Final Battle in HeXen

[DooMBoy]

Is it just me, or is the final battle in HeXen a little underwhelming? I think so. I think that Raven could have put in some more scriptage, so Korax could taunt you one last time, before you fought him.

[pilottobombadier]

Underwhelming? Play as the warrior, my friend. I think you'll find it a wee more difficult then.

[Fletcher`]

feh, if u got the queitus sword- big k goes down easy

[The Ultimate DooMer]

It doesn't matter who you play, as you always have weapon 4 by the time you face him. To make it (and the rest of the game) harder, play on skill 5.

(that's fast monsters and no cheats allowed, but no respawning)

[kristus]

Play using Korax Mod2, the game will be a bloodbath on high level. and the bosses will be hard as hell.

[Ultimate Demon]

kristus said:

Play using Korax Mod2, the game will be a bloodbath on high level. and the bosses will be hard as hell.

Do you also have Korax Mod Ebola? Next best mod ever :)

[Ichor]

Korax isn't any harder in Korax Mod 2. He just has a ton more hit points. The same with the Heresiarch, but he has an extra...surprise if you don't kill him quickly enough.

[Woolie Wool]

DooMBoy said:

Is it just me, or is the final battle in HeXen a little underwhelming? I think so. I think that Raven could have put in some more scriptage, so Korax could taunt you one last time, before you fought him.

Korax is boring. *snore*

[IMJack]

The question is, how do you make an original, challenging boss in a first/third-person shooter? All the realy good ideas have been done to death, and we're all used to them by now.

[Grazza]

IMJack said:

The question is, how do you make an original, challenging boss in a first/third-person shooter?

Better AI perhaps? Something as smart as Xan in UT, attacks as varied as the Iron Lich, as tough as a cyberdemon and able to port in extra bad guys as it sees fit.

It's good if you can see whether the boss is being hurt too. Otherwise you can be plugging away at it, wondering whether you first need to destroy some shield/regeneration system or whatever (like the Nihilanth in HL).

IMJack said:

All the realy good ideas have been done to death, and we're all used to them by now.

And some pretty crappy ones. Shub-Niggurath? (giggle)

[Quasar]

Play as the Cleric and use your screaming ghosts over and over and over all at once and if you do it right, Korax will die too early and the scripts mess up and you can't finish the level.

I believe personally that the final hub of Hexen had VERY little time spent on it, because it has the most bugs of any of them. Especially the tomb of the Warrior class's leader, which has a bad BSP build, causing an entire subtree to get corrupted when the polyobjects for the Indiana-Jones-style access code "panel" turn.

I'd venture to bet they play-tested that level once or twice at the most. There's no way you could miss an error that grotesque with any further testing. They were probably running up to the end of their budget and Romero was probably itching for a release 9_9

[Captain Red]

Really? I thought that the battle with korax was great! He's screaming at you, while his lair is collapsing around him. I thought it was neat.

[DooMBoy]

Still though, they could have put one final script where Korax appears saying something like:
"Are you ready for the final battle?"

[AndrewB]

ravage said:

feh, if u got the queitus sword- big k goes down easy

And if you don't have Quietus at that point, then you really really suck.

[Quasar]

AndrewB said:

And if you don't have Quietus at that point, then you really really suck.

Unless you were, for instance, trying to beat him starting from scratch on MAP40 (or whatever it is...)

[Grazza]

Quasar said:

I'd venture to bet they play-tested that level once or twice at the most. There's no way you could miss an error that grotesque with any further testing. They were probably running up to the end of their budget and Romero was probably itching for a release 9_9

You could ask the Man Himself over at http://rome.ro/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi
The Hexen/Heretic forum seems pretty quiet there, so he'd probably be only too happy to answer.

I didn't find Korax too lame. Perhaps they had made the Heresiarch too tough by comparison though.

Quasar said:

Unless you were, for instance, trying to beat him starting from scratch on MAP40 (or whatever it is...)

Whoa! Bad-asses R Us!

[DooMBoy]

Map 40

Uh, it's map 31, IIRC.

[Woolie Wool]

IMJack said:

The question is, how do you make an original, challenging boss in a first/third-person shooter? All the realy good ideas have been done to death, and we're all used to them by now.

I know how to make a challenging boss:

CODE HIS AI SO HE ACTUALLY HAS HALF A CHANCE OF HITTING YOU!

[Grazza]

Woolie Wool said:

CODE HIS AI SO HE ACTUALLY HAS HALF A CHANCE OF HITTING YOU!

When the games come out, the bosses generally seem quite tough for most players. Years on, they seem quite easy to deal with...

So here's a (silly) thought: the program could check the date, and as each year went by, make the bosses progressively tougher. So, in 1993, the cyberdemon could be the slow-moving rocket-firing dork we know and love. By 1998, he could have fired multiple rockets, some of which tracked you. By 2002, he could teleport at will, spray tracking rockets in all directions and fire a BFG.

[IMJack]

I had a thought: Program the AI so that when you dodge or circle-strafe it, it will "lead" its shots into you. It'll look for patterns in your movement and fire at where you will be rather than where you are.

[Ichor]

I think some monsters in Hexen 2 already do that.

[dsm]

IMJack said:

I had a thought: Program the AI so that when you dodge or circle-strafe it, it will "lead" its shots into you. It'll look for patterns in your movement and fire at where you will be rather than where you are.

This has already happened.
If you played Quake 1 mp 1: Scourge of Armagon and reached the boss, you'll have experienced this. He's a freak that fires twin rocket launchers at you, and he does exactly what you described on Nightmare (and perhaps also hard?).

[Grazza]

dsm said:

If you played Quake 1 mp 1: Scourge of Armagon and reached the boss, you'll have experienced this. He's a freak that fires twin rocket launchers at you, and he does exactly what you described on Nightmare (and perhaps also hard?).

I recall reading that the Quake 1 monster AI in general had some movement prediction built into it in Nightmare skill (but not Hard). Naturally, the speedrunners used this to make some tricks (e.g. the zombie "gib-ride" in e3m2) possible so they could finish the game even more quickly.

[Baron of Sigma]

Yes, I know about this kind of projectile attack. EDGE calls it SMARTPROJECTILE, and it can be used in the engine, as Korax in my game can do it on his attacks, and it makes him a little more annoying.

Yes, I remember Armagon having that nasty ability in the harder difficulties of perdicting your location with his rocket attacks. Made him more challenging. But yes, I wish Doom's AI was little more advanced[I mean prior to the ports and such]. Monsters didn't aways know HOW to get to you, especially if a large wall seperated you from a monster. The monster would just meander along the side of the wall near your coordinates, even if a way around the wall was in his site. :\

[SyntherAugustus]

kristus said:

Play using Korax Mod2, the game will be a bloodbath on high level. and the bosses will be hard as hell.

korax mod is easy.

[DooMBoy]

Not if you're playing as the Mage. 20 health, 2 speed, 6 efficiency = hard.

[Ichor]

Level 12 - 14 mage: health - around 35, speed - 10, efficiency - somewhere in the 40s, infinite mana from mana creation spell, can cast invulnerability at will (if he has enough magic).

By the time he reaches Korax, he'll have all weapons, probably 25 of all health artifacts, and about 10 or so Dark Servants. It may take a long time because Korax has so much health, but the mage will easily win.

[dsm]

DooMBoy said:

Not if you're playing as the Mage. 20 health, 2 speed, 6 efficiency = hard.

The mage can just fire his Arc of death at Korax from a safe distance and dodge Korax's counter attacks - easy.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

I've beaten Hexen on skill 5 with all the characters, and there's not much difference between them when it comes to the final battle, as you can easily kill him with weapon 4 and dodge his attacks. The differences are mostly in the early hubs, when you only have 2 weapons and not much mana/items. (try completing the bright crucible on skill 5 with the fighter!)

[DOOM Anomaly]

I do agree with having betta AI but, are demons really all that smart? I mean the stereotypical isnt really smart depending on wut they are, the demons shud b smarter but not Genuis' (but there is an exeption for the Spider Mastermind, that cant just be a catchy title name, despite its asaults on the moon bases. Perhaps the cyber demon too, since hes a cybernetic demon hes gotta have sum intelligence in him.)