[t800]

Few gameplay tips I learned:
- Mummies are weak in melee, so you can deal with them easily with machete.
- Lion women are more vulnerable when they are scaling walls. So good tactic is to get them near ledges to provoke them into climbing and then shoot them down.
- Those alien ants can be goaded into in-fighting rather easily, because they keep shooting all over the place. (Just wondering, isnt this the only Build game that features monster-in-fighting?)

Armored "rhinos" remind me of pinky demon. They are typical example of enemy, whose challenge of dealing with them is based mostly on player´s limited controls. So unfortunately this "controls fix" make them just time consuming hindrance.

To deuxsonic:
If main obstacle in enjoying game for you are clunky controls, I can recommend you this "fan made controls fix".
So if you combine it with keys redefined to WASD, it could be considered "modern fashion-ist". It is not perfect and I am not denying source port would be much better, but I think that is the best we have at this moment.

[deuxsonic]

t800, on 05 May 2016 - 03:24 PM, said:

Few gameplay tips I learned:
- Mummies are weak in melee, so you can deal with them easily with machete.
- Lion women are more vulnerable when they are scaling walls. So good tactic is to get them near ledges to provoke them into climbing and then shoot them down.
- Those alien ants can be goaded into in-fighting rather easily, because they keep shooting all over the place. (Just wondering, isnt this the only Build game that features monster-in-fighting?)

Armored "rhinos" remind me of pinky demon. They are typical example of enemy, whose challenge of dealing with them is based mostly on player´s limited contros. So unfortunately this "controls fix" make them just time consuming hindrance.

To deuxsonic:
If main obstacle in enjoying game for you are clunky controls, I can recommend you this "fan made controls fix".
So if you combine it with keys redefined to WASD, it could be considered "modern fashion-ist". It is not perfect and I am not denying source port would be much better, but I think that is the best we have at this moment.

That will certainly help.

leilei, on 05 May 2016 - 03:16 PM, said:

I'm curious about the Japanese version. Obviously, something had been censored there.

As far as I know the only difference is the name. They only had the rights to call it Powerslave in the US so it went by Exhumed elsewhere except Japan where it got the name A.D. 1999: Pharaoh's Revival and was not released on PC there ostensibly because of the lack of PC gamers there.

[leilei]

deuxsonic, on 05 May 2016 - 03:29 PM, said:

and was not released on PC there ostensibly because of the lack of PC gamers there.

PC/AT hadn't gotten a strong foothold until well after PC-98 was done with though, but a lack of PC gamers there was not.

[Player Lin]

leilei, on 05 May 2016 - 04:04 PM, said:

PC/AT hadn't gotten a strong foothold until well after PC-98 was done with though, but a lack of PC gamers there was not.

Since in 1990, DOS/V(Japanese version of IBM DOS) happened, I don't think "lack of PC gamer in Japan" is true, but "lack of PC Gamer whose plays non-Japanese games in Japan" maybe true.

[Lunick]

Found a secret ship in a map

[deuxsonic]

Boat needs some sloped surfaces.

[Lunick]

It's too bad we'll never see slopes in Exhumed

[icecoldduke]

This looks like a fantastic game, it would be awesome if one of the old devs can find the source code for it on a old floppy someplace .

[Lunick]

It's a pain trying to hit the spiders when they jump into the water and start swimming

[deuxsonic]

It's hard to hit anything with the machete. You have to be pretty much touching it.

[Lunick]

Had my first game crash just as my invincibility ran out in a level

[t800]

Lunick, on 13 May 2016 - 03:40 AM, said:

It's a pain trying to hit the spiders when they jump into the water and start swimming

deuxsonic, on 13 May 2016 - 11:46 AM, said:

It's hard to hit anything with the machete. You have to be pretty much touching it.

Machete sucks against spiders even on solid ground, because they are too small targets and keep jumping on your head (but it is actually not that bad against mummies). But machete is not the only weapon that works underwater - grenades, cobra staff and lighting spell do too.

While it can be argued that this game feels more arcade, older and less interactive than other mainstream Build games, you still cant deny that developers had sense for detail like: blue flame coming from flamethrower moves to side you turn and it gets extinguished while you are underwater; lava floors damage enemies aswell and ammo belt coming from machine gun gets shorter as you use, thus telegraphing to player when he/she will need to reload.

[Lunick]

I feel like I have missed the Flamethrower in a level. There is tons of ammo for it in levels I've played (up to the first major boss) but I haven't seen a pickup for it in any level...

[MrFlibble]

IIRC the flamethrower should be somewhere in level two (?). Certainly not later than level three.

[MetHy]

Lunick, on 13 May 2016 - 02:23 AM, said:

Found a secret ship in a map

That ship is awesome. You can go underneath (underwater), inside, and on the deck.


Can't remember you get the flamethrower sorry, you might want to use the cheat code that gives all weapons +ammo and waste the ammo so it fits your current count. You can only pick up each weapon once in the game.

Or you can always go back to previous levels on the map screen.

[Lunick]

MrFlibble, on 14 May 2016 - 07:27 AM, said:

IIRC the flamethrower should be somewhere in level two (?). Certainly not later than level three.

It was in level 3 surrounded by a ring of lava that I guess I didn't see on my path. Thanks!

[deuxsonic]

Generally the weapons in Powerslave are placed right in the middle of a path that you have to traverse so you don't miss them since the pickup is in the game only once.

[Lunick]

Which is why I thought it maybe was a later game weapon but considering there was ammo for it everywhere... This was one weapon placed in a way that was missable.

[MrFlibble]

Lunick, on 15 May 2016 - 02:18 AM, said:

I thought it maybe was a later game weapon but considering there was ammo for it everywhere...

Reminds me of how I missed the flamethrower on my first playthrough of AvP2.[/offtopic]

[MetHy]

Just beat the game now, it was my third playthrough. The more I play this game, the more I love it.
Gameplay isn't as basic as I made it out to be; and it actually gets tons of fun and remains challenging even when using WASD+Mouse with the real strafing patch, because when you're strafing enemies predict where you're going to end up and shoot in consequence. So gameplay doesn't "age" badly with modern controls, like most other retro FPS would.

I just love the level design in this game, I know I've said it already but it's some of the best Doom-era level design I've seen, or at least it's everything I love about level design of that genre period.
They may not have had many effects to work with compared to games like SW or even DN3D, but they really made the most of what they had, unlike SW which continuesly throws new effects which potential are never scratched.
But the best thing about the level design are the layouts. Lev14 stands out for me on this point.

I also really enjoying the life/checkpoint system, with autosaving every new level, versus being able to save/load anytime you want. It really gives tension to gameplay, mistakes matter, and there is an extra layer of supplies management.
Since each map lasts between 20 and 30 mins, there is a good balance between arcade gameplay and adventure feel, and that is rather unique for a FPS game of the time.

btw if you guys remember in what levels each weapon is acquired it would be nice to know. I know Rah's gauntlet is after Lev10....

[Micky C]

Are you saying if you die near the end of a level, you could potentially be forced to replay nearly 20-30 minutes of gameplay?

[Hendricks266]

No, there are checkpoints in levels.

[Lunick]

The checkpoints in Exhumed are great because if you get lost, you can just die to get back to somewhere you know without the level resetting

[MetHy]

Micky C, on 16 May 2016 - 03:02 PM, said:

Are you saying if you die near the end of a level, you could potentially be forced to replay nearly 20-30 minutes of gameplay?

Only if you lose all your lives. But if you find yourself in a tough level with few supplies and only one life left, you can always go back to play previous levels first.

[MetHy]

Screenshots:

Spoiler

[MrFlibble]

Awesome screenshots, would you consider contributing some to MobyGames to show off some of the later levels?

BTW, you know you can record a gameplay video in DOSBox and then grab some "action" screenshots from there using a programme like VirtualDub? DOSBox uses a lossless video compression format so the screenshots will be the same as if you made them manually.

MetHy, on 16 May 2016 - 08:28 AM, said:

Gameplay isn't as basic as I made it out to be; and it actually gets tons of fun and remains challenging even when using WASD+Mouse with the real strafing patch, because when you're strafing enemies predict where you're going to end up and shoot in consequence. So gameplay doesn't "age" badly with modern controls, like most other retro FPS would.

That's a cool feature, I didn't pay attention to that. Reminds me of Will Rock on hard difficulty.

[MetHy]

Added some screenshots on mobygames (the last 5 ones)

I found where weapons are located. So that's flamethrower Lev3, Cobra staff Lev06, and Rah Gauntlet Lev08.

I know about the video but DOSbox video recording make my game very laggy.

[MrFlibble]

MetHy, on 18 May 2016 - 01:23 AM, said:

Added some screenshots on mobygames (the last 5 ones)

Cool, thanks!

[leilei]

MetHy, on 18 May 2016 - 01:23 AM, said:

I know about the video but DOSbox video recording make my game very laggy.

They fixed that in the SVN ages ago fyi, any svn build shouldn't suffer the gradual recording slowdown bug.

[Hendricks266]

I have building DOSBox on Windows from SVN all set up, so let me know if anyone wants a fresh build from SVN HEAD.