Heretic episode: Sold Soul // Now on idgames!

I've never actually played Heretic, but damn! Those screenshots look wonderful!

Awesome! Can't wait to play this.

Played few maps and yes, its freakin` great! Another very good Heretic wad, congrats mate!

12 minutes ago, Zaratul said:

Played few maps and yes, its freakin` great! Another very good Heretic wad, congrats mate!

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it! This is the first time I worked with Heretic so it really means a lot.

Saw that you had some compatibility issues with The Wayfarer's Tome. I tried to look into it but the bag of holding worked fine for me so I'm a bit clueless now.
 

Wierd stuff, im using GZDoom 4.5.0 WF Tome is with wand start on. Btw im using WF Tome load after Your wad, this is a good thing right?

Edit: 

Lots of errors in the console.

1 hour ago, Zaratul said:

Wierd stuff, im using GZDoom 4.5.0 WF Tome is with wand start on. Btw im using WF Tome load after Your wad, this is a good thing right?

Edit: 

 

Lots of errors in the console.

That's weird. I'm using the same load order.

Anyway, most of those errors shouldn't exist anymore because all of them got fixed today. I must have messed up the versions while uploading (nothing major changed other than the fixes). I will correct this as soon as I have the time.

Everything related to "sun" probably exists because both sold soul and WF Tome have the same lightbringer weapon.

Edit:
Just checked the uploaded file and it is the correct version, I only get errors when the two wads are launched together.

I redownloaded Your wad and i have no bag of holding bug. I must had older version of Your wad.

i download SS from here, now. And the console is clear.

Very nice work indeed, although I wish it was without the custom monsters. The super-knight in particular is overpowered, or rather, those two homing fireballs. They are fast, but have have very tight turning radius and can kill the player in one hit. And I noticed some other issues while playing on UV in Gzdoom 4.5.0:

E1M3: wizards 233 and 234 didn't teleport to playable areas because I didn't need the shield (tag 12), maybe this could be changed to standard linedef tag.

E1M9: I have no idea why, but the final maulotaur or super-knight sometimes spawn outside the room. This happened while I was fooling around and reloaded the game several times before pressing the switch, but I don't know if that's the cause. Also, it's hard to get 100% kills in this map when the monsters fall to the sea below. Probably the easiest fix would be to make the sea insta-kills monsters, too. This also includes small "sea" areas like in the center arena. And this problem affects some later maps, too.

Thank you for you feedback. 😁

Changing the shield pickups to standard linedefs is good idea. The same way you missed those disciples you can skip an iron lich too on that level so I'll fix that. 

I haven't got any feedback about E1M9 before. I didn't know that you can insta-kill monsters too, have to check that out. I know how frustrating is knocking them down.

I'll look into everything you just mentioned and maybe it's really time to nerf the death knight's attack. 

Let me ask you. Did you manage to find the secret exit or just warped to E1M9? 

If you lower DeathKnight mass from 700 to 100. In the snow village you could push him of the cliff into the sea - which would be cool, out of the box approach.

6 hours ago, Fryuko said:

Let me ask you. Did you manage to find the secret exit or just warped to E1M9? 

 

 Well, that one was tricky, maybe too tricky. I did find

I'm glad to hear that. The cryptic nature of it is intentional, but I tried to suggest what to do

I released an update with many things you suggested. Sadly I couldn't figure out how to kill monsters in instant death pits. That one still needs to be fixed in the future.
But the death knight nerfs really made this update important. Almost halved the damage of his homing attack and made it slower.

Yeah, to kill the monsters in the pits would be possible only via scripting, I'm afraid. Here is one possible way:

https://zdoom.org/wiki/SectorDamage

Then again, your mod already requires GZdoom, so the only obstacle is that you need to painstakingly specify which sectors will trigger it.

Thank you for the suggestion. 
 

This is the same solution I managed to find, just couldn't make it work. Somehow I never used scripts before.

I tried to use the example from this wiki page and changing the tags to the sectors I wanted to use, but I either get an "invalid identifier line 0" error or an "aprop_health : Identifier has not been declared line 7 error"

Always a pleasure to see a Heretic WAD. Lovely stuff in there. Pretty sure I'm going to enjoy this and probably make a review at some point :D

2 hours ago, Endless said:

Always a pleasure to see a Heretic WAD. Lovely stuff in there. Pretty sure I'm going to enjoy this and probably make a review at some point :D

Thanks, I'm glad to hear that. I'll be looking forward to it :)

3 hours ago, Fryuko said:

I tried to use the example from this wiki page and changing the tags to the sectors I wanted to use, but I either get an "invalid identifier line 0" error or an "aprop_health : Identifier has not been declared line 7 error"

 

I'm no expert, but I think you need to tag the sectors (as you would for normal teleporters etc.) and then provide the tag number, not the sector serial number. (Hmm, that's actually easier and more flexible than I originally thought.) And every such sector must have one special thing (map spot) Actor Enters Sector (type 9998). It seems you need to set the matching tag for the map spots, too.

16 hours ago, Caleb13 said:

I'm no expert, but I think you need to tag the sectors (as you would for normal teleporters etc.) and then provide the tag number, not the sector serial number. (Hmm, that's actually easier and more flexible than I originally thought.) And every such sector must have one special thing (map spot) Actor Enters Sector (type 9998). It seems you need to set the matching tag for the map spots, too.

I can't believe how simple it was and yet I managed to spend so much time figuring it out.

I forgot to include "#include "zcommon.acs" at the beginning of the script. This was the sole reason for my invalid identifier problems. Although my solution is more simple than the example it works.
Thank you again :)

Now monsters knocked out of the map on E1M5, E1M6, E1M9 will die. Getting 100% kills is easier now.

I'll upload the new version pretty soon.

This is some genuinely good Heretic content - great stuff from start to finish!

Played it on medium difficulty. Final boss was interesting, but to me the slaughter at the end of M7 was actually more difficult and had me checking if I'm actually on M7 or already on M8 :)

Another thing: I somehow got from M7 to M8 with full runes and flame orbs. I got stuck for a while at the point where one is supposed to pickup the rune staff and phoenix rod to trigger progression. I even tried to just walk through the weapons (not picking them up because I had full ammo) thinking there is some player-walks-over linedef action. Anyway at the end I somehow figured out that I should probably spent a bit of ammo to pickup the weapons.

11 hours ago, revlis said:

This is some genuinely good Heretic content - great stuff from start to finish!

 

Played it on medium difficulty. Final boss was interesting, but to me the slaughter at the end of M7 was actually more difficult and had me checking if I'm actually on M7 or already on M8 :)

 

Another thing: I somehow got from M7 to M8 with full runes and flame orbs. I got stuck for a while at the point where one is supposed to pickup the rune staff and phoenix rod to trigger progression. I even tried to just walk through the weapons (not picking them up because I had full ammo) thinking there is some player-walks-over linedef action. Anyway at the end I somehow figured out that I should probably spent a bit of ammo to pickup the weapons.

Thank you!

E1M8 serves as some kind of Epilogue that's why it shorter and easier than many of the other levels. Besides after the hardships of the previous two levels, it may feel refreshing :)

Good point on the "player-walks-over linedef action" stuff. I already fixed similar triggers on E1M3 yet somehow I managed to forget these.

It was faster to make items trigger things but I'll definitely update them with linedefs.

Anyone else find their weapons are failing to switch to anything that's not the wand, stick, crossbow, or dragon's claw? I'm using Wayfarer's Tome.

3 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Anyone else find their weapons are failing to switch to anything that's not the wand, stick, crossbow, or dragon's claw? I'm using Wayfarer's Tome.

Probably an incompatibility between the mod and the episode, which is somewhat expected since the episode has a custom weapon. I set up a patch that seems to work, but I haven't released it because I'm not happy with how Wayfarer's Tome plays with this episode in general. Sold Soul has extremely good ammo balance and challenges that are tailored to the mostly-vanilla weapon loadout. The mod just throws off that meticulous balancing.

On 4/19/2021 at 5:42 PM, Not Jabba said:

 

Probably an incompatibility between the mod and the episode, which is somewhat expected since the episode has a custom weapon. I set up a patch that seems to work, but I haven't released it because I'm not happy with how Wayfarer's Tome plays with this episode in general. Sold Soul has extremely good ammo balance and challenges that are tailored to the mostly-vanilla weapon loadout. The mod just throws off that meticulous balancing.

It was probably because I loaded it up after I saved a game, because I started a new one where the bug did not repeat itself.

On 4/20/2021 at 2:42 AM, Not Jabba said:

 

Probably an incompatibility between the mod and the episode, which is somewhat expected since the episode has a custom weapon. I set up a patch that seems to work, but I haven't released it because I'm not happy with how Wayfarer's Tome plays with this episode in general. Sold Soul has extremely good ammo balance and challenges that are tailored to the mostly-vanilla weapon loadout. The mod just throws off that meticulous balancing.

Maybe a month ago, I tried to play through the episode with Wayfarer's Tome to find more incompatibility and bugs. Finished the first 4 levels but haven't really found anything so far. I'll definitely finish the rest, especially the part where players get the new weapon. 

The only thing I noticed so far, that it makes Sold Soul easier due to overall having more resources to work with. (or enemies requiring less)

I agree that the mod somewhat changes the balancing, but makes the episode more accessible.

 
I'm glad that you liked the balancing and more than grateful for your work with the patch.

I think I'm still going to release the patch, but I want to adjust some of the ammo pickups to help accommodate the resource balance. I'll need to do some testing and see what works.

It took me long enough, but I released a much-needed update. The main thing is that I replaced all music with their midi equivalents and fixed up E1M9 since it was still buggy, sometimes getting 100% completion on that one was impossible.

I also went through the whole episode and fixed up "all?" midtexture bleeding glitches. Thank you @Not Jabba for pointing that out in your Wayfarer's Tome update.

I'm also super grateful for your Wayfarer's Tome Patch, and I loved playing the episode with it.

This looks wonderful!

It's possible to get stuck behind these barrels in E1M6. Spoiler for image.

Great mapset so far though!