First post, by MrFlibble
- Rank
- Oldbie
This is a DOS port of HacX (a stand-alone free total conversion for Doom II) based on Gerwin Broers' MBF Maintenance Release 2.04, with additional sound code for GENMIDI/OPL3 playback by ludicrous_peridot. It has all the regular MBF features (including helper dogs) and supports both versions 1.0/1.1 (no other files required) and the vanillified v1.2.
Downloads:
- binary executable package: barx.zip (Google Drive)
- source code: barx-src.7z (Google Drive)
To play, just put HACX.WAD into the same directory as BARX.EXE. Versions 1.0/1.1 will run without any other files thanks to a modified Miniwad. You can get HACX.WAD from the freeware release v1.1 in this files only package.
IMPORTANT!!! The original version 1.2 release from 2010 is not supported. To play v1.2, take this version instead.
BarX will correctly reproduce (and fix) health and armour mechanics from the original HacX. If Doom II allows you to increase health or armour above 100% to a maximum of 200% by picking up bonuses or the Soul Sphere, vanilla HacX ups this limit to 400%. However, the developers apparently forgot to implement this for Centrophenoxine (Soul Sphere replacement), which in vanilla HacX 1.0 and 1.1 will only increase player health to 200%, and actually decrease it to 200% if it was above that. Moreover, MBF and possibly other source ports misinterpreted the Max Armor variable in DeHackEd, so in the 2010 release of HacX version 1.2, the armour and health caps were reset to 200. I made edits to MBF code so that BarX correctly allows the player to increase health and armour by picking bonuses and Centrophenoxine items.
I've also made a few other, mostly cosmetic changes:
- a custom automap colour scheme, based on that from Strife but with green instead of blue
I think it works pretty well with HacX' status bar design. - added full support for HUD font palswap to enable working menus and help screen
The non-blue font colours (and the background tile) match the fonts used in the original HacX installer. - since HacX does not have custom par times, I removed their display from the tally screen altogether
BarX takes advantage of ludicrous_peridot's modified Allegro library that enables the use of the GENMIDI lump (DMXOPL is included) for OPL music playback.
And yes, you can turn on the optional helper dogs to play around. The port uses the libre versions by Nash Muhandes from GZDoom.
I also included multiplayer drivers IPXBARX.EXE and SERBARX.EXE, which are modified IPXBOOM.EXE and SERBOOM.EXE from the original BOOM 2.02 distribution that recognise BARX.EXE as a valid executable. I was able to start up a co-op multiplayer game with IPXBARX.EXE using two instances of DOSBox running on the same computer (as described here).
