even if not fun to play.

[Dynamo]

Witchaven is fun in its own way, the level design has strong 1994 Doom PWAD energies but can be charming, and a few of the levels in its final portion are actually somewhat impressive for their age (like the castle with a moat). All that said, the games were definitely ineptly made, and Witchaven in particular is an absolute broken mess in terms of coding. It can be played now easily with source ports such as BuildGDX or EGWhaven, but 10 years ago it was not so easy to play it without running into a myriad of technical problems.

 

I have never played Witchaven 2, however. I have heard it is worse than the original.

[Kinsie]

All of the Capstone games were a perfect storm behind the scenes: Low budgets meant they couldn't hire any steady hands, meaning most of the staff were inexperienced and in many cases, straight out of school. And extremely short schedules (as in, six months or so a game) meant that there was little-to-no room for such luxuries as design documents or effective QA.

 

Witchaven 2 was not a good time. The company was running out of money and management were making a (failed) bid to take it public, regularly bringing in prospective investors to show around and give the whole dog-and-pony show. Morale was bad, all the different factions (management, development, marketing, QA...) hated each other, and the end of the tunnel was pretty clearly in sight. That they shipped anything at all is a tiny miracle.

[Professor Hastig]

The only positive thing I have to say about it is that of the 3 Build-engine Capstone games it is definitely the best. Which still doesn't make it a good game. Unlike TekWar and Witchaven 2 which are outright garbage this one is at least somewhat mediocre and doesn't turn into an instant stinker once it is started, it takes a little longer to realize.

 

[Gmg]

Pretty good game.

[Dynamo]

What was wrong with Witchaven 2 anyway, apart from the rushed production? All I know about it is that it uses new enemies with significantly higher resolution sprites alongside the old, janky 2d sprites of the original game, making for a weird look.

[magicsofa]

...

 

...I'd rather play Tekwar

[Aaron Blain]

I bought both Witchaven games with my allowance/birthday money as a kid because I was fascinated by the art and the theme. I played them for years, desperately trying to figure out how to see them as good games.

 

Honestly, I think they would both be great with a little polish.

 

- The main thing is the physics and collision detection. The jumping in particular is completely unacceptable in a game that emphasizes platforming to the extent it does.

- There are mechanical and graphical bugs. WH2 has a lot of sprites that have a wildly inappropriate scaling factor, for example.

- The balance and enemy behavior need to be tweaked.

 

I've spent some time poking around in the BuildGDX code, but last time I checked I couldn't find an easy way to do the level of modifications that would be necessary to fix the Witchaven games. I don't think it would take all that much.

[Argent Agent]

 

[Grungo]

6 hours ago, roadworx said:

makes sense that the only one who likes witchaven is a literal troglodyte

._.

[Grungo]

3 hours ago, Gez said:

My impression of Capstone Games is that they had passion for their craft, but not, you know, skill. So they made bad games, but with a lot of heart and effort poured into it. They just were bad games anyway. And that makes them kinda endearing, even if not fun to play.

Yeah, the games are bad, but you tell they put lot effort in, It like child trying to draw painting, full of creativity, but not good in eye of master professional painter

[Patrick_Plays_Doom]

3 minutes ago, Grungo said:

._.

Woah I learned just grungo text-emoticon know what is

[Grungo]

Just now, Patrick_Plays_Doom said:

Woah I learned just grungo text-emoticon know what is

Grrng.

[Dynamo]

31 minutes ago, Argent Agent said:

 

So uh... what are the complaints again?? This is awesome :D

[Grungo]

1 minute ago, Dynamo said:

So uh... what are the complaints again?? This is awesome :D

Pinnacle of entertainment software

[Master O]

 

 

 

[Powerlord]

I played witchaven on a whim once with super low expectations cuz it's yknow, a janky ass capstone game, and I don't know if it was my trench-level expectations or some genuine charm but really I didn't have a bad time with witchaven. I wouldn't say it was good but I do think it was entirely tolerable, nothing in witchaven wowed me but neither did anything really incite rage or reluctance or annoyance in me. I blazed through it in a day and I just came away being like "huh". It might be partly for my affinity for melee FPS, but yeah suffice to say I feel there's a good reason this was the only capstone game to get a real sequel. I also think it's a more enjoyable time than hexen not because it's actually better designed than hexen in a traditional sense but because my playtime isn't 80% wondering where to go and getting lost and not being able to find the 8th switch behind a not secret secret wall or whatever. Indeed might be a bit of a troglodyte opinion but when my options are easy to digest trash that comes and goes within a day vs wallhumping indigestion that will last far longer in my brain over the occasional bouts of enjoyable set dressing and well designed combat, I choose the trash.

 

Oh yeah, witchaven 2 on the other hand was painful, don't think I'll ever pick that game up again

[Herr Dethnout]

5 hours ago, Grungo said:

It is prolly the first FPS mideivl fantasy game with actuall sword combat and melee

Ultima Underworld: xd

[Grain of Salt]

Some of the art is quite nice. A lot of the ideas are cool. The level design seems alright. It's just the completely non-functional engine and lack of polish that make it unplayable. It's like playing Hover for windows 95, but with new sprites.

 

11 hours ago, Grungo said:

Witchaven better than Hexen.

 

When you play hexen you can tell what's happening.

[vyruss]

Hehehe.  Witchaven.

 

[Aaron Blain]

I think in the Doom 30th Anniversary Stream John Romero talked a bit about how having the games feel absolutely solid and believable was non-negotiable. Witchaven shows why.

 

I just installed the GOG version and played the first level to refresh my memory. Combat feels fine, but mostly the problem is ledges and jumping. Give the player more air control or maybe a floatier jump and the game would improve massively. The way enemies clip and collide doesn't seem entirely right, although I can't identify why. Maybe their radii or their sprite alignments need to be tweaked? There are also problems with enemies falling into pits that they can't get out of. (Especially these strange "water pits inside water pits" the level designer is so fond of.) Also, the player's view-height should adjust much more quickly when entering a higher sector. This really makes the game feel bad. I remember WH2 in particular feeling like a bad dream where I'm trying to walk through some kind of glue or molasses.

 

When you finish a level and teleport to the next it doesn't play the teleport noise or display the teleport flash.

 

I'm also remembering how it's annoying that you can't pick up a fresh weapon until you break your current copy of that weapon. It would be better if weapon pickups worked like health pickups in Doom etc, such that they "refill" your weapon health even if that means some % is wasted.

 

And as cool as it is to make ladders of arrows stuck in the wall, it would probably be better to make them collectable instead of blocking.

 

Witchaven also shirks the discipline of texture alignment in favor of ill-advised texture stretching, which often looks quite bad. The false floors above pit traps are usually an incorrectly-scaled sprite.

 

I'm also pretty sure there are mistakes with things like line specials, leading to levels that can't be completed without using an "Open Door" spell.

 

It would have been a good game with a few more months of work before release.

[Dynamo]

40 minutes ago, Aaron Blain said:

Combat feels fine, but mostly the problem is ledges and jumping. Give the player more air control or maybe a floatier jump and the game would improve massively.

I'm pretty sure this is dependent on PC hardware/DOS settings, which was the case for a lot of games from the time (i.e. Killing Time is another one that will have variable jumps depending on what your PC specs are)

 

I think when playing games this old it pays off just use a source port where applicable, such as BuildGDX or even EGWhaven. That way you won't have to deal with problems that did not even exist when the game was new, or at least were not as severe.

[mrthejoshmon]

I have played Witchaven 1 and 2 to completion and it is easily one of the worst games I have endured, even from just a technical perspective.

 

Everything about it is shagged, from the enemies damaging you before even animating or even throwing a punch to the fact that one map on Witchaven 2 literally folded inside of itself if played for too long (It was mainly room over rooms, forget which map in particular) or the fact that I had to skip the stats screen or the game would fuckin crash (in Witchaven 2, specifically)...

 

It just isn't good.

 

It's a shame actually, because Witchaven is a premise and style of game I wish more existed of, best we got is Arthurian Legends (pretty good, recommend). I was so disappointed by Witchaven that I'm currently making my own Witchaven inspired level just to fill the void.