HereticPlus [Randomizer - GZDoom] Update 9/21/14

One day I attempted to make a randomizer for Doom, but it occurred to me how many times it was done. Then I realized how little love Heretic seems to get in comparison and decided to make a randomizer for it. Still work in progress, got some things to work out but it is playable right now. Feel free to check it out and give some feedback.

"HereticPlus" is a placeholder name, so any suggestions of a new name is greatly appreciated (as well as any playtesting and suggestions in general).

Contents
+New Monsters
+New Weapons
+New Artifacts
+New Props
+Widescreen HUD (by Revenant100)
+Fixed Sprite Rotations for stock actors (Revenant100)

Known Bugs
-no GL light for Hefty Wand Ammo
-D'Sparil replacements do not have proper boss scripting for E3M8

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62445669/HereticPlus.pk3


Demo - Outdated

That steak sure looks delicious, Corvus gonna pack some weight if he keep eating like that. oh wait he's an elf, they can't get fat.

Not a big fan of randomizers generally, but I always appreciate when Heretic gets some more love. I'll give this a spin sometime.

Since there's a Heretic++, I'll have to change the name to something better. In the meantime, it's just going to be HereticPlus... blimey, thought I was being original there.

Link updated. Some balancing for the stronger monsters done, though still may not be finalized. Some death glitches have been fixed. A couple other miner nitpicks fixed up a bit, and a new placeholder name (HereticPlus).

Currently thinking of a new, proper name for this mod. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

Aeons of Chaos :p

Actually something with 'chaos' in the title might be appropriate, in fact.

plums said:

Aeons of Chaos :p

Actually something with 'chaos' in the title might be appropriate, in fact.

I'll keep that in mind :P

Update 9/21/14

Got back to work on this during what little free time I have nowadays, with work and school taking up a great portion of it.

What's New
+Added a few new monsters
+Added prop spawners for various decorations
+Added widescreen HUD by Revenant100
+Added fixed sprites for stock graphics by Revenant100
+Added GL Lights to "new" stock actors (ammo and light sources)
+Adjusted spawn probabilities
+Adjusted difficulty balancing of monsters

Current Known Issues
-Hefty Want Ammo doesn't want to give off light
-D'Sparil replacements do not trigger E3M8 boss death actions


Still trying to come up with a decent name for this, so any suggestions are welcome!

I also really love to see something new for Heretic! :)
And I also like the idea of having more variety in Heretic - the original had just very few Monsters compared to Doom.

The only problem I see with randomizers is that they tend to mix things up just a little bit to much. What I mean is this: Let's say in the original, you had a cave with some Weredragons in it - this was thematically fitting together. Now you get a cave with a wild bunch of everything, Monsters of every sort in any color you wish - while this adds variety for sure, I think it feels just a bit too random and odd.

- I would find it ok when there was one Boss-Weredragon in this group, that is stronger and looks a bit different, but having totally different monster mixed together is a bit too crazy for my taste.

- Another (better) possibility (but I don't know if this is technically possible): I think it would be great if monster randomization would work more like, lets say, "All Weredrgons in E2M1 are replaced with Red Chaos serpents", "All Weredragons in E2M4 are replaced with Shadow Beasts" - this would still increase variety over the different levels and episodes, while preventing "wild colorful bunches of everything" in one single room.


Just my opinion. I don't know whether it is possible, nor do I know if there are any other randomizers that work like this. But even if there aren't any (and this should be possible), you would indeed have created something special and new :)

Thank you for the feedback! I definitely get what you mean, but there isn't too many monsters that are equally as fitting as Weredragons, so my best bet is to get equally as challenging (give or take) uglies to take its place. It would be cool to make it map specific, but I don't believe there is a way to do that. That would be purty darn cool, though.

I just got an idea that might actually work:
Some time ago, I played "Wrath of Cronos", an RPG Mod for ZDoom Heretic. I remembered there were terrain-specific spawns: When you killed a Monster and Blood/Gore particles hit the ground, they would spawn a reagent that was specific to the ground it fell on (for example blue reagent when it landed on Ice, brown reagent when it landed on earth, ...)
Since this is technically possible, it should be possible to do the same for Monsters as well: A Weredragon spawnpoint on an Ice Terrain could transform it into a Wendigo, on a metal/stone ground it could be transformed into a Juggernaut, and it could stay a Weredragon when it's spawned on Earth terrain. Wouldn't this be an idea?
This way you wouldn't have the problem of random/odd monster mish-mashes and you would even get thematically fitting monsters to each map.
Let me know what you think of it - I myself would love to see this realised.

edit: Of course this would make it less random, but it would still add variety.

Definitely something to look into, thanks for the suggestion!

You could also use this mechanic for obstacles. While playing the Demo I noticed some giant mushrooms growing in the Lava Pits - I guess these were Stalagmites. So while giant mushrooms in a cave (on earth terrain) might be a great idea, they shouldn't be spawned in Lava Pits.

Yeah I noticed that too, got a little chuckle out of it. Hardy little fungus.