Saturday, April 26 : A few tidbits here and there. One big note is that Gary Arnold formerly of Presage Software, has now made a slight change in company. Gary now works for LifeLike Productions. Here's what he had to tell me in a recent email:
My first project here is a PC to PSX conversion of a real-time strategy
game. Yes, I'm leaving the Mac behind for awhile, though I still intend to program my personal
projects for the Macintosh and Windows 95. Hopefully, Apple will regain it's glory and make
the Mac a sought-after game machine (thereby making my Mac skills worth some real money ;)."
No need to fear, Gary hasn't defected from his Macintosh ways, he's still as big of a Mac lover as ever, and one hell of a guy. I wish him the best of luck at his new found home.
Also new is that Hellmaker is now in beta version 1.2! I must warn you though, this is a beta version and anything could happen! You may download Hellmaker v1.2b2 or v1.1 from the Edit Page.
It seems that Balagi's MacHexen page has bit the dust, but a new MacHexen page, Dave's MacHexen Homepage , is now up and running and a link to it is available on the Links Page.
There's a new cheat that has been found as well! The cheat for losing all weapons in the demo of MacHexen is RAMBO. Other cheats can be found on the Cheat Page.
Other than that there isn't much going on (although there's a lot of stuff here!). There's been a few basic updates to MacHexen Underground, most of which you won't notice because they're slight cosmetic changes. Other than that, that's all there is for now.
Tuesday, March 25 : Well the only thing of interest lately is that the front page has been redone. "Redone?" you say? Well I've been meaning to impliment tables for quite a while and move to using gifs that look just as nice as my old jpegs and add a cool animated gif as well. So now the entire front page is done with tables and should load MUCH faster now. You only have about 35K to load the front page now instead of well over 100K like before. Should be faster. AND you now have the animated gif and brighter blues to let users of low gamma monitors be able to view the text more easily. I'm hoping to add table support to the other pages soon, but the graphics are giving me a hard time right now (those pesky things ;). Perhaps I'll totally redesign the site when I have more time this summer. We'll see. Hopefully I can find out more info on Hellmaker 1.2 soon for all of you.
Tuesday, February 19 : Well a few new things of interest. Most notable of which is that Hellmaker v1.2 is currently being worked on and should be out soon. There are many new features in v1.2. Expect to see it here when it's released.
As for what's new on the page itself I took out the New@Hu page because this page is pretty similar. To have two pages saying the same thing is sort of redundant don't you think? ;) Anyway, new updates to the page AND to news concerning Hexen can now be found here. Also the link to New@Hu on the main page has been removed, and the Hu Element symbol at the bottom of the main page now takes you to the mail page. The main page is the only page that this happens on. On every other page the Hu element takes yout to the main page.
Other new additions (or subtractions) include the disappearance of a few MacHexen sites on the Net. These include Hexen at MacGaming, The Best MacHexen Page on the Net (although I'm assuming it's not the best anymore ;) and Mac to PC Networking for Hexen. However you'll be happy to note a few new links to MacHexen pages on the Net. These include Vinay's MacHexen Homepage, The Complete Walkthrough of Hexen, Hexen at The Guild, and Balaji's MacHexen Page. So check these pages out. The only other major change here is that I changed one of the links to the MacHexen Demo at Next Generation. Appently they moved it, although it's still not responding (Next Gen is wierd like that). But you SHOULD be able to download from Grayphics now (I'm not promising reliability however since they're still in the process of switching servers). That should be about all for now. As usual, if there is ANYTHING you'd like to see at MacHexen Underground, let me know!!! I'm always open to suggestions and comments on the page.
Monday, December 3 : Wow, it's been a while. Well, the main new thing in the realm of Hexen is that we got a new site! Now Hexen Underground is located at Grayphics Digital Imaging and will be here until it disappears for good (basically a long time). Other than that, the only real big news is that Hellmaker v1.1 is now out and allows you to edit and create your own WAD files for MacHexen. It's pretty cool. You can get it off this site. And please, don't be emailing me your WADs ok? That's what MDR is for. If you go there, there is information on how to upload your own Mac made WADs to the FTP site here at Grayphics. That way everyone can download them and have a good time. Hopefully more news later, but for now, just have fun pillaging my site.
Thurday, August 22 : Well, there isn't much new to report on MacHexen as of late. There just hasn't been that much news. Info on MacHexen level editors has come to a standstill with none in production or even on the drawing board. I guess we'll just have to play all of the PC WADs. On a related note, both Lion and Presage are currently bidding on the port of Quake. More info as it becomes available, which should be soon.
Monday, June 17 : I've recieved many letters from people regarding the MacHexen release. Most people are happy with it and the speed gain. Here are a few letters I've received in case you're still wondering about speed problems...
I have the 1.1 version, arriving yesterday from Cyberian
Outpost. It is quite a bit faster than the demo, and on my
Centris 650, I can see the difference easily.
Mike Kazmierczak
- - - - - - -
Well, its official...the game is out and I'm playin' it. The commercial
version appears faster than the demo on my 7500. By the way, switching
the sound manager to 22.50 Hz kicked the speed up by at least 15-20%.
-Jeff Till
Dept. Physiology and Biophysics
SUNY @ Stony Brook
- - - - - - -
The speed is about
the same as the demo (perhaps a little bit faster). The ticker still
doesn't appear to work, so I can't tell for sure. The application comes in
5 different versions: a 68k version (for 68040 and 68LC040), a PPC 601
version, a PPC 603/603e version, a PPC 604 version, and a fat version which
has all (?) of the above. You can either do a drag install from the CD or
run the installer. You can also play right off of the CD.
Adam Schenker Department of Computer Science &
aschenke@babbage.csee.usf.edu Engineering
There ya go! It also seems that this very page appears in the "Special Features & Troubleshooting
Guide" section of the MacHexen manual! :)
Since the MacDoom v1.0.3 update is out I asked Gary Arnold whether or not this would have any effect on an update for MacHexen (since some MacDoom code is used in MacHexen). Here's what he had to say:
All the Doom 1.0.3 updates are in Hexen. We got that source code
near the end of the Hexen project, so we were able to include the changes.
Mostly they had to do with Open Transport compatibility. I have been kicking
around ideas for Hexen updates, but unfortunately, it's out of my hands.
id/GT/Presage has to want an update before I can work on one, and I don't
know if they want one or not. Not much left to update, but I guess I'll find
out.. *shrug*
-Gary
You can bet that if any update is going to be comming out for Hexen, the news about it will be here.
Saturday, June 8 : Well folks it looks like MacHexen is done and shipping!! Adam Schenker sent me this letter from Russ Blaine of Cyberian Outpost.
Contrary to some rumors that are flying around, here at Cyberian Outpost
we have boxes and boxes of Mac Hexen ready to go out the door. Yes, in
stock and ready to ship. Just on principle alone we don't announce
something as in stock until it is here in the building.
I also put the demo up on our site available for downloading. Have fun!
-Russ
Also, this letter was sent to Dave Kramer of MacDoom Review from Cyberian Outpost:
On June 7, Friday afternoon, we folks here at Cyberian Outpost
recieved about seventy copies of Mac Hexen. We currently have around 20 to
30 units on hand, in stock.
Feel free to get it here First!
Sincerely,
Kat
You can bet that if this was yesterday and there were only 20-30 left then, that they're probably gone now, but I would expect Cyberian to have more coming in very soon, if not today. The least you can do is write them and ask to see what the situation is right now. If anyone get's there full version in the mail tommorrow, please write me and let me know how much of a speed difference there is between the demo and the full version, as well as anything else you have to say about it. ;)
Friday, June 7 : A few new things for you to ponder. First of all I hear that Cyberian Outpost is taking orders for the full version of MacHexen. No word yet as to whether it is actually in stock right now though. I'd assume not because I just heard a few days ago that GT was scrambling with some last-minute manual addendum changes. (BTW, the manual was completely redone for the Mac version). However maybe (hopefully) they'll prove me wrong and release it soon. And because of GT making an entirely new addendum and things like that, Gary was able to get a slightly-optimized version of Hexen out for final burning. He didn't have time to measure the speedup, but he told me it was maybe around 5-10% faster than the demo. So all of you who were worrying about speed will have a nice surprise when your final version hits your doorstep. By the way, Gary's Hexen Editor is still alive and kicking. It's pretty much hanging on him finishing up his reading on the application framework he's going to use to make it with.
Thursday, May 30 : Well I hear that the full version of MacHexen may be released today. This may happen, however if it doesn't, it should be very soon. I may be holding off updating until next week sometime (my sister is graduating this weekend) so if something happens that's really big this weekend, that's my excuse for not adding anything right away. Things are looking good now for MacHexen, and we should be seeing you all playing the entire game (not the tiny bit the demo has) very soon.
Tuesday, May 28 : There's been a lot of talk about MacHexen since it's release, and I'd like to clear up a few things. 1). Then bug that's in the demo is NOT in the full version. People have been complaining that the game will crash on the demo at a certian spot where it loads the music. This is something that only happens in the demo, and is not in the full version. 2). There have been complaints about speed with the demo. Please, before you complain, kill other apps, turn off the sound, get rid of some extentsions, and give it more memory. Hexen is a little on the slow side, however this was more due to the Lion code that Presage used than actual bad coding by Presage. If you'll recall, Doom was MUCH slower than Marathon, and since Hexen is MUCH more complex than Doom and running off the same engine it's gonna be a bit slow. If you have a 604 you have nothing to worry about. If you don't you'll have to tone down things a bit. Why did Presage use Lion's code? Well, if it didn't you'd be waiting until Christmas for this game. It's that simple. I hear Lion's working on an update to thier MacDoom engine to gain speed. If they ever complete it, it'll probably be used by Presage as a speed increase to MacHexen. 3). For those of you who were hoping the full version will be better, it will, sorta. It will offer more in the terms of levels and options, but speed and graphics should remain very close to what the demo version is showing. 4). I'm sorry I haven't been able to respond to everyone's emails as of late. I've been quite busy working. I live in Door County, WI and if you've ever been here you know why I'm busy (it's a MAJOR tourist trap). Please, if you want your email replied to, read what's on my page first before asking questions. It'll help us both out. Anyways, I'll probably get to those emails soon. That's all for now. Sit back and enjoy MacHexen. It's great fun.
Tuesday, May 14 : Well boys and girls the big demo is supposed to be out TODAY. When it does come out it, the site will be on my Demo Page (link above). For all of you who like to celebrate, there's a MacHexen Demo Release Party going on right now on IRC, #machexen. No sense in being here then now is there? All right then, off ya go!
