"Shadow of Drangleic" - 5 maps for Heretic, full episode maybe soon?

Quote

Perhaps you've seen it, maybe in a dream. A murky, forgotten land.
A place where souls may mend your ailing mind.
You will lose everything... once Branded. The symbol of the curse, an augur of darkness.
Your past. Your future. Your very light. None will have meaning, and you won't even care.
By then, you'll be something other than human.

A thing that feeds on souls.

A Hollow.

Long ago, in a walled off land, far to the north, a great king built a great kingdom. I believe they called it Drangleic.
Perhaps you're familiar... No, how could you be?
But one day, you will stand before its decrepit gate. Without really knowing why...

Like a moth drawn to a flame. Your wings will burn in anguish, time after time. For that is your fate.

The fate of the cursed.

Screenshots

downloab, please and thank

SOD1_2.zip -v1.2 (current:E1M1-E1M5)

SOD1_1.zip -v1.1 (outdated: E1M1-E1M5)

SOD1.zip     -v1.0 (outdated: E1M1-E1M3)

Yay Heretic maps! Random feedback.

Dunno how I feel about the different palette and various recolors. Looks a bit drab, but it does give these maps a distinct identity.

The levels definitely felt like Heretic maps (and not like Doom techbases with a medieval paint job), so good work on this.

Cute idea to make picking up the Phoenix Rod trigger the exit. (As far as vanilla Heretic allows anyway.) I suppose it means it's designed for continuous play because otherwise you don't get to actually use it?

Backroad Wanderer is "the Massmouth theme" as far as I am concerned, so E1M1 was a bit weird at first.

Making the edge of the waterfall a carrying sector was clever. No camping on the edge and looking down to shoot at the monsters!

I couldn't register this secret (in spoilered picture). Too thin, the player's center cannot get on it without climbing on the ledge with the item. And then that makes you technically above the ground so you don't register the special.

Is Drangleic pronounced "Drang-like" or "Dran-gull-ic"?

2 hours ago, Gez said:

Cute idea to make picking up the Phoenix Rod trigger the exit. (As far as vanilla Heretic allows anyway.) I suppose it means it's designed for continuous play because otherwise you don't get to actually use it?

 

Backroad Wanderer is "the Massmouth theme" as far as I am concerned, so E1M1 was a bit weird at first.

 

Making the edge of the waterfall a carrying sector was clever. No camping on the edge and looking down to shoot at the monsters!

 

I couldn't register this secret (in spoilered picture). Too thin, the player's center cannot get on it without climbing on the ledge with the item. And then that makes you technically above the ground so you don't register the special.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Is Drangleic pronounced "Drang-like" or "Dran-gull-ic"?

-You can play continuously but wand starts are also worked in.

-Backroad Wanderer is subject to change.

-That secret bug will be fixed in the next release (which will be as soon as the new e1m1 is done)

According to the source material the name comes from, "Drang-LAY-ic"

2 hours ago, DILDOMASTER666 said:

According to the source material the name comes from, "Drang-LAY-ic"

King Vendrick approves.

I hereby bequeath upon thee yon ETTiNGRiNDER silver trident of approval. ♆

Played with ZDoom v2.8.1, continuous play.  Can go back and check with chocolate or something if you want a compatibility assessment.  Overall fun levels, feel like genuine Heretic to play.  The few custom textures used were pleasant, which seems like a too-rare blessing with Heretic WADs these days.  Maybe a touch switchhunty in places but not dealbreakingly so.  A few misaligns at the corners of textures, not glaring ones but could be worth hunting down if you want it all to look closer to perfect.

I liked the intention behind the custom palette although in a few places it seems rough around the edges.  In particular the yellow used on the dragon claw and orbs isn't that great... you might do well to try to get it (and a few others, perhaps, like the crystal vials) put into a range of contrast more in line with the original palette so they don't look quite so flat.  Crystal vials have the flatness issue as well.  Not a big fan of Mac-and-cheese orange menu font or the red elvenwand either.  The blue and green are quite nice, though.

On the exits that the phoenix rod is sitting on, the exit triggered before the pickup did.

More nitpicky:

A few places that I might have expected to count for secret score didn't, but then they might have been a bit too obvious for that, just a bit out of the way.

On the second map you have the infamous "door that raises into a roof too short for it to realistically raise into" thing at one point.

I died a few times in the early section but once I got to about the middle of the first map, it was rather easy cruising from then on.  I suppose I'd have to wand start the second and third maps to really assess that further.

I too have wondered how some of the tracks from old classic Doom megawads would work with Heretic and Hexen.  The choices weren't ones I would have made, but I liked the one for map 2, indifferent on 1, wasn't really feeling it with the one on map 3 though.

Downright pedantic:

Breaks some of the IWAD conventions for key order and door texture use.

I assume the sky issue you're talking about is the old tutti-frutti issue with Heretic skies when you're up high enough to see them tile past the bottom.  It might be possible to address that by using a sky texture that's 128 px tall and appropriately tiles vertically, but I haven't yet tried that to be sure it really works.  Worth a shot.

Cool! Always love me some Heretic. Color changes were interesting. A couple of times I lost sight of the red wand ammo because of the red gibs. Good thing there was a lot of it. Secret bug was mentioned. You probably need to add a Dehacked to swap the door messages. "You need a blue/green key to open this door". Not sure I like having two levels end with a pickup in the exit. The problem with that is you have to know it's the exit and run at it so you pick up the item before triggering the end of level. Just like with an item on a teleport pad. Maybe some white exit sparkle would help. Looking forward to more.

update: this post and fp link to version 1.1.

some of the remapped sprites were removed, others were changed. level order has been changed; e1m1-e1m2 is new (m1 being in the "beta-ish" phase), e1m3-e1m5 are e1m2-e1m1-e1m3 from the previous build but with some minor changes. it should now be impossible to exit the levels in question without collecting the phoenix rods. the secret on e1m3 (now e1m5) should be fixed.

next to-do is i'm probably going to throw out the new e1m2 and re-do it. it serves a temporary purpose as a thematically-correct stop-gap between m1/m3 until i make something better to put in its place.

SOD1_1.zip

sorry for double-post, updated FP with more up-to-date representative screenshots and some proof of a restarted e1m2

version 1.2 released

-messed with e1m1 a little

-brand new e1m2, now in "beta" (same as e1m1)

-music changes

-more graphic changes (palette was modified again - i have not duplicated the changes across all 14 palettes so greens will look really weird in vanilla, working on it)