HoT DOSBox failure to load

[Weary Old Man]

Greetings,

Thank you for making Hexen II: Hammer of Thyrion, I can't believe I just discovered it! So far I've successfully gotten my copy of Hexen2 to work with Win10 64-bit, music and all.

I'd also like to try and also get a copy running using DOSBox 0.74-3, but it crashes on startup. I was wondering if you have any suggestions for getting it to start. I'm guessing it's hard to figure out if it's related to DOSBox settings, DOSBox itself, or HoT. When I try to start HoT v1.5.9, I get a long series of errors, which include:

• WATTCHP initialization failed (No PKTDRVR found)
• TCP/IP shutdown: Segmentation violation
• Cannot continue from exception, Exiting due to signal SIGSEGV
• Page fault related to H2DOS.EXE. This is an exceptionally long error, so I've attached a screenshot of my DOSBox window for you to look at.

I'm guessing the DOS version is probably one of the least used branches of Hexen 2 HoT, so I appreciate your input.

[Ozkan Sezer]

Thanks for the report. Will look at this as soon as possible.

[Ozkan Sezer]

FWIW, I cannot reproduce the issue on Linux running under dosbox-0.74
The crash message is coming from the watt32 (wattcp) library catching a
segmentation violation. For the moment, things to try / consider:

• My dosbox configuration has memsize=48, i.e. dosbox can use up to
  48 mb memory. If your configuration has less, try that.

• Try running h2dos with -noupd command line switch, which disables
  tcp/ip stuff.

[Weary Old Man]

Hi Sezer,

Thanks for the quick reply. Changing the memsize configuration option did the trick! I've always left it alone, since the config file recommends you don't change it.

For some reason, I like a somewhat pixelated look - otherwise these older 3D games look worse to me, and DOSBox has a nice normal2x and normal3x scalar option and a full screen windowed mode, which doesn't mess with my actual desktop resolution.

Interestingly, the memsize value has a very tight relationship with the available resolution:

memsize=20: The minimum value I could get H2DOS.EXE to run. Looking at 4:3 aspect ratios, which I'm guessing was the default ratio (or was it 16:10 stretched, I can't remember) , 320x240 is the only available option.
memsize=21: 640x480 is the maximum 4:3 aspect ratio option
memsize=22: 800x600 is the maximum 4:3 aspect ratio option
memsize=24: 1024x768 is the maximum 4:3 aspect ratio option
memsize=25: 1152x864 is the maximum 4:3 aspect ratio option
memsize=27: 1280x1024 max resolution, which seems to be the max for the engine

Thanks again for your help, just made it through Blackmarsh!