Hocusdoom RELEASED (in /idgames)

This has been some ambitious shit for a long-time-coming. I need to get the old alienware box working again so I can run gzdoom comfortably since I am a poorfag with a shite laptop but I know the end payoff will be worth it. This project reminds me strongly of Serpent: Resurrection by The Ultimate Doomer.

rf` said:

The way the difficulty settings work is fairly similar to how it was in the original game, as well as the general gameplay. Hocus Pocus had fairly simple mechanics, yes. I've tried to add new things to them but still keep it relatively the same. Obviously I'll add new traps and stuff like that later on but the core gameplay should remain arcade style. Keep in mind this is only the first episode out of four, so I'd like to gradually introduce the player to new concepts throughout the game. (You don't get the fireball or homing potions until episode 2 for example.)

While I'll keep trying to make the game play smoothly and fun, I also have to accept that I won't be able to please everyone. As far as the weapon sprites go, I can always tweak them some more. Not really sure what to do. The original game sprites (player sprites) looked like Hocus was dancing Disco rather than shooting lightning from your hands, so I'm not sure what to do there. If you'd like to help with sprites, you are more than welcome to help out and make them better! I'd honestly welcome it.

I'm not a sprite maker (not any talented + not patient enough), but instead I did something else - I've opened your mod in SLADE3 and did a few changes that actually improved my experience when I've tested them ingame. And the changes were:

-Set player's Viewheight to 41 (Doomguy's standard)
-Set player's Speed to 1.0
-Set new Y offsets for the basic weapon, as follows:

Sprite | New Y offset
LITEA0 | -96
LITEB0 | -90
LITEC0 | -86
LITED0 | -89
LITEE0 | -94
LITEF0 | -96
LITEG0 | -90

-Set "Scale 2.0" of class BaseBall
-Set "Scale 3.0" of class ZapperBall
-Set "Scale 3.0" of class LightningShot (all for better visibility)
-Removed "+WEAPON.NOAUTOAIM" from player's basic weapon

The last change was because I've found it excessively annoying to be hitting the Fire key repeatably and so often. In addition, I'm playing with the keyboard (not mouse), so that my Fire key is actually Ctrl! With this change, I was suddenly able to push through the levels, enemies and walls much faster and easier. Thanks to this, it also turned out that the enemies didn't provide quite much challenge, due to their slow movement and projectiles. So that I've done a few more changes:

-Set the tic duration of each enemy's NormalSee animation to 2 (increased aggressivity)
-Set the Speed of BaseBall to 16 and FastSpeed to 24

Now it still didn't feel over the top for me at all, but the challenge amount quite increased and I liked it.

Last gripe: I don't like how long does it take for the enemies to teleport in. I tend to go fast, then stop, and often find out that a FireCroc has silently teleported right behind me (was supposed to teleport in front of me) and damages me multiple times without any warning. I think that you'd make them appear faster, if not instantly (that'd be preferable for me).

Take my post just as suggestions for inspiration, because I'm only telling you how I would tweak the mod to be more comfortable to play for myself, speaking just and only for myself. Maybe you wouldn't be willing to do those changes because your preferences / vision what the game should be like is different, that's alright. Your project looks pretty good either way. Good luck with it.

Ok some quick feedback. I think the firing frame should be lowered, especially when the statusbar is on. I really like the statusbar but it's impossible to aim with the hand in the way!

http://imgur.com/PSlyVxm,3xbMyds

In other news, I kind of want to experiment with making a map that has the player collecting orbs similar to these maps instead of finding the one exit.

scifista42: Did you ever play the original Hocus Pocus? This is not doom. You should not expect it to play like doom.

BlackFish said:

Ok some quick feedback. I think the firing frame should be lowered, especially when the statusbar is on. I really like the statusbar but it's impossible to aim with the hand in the way!

http://imgur.com/PSlyVxm,3xbMyds

In other news, I kind of want to experiment with making a map that has the player collecting orbs similar to these maps instead of finding the one exit.

I'll try lowering it and see how it looks.

Gez said:

Try the latest 1.8.x official build if your hardware doesn't support GZDoom 2.0.x.
http://forum.drdteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6482

Now it seems even more like a disgusting everlasting paddleboard game with me as the ball.

Unsupported OpenGL version.
At least GL 2.0 is required to run GZDoom.

Never mind, I will be missed out on playing HocusDoom then.

rf` said:

scifista42: Did you ever play the original Hocus Pocus? This is not doom. You should not expect it to play like doom.

I admit, I didn't. I'm judging your mod only from the Doomer's standpoint. I find it logical, because I guess that there will be much more Doom fans than Hocus Pocus fans among the players of your mod when it's finished.

Also, I do nothing more than sharing my observations and preferences, giving suggestions for improvement from my own perspective, providing feedback so that you can take it into account, trying to help. I've never actually believed that I had any right to command you how you should make your mod, or anyone else.

Now I understand that you'd like to accustomize your mod for Hocus fans more that Doom fans - that's alright. In that case, feel free to consider my voice as a minor one. That's how it should work. :)

Figured I'd throw out a quick update that fixes a few things.

Current playable demo for 02-01-2015
Mp3 versions of music

• made player shots smaller so you could shoot alongside walls easier
  
• added better support for althud, thanks to Gez
  
• changes to map01 and map02 to make them a little easier (also map02 had no mushroom chargers)
  
• lowered weapon sprites so they didn't obstruct your view too much
  
• made power shot sprites smaller for the same reason (they should stay fairly large though)
  
• added speed/jump boost floors
  
• fixed some minor things in most of the maps
  
• used a different method for the ladders in map10. No longer uses swimmable 3d floors (no way around reverb effect and using ThrustThingZ works better)
  
• changed weapon sprites yet again. Not quite as in the way now (and is almost pointing now)
  
• made the rapidfire less powerful (overlapping shots). In turn nerfed many mass ambush areas to compensate. They're not as grindy anymore.
  
• Super Health Potions will now give you 20 health (with sbarinfo updated to represent it as gold hearts atop of the red hearts :D
  
• Heart icons updated to be less ugly
  
• added +GHOST to monsters and +THRUGHOST to projectiles so now they are no longer impeded by other monsters. (like in the original game)
  
• added the 10 story pages. Put them at the end of the help screens because I don't know if you can define a totally separate set of help pages
  

I really do love how it comes together. Feels nice and faithful to the source material. Very nice.

I played through maps 1-2 of the newest version. Everything looks cool. However, I get a "A secret is revealed!" message every time I pick up an item. (And there's 100-200 items in a level.) I don't remember that happening before...?

Try getting a newer version of GZDoom? The ability to disable secret messages with a language string is relatively new.

(If you want to know, each treasure is now a secret, so that the secret counter is useful for something.)

Gez said:

(If you want to know, each treasure is now a secret, so that the secret counter is useful for something.)

Yeah, I saw that; very handy! Seems it would be more useful to disable the secret message in-WAD, but is that even possible?

Salt-Man Z said:

Yeah, I saw that; very handy! Seems it would be more useful to disable the secret message in-WAD, but is that even possible?

It's possible, and it is done.

Again, update your GZDoom.
http://devbuilds.drdteam.org/gzdoom/

Progress!

Gotta fix the colored lighting in that second screenshot. Looking good though!

Sweeeeeet!

Downloaded the latest demo. I've never played the original game, but this is looking very good indeed. Very pretty, and I didn't know that GZDoom supported actual 3D models.

Considering how brown and gloomy the first level of Doom II looks, it's impressive how bright and colourful this mod is.

I look forward to its completion!

it's very cool seen that this project is still alive...

I've not said anything about this project (or played it) until now, but I must say I really like it. I especially like the creative use of shadows baked into some of the textures.

BlackFish said:

Gotta fix the colored lighting in that second screenshot. Looking good though!

The colored lighting is actually done using 'glowing' textures in GLDEFS. Unfortunately they're affected by light levels so sometimes it looks a little weird at times.

Happy Easter! Its time again to pick myself up from my self-imposed slump and get some more work done! Most of the maps for the first episode are finished, save for some small details and more playtesting. The biggest hurdle right now before a 'shareware' release is the high scores table. I don't have any idea how to implement that just yet, but I would really like to. I'd also like some feedback on how the levels play too.

Current playable demo for 04-06-2015
Mp3 versions of music

changelog for - 04-06-2015

• changed icy water in the Ice levels damage from 5 to 1
  
• finished map08
  
• finished map09
  
• added several new models & decorations for maps 13 & 14
  
• finally fixed the scrolling secret gem platform in map04 (after forgetting to fix it several updates in a row)
  
• nerfed the ambush to the crystal above the bridge in map06. It was too annoying.
  
• made Egg Dragons shoot only one egg instead of 1-3, since they're severely powerful
  
• also made the fire shots from eggs affected by gravity.
  

Progress! Map12 (map 2 of Episode 2) is nearly finished.
I still have to work on the scoreboard but at least work is getting done. I still need some playtesters to go through the first episode and let me know about anything that needs fixed, or any issues with gameplay.

I have a question. Do you name the enemies from scratch? 'Cause I don't clearly recall, but I guess Hocus Pocus itself has never had a monsters' definition base.

My bad... I forgot to proclaim that the progress looks gorgeous and promising as usual.

Cell said:

I have a question. Do you name the enemies from scratch? 'Cause I don't clearly recall, but I guess Hocus Pocus itself has never had a monsters' definition base.

There's nothing about monster names in the manual, at least.

Cell said:

I have a question. Do you name the enemies from rscatch? 'Cause I don't clearly recall, but I guess Hocus Pocus itself has never had a monsters' definition base.

My bad... I forgot to proclaim that the progress looks gorgeous and promising as usual.

As far as I know, Hocus Pocus never gave them names in-game. unless someone can peek at the source code (which doesn't exist) then I don't even know if they were ever given names. So, I have to come up with my own interpretations.

Nevertheless, creative and fitting ones you've invented for them.

Just poked around in this again today. I haven't tried out the latest changes yet, but I felt the need to point out that I like to use the Monsters/Secrets/Items tallies on the automap, and in HocusDoom it still says Monsters/Secrets/Items instead of Monsters/Treasure/Crystals or whatever it should be.

Salt-Man Z said:

Just poked around in this again today. I haven't tried out the latest changes yet, but I felt the need to point out that I like to use the Monsters/Secrets/Items tallies on the automap, and in HocusDoom it still says Monsters/Secrets/Items instead of Monsters/Treasure/Crystals or whatever it should be.

As far as I know, this is hardcoded in zdoom and cannot be changed yet.

More progress!

Wip of the Egypt levels from Episode 2:








Bumping my own thread :V

Excitement! (No really, looking forward to this)