Hacx 1.2 in Vanilla Doom Engine?

I am trying to get Hacx1.2 to run on Doom2.exe through DosBox but it just doesn't seem to work. The Doom Wiki "claims" it's vinilla compatible if you "extract" the DeHackEd lump and use it to make a patch" so I extracted the "DEHACKED" lump from the HACX.WAD (v1.2) and saved it as a .DEH file. I had the full version of Hacx 1.1 installed properly, so I tried replacing the HACX.WAD and HACX.DEH with the new ones but when I start up the game it plays the DOOM II music instead of the HACX music, indicating that I have clearly done something wrong.

I compared the two HACX wads in SLADE and their are clearly organized differently. I tried converting the Hacx1.2 PWAD to IWAD format myself but was very unsuccessful.

I have a couple utilities that might be able to helm me out such as SLADE, DeHackEd 3.1a (Run through DosBox of course) and WHackED 4.

So if someone could guide me through the process of getting Hacx v1.2 to run vanilla style, that would be AWESOME.

ON3i11 said:

So if someone could guide me through the process of getting Hacx v1.2 to run vanilla style, that would be AWESOME.

You need to apply the DEH patch to a copy of your doom2.exe file, and then launch that EXE.

DOOM itself has no idea what a .deh file is and cannot use it in any way. DeHackEd is an exe patching utility.

If you want the pure vanilla experience but don't mind going one step outside DOSBox, you can play it with Chocolate Doom. It supports the Hacx 1.2 IWAD right out of the box and is a faithful emulation of the original engine in pretty much every way that counts.

Quasar said:

You need to apply the DEH patch to a copy of your doom2.exe file, and then launch that EXE.

DOOM itself has no idea what a .deh file is and cannot use it in any way. DeHackEd is an exe patching utility.

Yeah I already got all the basics down. I'm not a super newb or anything.

If I use DeHackEd to patch the doom2.exe it creates a new modified exe AFAIK, but do I have to launch hacx through dehacked every time I want to play? Not to mention I have no idea how to use DeHackED as I'm not familiar with old DOS programs.

Perhaps screenshot of the Hacx install will help. As you can see all I have to do to play Hacx1.1 from the original install is run the Hacx.exe. How it uses the other hacx related files (highlighted in red), such as the hacx.deh, is unknown to me.

I thought if I replaced the hacx.deh file and the hacx.wad file with the new ones it would work perfectly fine. I think the reason it doesn't work is because the Hacx1.2 wad is in IWAD format but the 1.1 is in PWAD format. Not to mention I probably have to make a new hacx.exe by editing the doom2.exe using DeHackEd and then new hacx.deh.

SO I was thinking I would make a new directory with the Doom2.exe in it and make a modified exe with dehacked and just throw the hacx1.2 wad in there renamed as doom2.wad so it gets loaded as the default IWAD when I launch the modified exe. Would that work?

sorry for my unorganized ideas.

Xaser said:

If you want the pure vanilla experience but don't mind going one step outside DOSBox, you can play it with Chocolate Doom. It supports the Hacx 1.2 IWAD right out of the box and is a faithful emulation of the original engine in pretty much every way that counts.

thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not really looking for another source port. I have some, and I use them to play some mods and wads that aren't vanilla compatible sometimes, but for this particular situation I want to be able to play vanilla. This is somewhat I plan on moving the files over to an older computer running windows 98 in the near future.

ON3i11 said:

Not to mention I probably have to make a new hacx.exe by editing the doom2.exe using DeHackEd and then new hacx.deh.

The vanilla exe does not care in the slightest about .deh patches. It doesn't do anything with them. You have to use DeHackEd to apply the patch to the exe.

DHACX.EXE is the modified executable file, and you need to load HACX.WAD as a PWAD. Try this in the command line from the Hacx folder or directory you show in the image you posted:

dhacx -file hacx.wad

Gez said:

The vanilla exe does not care in the slightest about .deh patches. It doesn't do anything with them. You have to use DeHackEd to apply the patch to the exe.

Yes that's what I said. You even quoted it in your post.

myk said:

DHACX.EXE is the modified executable file, and you need to load HACX.WAD as a PWAD. Try this in the command line from the Hacx folder or directory you show in the image you posted:

dhacx -file hacx.wad

Yes I tried that and it doesn't work.

Anyways I figured out how to use DeHackEd and made a new modified doom2.exe using the .deh file extracted from the Hacx 1.2 wad.
The only thing is that DeHackEd got and error on "line 2364: unmatchable text string"

Fortunately for me Hacx 1.2 now runs perfectly fine vanilla style, unless that error has cause some kind of problem I'm yet to notice.

Thanks for tryin to help me out guys. I realize I'm not the easiest to help out, since I'm not very good at organizing my thoughts (I blame the AD/HD), which causes a lot of misunderstandings. But sharing my ideas seemed to help me anyways.

Edit:

Since hacx is now "freeware" would it be okay for me to upload my "vanilla hacx 1.2" for other people to download? That way if anyone else wants to run Hacx 1.2 vanilla style they won't have to go through everything I did. Or is that technically "illegal" because it contains a modified doom2.exe

You would need to specifically detect that something is wrong with the existing uploads before yet another version of Hacx (1.3?) is uploaded to idgames. Before posting above I had tried a fresh install of v1.1 and it worked fine.

The line 2364 error is harmless and occurs because DeHackEd is trying to edit a text string from the Ultimate DOOM executable file which is not present in the original v1.9 (for DOOM II or shareware and registered DOOM).

ON3i11 said:

Yes that's what I said. You even quoted it in your post.

The "and then" was a bit ambiguous. I thought you thought the deh patch was a different step from using dehacked. :p

ON3i11 said:

Since hacx is now "freeware" would it be okay for me to upload my "vanilla hacx 1.2" for other people to download? That way if anyone else wants to run Hacx 1.2 vanilla style they won't have to go through everything I did. Or is that technically "illegal" because it contains a modified doom2.exe

It's not really legal to distribute modified versions of doom2.exe. Best thing to do would be to either write up a tutorial/set of instructions for how to do it, or write a batch file to automate the process.

myk said:

You would need to specifically detect that something is wrong with the existing uploads before yet another version of Hacx (1.3?) is uploaded to idgames. Before posting above I had tried a fresh install of v1.1 and it worked fine.

The line 2364 error is harmless and occurs because DeHackEd is trying to edit a text string from the Ultimate DOOM executable file which is not present in the original v1.9 (for DOOM II or shareware and registered DOOM).

Thanks for the info. I was afraid I would get halfway through the game before realizing there was something wrong with the game, or being stopped by some unfixable glitch.

fraggle said:

It's not really legal to distribute modified versions of doom2.exe. Best thing to do would be to either write up a tutorial/set of instructions for how to do it, or write a batch file to automate the process.

Ahh, I thought it might be okay since the freeware version of Hacx 1.1 on the ID archive contains DHACX.exe which is a modified version of the DOom2.exe, but I guess Hacx did buy the rights to distribute it.

I wouldn't know how to get a .bat file to run dehacked and patch the doom2.exe but it isn't to hard to do it yourself. I could write a short Tut, or record a video or something. Then again I have been really lazy lately...