Quoting: uglyI'm playing through with each class. In the expansion they do put you up against difficult enemies early on. Without a ranged attack, the Fighter class is significantly harder than Cleric or Mage so far.

I played both the main game and the expansion as the Fighter just for that sweet instant gratification. I do understand the Cleric and Mage classes will grow in power while the Fighter stays mostly flat, but hack and slash for me was the way to go. Especially since I went through most of the game twice. The alternate fire on the Hammer of Retribution served me well enough for range.

Quoting: gbudnyI have to admit that I liked reading how you sorted out all these issues. It probably wasn't fun for you to frequently encounter them.

It is all part of the experience. If I wanted stable and supported I would just be playing the game through Crispy Hexen on my modern Arch Linux computer after all. Next article should not take nearly as long to publish though.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPYeah, HeXen is more than anything else a test of patience. How long until the endless backtracking and looking for hard to find levers, doors and keys will drive you insane?

I actually did manage to get through the entirety of the main game without a walkthrough apart from being told that the secret exits would all be stashed somewhere on the main area of each hub. They pull a nasty trick for this with the secret exit in the final hub area but I will not spoil it here.

I almost managed this feat with Deathkings of the Dark Citadel except I did end up looking up how to find the fifth planet in the first hub, as I already had the fact I was looking for a planet spoiled for me when trying to resolve the issues with the Sump level, and its location is by far the least telegraphed secret in the entire game. I also needed to play every level to know which ones were actually solvable at that point.

I am looking forward to coming back to HeXen with say Crispy Hexen somewhere down the line now that I will have some hazy memories to guide me. The first games I played through on Windows 98 from Dianoga was the Arthur Yahtzee Trilogy which I went through as a teenager with heavy use of the walkthrough, but over a decade on I had my recollections guiding me and managed it entirely on my own. It seemed a good balance between tackling moon logic and a genuine mental challenge.

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Further links and resources can be found on the official website:
https://icculus.org/~hamish/retro/part39.html

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Quoting: PyreticYou should write that book. Seriously, post another editorial/article on how Linux gaming has changed over the years, I'd love to read it.

The period I am covering right now might be considered ancient history, but that is already kind of what I am doing...

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: StoneColdSpiderAlso love your GIMP skills to make the Tux the Heretic thumbnail........

I loved that too - it's great! Very eye-catching.

I can not claim full credit for that as it is derived from the image on the old Linux Heretic homepage:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150722204913/http://heretic.linuxgames.com/

I did futz around a bit to scale it up and diminish the JPEG compression artifacts, but the original credit would seem to go to "Nickbot".

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Further links and resources can be found on the official website:
https://icculus.org/~hamish/retro/part38.html

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Quoting: whizseA pity they didn't make the gane data available somewhere when they stopped sales (or just put it up on itch).

The Virtual Resorts are freeware so you could just use those along with the source release if you wanted. Virtual Jay Peak even has a standalone Linux release available on the website:
http://soulride.com/products/jay_peak.html

It would also be a good candidate for a free content makeover in the style of Freedoom if anyone was inclined to make one.

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My main concern with the lack of snow here is we were already coming out of drought conditions, and with how bad the wildfires were last spring and the fact I need to regrow my pastures, we need all the moisture we can get. Hopefully the heavens will open up at some point in the new year.

Quoting: gbudnyDid you try to contact them and ask about the catapult?

I picked up my copy of Soul Ride for quite cheap on eBay so I have had no contact with Slingshot Game Technology themselves. Based on the Wayback Machine it looks like they took their online store down sometime in 2016 but were still selling both The Catapult and Soul Ride up until that point. I would hazard a guess they are no longer in business.

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Quoting: StoneColdSpiderI have never gotten on well with snow games...... Maybe because im an aussie and ive never seen this mythical thing called "snow" in real life........

I would make some smart-arse Canadian comment, but we got a dump of snow the week before Halloween which then all melted, and have not had another real snowfall since. El Niño is working overtime this year.

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Further links and resources can be found on the official website:
https://icculus.org/~hamish/retro/part37.html

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