DOS ain't dead

On 17 Aug 2016, the developers of Hammer of Thyrion (HeXen II) released version 1.5.8.

Short ChangeLog:

* Software renderer: Fixed sky scaling issues, thanks to Szilard Biro.
(fix found in 'ToChriS' quake source.)
* Software renderer: Fixed scaling console backgrounds whose dimensions
are not the default 320x200. One such example is the "Game of Tomes"
mod which has a 1024x768 conback.lmp.
* Hexenworld server: Added "-protocol x" command line option to force
the server to use a specific protocol (25 or 26), if so required.
* DOS, PCI sound driver: Updates, more Intel HDA chipsets recognized.
* DOS, 3dfx opengl: Macronix (MX86251) variants of Voodoo Rush boards
are now functional.
* DOS, 3dfx opengl: Further updates/fixes to opengl and glide drivers.
Updates to DXE exports so that more opengl driver builds would work
without requiring an engine recompile.
* All platforms, gameplay: Fixed an issue with the rider bosses Death,
Pestilence and War in coop mode. (as reported by Spike and Korax.)

Website: http://uhexen2.sourceforge.net/
Demo download (with shareware data): hexen2demo_aug1997-dos.zip (13 MB)
Full download (needs commercial data): hexen2-1.5.8-dos.zip (7 MB)

Unfortunatelly still have a rapid slow-down problem with water and in-game menu. There seems to be a sharp edge - with res. <640x400 it runs all smoothly and with >=640x400 it drops to a few FPS...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Unfortunatelly still have a rapid slow-down problem with water and in-game
> menu. There seems to be a sharp edge - with res. <640x400 it runs all
> smoothly and with >=640x400 it drops to a few FPS...

Mine (VESA 3, Intel Ironlake) doesn't show 640x400, only 640x480. For laughs, I did play in that resolution today. It seemed "mostly" fine (certainly fast enough for me, although I do still probably prefer 320x240). However ....

The Egypt-area pyramid with two obelisks with the switch on the wall (with mummy archer and blue flying imp) seemed to glitch out. So I couldn't actually activate the switch itself, seemingly passed right through it, even after reloading the save state a few times. Of course, switching res to 320x240 allowed it to work fine. Just FYI, and my save slot (Assassin, /data/s1/) is here (if you're bored enough to try reproducing this).

> The Egypt-area pyramid with two obelisks with the switch on the wall (with
> mummy archer and blue flying imp) seemed to glitch out. So I couldn't
> actually activate the switch itself, seemingly passed right through it,
> even after reloading the save state a few times. Of course, switching res
> to 320x240 allowed it to work fine. Just FYI, and my save slot (Assassin,
> /data/s1/) is here (if you're bored enough to try reproducing this).

Just tried on my DOS machine and couldn't reproduce.
Tried at 640x480 with software renderer and at 1024x768
with opengl, I was able to trigger the button in both
cases.

> my save slot (Assassin, /data/s1/) is here
>
> Just tried on my DOS machine and couldn't reproduce.
> Tried at 640x480 with software renderer and at 1024x768
> with opengl, I was able to trigger the button in both
> cases.

Well now I can't reproduce it either (restarting game from DOS). But it was consistently broken when loading from in-game in my last gaming session. So I dunno. Never mind.