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Not Jabba

The Wayfarer's Tome: a standalone gameplay mod for Heretic (Update to beta 7a with wand start bugfix, November 2021)

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I don't (and didn't) know if it modded vanilla monsters at all - or if wtome will tolerate custom nonvanilla monsters. Plus sometimes (perhaps usually) custom monsters are actually taking a vanilla monster & changing the sprite/behavior. Sorry not familiar with or an expert on any of this...

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15 minutes ago, FrancisT18 said:

Plus sometimes (perhaps usually) custom monsters are actually taking a vanilla monster & changing the sprite/behavior.

That's true for Doom, because DeHackEd is the only thing available to change actor behavior in the more conservative ports. But for Heretic, things are different. Heretic's equivalent of DeHackEd never got as much traction, and is plagued with compatibility problems even with vanilla Heretic (Chocolate Heretic, only port I know of that bothers trying to support HeHackEd, must do some guesswork to figure out what version of the game is targeted by the patch), so ZDoom's DECORATE has been the way to do custom monsters for Heretic.

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I just noticed something. The dynamic lights for the hellstaff's projectiles and ammo crystals of wand are not showing. Were they intentionally removed by the mod or is it just accidental.

 

EDIT: Actually, the dynamic lights for other ammo like that of crossbow is also not showing. And also projectiles of many monster don't have dynamic lights either.

Edited by ReaperAA

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1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

I just noticed something. The dynamic lights for the hellstaff's projectiles and ammo crystals of wand are not showing. Were they intentionally removed by the mod or is it just accidental.

 

It looks like that's true, but I don't know anything about it. I normally play in software mode, and I never load lights.pk3. Many projectiles in the game are modified -- for instance, the Crossbow uses new projectiles that inherit from the old ones, but it still seems to have its dynamic lights working. The Hellstaff also uses new projectiles that inherit from the old ones, but its dynamic lights aren't working. All of the ammo pickups have been changed to be bright by default, and none of their dynamic lights are working. I've got nothing -- I don't know what causes this or how dynamic lights even work.

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I don't know much myself but I know that lights.pk3 has gldefs.txt in which the lights are defined and also objects are defined to which these lights are meant to be assigned. I think that a GLDEFS lump will have to be included for defining and assigning lights to to objects/projectiles.

 

Upon opening it Slade I found this. This is not entire gldefs.txt but only the part where the lights for ammo are defined and assigned to the ammo objects.


// Small wand ammo
pointlight SWANDAMMO
{
    color 1.0 1.0 0.0
    size 8
}

object GoldWandAmmo
{
    frame AMG1 { light SWANDAMMO }
}

// Large wand ammo
pulselight LWANDAMMO
{
    color 1.0 1.0 0.0
    size 16
    secondarySize 18
    interval 2.0
}

object GoldWandHefty
{
    frame AMG2 { light LWANDAMMO }
}

// Ethereal arrows
pointlight ETHARROWS
{
    color 0.0 1.0 0.0
    size 12
    offset 0 8 0
}

object CrossbowAmmo
{
    frame AMC1 { light ETHARROWS }
}

// Quiver of ethereal arrows
pulselight ETHQUIVER
{
    color 0.0 1.0 0.0
    size 16
    secondarySize 18
    interval 2.0
    offset 0 16 0
}

object CrossbowHefty
{
    frame AMC2 { light ETHQUIVER }
}

// Small claw ammo
pulselight SCLAWAMMO
{
    color 0.0 0.0 1.0
    size 8
    secondarySize 10
    interval 2.0
}

object BlasterAmmo
{
    frame AMB1 { light SCLAWAMMO }
}

// Large claw ammo
pulselight LCLAWAMMO
{
    color 0.0 0.0 1.0
    size 16
    secondarySize 18
    interval 2.0
    offset 0 6 0
}

object BlasterHefty
{
    frame AMB2 { light LCLAWAMMO }
}

// Small hellstaff ammo
pulselight SSTAFFAMMO
{
    color 1.0 0.0 0.0
    size 8
    secondarySize 10
    interval 2.0
}

object SkullRodAmmo
{
    frame AMS1 { light SSTAFFAMMO }
}

// Large hellstaff ammo
pulselight LSTAFFAMMO
{
    color 1.0 0.0 0.0
    size 16
    secondarySize 18
    interval 2.0
}

object SkullRodHefty
{
    frame AMS2 { light LSTAFFAMMO }
}

// Small phoenix rod ammo
pulselight SRODAMMO
{
    color 1.0 0.6 0.0
    size 8
    secondarySize 10
    interval 2.0
}

object PhoenixRodAmmo
{
    frame AMP1 { light SRODAMMO }
}

// Large phoenix rod ammo
pulselight LRODAMMO
{
    color 1.0 0.6 0.0
    size 16
    secondarySize 18
    interval 2.0
}

object PhoenixRodHefty
{
    frame AMP2 { light LRODAMMO }
}

 

I think that if the ammo objects in wayfarer have different names, then these lines can be copied and only the names of the ammo objects need to be changed. For example originally the name of wand's ammo is GoldWandAmmo. If in Wayfarer, it is defined as GoldWandAmmo2, then the line that has GoldWandAmmo needs to be replaced with GoldWandAmmo2 and the rest of it copied as it is in GLDEF lump inside Wayfarer.

Edited by ReaperAA

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Thanks for the info -- I've been brainstorming it with some other people as well and am working on fixes. The enemy projectiles and a bunch of tomed weapon projectiles were missing the lights as well. Let me know if you catch anything else!

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So as it happens, I was planning to release Beta 2 today anyway before getting sidetracked by the GLDefs stuff, which seems to all be in order now. Here are the changes from B1:

-D'Sparil's first form now has a pain chance of 25, like a Maulotaur. His second form has a pain chance of zero. This is primarily to keep him from being stunlocked by the Tomed Phoenix Rod.

-The mod now includes a KEYCONF lump, which adds a section to the Configure Controls menu in ZDoom/GZDoom that lets you bind keys for every artifact in your inventory.

-Nearly all of the sprite fixes from the Heretic Minor Sprite Fixing Project are bundled into the mod, as is the widescreen-friendly status bar.

-Fixed all the missing dynamic lights I could find; this includes Tomed and un-Tomed weapon projectiles, ammo pickups, enemy projectiles, and the Iron Lich's death sequence. I think everything is accounted for, but let me know if you see anything that's missing lights.

 

In addition, I played Dark Deity's Bastion and added it to the recommended maps list. I also tried out making the Wand more accurate, but I didn't like it -- sorry.

 

Still to do (these will probably be on the backburner for awhile):

-Patches for specific mapsets.

-Menu option to replace Firemace with Lightbringer.

-Making enemy melee attacks pass through ghosts. This may be messier than it sounds, as it will potentially screw up a lot of enemy infighting, and I may not end up implementing it until I eventually convert to ZScript.

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I just got some suggestion/idea regarding firemace (provided if this can be implemented of course).

 

What if the firemace is made to be like a grenade launcher type weapon (just hear me out as I don't really mean giving it splash damage). Grenade launcher projectiles have ability to bounce off walls which makes them useful for clearing enemies safely from a corner. What if the firemace projectiles have this capability where they can bounce of from floor AND walls (I mean both tombed and normal projectiles having this ability).

 

This suggestion is to make it more useful and unique without making it overpowered.

 

And I more question:

Spoiler

Have u ever thought of making a similar balance mod for Hexen as well. Just asking ;)

 

Edited by ReaperAA

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7 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

I just got some suggestion/idea regarding firemace (provided if this can be implemented of course).

 

And I more question:

  Hide contents

Have u ever thought of making a similar balance mod for Hexen as well. Just asking ;)

 

I'm not planning to do any additional work to the Firemace (it already has a damage boost to bring it in line with the other weapon upgrades), because the intent was always to just use the Lightbringer instead for mapping purposes. I was talking to someone recently who's actually working on an upgrade similar to what you've described, though.

 

Doing a similar overhaul for Hexen would be quite a can of worms, since a lot of the stock weapons and enemies would simply have no place in a game that's designed for more versatile and balanced combat, and balancing for all three classes is always difficult. When I first started mapping, I envisioned The Wayfarer as a warmup project, and then I was going to move on to Hexen and do an overhaul of it with new monsters and stuff, and then make my own Hexen sequel. But then I ended up really liking Heretic and decided to stick with it.

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I noticed a bug. The tomed phoenix rod does not make any sounds (no flame sounds). This bug is in both the main Wayfarer mod and Wayfarer's tome. I was using GZdoom 4.1.1

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8 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

I noticed a bug. The tomed phoenix rod does not make any sounds (no flame sounds). This bug is in both the main Wayfarer mod and Wayfarer's tome. I was using GZdoom 4.1.1

Ok, thanks for catching that! I'm sure it just didn't get added in when I recoded the weapon firing. I'll fix it for the next release.

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Beta 3 is ready!

 

I played Curse of D'Sparil, and it works well with the mod; it makes the horde combat less grindy, but I found that the episode still encourages you to use your inventory items a lot, which is an important part of how Curse is designed. This release of Waytome includes a patch for Curse of D'Sparil (wtome_cod.wad), which fixes the custom status bar graphics. Without the patch, parts of the status bar are overwritten by the widescreen-friendly status bar graphics. The mapset is totally playable without it, though.

 

Other changes from Beta 2:

-A menu option has been added that replaces the Firemace with the Lightbringer and all Firemace ammo with equivalent Lightbringer ammo. I make no guarantees that any map will be properly balanced if you do this; it's just for fun.

-The firing and impact sounds for the Phoenix Rod have been replaced with ones that sound more powerful.

-The firing sound for the Lightbringer has been replaced with a better one.

-Fixed the Tomed Phoenix Rod not making sound when it fired.

-The faux-brightmaps for weapon/ammo pickups are no longer offset incorrectly in OpenGL.

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Slight update to Beta 3a.

 

This update includes a patch for UnBeliever (wtome_ub.wad) based on some issues found by Ryath and their testers. The modded D'Sparil now takes increased crusher damage (this same change was made to vanilla D'Sparil in UnBeliever itself to ensure that it plays properly in GZDoom). The Tomed Crossbow's damage has been nerfed slightly (back to vanilla levels), and the Tomed Phoenix Rod depletes ammo less quickly to ensure that certain maps play properly.

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5 hours ago, FrancisT18 said:

Any patch for Faithless planned, at some point? Can't be sure but I doubt it'll work as is

Yes, at some point. It may be compatible as-is -- Jimmy changed the way the Firemace spawns so that it would be more mod-compatible, and that was the only major issue I know of.

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On 6/23/2019 at 6:59 PM, Not Jabba said:

Slight update to Beta 3a.

 

This update includes a patch for UnBeliever (wtome_ub.wad) based on some issues found by Ryath and their testers. The modded D'Sparil now takes increased crusher damage (this same change was made to vanilla D'Sparil in UnBeliever itself to ensure that it plays properly in GZDoom). The Tomed Crossbow's damage has been nerfed slightly (back to vanilla levels), and the Tomed Phoenix Rod depletes ammo less quickly to ensure that certain maps play properly.

Thank you for putting this patch together! I really appreciate you going out of your way to make the mod compatible with my mapset. I'm still testing it out but the first two changes seem perfect so far. The tomed phoenix rod change is a bit of an issue, though. When I brought it up, I was hoping to address a minor balance concern in E1M2, but lowering the ammo consumption has had the side effect of making the flame jet overpowered in almost all other contexts. It completely blows through all the bosses now -- without the drawback of quickly depleting ammo. If it's a choice between the two, I think it makes more sense to leave the slightly skewed fight in E1M2, since most players won't even notice that it doesn't play as intended.

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6 hours ago, Ryath said:

Thank you for putting this patch together! I really appreciate you going out of your way to make the mod compatible with my mapset. I'm still testing it out but the first two changes seem perfect so far. The tomed phoenix rod change is a bit of an issue, though. When I brought it up, I was hoping to address a minor balance concern in E1M2, but lowering the ammo consumption has had the side effect of making the flame jet overpowered in almost all other contexts. It completely blows through all the bosses now -- without the drawback of quickly depleting ammo. If it's a choice between the two, I think it makes more sense to leave the slightly skewed fight in E1M2, since most players won't even notice that it doesn't play as intended.

Fair enough!

 

Here is Beta 3b with a fix for the UnBeliever patch. The Tomed Phoenix Rod ammo still depletes more slowly, but the damage is reduced to what it is in vanilla. That seems to help a bit with the E1M2 fight, since the enemies in it are low-health.

Edited by Not Jabba

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This is really cool to see. I'm always saying to myself that I should play more Heretic so I'm going to go through the recommended wad list with this mod. Thanks heaps for keeping Heretic pumpin.

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@Not JabbaSorry to bump a bit...but...the AddMenuOption feature breaks ZDooM 2.8.1 on startup (unknown command)...could you release a version that has this either cut out or rewritten so it is compatible with ZDooM instead of just GZDooM? I still prefer to use plain ZDooM for wads that don't need GZDooM...:)

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Unless you've got some sort of special-case compatibility issue (i.e latest GZD doesn't run well on your system), or are expecting to do demo recording/playback or something, there isn't any reason to stick to an older version of effectively the same port. If it's the software renderer you're looking for, you can flip that back in GZD's video options menu.

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Sorry for bumping the thread, but I have a question. What is the reason behind having all the graphics in PNG format instead of having them in Heretic's palette. Is there any advantage behind this?

 

The reason I asked this is because I am working on a new palette for Heretic which does affect paletted graphics, but not the PNG ones. 

 

See the water in pictures below. The issue occurs in Hardware renderer but not in software renderer (as the PNG graphics get palettized in software mode).

 

Hardware renderer:

Screenshot_Heretic_20191124_192813.png.2601cbf33c9bae2cede62c623961b341.png

 

Software renderer:

Screenshot_Heretic_20191124_192828.png.a0d49c316a6f6e16432607e59df6d92c.png

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14 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

See the water in pictures below. The issue occurs in Hardware renderer but not in software renderer (as the PNG graphics get palettized in software mode).

 

I'm not sure what's causing that. The images are pngs because it's a gazillion times easier to work with and I'm not aiming for any compatibility that requires Doom format graphics. However, all of the pngs are already Heretic palettized, not truecolor, unless I just happened to miss those water flats for some reason -- so GZDoom shouldn't be trying to convert them to anything. Are you sure it's not an issue with your palette or colormap?

Edit: I think I misunderstood the problem -- so GZDoom is simply ignoring the palette when you're in hardware mode? I can't really say why the port wouldn't apply a new palette to palettized pngs -- that seems like a problem that should be addressed by the port maintainer.

Edited by Not Jabba

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I think palettized pngs store the palette internally, and are not affected by the PLAYPAL lump because they have their own on a per-image basis. so that means if someone loads their own PLAYPAL on top, all the png-ified textures would still display with the original heretic palette that each graphic has already stored internally. so it's not exactly that the engine is ignoring ReaperAA's PLAYPAL in hardware, but rather that any png-ified textures from Wayfarer's Tome have their own internal palette (the vanilla heretic one) to be rendered with instead.

 

software doesnt have this problem because instead of using png's internal palettes to render, the engine tries to conform each png (and any other graphic lump) to whatever the global PLAYPAL lump is, at runtime I think

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39 minutes ago, Tango said:

I think palettized pngs store the palette internally, and are not affected by the PLAYPAL lump because they have their own on a per-image basis. so that means if someone loads their own PLAYPAL on top, all the png-ified textures would still display with the original heretic palette that each graphic has already stored internally. so it's not exactly that the engine is ignoring ReaperAA's PLAYPAL in hardware, but rather that any png-ified textures from Wayfarer's Tome have their own internal palette (the vanilla heretic one) to be rendered with instead.

 

software doesnt have this problem because instead of using png's internal palettes to render, the engine tries to conform each png (and any other graphic lump) to whatever the global PLAYPAL lump is, at runtime I think

 

Yes. I think this is what is happening.

 

And by simply converting all the graphics in Wayfarer's Tome into "Graphics (Doom)" or "Graphics (Flat)" form through SLADE, they started using my PLAYPAL just fine. Pretty easy to convert them.

 

To make life simple, I attached the modified file here: wtome_sa.zip

Edited by ReaperAA

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Interesting. So what is the normal expectation with a gameplay mod? I know the modding community is almost entirely GZDoom-oriented and I'd assume they default to png in most cases, so I imagine a palette mod like this would be incompatible with most mods in hardware rendering, not to mention mapsets with extensive new content like Wayfarer. Is there some sort of established ettiquette for this, or what?

 

I'd prefer to stick with pngs for mapping, but it should be simple enough to fix up the standalone mod, since @ReaperAA has already handed me the graphics (thanks!)

 

It is a nice palette, btw.

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Apologies for the bump but I have discovered a bug with the untomed Lightbringer in the newer GZDoom versions (I am using 4.3.2 right now). The lightbringer projectile is not passing through alive enemies. It only passes through if the enemy which the projectile hit managed to die from it.

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Ok, thanks for the report. I'll see what I can do. It looks like somebody has already figured out how to fix this on ZDF.

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