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samiam

Heretic DM megawad in progress

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Hello there,

I'm in the process of making a Heretic DeathMatch megawad that can also be played single player. I am making this megawad because I poked around at the cdrom Heretic DM levels, and they all, well, suck. Heretic is a game that has never had DM levels give it justice.

In the process of making this megawad, I looked at the DOOM2 wads for IPXMATCH.ZIP, whose README gives permission to modify and distribute modified levels:

Authors may use this package as a base to build additional packages. Since I did NOT build the provided levels myself (I modified them a little bit, please have a look at the "credits" section) and their authors did allow to distribute them, anyone can take away any part of this package and modify it to its needs.


So, I did just that. I took the first level of this zip file and spent hours last night converting it in to a Heretic DM level. Well, today, when I got internet access again, I looked at the README for the original level, I converted, and discovered the standard crappy non-open-source old cdrom.com boilerplate for the level:

Authors MAY NOT use MANCERX3.WAD as a base to build additional levels.

You MAY distribute MANCERX3.WAD, provided you include this file, with
no modifications. You may distribute MANCERX3.WAD in any electronic
format (BBS,Diskette,CD,etc.) as long as you include this TXT intact.

You MAY include MANCERX3.wad in any PWAD complitations, you may not
alter the level in any way except the minor change of the MAP number.


I tried contacting Cole Savage, the author of this wadfile to get permission (I got permission a couple of years ago to GPL SLIGE, for example; the only time I didn't get permission to do something like that was from a DJB fanboy) to Heretic-fy this level. Unforrtunatly, Cole's email address doesn't work and "Cole Savage" is too common of a name for me to find him with a Google search.

Does anyone, by chance, know how to contact Cole? If I can't reach him, I will assume he gave permission to "Open Source" this level when it was modified for IPXMATCH, and that it's OK for me to further modify it to make a Heretic level. I'm not about to throw out my hours of work made under the assumption the level was open source unless the unlikely event of Cole Savage popping in and saying "Don't convert this level in to a Heretic level" happens.

That said, I'm not going to adapt any other IPXMATCH levels for Heretic DM play, since the copyright status is not 100% clear. I think my next conversion will be based on a smaller FreeDoom level.

- Sam

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samiam said:

I'm in the process of making a Heretic DeathMatch megawad that can also be played single player. I am making this megawad because I poked around at the cdrom Heretic DM levels, and they all, well, suck. Heretic is a game that has never had DM levels give it justice.

while it's true that Heretic has very little historic to recommend it for DM play then you should really go see Chaindude's Parthoris project or Earthquake's Rara Avis before you throw out such wild generalisations ;>

but hey, good luck with this!

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First of all, I'm *really* pleased to see that I was wrong about there being no good Heretic DM wads; I've downloaded both projects and will look at them in the next few days. It's good to be wrong.

Second of all, I'm really happy to have Mancer's email address and Doomworld ID; I just sent him a message asking for permission to redistribute my megawad with the Heretic conversion of his MANCERX3 map11 level.

Finally, I have finished the 7-level mini-megawad of the Heretic levels. This has five tiny Oblige wads updated (textures aligned, some new texture themes created and added, architecture made to look less random, connectivity improved for better DM play, etc), and two DOOM2 Deathmatch levels converted in to Heretic levels (Mancer's MANCERX3 map11, and map06 from the FreeDM part of the FreeDoom project).

Five maps can be played single player; I have implemented difficulty levels, and have verified that it can be completed at Smite-Master difficulty (albeit barely using just the keyboard). The two deathmatch maps can be played SP (there are a couple of boss monsters in the maps to keep SP people occupied), but can not be accessed without using the "ENGAGE" (Heretic's "IDCLEV") cheat, or warping to the level when starting a deathmatch game.

Anyway, the wad is done; the only thing I am waiting for is Mancer's permission. And, yes, I apologize for making the level without Mancer's permission first; I didn't have 'net access and IPXMATCH.ZIP implied that Mancer gave this permission.

- Sam

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I haven't heard from Mancer, either good or bad, about giving me permission to publish my Heretic conversion of MancerX3 map11. So, I have just removed that map, replacing it with a placeholder map I hacked together in about 30 minutes, and have the megawad available for download here:

http://www.samiam.org/slump/evilruin.zip

Since most of the maps are based on Oblige maps, I will not upload this to gamerz.net.

Enjoy!

- Sam

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