DOS ain't dead

> > But anyways, try something like "320x240" if you can. Maybe that's
> > better than nothing?
>
> Nonsense.
> Games like Hexen2 are designed for higer resolutions and in 300x200 or
> 320x240 look very ugly, much worse than f.e. Doom.

Designed for higher VESA modes, yes, but VESA isn't always well optimized.

Anyways, I disagree about "very ugly", it looks fine to me, I'm not picky. But you could definitely say that about Doom or Quake, just in general, compared to modern titles.

> I played Hammer of Thyrion on my PII-300 machine in 640x480 which is
> perfect. In 800x600 is it still playable but slow, the feeling from the
> game is worse.

(quoting what I told Ozkan via email a few years ago)

Rugxulo -- Nov. 28, 2011 -- Lenovo Core i5 3.2 Ghz 6 GB RAM (Intel
Ironlake? VESA 3 gfx)

Hexen2 1.5.1 / DJGPP natively atop FreeDOS kernel 2040 w/ XMSv3 (XMGR)
+ CWSDPMI r7, "timedemo demo1"

320x200: 12.8 seconds, 194.8 FPS
320x240: 15.2 seconds, 164.0 FPS
360x400: 28.3 seconds, 88.3 FPS
640x480 : 118.2 seconds, 21.1 FPS
800x600: 180.7 seconds, 13.8 FPS
1024x768: 289.7 seconds 8.6 FPS

P.S. Before I forget, let me run at least one or two timedemos under
DOSEMU (1.4.0) for comparison. Let's try 640x480 and 1024x768 (Lucid
Puppy Linux 5.28 / kernel 2.6.33.2 / i686):

640x480: 7.7 seconds, 326.1 FPS
1024x768: 15.7 seconds, 159.5 FPS

Okay, lemme also try Linux native (1.5.1, 32-bit):

640x480: 12.2 seconds, 204.5 FPS
1024x768: 21.2 seconds, 117.8 FPS

(end quote)

See what I mean? DOSEMU wins! (BTW, originally I played exclusively under DOSEMU [because DOS, duh] due to sound support.)

> The "sand storm" effect in menu is annoying and certainly very badly
> optimized but fortunately it is only in menu.
> Other slowdowns are caused in scenes with windows - break them to speed up
> the game and with water but it is stil acceptable.

I never notice any slowdown, but I stick to low res. And I've comfortably played and beaten the game dozens of times. I also don't use any fancy monitors, so maybe I'm not seeing the detail you're seeing.

> But I am writting this post because I tried HoT 1.5.7 on my machine with
> Voodoo2 card. I have to repeat what I wrote about Quake2 on this card. It
> looks beautiful. There is no slowdown with windows glassesm water or in the
> menu.
> The effect in menu does not more look like a sand storm - it is rather fog
> or smoke. Nothing special but at least it is not slow.

I don't have any "fancy" video cards, just generic Intel integrated gfx. No slowdown, but like I said, higher resolution does make it worse, so caveat emptor.

> > I mean, in the demo, two or three spiders can kill you,
>
> It is by design. Try the retail game on the same setup
> with the same player class and difficulty and you will see
> the difference.

Of course I did that, I prefer the full game. But it's the kind of difference that one thinks one's just imagining.

But my opinion now is that the demo is "mostly" fine, just a bit tricky to complete. Of course you don't want it too easy. I just think the spiders are a bit too fast and unfairly aggressive, but you can run away and not kill everything too (duh).

> > There may be a few bugs. Video mode didn't change (actually, restore)
> > properly, e.g. trying 320x240, unlike full game.
>
> This I am interested in: What did you intend to do? What
> did happen and what did not happen? It would be better to
> send the details to my email, as I may miss reading here.

I tried again ("raw") and couldn't reproduce this. It could've been some rare TSR issue, who knows. (Normally I prefer 320x240 these days, which is hardly obscure.)

Okay, so I've now beaten the demo with Paladin, twice, on hardest difficulty (Lord). Even though it's fairly obvious (esp. to you), let me explain:

The very first room once you start the game has a torch and spiders. You push a wall switch and jump down the hatch to a room. My point is that, while jumping, trying to get down, the spiders can eat up like 20 points of your health! So in a very miniscule amount of time, you can easily get whittled down to nothing.

Even once you get to the room with the sliding coffin, there are two barrels. One of them has a quartz flask (health potion). Normally I kill and collect literally everything, but here I'm forced to skip a lot of enemies (and even that flask) just because I'll literally get killed very quickly! So I have to either come back or ignore some enemies (and items) entirely. That's not how I normally play the full game. Of course, I must admit that Paladin is stronger (and sword has longer reach) than Assassin. Maybe the arrows are supposed to help keep spiders away, long range, but it's so easy to run out of mana, plus the spiders are numerous and very fast.

Funny story: at one point I was at the Mill, trying to crush the bones. I got attacked down to literally 1 HP. I ran up the slope to get the Mystic Urn, but I see a horseman. I had to (very quickly) use a Disc of Repulsion to throw him off, then I got my health up to 100+ HP, which is quite good! Nice save, I thought, but when I went to get the bone dust, the windmill accidentally crushed/killed me! C'e la vie.