Hexen: За гранью Ереси

1995 video game

Hexen: Beyond Heretic is a fantasy first person shooter video game developed by Raven Software and published by id Software distributed through GT Interactive on October 30, 1995. It is the indirect sequel to 1994's Heretic, and the second game in Raven Software's "Serpent Riders" trilogy, which culminated with Hexen II. The title comes from the German noun Hexen, which means "witches", and/or the verb hexen, which means "to cast a spell". Game producer John Romero stated that a third, unreleased game in this series was to be called Hecatomb. Hexen: Beyond Heretic met with highly positive reviews upon release, though the various 1997 console ports were negatively received because of problems with frame rate and controls and the aging of the game itself. Critical plaudits for the game centered on the non linear level design and the selection of three playable characters, each offering a distinct gameplay experience.

Following the tale of D'Sparil's defeat in Heretic, Hexen takes place in another realm, Cronos, which is besieged by the second of the three Serpent Riders, Korax. Three heroes set out to destroy Korax. The player assumes the role of one such hero. Throughout the course of his quest, he travels through elemental dungeons, a wilderness region, a mountainside seminary, a large castle, and finally a necropolis, before the final showdown with the Serpent Rider.

A new series feature introduced in Hexen is the choice of three character classes. Players may choose to play as a fighter (Baratus), a cleric (Parias), or a mage (Daedolon). Each character has unique weapons and physical characteristics, lending an additional degree of variety and replay value to the game. The Fighter relies mainly on close quarters physical attacks with weapons both mundane and magical in nature, and is tougher and faster than the other characters. The Mage uses an assortment of long range spells, whose reach is counterbalanced by the fact that he is the most fragile and slowest moving of the classes. The Cleric arms himself with a combination of both melee and ranged capabilities, being a middle ground of sorts between the other two classes. Additionally, certain items, such as the flechette (poison gas bomb), behave differently when collected and used by each of the classes, functioning in a manner better suiting their varying approach to combat. Hexen introduces "hub" levels to the series, wherein the player can travel back and forth between central hub levels and connected side levels. The player must traverse through a hub in order to advance to the next hub. The inventory system returns from Heretic with several new items, such as the "Disc of Repulsion", which pushes enemies away from the player, and the "Icon of the Defender", which provides invincibility to each class in a different manner.

Like Heretic, Hexen was developed on NeXTSTEP. Hexen uses a modified version of the Doom engine, which allows jumping, looking up and down, network play with up to eight players and the choice of three character classes. It also popularized the "hub system" of level progression in the genre of first person shooter games. Unlike previous games, which had relied purely on General MIDI for music, Hexen is also able to play tracks from a CD. The game's own CD contained a soundtrack in an audio format that was exactly the same as the MIDI soundtrack, but played through a high quality sound module. However, the most significant improvement was the addition of wall translation, rotation, and level scripting. The Macintosh version of the game was developed by Presage Software.

"Polyobjects" are the walls that move within the game. Because the Doom engine uses the binary space partitioning system for rendering, it does not enable moving walls. Hexens moving walls are actually one sided lines built somewhere else on the map and rendered at the desired start spot when the level is loaded. This enables a pseudo moving wall, but does not allow moving sectors (such as seeing the tops of moving doors). This often creates problems in sectors containing more than one node, however, explaining the relatively limited use of polyobjects. Whereas Doom, Doom II, and Heretic rely on lines within the maps to perform simple actions, Hexen also allows these actions to be activated by Action Code Script (ACS). These scripts use a syntactic variant of C, thus allowing special sequencing of game actions. Programming features such as randomization, variables, and intermap script activation enable smooth hub gameplay and are responsible for most of the special effects within the game: on screen messages, random sound effects, monster spawning, sidedef texture changes, versatile control of polyobjects, level initialization for deathmatch, and even complex environment changes such as earthquakes manipulating floor textures and heights.

On January 11, 1999, the source code for Hexen was released by Raven Software under a license that granted rights to non commercial use, and was re released under the GNU GPL 2.0 only on September 4, 2008. This allowed the game to be ported to different platforms such as Linux, AmigaOS, and OS/2 (including eComStation and ArcaOS). Hexen is compatible with many Doom source ports; Hexens features are also compatible with Doom WADs made for source ports regardless of what game they are being played on.

The score was composed by Kevin Schilder. In contrast to Heretic, some songs in Hexen, in addition to MIDI versions, had higher quality versions on CD. When playing in CD audio mode, songs absent from CD would be replaced by some existing CD tracks.