Is Hacx 1.0 full anywhere?

[Cire]

Does anyone know if the Hacx 1.0 full and working IWAD is available for download anywhere? I can only find Hacx 1.1 and newer or 1.0 shareware or broken 1.0 full IWADs.

[SavageCorona]

Why do you want an old version that's probably been updated for a reason?

[Cire]

Because I'm interested in such files for historic interest. I'm curious to look through the WAD file, besides I think it's important for that revision also be preserved, like it's important to preserve older revisions of other games too. There's probably a lot of reasons why to preserve older revisions, beta versions etc. of games.

[Xaser]

I've got it:

Original Installer package
Installed Wad (and accessories)

There's a couple of interesting things about 1.0 to note:

• There's no DEHACKED patch in the resulting distribution; the installer creates HACX.EXE directly.
  
• A MAP21 is present, with immobile enemies on pillars and weapons all around. Probably a "zoo" map for dev testing.
  
• MAP14 ("'Trode Wars") and MAP15 ("Twilight of ENK's") are swapped. Interestingly, the map names have not changed.
  
• 1.0's MAP15 (MAP14 in the 1.1 release) has tweaks to the end room -- the exit portal looks more "complete" and there's a secret exit just to the north.
  
• Similarly, the transition between the two maps includes one of those console rooms, which isn't present in the 1.1 release.
  
• Somewhere on Nostromo's site, there's a tale about the earliest Hacx release (1.0?) supposedly having massive texturing issues because a few texture names were swapped around, but that doesn't seem to exist here.

This list naturally isn't complete; there's likely bugs between the versions, etc. that were fixed, prompting the 1.1 release.

Though I'm speculating, it seems to me that there were some last minute map changes in v1.0 that accidentally got reverted for 1.1. I wouldn't understand the removal of some MAP14/MAP15 elements otherwise.

[Cire]

Thanks a lot Xaser, this was what I was looking for. For the record, I found an ISO image of Hacx 1.0 at a warez site I won't give the adress to for obvious reasons. It seems to be a bit corrupted though because the last install file (HACX.9 iirc) was reported corrupt and the installer failed.

[CacoDoomer]

Speaking of all of this, does anyone know if HacX 2.0 is still going to be finished?

[Blastfrog]

CacoDoomer said:

Speaking of all of this, does anyone know if HacX 2.0 is still going to be finished?

Not to speak for Xaser, but I do believe it's still making progress, just quietly. At least, Xaser still speaks of it as an upcoming project and IIRC he even confirmed to me that it wasn't cancelled when I asked a few months back.

[VGA]

HacX is one of the most inconsistent megawads I've played. Some maps are awesome, others are shit. Same for the music.

I'd love some solid new maps for it, it had good atmosphere most of the time.

[SavageCorona]

Do you mean HacX 2.0 as HacX 2 being a sequel or just an update to the old one that refurbishes it?

[Pencil of Doom]

Hacx is underrated, it needs more love, that's all.
But then again, it was very fun playing that 1.2 from start to finish(yes i completed all maps).

[Blzut3]

SavageCorona, I guess you could describe Hacx 2.0 as a refurbished version. It's an updated reboot of the game for ZDoom and EE.

Also I reapplied the map changes from 1.0 into 1.2 for a future 1.3 release. I believe it just needs a co-op playthrough to verify that everything is correct, but who knows when we'll find the time.

Xaser said:

Though I'm speculating, it seems to me that there were some last minute map changes in v1.0 that accidentally got reverted for 1.1. I wouldn't understand the removal of some MAP14/MAP15 elements otherwise.

That's exactly what happened. Hacx 1.1 is a beta version.

Version 1.1 is actually a throw back to a version "before" the CD version. What happened was this. We created the final version of the game. Then the "powers-that-be" at Banjo thought it would be more "developer" friendly if we changed the texture names we were using to the more commonly known Doom names. It was a nice thought but in the process, some of the texture references in the game got messed up. ...and, unfortunately, this messed up version is what made it to the commercially released CD. So, what you have here is the original version of the game without any of the texture bugs inherent in the CD version ...although the Co-op bugs still exist.

[Xaser]

Hmm, yeah, that's the paragraph I was thinking of that described 1.0 texture issues. I'm still not seeing them, though.

When playing through 1.2 co-op with Nostromo a ways back, he pointed out that the fan vent room in MAP12 was one of the biggest offenders of the texture "oops" bug (the walls were no longer fans), yet they appear just fine in v1.0. We may need a better litmus test (or at least some sort of screenie of an error in the 1.0 wad; I don't really feel like combing through myself just yet).

Curious either way. ;)

[Dimon12321]

In case somebody will ever revisit Hacx 1.0, here is a .deh file, that's required for some various things, like playing back old demos. For reference, I took it from Hacx 1.1 pack.

HACX_DEH.zip

[Grazza]

But there aren't demos on 1.0. All the demos at DSDA are for 1.1. BTW, I wouldn't assume the deh for 1.0 is necessarily the same. There were even different versions included in 1.1 - the separate deh file included in the package was not the same as the one used to create dhacx.exe. That's why in the package there are two different versions of the deh file (hacx.deh and hacx_f.deh).

BTW2: the prb+ autoloading patterns will load the right deh for each demo.

BTW3: the deh is of a type that Boom/MBF will screw up due to incorrect handling of maxhealth. So Hacx really needs -complevel 2 to act as intended. The TASMBF demo illustrates wrong health levels.

 

If you want the 1.0 deh, you'd need to extract it from the exe using dehacked.exe. It's simple enough to do, but I can't be bothered right now, since it isn't really needed for anything much.

Edited August 13, 2019 by Grazza