The History of Fruit 2 - Another Heretic Episode

The sequel to the fruitiest wad of 2008 is in production!

STORY - IN AN EPIC TURN OF EVENTS, the Sidhe elves battled all the way to the mountaintop fortress of THE OVERLORD OF FRUIT. They mortally wounded him with a hail of ethereal arrows as he sat on his throne! He cast a wicked teleport spell just in time to avoid death!! AND!! Now it is up! to the Heretics! to hunt down! the Overlord! of Fruit! AND! END HIS! Reign!!
!
!!

So yeah! This is my latest project of Heretical nature. It's going to be a Heretic SP/Coop wad. These maps are a bit larger/longer/more deadly than I'm used to making, so it's taking me a while to get things done. Worst has also graciously provided a pair of new monsters to this wad which should work in all ZDoom based ports. Oh, and Essel and Rott also deserve cookies for their texture work.

Screenshots, or else it didn't happen!
E2M1 Papaya Palpitations: OMG look at this L-shaped corridor!
E2M2 Kiwi Ballsack: An ultra hallway.
E2M2 Kiwi Ballsack: The new menaces in the world of Heretic!

This isn't a jokewad series, and the History of Fruit 2 will be more "serious" than its predecessor plus it takes into consideration all the suggestions I've received and flaws in the first History of Fruit. I always appreciate suggestions/comments/criticism/donuts.

Nice to see some quality Heretic stuff being done.

Although I have to admit that your map names just don't work for me...

Looks nice. I need to get around to playing your first one.

Yeah, so do I. I like the looks of these too.
And Graf, can't someone have a little fun with map names? :P

Nice! Those green textures really look garish with the original unmodified Heretic palette, though. I really should have turned them to moss-green or just removed them from the texture wad after giving up on modifying the palette... :\

Kiwi.... Ballsack? Very interesting names here, although I don't understand the fruit themes. However, this is some quality looking stuff here, and I do see the correlation between fruit color and level color theme. Great job, I like the names.

Be sure to add a new, fruit-themed weapon to this wad! Like say, a magical machinegun that fires fruit seeds. :p

Anyway, this is looking pretty good! The last episode looked great, so I'm looking forward to this.

^Heh

Thanks, folks, for your comments about the palette and level names. I appreciate the provided suggestions.

Less giant "A history of fruit" posters in this one, plz kthx.

Also, just asking, did you try Hordes of Chaos or Ressurection of Chaos?

Since you haven't gone out of your way to make levels that are completely off the wall, but instead, are straight-forward levels with ridiculous names, it seems that, for most people, the names and story just make it harder to take this wad seriously, when they want to take it seriously.

At least that's my impression.

udderdude said:

did you try Hordes of Chaos or Ressurection of Chaos?

Of course! I totally loved both of those, AND I loved History Of Fruit Episode1 as well.

I find the fruit-themed titles to be very amusing and very original, therefore I'm glad that they're there and I'm not bothered by them at all.

To anyone who is bothered by the fruit-themed titles: just refrain from switiching into the automap view mode and you'll be able to forget about the existance of those titles while you play. :p

Did somebody call for Donuts?

Yeah, you're a life saver. :P

Udderdude: I haven't played the complete HoC for a year or so but I do play certain levels when I have spare time. As for RoC, I just played it a couple of days ago and enjoyed it quite a bit as the fighter. Good stuff! HFruit reminds me of those two wads a little bit. I'm not sure if it's the mapping style or monster placement or what. It's not quite as difficult, though. :-P

I remember the History of Fruit episode 1 and I enjoyed it - great to see an episode 2 is in the works... with new critters to boot. What about Bosses though? We already defeated a non-Serpent D'Sparil at the end of the first episode... how about a giant Chaos Serpent that breathes a stream of fire in Episode 2? But I'll enjoy it no matter what's thrown at me.

I agree it would be good to fight something other than D'Sparil at the end. Either way, I'm looking forward to it. The first one was fantastic!

udderdude said:

Ressurection of Chaos?

linky

It's a pity that someone with skills and motivation to mod for Heretic waste it all with such ridicule story and level names. I wish there were more authors like Ichor that know that Heretic and Hexen mods have game design laws that are completely different of these of DOOM.

I really don't see the issue with the ridiculous level names, story, and whatnot. After all, it's just a mod for an old game that they're making for fun during their free time. It's not like they're going to be selling this for a profit, so why not have a little fun with it? And at least they add something unique to the wad, rather than the typical "Big bad guys have summoned a bunch of monsters. Go kill them." story and the "Gothic Castle of Death!" type level names. I haven't played the first one, but the wacky names and such interest me much more than more of the same old things we've seen countless times, therefor giving me much more incentive to try it out in the future.

Maybe I'm just insane, but those are my thoughts on that whole issue.

Names and stories are just text, and unless there is some ZDoom text scripting involved (which is not the case for the HoF series), this should not interfere with the level, layout, gameplay and so.

brinks said:

I really don't see the issue with the ridiculous level names, story, and whatnot. After all, it's just a mod for an old game that they're making for fun during their free time. It's not like they're going to be selling this for a profit, so why not have a little fun with it?

Nobody blamed the author, he is free to do whatever he wants, and users are free to play it or not. I just said that's a pity that someone skilled and motivated makes something that is hard to take serious and I see this an opportunity for a great mod to play sadly missed, or at least from the way I see Heretic/Hexen mods.

And Naan as I said, at least for me, the game designing laws in Heretic/Hexen are very different than these of DOOM. Random maps, or stupid stories doesn't work the same way they do in DOOM.
Of course others may see things different.

Vegeta said:

Random maps, or stupid stories doesn't work the same way they do in DOOM.
Of course others may see things different.

Try making a set of non-random maps for Heretic and finding out how hard it is first.

I just think Heretic and Hexen call for a different kind of humor than Doom. I really don't think the fruit thing would work in Doom, for example.

The overdone fantasy stories that take themselves way too seriously in various games, are practically begging to be parodied and made fun of. :P