THIS IS IT: The first 'Alpha' demonstration has been released, you can download it right here: http://www.hexenmod.com

Have a lot of fun while playing!

--------------------------------------------

Chaos Beckons Thee - Release Date!

Hear! Hear! That time is near! We have been crunching away every day and it's all wrapping up. At this time, we would like to announce our planned release of the first playable version of our game Hexen: Edge of Chaos for November 2010.
It will contain the Cleric's first hub which consists of 3 full maps and some 1.5 to 2 hours of gameplay. You will fight monsters, solve puzzles, fail puzzles, use weapons, utilize artefacts, break lots of stuff, and curse our names to Chaos when you most likely die a few times along the way. Surely you all expect some degree of obscurity that comes with puzzles for this game... and the price for failure is steep...

We know, we know! We've read comments from followers: "Don't tease us!" and "Oh you silly people... causing a frenzy with your single image release! We need MEAT!". (Ed: Soylent Ettin is made out of people!) Well then, we say how about something more!
For you today, in our state of excitement, we have a Hexen: Edge of Chaos wallpaper in various formats....even for your iPhone! All made from our specially talented artist Slash.

Also for you today is a very special clip. If you've read our history journals then you are aware of what happened to the past heroes, and also know that strange things are brewing. Well... YOU have been summoned! Evil things are happening indeed in this world... Will you answer the dear Astronomer's call??

Wallpapers, goodies and such here: http://www.hexenmod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=393

Edit: Gameplay trailer released!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz4PFYcYYac

Grats guys. Can't wait to try it out

I have been watching your mod progress for years - and am very excited about the possibility of a release!

Congratulations!

Cool

I wish to read more positive news like this one.

REAHY! Good news, moved to good news

So cool! Thanks for keeping the Doom3 community alive!

Nice to see your work finally seeing the light of day. You must be proud of yourself and your team.

Quoting PyToX over here : http://www.moddb.com/mods/hexen-edge-of ... lease-date

Quote:

a full version will take still quite long as each episode follows a hero, the first episode following the cleric. Each episode consists of 3 hubs. Each hub consists of 3 primary maps. A hub is a type of gameplay style where 1 map of the hub is sorta like your main map, you get to other levels through it.

I'm mapper also btw

This is like a demo right? Can't wait for it, I'll start searching around for Heretic and HeXen.
Uh, a full version over the next 5 years?
What are the new sys requirements for it, I see some new post-processing effects and might eat lots of resources.
And what's the name of that demon in the wallpaper, it looks demonic :X

very cool news indeed, November is around the corner !

can't wait..

reko wrote:

This is like a demo right? Can't wait for it, I'll start searching around for Heretic and HeXen.
Uh, a full version over the next 5 years?
What are the new sys requirements for it, I see some new post-processing effects and might eat lots of resources.
And what's the name of that demon in the wallpaper, it looks demonic :X

The requirements for low quality setting is probably somewhere around 2ghz, single core, 512ram, 5900xt. That is of course a guestimation as its impossible to really say with such a small crew. That is just what we've been testing our low end at. Range will vary.

The demon is called the 'hellion'

With a base game pretty solid, we hope to attract more members, especially level designers. If we can do that, future releases can happen in a much, much shorter time frame.

No, thank you guys for all the support this community has given us in the years.
We wouldn't and couldn't have done it without D3World!

been a long ride bloodrayne and im stoked! Thanks for everyone who put all the time and effort into this.

Great news, can't wait to give it a run through

Excellent!

Sounds fantastic!

I was wondering about this project. I couldn't get into the development forums for a long time and my PMs seemed to go unnoticed. I still have some stuff to contribute if it's needed.

Nice to know it's still going strong!

It's so great to see you guys go through with it and we'll be able to see the fruit of your work soon! Who cares about Duke Nukem, The Force Unleashed 2 or Gran Turismo 5, when there is the Edge of Chaos around the corner!

We can chat long about this, or short. We could elaborate further on the story and the fate of the astronomer and redirect you towards the storyline website. We could even tease you more with a 'coming soon'.

Not this time...

Without further ado we present to you the official gameplay trailer for the demo, showing off gameplay from the first of three maps that we are releasing in this demo.
This should satisfy your curiosity until the 11th of November when we release the playable demo in the Windows and Linux varieties.

YOUTUBE Gameplay Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz4PFYcYYac

Despite the fact that we're releasing a demo we need help!
We need skilled creature modelers and animators as well as dedicated mappers for future releases.
If you're interested in a position register over at the forum and let us know!

Just out of curiosity how many different monsters we will fight. So far from what I've seen I've seen only the Afrit and the Ettin, and maybe the Hellion . I'm talking about the Demo Release.

The Afrit, Hellion, Ettin, Velch and the Veloxite.

(You'll find out what the velches and veloxes are all about)

I've played a part of the game and here's what I think (no offense at all, just what I think):

Sounds

Pros:
- The atmosphere is great
- The sounds really puts me on the HeXen trip
- Some swamp sounds are weird at some places: that's absolutely cool as it gives a real personality to the map !

Cons:
- I think that the water sound, although being good, is a bit annoying as it's a continued sound (not 100% sure on that part, I'll re-listen this in-game...)

Graphics

Pros:
- Man, I didn't thought that a mod based on this engine would really be so good on the performance part ! It's fluid & for the gameplay, it's awesome to me !
- The menus, HUD & notes looks good
- The overall looks great, in fact !
- The player view looks good
- Awesome scene in the cave (with the skull and impaled bodies around)

Cons:
- I think that the characters (included dead humans) could be better (except the flying ones): the spiders don't look that great & although the monsters with 2 heads are cool, I don't really like their shape
- I think that there's a dead body "in the air" at the top left of the first broken bridge
- The second weapon green effect seems to stay even if we grab the weapon
- If think that the lantern is awesome but useless in the parts I saw: the only part I used it was in the cave exit (swamps), where it's dark. Maybe some simple decals could be added to give extra atmosphere for people that think of using the lantern in such places...
- Maybe some textures could be better (ex: the walls at the spawning room)

Gameplay

Pros:
- I personally like the game speed: it goes well with the nice framerate
- The fact that you don't need to use a button to open doors or even unlock those (cool) skull mechanism is good
- Notes seem optional to play the game, that's good: either you want to know more, then you can, or you just want direct action, there again, you can too. The kind of thing I would have liked to see in Doom 3 for instance...
- Weapons are cool, magical stuff too

Cons:
- Although I like the game speed, I think that the first weapon animation is too speed (the mace)
- About animation, there's some kind of asynchronous effect from the time you're "firing" and the time the barrels are broken (as I remember, anyway, maybe just a value tweak for this would be enough ?)
- The doors. We can simply go though the door, whatever the way they're opening (no collision it seems).
- In the swamps where there's the place near the water with the impaled bodies and ribs (? don't remember the names) to take, near the small underground cave: there are those things on the ground where you can see big spikes normally going out and in, but near the bodies, if you walk on those, fire gets you killed on one shot, even if you're passing on those at high speed: I don't know if this is normal or not, maybe related to what is missing for me to advance in the game (see next).

That's all I remember at the moment.

Now I have to say that I'm somewhat blocked in the map progress: I came in front of that "castle" but I'm stuck there & don't find a way to get into: I got back many times, trying to see if I missed something, but didn't saw anything yet. So maybe I'm missing something at some place, but I gotta say it's a bit frustrating, given the fact that what happened previously was rather well directed (gameflow-wise).

So to sum up: I'm absolutely fan of the trip, you guys did a good job on that & I like that "old school" feeling from the gameplay. Now there are rooms for enhancements (easier to say than to make, I know), but in the whole it's a great release !

Edit: I was on the right track about those marks & fire stuff: so after having placed the ribs/bones in the correct order, I finally got the dungeon key. Problem is: now I don't see where I can use it :/

I'm sad to say that I downloaded it the second I saw it available but I haven't been @ my computer in ~36 hours so haven't been able to test yet... :evil:

Was it hexen or heretic where you could turn baddies/other players in to chickens? I liked that part especially.

The Happy Friar wrote:

I'm sad to say that I downloaded it the second I saw it available but I haven't been @ my computer in ~36 hours so haven't been able to test yet... :evil:

Yeah me too... have it on my PC but don't find much time to play it.. Or I'm in no mood to play anything .

The Happy Friar wrote:

Was it hexen or heretic where you could turn baddies/other players in to chickens? I liked that part especially.

And that was Heretic.

TTimo tweeted about EoC too: https://twitter.com/TTimo

Just for testing, I found a way to pass the first door & go to the swamp, without activating the mechanisms:
1. Near the door in question (where there's that first big place in flames), walk in front until you have the long ramp at your left and the smaller ramp at your right
2. Now climb the ramp at your right and face the barrels standing at your height (facing in the direction of the door we'll get passed in the end)
3. Now jump at the first wood level (near the barrels) and don't crash those ones, instead, just push those ones, so that you can jump on one and then get to the second level
4. Now that you're here, just run and jump again in the same direction as the door (you should be on the roof of the small "barracks", where the very first enemies are present)
5. At this point, when you follow the wall in front of you, you have no choice but to fall at your right (the wall with a hole at the top-right). There, go to the very edge in your right and walk closely to your left so as to pass the wall and get back to the other side on your left
6. At this point, if you go at the left, you'll see the dining room with the 2 monsters waiting
7. Now look the door in question, all you have to do is a run + strafe jump to jump over the door and get to the second part :mrgreen:

Of course there's no big point in doing so (and you can't return back anyway), but I just wanted to let you know about this.

I'm having trouble in the swamp level trying to find another way into the castle. I did the bone and crypt puzzle. Any hints?

After the crypt go to the magistrate door in the first map.

yes, as Kristus said, If you've gotten the magistrates key, you need to go back to the first map to get to the third map. If you haven't yet used the dungeon key from the bone puzzle, there is a hole in the ground that is an underground passage. Go through it to continue on your way to the Port Town portion of the second map. There is an entrance at the rear of the Port Town.

Cheers.

I must be blind, but I don't find a way to use that Dungeon Key ?

And about that underground cave (i.e the one near the bone puzzle to get the Dungeon Key), I'm going there, then face that huge doors, but I can't get into. In the very left part, there's that water going through a non-accessible cave and in the very right of that part, there is some kind of caged mechanism (not accessible too) and a big rock in the left with an item we don't seem to be able to access.

At this point, I don't have the magistrate key & I can't access Port Town. Where is that rear access ?

It's been something like 4 - 5th time I'm trying to get out

lol I'm going to try it out now! This is getting me excited!

And I went to unzip it & my download ends up corrupted.

Great TC guys!
Love it. Great nostalgia of the original

Sebultura wrote:

there is some kind of caged mechanism (not accessible too) and a big rock in the left with an item we don't seem to be able to access.

This is hexen. Break the cage's lock open!

The Happy Friar wrote:

And I went to unzip it & my download ends up corrupted.

I had heard somewhere that moddb in the middle of the night removed, then readded our package and it messed up their download. If you got it from moddb, maybe it effected you as well. If not, then I guess it got corrupted some other way.

Overall an excellent job by the Edge of Chaos team: the Hexen-esque atmosphere has been carried over to the Doom 3 engine very well, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well many of the faithful "nods" to the original Hexen were implemented. For the most part it contains the elements that made Hexen great and glosses over the elements that made it not-so-great, and uses the advantages of the Doom 3 engine to build upon the experience.

That said, there are a few criticisms, I found the rib puzzle somewhat counter-intuitive and had a few occurrences when I had to backtrack over large areas of a map to find which areas I might have inadvertantly missed (the Dungeon Key, and the planets, were prime examples). It would be good to have more of an indication of where to look, although I appreciate that it's a very difficult task for mappers to get the balance right between doing that and having the player "spoon-fed" too much, especially when designing large sprawling nonlinear levels- Raven struggled with this to a greater extent with the original Hexen. I think an automap system (which was mentioned over at the Edge of Chaos forums as an idea for future releases) may help to reduce the extent of this problem.

But all in all very impressive especially considering that it is the mod's first release.

The Happy Friar wrote:

I'm sad to say that I downloaded it the second I saw it available but I haven't been @ my computer in ~36 hours so haven't been able to test yet... :evil:

Was it hexen or heretic where you could turn baddies/other players in to chickens? I liked that part especially.

In Heretic you could turn others in to chickens, in Hexen into pigs, and in Hexen 2 into sheep.

hellstorm27 wrote:

Overall an excellent job by the Edge of Chaos team: the Hexen-esque atmosphere has been carried over to the Doom 3 engine very well, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well many of the faithful "nods" to the original Hexen were implemented. For the most part it contains the elements that made Hexen great and glosses over the elements that made it not-so-great, and uses the advantages of the Doom 3 engine to build upon the experience.

That said, there are a few criticisms, I found the rib puzzle somewhat counter-intuitive and had a few occurrences when I had to backtrack over large areas of a map to find which areas I might have inadvertantly missed (the Dungeon Key, and the planets, were prime examples). It would be good to have more of an indication of where to look, although I appreciate that it's a very difficult task for mappers to get the balance right between doing that and having the player "spoon-fed" too much, especially when designing large sprawling nonlinear levels- Raven struggled with this to a greater extent with the original Hexen. I think an automap system (which was mentioned over at the Edge of Chaos forums as an idea for future releases) may help to reduce the extent of this problem.

But all in all very impressive especially considering that it is the mod's first release.

Yes we had started a rough idea on the automap that we never finished or came close to implementing. We're going to revisit it for next release and get back to work on a good way for implementing it.

The rib bone puzzle has already been re-worked as it is as you(and many people said about that puzzle specifically) said....it could have been much better. Our lead mapper went in and re-tooled it yesterday actually

Deadite4 wrote:

yes, as Kristus said, If you've gotten the magistrates key,

As I recall it's not called the magistrate key when you pick it up though. Which threw me off and made me hunt for a door that I didn't know where it was before taking the wild stab at trecking bck through the entire maps to somewhere I hadn't been for a very long time.

Deadite4 wrote:

Sebultura wrote:

there is some kind of caged mechanism (not accessible too) and a big rock in the left with an item we don't seem to be able to access.

This is hexen. Break the cage's lock open!

Damn ! I didn't even saw that small part that was locking the cage :shock:

My first "HeXen idea" was to blast the cage itself :mrgreen:

so as to break it, but when I heard and saw that this wasn't working I though there was another place to open that cage.

This mod is atmospheric and immersive, right from the main menu, which looks similar to Hexen1 title screen. It was really good to see so much new content, because nowadays a release of Doom3 modification is a very rare occasion.

The red sky with moving clouds is great.

I see you realised planets like in Prey. It would be very cool to experience playing with gravity somewhere in the mod.

I like the AI of afrits and hellions: they evade the attacks, and I had to take some time to get used to their behaviour.

Sometimes the lighting is unrealistic: some surfaces are black while they clearly shouldn't be. In the swamps the repetitiveness of textures is very noticeable. And there are minor visual glitches here and there. At some times they were too obvious, I attached the screenshots to my post. There is a bug with save\load code - when the saved game is loaded, some items disappear from the inventory. Gibbing monsters didn't feel right, I expected ragdolls + dissolve. If I jump in the high place, I see the black void under the sky.

Unfortunately, I had to cheat in order to advance. I couldn't find a way to bypass the killing trigger in the swamps to put the bones in the fireplaces, so I used an invincibility cheat. In the dungeons I had to kill all ettins. One of them falled under the floor, so I used the noclip to get to him. And I got the third, black planet through the console, because I couldn't find it anywhere. I also missed the third weapon. Well, maybe in the next playthrough...

All in all it was interesting and enjoyable trip, and I congratulate the dev team for their unbelievable work on this incredibly huge progect. This release is a very significant event in the Doom3 modding history.

Kristus wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

yes, as Kristus said, If you've gotten the magistrates key,

As I recall it's not called the magistrate key when you pick it up though. Which threw me off and made me hunt for a door that I didn't know where it was before taking the wild stab at trecking bck through the entire maps to somewhere I hadn't been for a very long time.

I believe when you pick up the key a pop up appears saying "You have the magistrates key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city."

Sebultura wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

Sebultura wrote:

there is some kind of caged mechanism (not accessible too) and a big rock in the left with an item we don't seem to be able to access.

This is hexen. Break the cage's lock open!

Damn ! I didn't even saw that small part that was locking the cage :shock:

My first "HeXen idea" was to blast the cage itself :mrgreen:

so as to break it, but when I heard and saw that this wasn't working I though there was another place to open that cage.

I think we have already re-worked the area a little bit to make the lock more noticeable. There were some people missing it in general.

Deadite4 wrote:

I believe when you pick up the key a pop up appears saying "You have the magistrates key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city.".

No, it sais "You've aquired the anchient key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city."

One could also ask what the key to the upper echelons of the city is doing in a coffin in a crypt anyway.

Kristus wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

I believe when you pick up the key a pop up appears saying "You have the magistrates key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city.".

No, it sais "You've aquired the anchient key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city."

One could also ask what the key to the upper echelons of the city is doing in a coffin in a crypt anyway.

A lot of things you could ask are answered in the journals, of which there a total of about ~22.

I've started playing it now. The fire-dogs are a PITA. Hate 'em.

I'd love to see some gibbing too. But it's fun so far!

Deadite4 wrote:

A lot of things you could ask are answered in the journals, of which there a total of about ~22.

That was the only thing I asked.

Oops, I got 2 execution problems at the same part of the game, after you get through the magistrate portal. It happened in those situations:
- after the spawn, you go in front of you (where your first meet the "dog") and you continue your way in that direction
- or when you get on the left, again going in the same direction

What happens on my comp that the screen gets black (& I suppose will crash). As I was stuck, I CTRL + ALT + DEL to kill the task & get back on desktop.

Here's my config:
- Win 7 64. @ 1680 x 1050 x 32
- 4gigs RAM
- core i5 750
- GeForce GTX 275

No luck

I think I'm having the same trouble. The game keeps crashing at the beginning of level 3 (upper echelons) and I have went back to previous saved games to re-enter it but I'm having no joy. Anyone else having this same problem? It's just after you kill the four bad guys at the beginning.

Are you guys with the crashing using AA?

There have been a few instances of this, haven't nailed it down yet but there so far seems to be a possible connection between Nvidia, AA and some uncommon screen resolutions.

Kristus wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

A lot of things you could ask are answered in the journals, of which there a total of about ~22.

That was the only thing I asked.

'you could' was a general term meaning there are lots of storyline elements one could ask about that can be found in the journals.

I'm running @ 1440x900, 4x AA, ultra quality, no issues.

BTW, I'd say that you should stick to the "old school" story ways: a background for giving a reason to blow stuff up.

Anti-aliasing is disabled on my case.

Douglas Quaid wrote:

I think I'm having the same trouble. The game keeps crashing at the beginning of level 3 (upper echelons) and I have went back to previous saved games to re-enter it but I'm having no joy. Anyone else having this same problem? It's just after you kill the four bad guys at the beginning.

This seems to happen at certain resoltions. Which resolution are you running it on?

Geforce 9800 gtx, 1280 x 1024, Ultra.

Douglas Quaid wrote:

Geforce 9800 gtx, 1280 x 1024, Ultra.

so far the handful of people crashing all have Nvidia cards.

what driver version are you using. Any special settings for the driver? AA? What is your desktop resolution? Windows Version?

Deadite4 wrote:

so far the handful of people crashing all have Nvidia cards.

Then I'm guessing the "way it's meant to be played" is that you can't?

I've seen a decent amount of people who have crashes with Nvidia cards in various apps that people with non-Nvidia cards (intel, ATI/AMD, etc) don't.

The Happy Friar wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

so far the handful of people crashing all have Nvidia cards.

Then I'm guessing the "way it's meant to be played" is that you can't?

I've seen a decent amount of people who have crashes with Nvidia cards in various apps that people with non-Nvidia cards (intel, ATI/AMD, etc) don't.

We really would like to find out what this problem is. So far, nothing concrete. and its only some nvidia users. It's very strange. All we got so far is Nvidia and possible some connection with desktop res, in game res, and AA.

1 guy seemed to solve his problem by turning on AA in game. His english was difficult to understand though, so not really sure what went on there.

As I remember, I'm on high (not ultra), I only activated the high quality special effects option if I remember well & also setup that resolution (1680x1050, no AA).
About the NVidia driver, it's version 8.17.12.5896, dated from 09/07/10 (dd/mm/yy).

A small thing I remarked: Aero is somewhat disabled when it happens (got the message with minimum colors stuff), then all came to normal after killing the process.
Apart this, I tried a text-file paste right after this to happen, but didn't worked. I'll continue testing this issue until I found something useful/new.

The only major crasher that we're seeing in TDM land relating to graphics drivers is that on new AMD cards it's possible that DDS textures that are not-power-of-two dimensions can result in a crash once the texture is used (i.e it will happen as someone looks thought a visportal containing an object using one). DDS textures are not preloaded in the same way that TGA's are. If I have some time tomorrow I'll run my texture check tool over everything and see if I can see any of these, tho I don't remember anyone having issues with nV cards.

Serpentine wrote:

The only major crasher that we're seeing in TDM land relating to graphics drivers is that on new AMD cards it's possible that DDS textures that are not-power-of-two dimensions can result in a crash once the texture is used (i.e it will happen as someone looks thought a visportal containing an object using one). DDS textures are not preloaded in the same way that TGA's are. If I have some time tomorrow I'll run my texture check tool over everything and see if I can see any of these, tho I don't remember anyone having issues with nV cards.

Odd because I run on an ATI card and have never crashed.

The seems that is could have been a corrupted Visportal in that area. The strange thing is why does it only crash a select set of cards.

Deadite4 wrote:

Odd because I run on an ATI card and have never crashed.
The seems that is could have been a corrupted Visportal in that area. The strange thing is why does it only crash a select set of cards.

I didnt say it was 100% the cause. I dont have Hexen:EoC atm, but I'll download it and have a look around for bad DDS files later... but I don't expect any smoking guns

I think all DDS's are power of two. Three months ago I took two days to go over every texture in the mod and DDS where necessary.
(Yes, that was right before I got an insight on how to automate the process, so now it takes two minutes to go over all textures lol).

I have to say I'm pretty proud that it seems to run so smoothly on all platforms, I've not heard a single complaint about performance!

I thought dds's HAD to be power of two, you couldn't covert them to anything else.

I guess a way to diagnose would be for a person with the issues to delete all the dds files (or rename the pak) & let D3 compress the tga's on it's own.

I've played a part of the game and here's what I think (no offense at all, just what I think):

Sounds

Pros:
- The atmosphere is great
- The sounds really puts me on the HeXen trip
- Some swamp sounds are weird at some places: that's absolutely cool as it gives a real personality to the map !

Cons:
- I think that the water sound, although being good, is a bit annoying as it's a continued sound (not 100% sure on that part, I'll re-listen this in-game...)

Graphics

Pros:
- Man, I didn't thought that a mod based on this engine would really be so good on the performance part ! It's fluid & for the gameplay, it's awesome to me !
- The menus, HUD & notes looks good
- The overall looks great, in fact !
- The player view looks good
- Awesome scene in the cave (with the skull and impaled bodies around)

Cons:
- I think that the characters (included dead humans) could be better (except the flying ones): the spiders don't look that great & although the monsters with 2 heads are cool, I don't really like their shape
- I think that there's a dead body "in the air" at the top left of the first broken bridge
- The second weapon green effect seems to stay even if we grab the weapon
- If think that the lantern is awesome but useless in the parts I saw: the only part I used it was in the cave exit (swamps), where it's dark. Maybe some simple decals could be added to give extra atmosphere for people that think of using the lantern in such places...
- Maybe some textures could be better (ex: the walls at the spawning room)

Gameplay

Pros:
- I personally like the game speed: it goes well with the nice framerate
- The fact that you don't need to use a button to open doors or even unlock those (cool) skull mechanism is good
- Notes seem optional to play the game, that's good: either you want to know more, then you can, or you just want direct action, there again, you can too. The kind of thing I would have liked to see in Doom 3 for instance...
- Weapons are cool, magical stuff too

Cons:
- Although I like the game speed, I think that the first weapon animation is too speed (the mace)
- About animation, there's some kind of asynchronous effect from the time you're "firing" and the time the barrels are broken (as I remember, anyway, maybe just a value tweak for this would be enough ?)
- The doors. We can simply go though the door, whatever the way they're opening (no collision it seems).
- In the swamps where there's the place near the water with the impaled bodies and ribs (? don't remember the names) to take, near the small underground cave: there are those things on the ground where you can see big spikes normally going out and in, but near the bodies, if you walk on those, fire gets you killed on one shot, even if you're passing on those at high speed: I don't know if this is normal or not, maybe related to what is missing for me to advance in the game (see next).

That's all I remember at the moment.

Now I have to say that I'm somewhat blocked in the map progress: I came in front of that "castle" but I'm stuck there & don't find a way to get into: I got back many times, trying to see if I missed something, but didn't saw anything yet. So maybe I'm missing something at some place, but I gotta say it's a bit frustrating, given the fact that what happened previously was rather well directed (gameflow-wise).

So to sum up: I'm absolutely fan of the trip, you guys did a good job on that & I like that "old school" feeling from the gameplay. Now there are rooms for enhancements (easier to say than to make, I know), but in the whole it's a great release !

Edit: I was on the right track about those marks & fire stuff: so after having placed the ribs/bones in the correct order, I finally got the dungeon key. Problem is: now I don't see where I can use it :/

I'm sad to say that I downloaded it the second I saw it available but I haven't been @ my computer in ~36 hours so haven't been able to test yet... :evil:

Was it hexen or heretic where you could turn baddies/other players in to chickens? I liked that part especially.

The Happy Friar wrote:

I'm sad to say that I downloaded it the second I saw it available but I haven't been @ my computer in ~36 hours so haven't been able to test yet... :evil:

Yeah me too... have it on my PC but don't find much time to play it.. Or I'm in no mood to play anything .

The Happy Friar wrote:

Was it hexen or heretic where you could turn baddies/other players in to chickens? I liked that part especially.

And that was Heretic.

TTimo tweeted about EoC too: https://twitter.com/TTimo

Just for testing, I found a way to pass the first door & go to the swamp, without activating the mechanisms:
1. Near the door in question (where there's that first big place in flames), walk in front until you have the long ramp at your left and the smaller ramp at your right
2. Now climb the ramp at your right and face the barrels standing at your height (facing in the direction of the door we'll get passed in the end)
3. Now jump at the first wood level (near the barrels) and don't crash those ones, instead, just push those ones, so that you can jump on one and then get to the second level
4. Now that you're here, just run and jump again in the same direction as the door (you should be on the roof of the small "barracks", where the very first enemies are present)
5. At this point, when you follow the wall in front of you, you have no choice but to fall at your right (the wall with a hole at the top-right). There, go to the very edge in your right and walk closely to your left so as to pass the wall and get back to the other side on your left
6. At this point, if you go at the left, you'll see the dining room with the 2 monsters waiting
7. Now look the door in question, all you have to do is a run + strafe jump to jump over the door and get to the second part :mrgreen:

Of course there's no big point in doing so (and you can't return back anyway), but I just wanted to let you know about this.

I'm having trouble in the swamp level trying to find another way into the castle. I did the bone and crypt puzzle. Any hints?

After the crypt go to the magistrate door in the first map.

yes, as Kristus said, If you've gotten the magistrates key, you need to go back to the first map to get to the third map. If you haven't yet used the dungeon key from the bone puzzle, there is a hole in the ground that is an underground passage. Go through it to continue on your way to the Port Town portion of the second map. There is an entrance at the rear of the Port Town.

Cheers.

I must be blind, but I don't find a way to use that Dungeon Key ?

And about that underground cave (i.e the one near the bone puzzle to get the Dungeon Key), I'm going there, then face that huge doors, but I can't get into. In the very left part, there's that water going through a non-accessible cave and in the very right of that part, there is some kind of caged mechanism (not accessible too) and a big rock in the left with an item we don't seem to be able to access.

At this point, I don't have the magistrate key & I can't access Port Town. Where is that rear access ?

It's been something like 4 - 5th time I'm trying to get out

lol I'm going to try it out now! This is getting me excited!

And I went to unzip it & my download ends up corrupted.

Great TC guys!
Love it. Great nostalgia of the original

Sebultura wrote:

there is some kind of caged mechanism (not accessible too) and a big rock in the left with an item we don't seem to be able to access.

This is hexen. Break the cage's lock open!

The Happy Friar wrote:

And I went to unzip it & my download ends up corrupted.

I had heard somewhere that moddb in the middle of the night removed, then readded our package and it messed up their download. If you got it from moddb, maybe it effected you as well. If not, then I guess it got corrupted some other way.

Overall an excellent job by the Edge of Chaos team: the Hexen-esque atmosphere has been carried over to the Doom 3 engine very well, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well many of the faithful "nods" to the original Hexen were implemented. For the most part it contains the elements that made Hexen great and glosses over the elements that made it not-so-great, and uses the advantages of the Doom 3 engine to build upon the experience.

That said, there are a few criticisms, I found the rib puzzle somewhat counter-intuitive and had a few occurrences when I had to backtrack over large areas of a map to find which areas I might have inadvertantly missed (the Dungeon Key, and the planets, were prime examples). It would be good to have more of an indication of where to look, although I appreciate that it's a very difficult task for mappers to get the balance right between doing that and having the player "spoon-fed" too much, especially when designing large sprawling nonlinear levels- Raven struggled with this to a greater extent with the original Hexen. I think an automap system (which was mentioned over at the Edge of Chaos forums as an idea for future releases) may help to reduce the extent of this problem.

But all in all very impressive especially considering that it is the mod's first release.

The Happy Friar wrote:

I'm sad to say that I downloaded it the second I saw it available but I haven't been @ my computer in ~36 hours so haven't been able to test yet... :evil:

Was it hexen or heretic where you could turn baddies/other players in to chickens? I liked that part especially.

In Heretic you could turn others in to chickens, in Hexen into pigs, and in Hexen 2 into sheep.

hellstorm27 wrote:

Overall an excellent job by the Edge of Chaos team: the Hexen-esque atmosphere has been carried over to the Doom 3 engine very well, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well many of the faithful "nods" to the original Hexen were implemented. For the most part it contains the elements that made Hexen great and glosses over the elements that made it not-so-great, and uses the advantages of the Doom 3 engine to build upon the experience.

That said, there are a few criticisms, I found the rib puzzle somewhat counter-intuitive and had a few occurrences when I had to backtrack over large areas of a map to find which areas I might have inadvertantly missed (the Dungeon Key, and the planets, were prime examples). It would be good to have more of an indication of where to look, although I appreciate that it's a very difficult task for mappers to get the balance right between doing that and having the player "spoon-fed" too much, especially when designing large sprawling nonlinear levels- Raven struggled with this to a greater extent with the original Hexen. I think an automap system (which was mentioned over at the Edge of Chaos forums as an idea for future releases) may help to reduce the extent of this problem.

But all in all very impressive especially considering that it is the mod's first release.

Yes we had started a rough idea on the automap that we never finished or came close to implementing. We're going to revisit it for next release and get back to work on a good way for implementing it.

The rib bone puzzle has already been re-worked as it is as you(and many people said about that puzzle specifically) said....it could have been much better. Our lead mapper went in and re-tooled it yesterday actually

Deadite4 wrote:

yes, as Kristus said, If you've gotten the magistrates key,

As I recall it's not called the magistrate key when you pick it up though. Which threw me off and made me hunt for a door that I didn't know where it was before taking the wild stab at trecking bck through the entire maps to somewhere I hadn't been for a very long time.

Deadite4 wrote:

Sebultura wrote:

there is some kind of caged mechanism (not accessible too) and a big rock in the left with an item we don't seem to be able to access.

This is hexen. Break the cage's lock open!

Damn ! I didn't even saw that small part that was locking the cage :shock:

My first "HeXen idea" was to blast the cage itself :mrgreen:

so as to break it, but when I heard and saw that this wasn't working I though there was another place to open that cage.

This mod is atmospheric and immersive, right from the main menu, which looks similar to Hexen1 title screen. It was really good to see so much new content, because nowadays a release of Doom3 modification is a very rare occasion.

The red sky with moving clouds is great.

I see you realised planets like in Prey. It would be very cool to experience playing with gravity somewhere in the mod.

I like the AI of afrits and hellions: they evade the attacks, and I had to take some time to get used to their behaviour.

Sometimes the lighting is unrealistic: some surfaces are black while they clearly shouldn't be. In the swamps the repetitiveness of textures is very noticeable. And there are minor visual glitches here and there. At some times they were too obvious, I attached the screenshots to my post. There is a bug with save\load code - when the saved game is loaded, some items disappear from the inventory. Gibbing monsters didn't feel right, I expected ragdolls + dissolve. If I jump in the high place, I see the black void under the sky.

Unfortunately, I had to cheat in order to advance. I couldn't find a way to bypass the killing trigger in the swamps to put the bones in the fireplaces, so I used an invincibility cheat. In the dungeons I had to kill all ettins. One of them falled under the floor, so I used the noclip to get to him. And I got the third, black planet through the console, because I couldn't find it anywhere. I also missed the third weapon. Well, maybe in the next playthrough...

All in all it was interesting and enjoyable trip, and I congratulate the dev team for their unbelievable work on this incredibly huge progect. This release is a very significant event in the Doom3 modding history.

Kristus wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

yes, as Kristus said, If you've gotten the magistrates key,

As I recall it's not called the magistrate key when you pick it up though. Which threw me off and made me hunt for a door that I didn't know where it was before taking the wild stab at trecking bck through the entire maps to somewhere I hadn't been for a very long time.

I believe when you pick up the key a pop up appears saying "You have the magistrates key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city."

Sebultura wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

Sebultura wrote:

there is some kind of caged mechanism (not accessible too) and a big rock in the left with an item we don't seem to be able to access.

This is hexen. Break the cage's lock open!

Damn ! I didn't even saw that small part that was locking the cage :shock:

My first "HeXen idea" was to blast the cage itself :mrgreen:

so as to break it, but when I heard and saw that this wasn't working I though there was another place to open that cage.

I think we have already re-worked the area a little bit to make the lock more noticeable. There were some people missing it in general.

Deadite4 wrote:

I believe when you pick up the key a pop up appears saying "You have the magistrates key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city.".

No, it sais "You've aquired the anchient key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city."

One could also ask what the key to the upper echelons of the city is doing in a coffin in a crypt anyway.

Kristus wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

I believe when you pick up the key a pop up appears saying "You have the magistrates key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city.".

No, it sais "You've aquired the anchient key. You may now enter the Upper Echelons of the city."

One could also ask what the key to the upper echelons of the city is doing in a coffin in a crypt anyway.

A lot of things you could ask are answered in the journals, of which there a total of about ~22.

I've started playing it now. The fire-dogs are a PITA. Hate 'em.

I'd love to see some gibbing too. But it's fun so far!

Deadite4 wrote:

A lot of things you could ask are answered in the journals, of which there a total of about ~22.

That was the only thing I asked.

Oops, I got 2 execution problems at the same part of the game, after you get through the magistrate portal. It happened in those situations:
- after the spawn, you go in front of you (where your first meet the "dog") and you continue your way in that direction
- or when you get on the left, again going in the same direction

What happens on my comp that the screen gets black (& I suppose will crash). As I was stuck, I CTRL + ALT + DEL to kill the task & get back on desktop.

Here's my config:
- Win 7 64. @ 1680 x 1050 x 32
- 4gigs RAM
- core i5 750
- GeForce GTX 275

No luck

I think I'm having the same trouble. The game keeps crashing at the beginning of level 3 (upper echelons) and I have went back to previous saved games to re-enter it but I'm having no joy. Anyone else having this same problem? It's just after you kill the four bad guys at the beginning.

Are you guys with the crashing using AA?

There have been a few instances of this, haven't nailed it down yet but there so far seems to be a possible connection between Nvidia, AA and some uncommon screen resolutions.

Kristus wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

A lot of things you could ask are answered in the journals, of which there a total of about ~22.

That was the only thing I asked.

'you could' was a general term meaning there are lots of storyline elements one could ask about that can be found in the journals.

I'm running @ 1440x900, 4x AA, ultra quality, no issues.

BTW, I'd say that you should stick to the "old school" story ways: a background for giving a reason to blow stuff up.

Anti-aliasing is disabled on my case.

Douglas Quaid wrote:

I think I'm having the same trouble. The game keeps crashing at the beginning of level 3 (upper echelons) and I have went back to previous saved games to re-enter it but I'm having no joy. Anyone else having this same problem? It's just after you kill the four bad guys at the beginning.

This seems to happen at certain resoltions. Which resolution are you running it on?

Geforce 9800 gtx, 1280 x 1024, Ultra.

Douglas Quaid wrote:

Geforce 9800 gtx, 1280 x 1024, Ultra.

so far the handful of people crashing all have Nvidia cards.

what driver version are you using. Any special settings for the driver? AA? What is your desktop resolution? Windows Version?

Deadite4 wrote:

so far the handful of people crashing all have Nvidia cards.

Then I'm guessing the "way it's meant to be played" is that you can't?

I've seen a decent amount of people who have crashes with Nvidia cards in various apps that people with non-Nvidia cards (intel, ATI/AMD, etc) don't.

The Happy Friar wrote:

Deadite4 wrote:

so far the handful of people crashing all have Nvidia cards.

Then I'm guessing the "way it's meant to be played" is that you can't?

I've seen a decent amount of people who have crashes with Nvidia cards in various apps that people with non-Nvidia cards (intel, ATI/AMD, etc) don't.

We really would like to find out what this problem is. So far, nothing concrete. and its only some nvidia users. It's very strange. All we got so far is Nvidia and possible some connection with desktop res, in game res, and AA.

1 guy seemed to solve his problem by turning on AA in game. His english was difficult to understand though, so not really sure what went on there.

As I remember, I'm on high (not ultra), I only activated the high quality special effects option if I remember well & also setup that resolution (1680x1050, no AA).
About the NVidia driver, it's version 8.17.12.5896, dated from 09/07/10 (dd/mm/yy).

A small thing I remarked: Aero is somewhat disabled when it happens (got the message with minimum colors stuff), then all came to normal after killing the process.
Apart this, I tried a text-file paste right after this to happen, but didn't worked. I'll continue testing this issue until I found something useful/new.

The only major crasher that we're seeing in TDM land relating to graphics drivers is that on new AMD cards it's possible that DDS textures that are not-power-of-two dimensions can result in a crash once the texture is used (i.e it will happen as someone looks thought a visportal containing an object using one). DDS textures are not preloaded in the same way that TGA's are. If I have some time tomorrow I'll run my texture check tool over everything and see if I can see any of these, tho I don't remember anyone having issues with nV cards.

Serpentine wrote:

The only major crasher that we're seeing in TDM land relating to graphics drivers is that on new AMD cards it's possible that DDS textures that are not-power-of-two dimensions can result in a crash once the texture is used (i.e it will happen as someone looks thought a visportal containing an object using one). DDS textures are not preloaded in the same way that TGA's are. If I have some time tomorrow I'll run my texture check tool over everything and see if I can see any of these, tho I don't remember anyone having issues with nV cards.

Odd because I run on an ATI card and have never crashed.

The seems that is could have been a corrupted Visportal in that area. The strange thing is why does it only crash a select set of cards.

Deadite4 wrote:

Odd because I run on an ATI card and have never crashed.
The seems that is could have been a corrupted Visportal in that area. The strange thing is why does it only crash a select set of cards.

I didnt say it was 100% the cause. I dont have Hexen:EoC atm, but I'll download it and have a look around for bad DDS files later... but I don't expect any smoking guns

I think all DDS's are power of two. Three months ago I took two days to go over every texture in the mod and DDS where necessary.
(Yes, that was right before I got an insight on how to automate the process, so now it takes two minutes to go over all textures lol).

I have to say I'm pretty proud that it seems to run so smoothly on all platforms, I've not heard a single complaint about performance!

I thought dds's HAD to be power of two, you couldn't covert them to anything else.

I guess a way to diagnose would be for a person with the issues to delete all the dds files (or rename the pak) & let D3 compress the tga's on it's own.