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XCVG5 years ago

Polyobjects have come a long way since Hexen but still have some... issues. They can be mitigated with careful level design, but as you could probably tell, I never actually finished that level.

Was it in the large room with the silver platform? That is the final boss and is meant to be challenging. The game is supposed to autosave at the beginning of every level, but it could be bugged. I could and should have set it up to autosave just before the boss fight but it just hadn't occurred to me.

But I mean, it's SBIG Jam, so these kinds of issues are to be expected. Glad you enjoyed it despite (or because of?) the issues.

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cubehero5 years ago

I did some small amounts of Duke Nukem 3D modding back in the day, didn't even know Hexen had an editor!

Oh yeah then it was the final boss, I shot him with almost all of my ammo and made two of the bots explode next to him but it wasn't enough to kill him! Even if I hadn't facetanked a rocket I don't know if I wouldn't have run out of ammo before killing him. I failed to check for autosaves as I didn't expect them from something based on old shooters, so I can't comment whether they actually worked or not!

But yeah, with this jam, issues can indeed make the game more enjoyable!

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XCVG5 years ago

Hexen is based on the Doom engine and uses (mostly) the same tools, but adds a few more features to the mix. (G)ZDoom actually used the Hexen map format even for Doom maps (Doom in Hexen Format) because it was more capable, before eventually switching to UDMF which is even better. Polyobjects are a hacky way of doing 3d-ish moving geometry created for Hexen. It can be seen in the first map, with a pair of towering wooden doors that swing open ominously. (G)ZDoom extended them quite a bit and that's how the sliding and swinging doors are done here.

The final boss is (barely) killable with the ammo in the room. Old shooters didn't have autosaves, but there's a critical quality of life feature these days. On top of that, some of the more complex (G)ZDoom mods would break horribly with an oldschool pistol start.

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cubehero5 years ago

Oh, I think I might have read that some time but maybe I forgot about it. Shame on me, considering I played through Hexen like 30+ times! It did have lots of moving 3D stuff, which wasn't really standard yet back then.

Hmm, guess I failed the fight then, or maybe he was 1 HP from dying when I facetanked that rocket D:

Autosaves do seem really important, though they alleviate that feeling of "oh, I saved 0.5 seconds before a rocket hit me and killed me, nice" that many old games had a bit...

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