Heretic 1.2 and 1.3 demo patch

Hi everyone. I made this patch today, it fixes (replaces) desynched demos during main menu in Heretic. Raven didn't bothered to update the demos along with the game itself and instead left them as they were before - we know how the result looks. So you can use it with version 1.2 (if you just like i t better) or with 1.3 (Shadow of the Serpent Riders). Of course, this has some meaning only if you're using Dosbox or Chocolate Heretic, as it won't work with source ports as ZDoom or Doomsday. So it's for nostalgics only. Enjoy it and let me know what you think!

Download here

It only has any meaning if you for some reason watch the demos of the IWAD of Heretic. Which I am pretty sure hardly anyone ever do, regardless if they use vanilla or not.

It's for purists. I'm sure I'm not the only one ;)

It might be interesting for someone who's never seen them before because of the desyncs. Might as well give it a look-see when I get Heretic running on my DOS machine.

kristus said:

It only has any meaning if you for some reason watch the demos of the IWAD of Heretic. Which I am pretty sure hardly anyone ever do, regardless if they use vanilla or not.

I always watched them, just to see Corvus running about in circles firing his Wand of Pea-Shooting into a wall until a bunch of Sabreclaws sliced him into bits ;)

I see no point and no "purism" in hacking the iwad with self-made demos, recorded with high mouse sensivity and crappy movements. At least drop your mouse off.

Also you forget to backup original iwad via your bat file. It is bad.

Heh, that's what this patch does? Bah. I hadn't checked, but at first I thought he had somehow hacked ("built") the demo data to work in the new version as it did in the older one. In retrospect, that is probably not possible.

The real way to watch the intro demos is to make a downgraded copy of the game with downgrade and upgrade patches.

Unfortunately, fixing original demos isn't possible. Raven probably changed behaviour of some monsters or projectiles and the result is desynched gameplay. The game reacts differently on these movements. Only solution is re-record these demos again with updated engine and replace old ones. This is what Id has done with Doom and what Raven should do with Heretic, but didn't. I admit that movement is somewhat different from original, but it is extremely difficult to match it. Maybe I could try again, maybe I should just drop it as you're not interested. Anyway I think that my solution is better than desynch, which makes the game looking unfinished.