HacX v1.1 as a stand-alone DOS game

[MrFlibble]

The stand-alone HacX v1.2 requires a modern source port to run (Chocolate Doom or ZDoom will do fine) , however it turns out that it is possible to play HacX v1.1 under DOS without the original version of Doom II as well.

Alongside the standard distribution of registered HacX v1.1 (the first version to have been released as freeware by Banjo), which requires Doom II to install, there's a plain files package that was originally made for people who have a non-DOS release of Doom II (Win95 or Mac). You can get it here:
http://gamers.org/pub/idgames/themes/hacx/hx11pack.zip

To play this version without the Doom II installation, a configuration file is required, and also the main IWAD file, which by default was supposed to be DOOM2.WAD. HacX v1.1 uses certain files from the IWAD, including the palette. This is the major difference between v1.1 and v1.2, which does not require any external files to work, and because of this the v1.2 IWAD can be used in lieu of the original DOOM2.WAD simply by renaming it. I think it might also be possible to use the shareware Doom IWAD, but I haven't tried that out yet. The game seems to accept any IWAD, including those from other shareware/demo versions of Doom engine games (I've also tried the Hexen demo IWAD), with as much as a warning, but other games have different palettes and because of this are not usable.

As for the configuration file, you can use the SETUP.EXE programme from any other Doom engine game shareware or demo, keeping in mind that the resulting CFG file must be renamed into DEFAULT.CFG for it to be recognized by HacX.

[leilei]

If only someone did a proper DOS Doom port that didn't use Allegro or do anything else stupid like take leaked Quake code (unreleased 1.01, not gpl'd 1.09) like Doom Legacy did...

[MrFlibble]

Yep, that would've been awesome ^_^

[MrFlibble]

I've tried playing HacX v1.1 with the Freedoom IWAD under Boom and MBF, and it works fine, except that for some reason, regular medkits can heal the player beyond 100%, which they shouldn't do. I guess this might be somehow related to the megasphere replacement pickup which grants the player 400% health and IIRC 300% armour.

The HacX v1.2 WAD, on the contrary, didn't work with Boom/MBF at all. First off, they don't recognize it as an IWAD (although modern ports do that), and when it's launched with a Fredoom IWAD, it crashes with a "Segmentation Violation" message whenever a new game attempts to start. I wonder if the v1.2 WAD could be edited so that it would work with Boom/MBF as a stand-alone IWAD.