Unreal and Hexen

[Lyric Suite]

You should probably grab the Direct3D10 renderer for the Unreal Engine. It improves the visual aspects of the game. Other than that you should be fine.

Its also the only thing that makes the game work on windows 7, at least for me. I ditched that OS a while ago but might be of interest to others.

 

[JarlFrank]

It's probably just that I'm not used to shooters being as fast as that, so it took some time getting used to.

Wait until your first Skaarj.

The monster that shoots two flaming laser balls? Yeah, encountered lots of those already. I've gotten used to the fast paced gameplay now and it's quite fun.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

ZDoom for Heretic/Hexen. It's the closest to the real thing and you don't have to use DOS Box.
Hexen II runs fine vanilla.

 

[Jaesun]

So what are your impressions of the game so far? That is assuming that you've played it for a bit.

It's interesting so far. Since I am a storyfag as well as an explorer fag, I have to read and explore everything. Now I'll be the first to admit I'm not the world's best FPS player, but the shoot things 4 or 5 times before they die mechanic (and I *swear* I am doing head shots) is kind of annoying (but I guess I can see why they did that). I fucking LOVED the first time I ran into one of those fucking ceiling things that shoot thorns at you, because I died and could not figure out what the fuck was hitting me. That was awesome!

I made it a little past that room where the fucking light's go out (after you hit the 2 switches) and then that nasty guy comes out. I of course died again. That was pretty cool though. Level design (so far is ok), though it is MILES above the shit boring banal stuff in modern FPS's. Anyways, enjoying it so far.

 

[Angthoron]

Heh, I remember having similar moments as well! Alt-fire of Enforcer is invaluable in that corridor, and alt-fire of Dispersion Pistol (without powerups) is great for taking down slow and stationary targets. Just charge it up for a few seconds and feed it to those ceiling things (Tentacles IIRC?), or to the Brutes.

 

[Gragt]

ZDoom for Heretic/Hexen. It's the closest to the real thing and you don't have to use DOS Box.

Closest to the real thing would be Chocolate Doom.

 

[Phelot]

This is making me want to reinstall Unreal. I haven't played it in years.

 

[JarlFrank]

So, I started playing Blood 2 which also uses the Unreal engine as far as I know, and that game showed me that Unreal *does* run too fast on my machine. In Unreal it merely felt slightly too fast, while in Blood 2 the voiceovers during cutscenes cut off before they've finished speaking, because the game runs too fast.

While both games are still playable, it's really quite annoying and I hope that the elite individuals of the Codex will be able to help me.

What I've already tried:
setting an FPS limit via command line or autoexec.cfg; doesn't work since either my problem doesn't seem to be FPS related *or* my chosen method of FPS limiting doesn't work or I did something wrong
assigning only one CPU core via task manager; didn't work either, the games are still too fast

Thing is that it doesn't happen with all Unreal Engine games, or at least with some it's less noticable - Rune and Deus Ex, for example, work perfectly well.

 

[DraQ]

So, I started playing Blood 2 which also uses the Unreal engine

Except Blood 2 uses Lithtech, which is a completely different and much shittier engine.

The only way to be sure is running a botmatch with specified time limit (at default speed) and measure the time it actually takes.

 

[JarlFrank]

Eh, okay, my fault then, supposed B2 would use the same engine.

Checked and Unreal runs fine. It's just Blood 2 which gives me this speed error shit.

 

[poocolator]

There's a story in Unreal-- read all of the diaries and go out of your way to find secrets.

 

[Heresiarch]

I remember the first time facing the Skaarj warrior. The guy fucking ninja-sidestepped my attacks. First time in all my FPS history. I was all like "OMG IAM GONNA DIE".

I also remember the first time facing the troll like beast boss in the arena. Got insta gibbed by a huge boulder flying in the face.

I also remember after a long, hard climb, finally reached the top of the Tower of Sun or something. Looked below, such a nice view! And then of course jumped off. Splattered into pieces.

Also remembered how amazed at the weapons creativity were. Shooting at the energy balls with your energy ray which all are fired with the same railgun like weapon wil make the balls explode. Eight ball launcher firing a full 6 rockets in one go. And the ultimate weapon is not some awesome BFG wannabe, but a simple but devastating minigun.

Good times.

 

[Jaesun]

I also remember the first time facing the troll like beast boss in the arena. Got insta gibbed by a huge boulder flying in the face.

I also remember after a long, hard climb, finally reached the top of the Tower of Sun or something. Looked below, such a nice view! And then of course jumped off. Splattered into pieces.

Good times.

Yeah I made it to that arena. I of course ran straight for the gun and was like, oh shit! Then saw that thing coming towards me, and I noticed some thing flying towards me and... splat. heh That was awesome.

This made me stop and go wow for a few minutes as well. (This IS with the upgraded hi-res textures though...)

 

[poocolator]

I also remember after a long, hard climb, finally reached the top of the Tower of Sun or something. Looked below, such a nice view! And then of course jumped off. Splattered into pieces.

Yeah, the Sunspire level is pretty amazing; what's more is that both the interior and exterior are part of the same map, so no loading times in-between.
You're going to love the Sunspire, Jaesun.
And the levels are all logical and consistent. I don't know what some of you are bitching about.

Spoiler

At the top of the Sunspire, you take the lift to SkyTown. It's pretty amazing.

 

[WhiteMagicRaven]

This might help you with unreal and blood2 too
http://www.thief-thecircle.com/guides/hyperthreading/

 

[DraQ]

This made me stop and go wow for a few minutes as well. (This IS with the upgraded hi-res textures though...)

And this is how it looks with original, low-res ones.

Unreal has never had much problem with textures going all blurry and shit close-up.
It uses multiple layers of detail textures on pretty much everything but see-thru surfaces (translucent, modulated, masked) and meshes (and almost everything in Unreal is good ol' BSP).

Even in software mode, which made most contemporary games look like shit it was sometimes hard to see that the game wasn't running in hardware.

And fear not for running out of awesome - game rations visual awesomeness in small doses. Completely unlike, say, Oblivious, which drops you near its most impressive city and it still fucking sucks.

Spoiler

I've just checked the Sunspire in the editor and it measures about 480m from the entry level and about 760m from the very bottom.

Apart from certain limitations to the overall complexity of geometry, a level in unreal pretty much is only constrained by requirement to fit in a 1.5km x 1.5km x 1.5km cube.


As for the Skaarj, the fuckers really are smart. Not just ninja-agile, smart. They aren't much of team players, but given opportunities like alternative paths through the level they may try to retreat, then jump on you from behind, they will also know that if you, for example, forced them through a doorway with fucking flak cannon, running out and charging you is not a smart idea, creating sort of Mexican stand-off situations. This probably wouldn't be so interesting since technology marches on, but for some reason they are nothing short of impressive even by today's standards.
of gaming AI.

 

[Jaesun]

OK DraQ, I finally beat the boss in Unreal, and now off to play the expansion. I really enjoyed Unreal. A couple of maps were bleh, but some were actually fun and interesting (Like the water temple, and Sunspire). That Castle made me go fffffuuuuuu just because it was huge in layout. But overall a fun experience. I definitely give it a thumbs up.

Now as many here and in chat have mentioned the expansion is apparently awesomesuace, so I can't wait to play through it.

Thanks for calling me out as a fag for not playing this enjoyable game.

 

[DraQ]

OK DraQ, I finally beat the boss in Unreal, and now off to play the expansion. I really enjoyed Unreal. A couple of maps were bleh, but some were actually fun and interesting (Like the water temple, and Sunspire). That Castle made me go fffffuuuuuu just because it was huge in layout. But overall a fun experience. I definitely give it a thumbs up.

Now as many here and in chat have mentioned the expansion is apparently awesomesuace, so I can't wait to play through it.

Thanks for calling me out as a fag for not playing this enjoyable game.

Expansion is actually pretty meh, but still enjoyable. It won't be nearly as atmospheric or cohesive experience, though, and in the light of the humongous consoletard turd that was Unreal 2 it can be considered an eerie foreshadowing (Unreal was made by Epic, while both expansion and the... "sequel"... were made by Legend).

I do recommend some of the SP packs, though. Quite a few are of much higher quality than the expansion and some also do interesting things with the game itself.
Some recommendations:

1. The Tower of Shrakitha is short (4 maps, I think) and quite old, but oozes excellence in all possible aspects (and runs in basic Unreal).

2. Nali Chronicles - some bad mapping, meh weapons and evidently cut out segment in the middle, but its very atmospheric pack and almost an RPG - putting you in the skin of a Nali mage before the events of the original game, with dialogues, interesting magic system with use-based skills, some cool spells, awesome mana mechanics, pretty awesome alchemy system, and strong atmosphere (requires UT).

3. Deja Vu - pretty much vanilla flavoured, but excellent nonetheless (UT).

4. Xidia -> Na Pali Haven redux -> 7 Bullets trilogy (will be a tetralogy if Residual Decay doesn't get scrapped) - a different, somewhat more aliens-flavoured take on Unreal universe. (UT)

5. ONP - arcadish in flavour, not very atmospheric but technically excellent, long lasting pack with stuff like aircraft levels. Oh, and worst voice acting ever. And best credits sequence ever. (UT)


Ah, brotip - if you use XMPlay as your music player you can play music from Unreal without having to rip anything, it reads .umx files.

 

[octavius]

Unreal was a great game with a unique atmosphere. As mentioned it also has som amazing monster AI, compared to for example Quake II which was possible to play though without getting hit once.

And the arsenal of weapons certainly was original.


But I think I was one of the few who actually enjoyed Unreal II. I knew it got bad reviews, but since it was in the bargain bin I bought it.
High expectations can ruin games, but low expectations helped me enjoy both Unreal II and Deus Ex II.

 

[DraQ]

Unreal was a great game with a unique atmosphere. As mentioned it also has som amazing monster AI, compared to for example Quake II which was possible to play though without getting hit once.

And the arsenal of weapons certainly was original.


But I think I was one of the few who actually enjoyed Unreal II. I knew it got bad reviews, but since it was in the bargain bin I bought it.
High expectations can ruin games, but low expectations helped me enjoy both Unreal II and Deus Ex II.

How low do your expectation need to be to make you enjoy Unreal 2?

 

[Angthoron]

How low do your expectation need to be to make you enjoy Unreal 2?

I actually recently replayed Unreal 2 and finally finished it (there's a gamekiller bug at one of the latter levels that kept crashing my PC), and well... By today's standards it's actually a-okay. Make no mistake, I didn't like it it, but then again, I kinda sorta don't like most modern shooters anyway, and that's pretty much what it was, a "modern shooter", just like Oblivion is a "modern RPG". Ahead of its time, if you will.

And yeah, I had zero expectations at replay and still it managed to disappoint. Go figure.

 

[Angthoron]

After a bit of thinking I figured out the cause of my biggest disappointment with Unreal 2. It's not that it's a bland shooter, that wasn't such a big problem. Stupid characters and the clear attempt to make it an episode-based game is also not the issue.

The biggest crime committed in Unreal 2 is the total and irreversible fucking up of the Skaarj. In the original, they were smart, vicious, agile and efficient, very alien in many ways, and their spawn seemed to suggest that they were actually evolved from insects like spiders. There was little in ways of glimpsing into their social structure and goals. They were a big deadly mystery, and that certainly attracted.

Then you have Unreal 2, where the Skaarj are descendants of kangaroos and apes with appropriate intelligence and finesse, their social structure apparently resembles ours, and they're utterly retarded, yet have apparently managed to enslave a whole lot of nations with the aid of necromancy. What the fuck?

Oh, and the character design turned from unique to generic.

 

[DraQ]

I wanted to post certain specific, relevant screenshot I posted here before but DU has borked the search.

 

[Jaesun]

After a bit of thinking I figured out the cause of my biggest disappointment with Unreal 2. It's not that it's a bland shooter, that wasn't such a big problem. Stupid characters and the clear attempt to make it an episode-based game is also not the issue.

The biggest crime committed in Unreal 2 is the total and irreversible fucking up of the Skaarj. In the original, they were smart, vicious, agile and efficient, very alien in many ways, and their spawn seemed to suggest that they were actually evolved from insects like spiders. There was little in ways of glimpsing into their social structure and goals. They were a big deadly mystery, and that certainly attracted.

Then you have Unreal 2, where the Skaarj are descendants of kangaroos and apes with appropriate intelligence and finesse, their social structure apparently resembles ours, and they're utterly retarded, yet have apparently managed to enslave a whole lot of nations with the aid of necromancy. What the fuck?

Oh, and the character design turned from unique to generic.

Thanks for the warning. I will never play that crap.

 

[Angthoron]

I wanted to post certain specific, relevant screenshot I posted here before but DU has borked the search.

Your avatar has gone through more skin colour changes than MJ, DraQ, watch out his snout doesn't cave in.

Thanks for the warning. I will never play that crap. :Salute:

Just doing what any bro would do for a bro.