Another Heretic Community Project?

[Egregor]

New Project Idea:

The Realm of Parthoris - A Heretic Community Project

The Realm of Parthoris would be the spiritual successor of HYMN! It is named after The Realm of Parthoris, the world in which Heretic takes place. It would feature a single fantasy theme chosen from the list bellow to inspire our maps. The theme would be revealed at the beginning of the session.

Possible Fantasy Themes:
Medieval Villages & Castle Fortresses: Classic Heretic E1, featuring blue water
Lava Caves: volcanoes and brimstone, with dark gothic textures and metal architecture, featuring orange lava
Swamps & Ancient Temple Ruins: featuring green water
Dungeons & Catacombs
Winter in Parthoris: ice and snow
Wilderness: canyons, rivers, forests
The Outer Void: maps featuring sky above and bellow, floating platforms

Before kicking this off and making it official I want some community feedback:

1: Are you interested in submitting a map for the project?
2: How would you feel about a fast deadline (one month for the alpha, and another month for the beta)? If this is a too hasty for most folks perhaps we could double each phase.
3: Do you prefer mapping (and playing) Heretic totally vanilla, or mapping (and playing) Heretic with the expanded themes including new textures and decorations?
4: Which name do you prefer: The Realm of Parthoris (TRoP), HYMN II, or Heretic Community Chest: Winter 2014 (HCCW2014)?
5: How could the original HYMN have been improved?
6: Which of these fantasy themes look particularly tasty to you?

If there is strong enough support for this we could get it going as soon as January 1st!

[A.Gamma]

Another Heretic Community Project? Friggin' awesome!

1. I'm totally in for another Heretic Community Project and will definetely submit a map for it.

2. I'm a slow mapper, so I'm not keen on fast deadlines.

3. Vanilla Heretic is awesome but it has a severe lack of textures, so I'll say expanded.

4. HYMN II sounds good, but Heretic Community Chest: Winter 2014 will be better if we manage to replace all 3 episodes!

5. I'm not really sure on this... A stricter quality control?

6. Hell yeah!

[Capellan]

1: I could be persuaded
2: Fast deadline is fine for me, provided you're not starting until post Xmas
3: New textures are a must, due to the limited number vanilla Heretic has. I'm fine with vanilla for everything else
4: I don't mind
5: Better implementation of skill levels. Smoother difficulty progression. None of that "race for the timed lift through obstacles and currents" nonsense. More consistent progression of texture themes (not swapping back and forth).
6: Flexible on theme, though see above about progression. e.g. maps 1-2 in one theme, 3 transitioning from that theme to the next, 4-5 in the new theme, 6 transitioning again, 7-8 in a third theme. Secret level can be uniquely themed.

[EvilNed]

1. Would love too!

2. I'm Ok either way. It would influence the size of the map.

3. The new texture pack is a must. I'd even be OK with new monsters / things.

4. Realm of Pathoris: HYMN II?

5. I coulda fixed my bugs. Otherwise, stricter quality control over the visual style of some of the maps. Maybe the mappers announce a theme before hand and they get to make a map around that. I wanna do an Icy/snowy map.

6. Ice, snow and castles.

[A.Gamma]

Whoops, just noticed that number 6 does not really makes any sense, what I meant to say is that I'm totally okay with your proposed themes, maybe add desert or something like that.

[plums]

1: Are you interested in submitting a map for the project?
I would definitely try to contribute to this, though I'm crap at finishing things quickly or at all. I do have something half-done for Heretic already that I might adapt to fit this, if that were OK.

2: How would you feel about a fast deadline (one month for the alpha, and another month for the beta)?
Depends what you mean by "alpha". Having seen so many projects in development limbo for so long, I like the idea, even though I'm not especially fast.

3: Do you prefer mapping (and playing) Heretic totally vanilla, or mapping (and playing) Heretic with the expanded themes including new textures and decorations?
Prefer a vanilla look, but I can understand why people would want to get some extra resources in. I strongly want vanilla gameplay/weapons/enemies though, most of the ZDoom Heretic maps that change these aspects don't do anything for me, but I think that's the plan anyhow?

4: Which name do you prefer: The Realm of Parthoris (TRoP), HYMN II, or Heretic Community Chest: Winter 2014 (HCCW2014)?
TRoP is cool. But what's in a name, right?

5: How could the original HYMN have been improved?
Can't really say, I'll have to go back and play this soon.

6: Which of these fantasy themes look particularly tasty to you?
For a single theme, Medieval is really the only one I can see working with vanilla resources the whole way through. The others would all be fine with some more textures, except maybe Void, which is kind of a hard theme to make a whole mapset out of while staying both consistent and non-repetitive.

Edit: thinking about it I really like the idea of a swamp-themed set, with the right textures (and not just taken from Hexen).

[SFoZ911]

I can make something for heretic, but not on a fast deadline because I like to take my time at building maps.

[Cacowad]

ctrl+c ctrl+v a.gamma post.

regarding 5... i got a little better at mapping, but you have to be brutal honest on what you think of a map (this is referred to anyone who playtest something), so the mapper can improve himself. like when i did my map for HYMN i didn't knew about unpegging the door rails, i needeed the video of someone (tarsman? i can't remember now) to learn what i really did wrong there (like the incoerent texture choise, the quite-difficult-to-find-and-frustarting green key puzzle and the overabundant monster teleport traps, the list can go on for a while).

maybe i can use this also to restart working on the blaphemer stuff i left behind...

[Xaser]

Hmm, personally, I'd like to see multiple themes, maybe a mini-progression or somesuch, because variety is cool.

+1 Void, either way, because always +1 Void.

[plums]

Soooooo... I guess this isn't happening huh? Bummer. I played the first HYMN recently (hadn't before, got it mixed up with something else) and it was a lot of fun.

Also fabian has released a limit-raising port of all the Doom-engine games, based on chocolate doom and co., and it would be nice to see some more projects that made use of it. Lots for Doom, not so much for the others...

[Egregor]

Yeah, I don't feel there is enough support to make this happen at the moment. I had considered assembling a 'team' to develop an episode, but decided against it because of how little time I have spent with doom over the past few months. Sorry.

[plums]

Yeah, that's understandable. Too bad. Congrats again on the first HYMN.

[DooMAD]

If another community project doesn't take off, there's always Blasphemer if any mappers and texture/sprite artists are interested.

[Tarnsman]

Void theme is the only correct answer, all other answers are objectively wrong™, so it has been decreed!