From what I understand, Hexen 2 has an intro movie that played from the CD but wasn't part of the game installation itself. How does the GOG version handle this? Also, can this movie be made to be part of the installation, or used with the Hammer of Thyrion source port?

Here's a YouTube video of the intro movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bJcIeH5r38

for GOG thats a pretty significant oversight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tQ69bgxcmw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHfZVNc9qW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bJcIeH5r38
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwd5efqdfJ0

the INTRO is part of the $$$ game $$$



from the CD its the file:

D:\Splash\MOVIE\Istart.smk
which is 32mb and its 2:21 long
31967200bytes

which GOG does have the rest of the \Splash\ folder, just no movie.

Damn. It would definitely be good if GOG managed to get this to work in-game.

Do any of the source ports play this video?

I do not remember watching this intro video even in the past, but honestly, I never played any original CD version.

My guess is that the quake engine itself is not capable to play smk video files. The CD inserted and windows did. If the folder directory order is accurate the intro was played from the d:\Splash\Movie directly. It was not installed into the hard drive by default.

Being a Windows game the way to emulate it is tricky. Not impossible but not very "realistic". Anyway, years ago, run or emulate the redbook system music, or real cd tracks in a proper digital game installation was a serious problem. Not now.

Would be nice if GOG or those doing the Hammer Source Port could get this video working within the game.

Anyways, this video probably could be tossed into the game folder just to have it and then the vid could be played outside of the game on media player programs that play videos like MediaMonkey, right?

I resized and converted the SMK intro file into a 1080p MP4 file which should work better with most video players these days as MP4 is a way more used file extension.

You can download it here: https://mega.nz/file/ckICEBaC#oC83ze2iP1-v_GaKDPZeBcVzf4-Tmw1EbwJmWVUBADo

Assuming that I use the sourceport Hammer of Thyrian, where am I supposed to put that file?

I don't think that Hammer of Thyrion is able to automatically find and play the intro. Seems like this was never a thing even with the vanilla game unless you had the CD spinning in your drive. The intro would then be read and played from disc.

I just made this MP4 version since some players like VLC have problems playing the SMK file. Maybe one fine day someone will come up with a working method to play the intro no matter if it's on disc or on your HDD/SSD.

Yep, the intro video was played from the CD during the installation of the game, and it was never installed as part of the game itself. Portals of Praevus has an intro video too, but that one was done within the game engine itself using a map and character models.

I have an AVI copy of the Hexen 2 intro movie, though I cannot remember where I got it from. Whilst the filesize of the AVI is slightly larger than the MP4 that Berzerk2002 created (375 MB vs 242 MB), the AVI does compress far better within a RAR archive.

VLC does play the original SMK file, but there seems to be some sort of palette issue as the colours are all wrong.

EDIT: Actually, the YouTube video from my original link, if saved to MP4 @ 720p, gives a file size of only 25 MB, and smoothes out some of the pixelly artifacts of the original.

@Korell
Can you share your .avi file?