[Heretic] Just An Idea

Just a question.

Would there be any interest in making a Heretic community project with nothing but small detailed maps playable in zdoom and all other zdoom child ports. I read once a forum at doomworld that someone said it would be great but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I was just wondering if anyone else thought it would be a good idea.

HPack sounds like it'd be just up your alley. Personally I'd like to see a vanilla Heretic community episode, but Heretic mappers are kind of thin on the ground.

Any interested Heretic mappers out there should consider donating to Blasphemer.

I hosted a Heretic Community Project in 2013 and am very seriously considering hosting another one again this year. It would be vanilla Heretic + a custom texture set. You can find the 2013 project here:

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?file=levels/heretic/Ports/hymn.zip

If there is enough support for another community project (at least 8 other mappers) I will get it going. Mostly though Heretic is received with bland apathy.

I've done the odd map for Heretic, although the feedback I got for one I posted suggested that I made the experience too Doomy. :P

Obsidian said:

Personally I'd like to see a vanilla Heretic community episode

This. I'd get on board for that.

Sodaholic said:

Any interested Heretic mappers out there should consider donating to Blasphemer.

I tried this once. Made a cool fortress. But then as I got oldered, I stopped.

Halfblind said:

Would there be any interest in making a Heretic community project

Yes.

Obsidian said:

I've done the odd map for Heretic, although the feedback I got for one I posted suggested that I made the experience too Doomy. :P

And that's what I liked about it! :)

Egregor said:

Mostly though Heretic is received with bland apathy.

Well, it's not as fast game as Doom is, the enemies are worse suited to give an interesting challenge while being killable fast enough, etc. On the other hand, exploitation of Heretic's inventory / powerup system still has a potential.

I don't know why but I have always enjoyed Hexen more than Heretic. :P

Avoozl said:

I don't know why but I have always enjoyed Hexen more than Heretic. :P

Heretic is like an "average" between Doom and Hexen, where Doom puts a little more focus to action and challenge (along with exploration) and Hexen is more about the adventurous exploration, effects, switch hunts and item quests. I personally strongly prefer Doom out of all of them. I also strongly prefer science-fiction over fantasy.

If it's vanilla, I'd love to try.

scifista42 said:

Heretic is like an "average" between Doom and Hexen, where Doom puts a little more focus to action and challenge (along with exploration) and Hexen is more about the adventurous exploration, effects, switch hunts and item quests. I personally strongly prefer Doom out of all of them. I also strongly prefer science-fiction over fantasy.

Hexen is also far, far more suited to portraying atmospheric and dark enviroments. The vanilla Heretic graphics are rather cartoony.

I like Heretic, but I agree that it's probably my least favorite out of the three. I have, however, played through it way more times than Hexen...

EvilNed said:

Hexen is also far, far more suited to portraying atmospheric and dark enviroments. The vanilla Heretic graphics are rather cartoony.

Try using the Blasphemer textures (and some of its sprites) and Hexen music to play Heretic and see if that makes any difference...

As a somewhat-related topic (especially since I otherwise super-want to see Egregor's project get off the ground), the idea of vanilla-Heretic mapping turns me off quite considerably. There's no Chocorenderlimits for Heretic that I know of, which will monkeywrench my mapping process. That and I'm getting a bit tired of sticking to limits as of late. :P

Assuming we went with a limit-removing approach, though, what non-ZDoom, non-Choco ports for Heretic are there in active use? I've no idea.

Xaser said:

Assuming we went with a limit-removing approach, though, what non-ZDoom, non-Choco ports for Heretic are there in active use? I've no idea.

Doomsday and... that's pretty much it AFAIK. Sadly there's no (pr)Boom equivalent for Heretic or Hexen. Eternity would be a good contender when it's able to play Heretic, but complete support seems to be taking... well, you know.

Announcement: New Vanilla Heretic Community Project!

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/71584-rop-2015-a-heretic-community-project/

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Doomsday and... that's pretty much it AFAIK. Sadly there's no (pr)Boom equivalent for Heretic or Hexen. Eternity would be a good contender when it's able to play Heretic, but complete support seems to be taking... well, you know.

HereticP, Doom Legacy, Vavoom, and to cite one thing that is more actively maintained, Crispy Heretic.

It's not like it's hard to recompile chocolate-heretic with same limits as Heretic+. There's only like a half-dozen constants to change, and that's it... You could probably even hex edit your binary directly, just like they did with DOS heretic.exe but it's probably easier to just build from source.

I did that a few years ago, and posted my diff but I guess nobody else tried it. Anyway here it is again in case someone finds it useful...
http://pastebin.com/NgFuhJ22

scifista42 said:

Heretic is like an "average" between Doom and Hexen, where Doom puts a little more focus to action and challenge (along with exploration) and Hexen is more about the adventurous exploration, effects, switch hunts and item quests. I personally strongly prefer Doom out of all of them. I also strongly prefer science-fiction over fantasy.

First off I have a love hate relationship with all 3 games.
Doom, though it is designed to have quick, action packed battles gives me headaches and nausea due to the graphics, lighting and simplicity of the levels. Though the later community wads for Boom and Zdoom don’t hurt as bad. Other maps made by like tormenter667, and the like, are way to action packed for my blood. I still enjoy them though ON EASY.

Heretic does not hurt as bad, but the sore nature of most classic community wads make me sad. I also think that the weapon sprites and particles could have been improved upon a bit. As for the monster heath and weapon damage ratio it is rather spot on, by my opinion. As for editing Heretic for me is the easiest due to my familiarity with the texture resources. I have also played Heretic more than the other 2 games. It is one of the only games that I play hardcore. I have even played it on difficulty 4 a few times without cheating.

Hexen, is my favorite due to atmosphere and style. I started playing it because I thought the fighters axe looked really cool. I don’t mind the mind numbing puzzles and the adventure aspects. I think it makes the game feel better. What I don’t like is how hard it is for me to make content for it. I find it difficult to script for and the map setup confuses me at times. I also do not understand global (hub) scripts.

Obsidian said:

HPack sounds like it'd be just up your alley.

Honestly Hpack is not out yet, by my knowledge. I will play it when it is complete. Otherwise, I don’t have interest making content for it.

Egregor said:

I hosted a Heretic Community Project in 2013 and am very seriously considering hosting another one again this year.

I stumbled upon HYMN in November, downloaded it because DoomMad had a map built for it. I still have not had a chance to play it yet. Some of the maps look good though.

Halfblind said:

I don’t have interest making content for it.

Why not?

Just to let you know what I have been working on, here is a link for my blog for one of my projects.

http://tiny-heretic.blogspot.com/

I am making it a zdoom project for a few reasons these include;

1. Using fog and translucent textures
2. Inserting additional decoration
3. Inserting carefully selected monsters
4. Inserting a crap load of texture resources
5. Naming the episodes and maps
6. Basic map scripting such as text on screen and creating Hexen style puzzles.

I was hoping to turn it into a community project, but not at the moment. I still need to work on the following things;

1. Finishing all the texture resources, such as re-naming, and re-coloring.
2. Inserting all the sprite resources.
3. And other such zdoom business

I was hoping someone would help me with re-coloring a bunch of textures so that I could start inserting them. I will submit an official doomworld forum sometime later this year. Until then I have a lot of work still to do.

Gez said:

Why not?

Tiny Heretic is my primary project, Once I get it off the ground I might have some time to make a medium sized map later. But otherwise I just don't have the time. It will probably be a couple of years before then.