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Halfblind

General Doom Questions and Conserns

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Here is a list of general Doom questions and conserns that I have. None of these have anything to deal with editing but refer to Doom in general.

First off I like Hexen the best. I think it is very autmospheric and it had very stable gameplay for its day. I realize that Raven Software ripped holes in the Doom engine and inserted a bunch of new things in the game that the doom engine was incapable of handling at the time. I really like using Zdoom to run all doom related wads. I prefer it over the original engines.

First Issue, Why isn't Raven often never credited for their resources by Doom mappers and modders as a whole.?

When people create wads for Doom etc. and insert resources from Heretic, Hexen and other Raven made games they forget to credit Raven for their masterpieces. Outside of most Heretic and Hexen wads most Doom wads do not make mention of Raven anywhere in their documentation or in the end credits. I have seen a doom wad, not to mention names, that credited Activision for Hexen and Heretic. First off Activision started publishing Ravens' games around the Hexen 2, Heretic 2 era not the Doom Era. Second GT interactive, and ID software published both games. Second Activision is a Publisher not a Developer, It is like crediting GT for Doom or Microsoft for Halo. It is just not right. And finally Raven developed the textures and sprites with exclusive privilege from ID software. They were created by Brian and company as artists so please give Raven more credit for their resources, thanks.

Second Issue, I was looking at some of my favorite Heretic wads at the Wiki and nowhere in the pages did they mention that the wad used Hexen textures and flats. For instance the Heretic: Tresure Chest uses Hexen textures on maps like Town of Witchcraft and Shrine of the Serpent. Both maps used earthy textures from the Badlands level in Hexen but the wiki only mentioned that the map set used stock textures from Heretic and textures from the Mid-evil texture pack. Can this be edited by someone to include a line that reads something like this "and various Hexen textures." I don't want to edit it myself so if anyone can edit it for me it would be very great.

Third Issue, Zdoom related issue. Has Randy Heit ever worked for ID or Raven? Why does Zdoom remind me of Quake 3? Why can I use Quake cheats in Zdoom? If it does not use some quake resources why can I launch wads that are in a .pk3 file? I understand Zdoom can launch wads in .pk3 files and .zip files without extracting them. I tried .rar files but it did not work. Is there any other types of files that Zdoom can run wads with?

Fourth issue, Why does native Zdoom not have a multiplayer launcher yet and are they going to insert one. I know that other ports like Zdamian and Skulltag have one so why hasn't Randy inserted one natively into a new version of Zdoom. I can still use Zdamian and the command line though to launch and join network games.

Fifth issue, has any doom mapper out there ever worked for ID software or Raven before or are still currently employed by said companies. I do know that Scott McNutt, who was responsible for Knockout and Dreadnaught hubs for Hexen, works for Raven now. What other mappers for ID and Raven have branched off and worked on other projects? I know that American McGee, who made Scrapland and the wonderful Alice has or is still working for ID software. Are there anymore that I am aware of. Perhaps Chip of Chips Challenge or Ken of Ken's Labyrinth.

Sixth issue, What is the differences between Doom and Doom 2. Other than 1 new weapon, new monsters and a different naming convention for the map names. Between the two games I cannot tell any differences. Between Heretic and Hexen I notice large differences such as different engine lighting, fog, animated skies and polly objects. But I cannot tell any differences between the doom games. To me the maps arn't any better and the textures don't look better either. Does the Doom marine stand taller in Doom 2 like the Hexen to Heretic caracters? Does the engine draw the walls and ceilings differently? Does it increase the amount of visible plains? Or is Doom 2 not that different from Doom 1 at all?

Fifth issue, Whats up with Korax in Hexen? Compared to D'Speril in Heretic, he doesn't seem to be as cool. Isn't Korax suppose to be more powerful? I do have to use my Icons to defeat him though. Compared to D'Speril he seems to be such a pansy and lazy too always teleporting away and when you have enough mana he is easily defeated. Korax doesn't even ride on a Serpent and he doesn't even get up and start walking around like D'Speril does. Is Korax what happens when a Serpent Rider merges with the Serpent that he is suppose to ride? To me Korax seems to be more of a pet that Korax uses like the Maulotaurs in Heretic because he is too afraid or lazy to challenge the games hero's. The Heriesiarchs' on the otherhand are way cooler and would make a better Korax if they made them tougher and put them on a serpent large enough. I have not played Hexen 2, I hate Quake 1's mouse aiming, so I do not know how powerful Eidolon is. Is he more powerful than D'Speril and Korax or is he a pansy as well? Does he get up and start walking around? I assume that with the pictures that I have seen and the You Tube videos that I have watched that Eidolon can grow larger than he originally was. What are your comments and complaints about the three serpent riders? I want to know what you think on this matter.

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Halfblind said:

Sixth issue, What is the differences between Doom and Doom 2. Other than 1 new weapon, new monsters and a different naming convention for the map names. Between the two games I cannot tell any differences.


This is the only one I'm even semi-qualified to answer.

Most of the alterations were small tweaks. New sector types and linedef actions were added ("blazing" doors, a new random light flicker effect, etc.), Lost Souls no longer counted towards kill percentages, and the game was no longer divided up into episodes like the original game. The Megasphere was added as an item. And, of course, the obvious things, like new textures and sprites and other graphics, and new music and sound effects. There weren't a lot of changes compared to the original DOOM, no, just some additions.

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Halfblind said:

Here is a list of general Doom questions and conserns that I have. None of these have anything to deal with editing but refer to Doom in general.

Fifth issue, has any doom mapper out there ever worked for ID software or Raven before or are still currently employed by said companies. I do know that Scott McNutt, who was responsible for Knockout and Dreadnaught hubs for Hexen, works for Raven now. What other mappers for ID and Raven have branched off and worked on other projects? I know that American McGee, who made Scrapland and the wonderful Alice has or is still working for ID software. Are there anymore that I am aware of. Perhaps Chip of Chips Challenge or Ken of Ken's Labyrinth.


Tim Willits comes to mind.

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Halfblind said:

Third Issue, Zdoom related issue. Has Randy Heit ever worked for ID or Raven? Why does Zdoom remind me of Quake 3? Why can I use Quake cheats in Zdoom? If it does not use some quake resources why can I launch wads that are in a .pk3 file? I understand Zdoom can launch wads in .pk3 files and .zip files without extracting them. I tried .rar files but it did not work. Is there any other types of files that Zdoom can run wads with?

PK3 and ZIP files have the same format, which is ZIP. RAR is something else and ZDoom doesn't read it. And yeah, I'm pretty sure the ZDoom guys were influenced by Quake 3 when they added support, but still, the trivia is interesting, because the header in the ZIP format file is "PK".

Fifth issue, Whats up with Korax in Hexen? Compared to D'Speril in Heretic, he doesn't seem to be as cool. Isn't Korax suppose to be more powerful?

He is supposed. But the designers didn't try hard enough to make him tough. His main non-scripted attacks are both too generic and too tacky to be cool.

Korax doesn't even ride on a Serpent and he doesn't even get up and start walking around like D'Speril does.

Why should he? I'm really tired of this literal interpretation of "Serpent Rider". The Hexen 2 manual described serpent riders as evil beings travelling from world to world to wreak havoc and destruction. Maybe those serpents are used as mere mounts for teleporting between worlds, going through wormholes. Get it? And they're fully invisible otherwise.

Is Korax what happens when a Serpent Rider merges with the Serpent that he is suppose to ride? To me Korax seems to be more of a pet that Korax uses like the

Nice interpretation. But I like to think of Korax as a true monstrous villain. He shouldn't really be humanoid like D'sparil. There are plenty of tales with draconic (or demonic!) villains, and Korax with his better than average chaos serpent aspect fits greatly.

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Fifth issue, Whats up with Korax in Hexen? Compared to D'Speril in Heretic, he doesn't seem to be as cool. Isn't Korax suppose to be more powerful? I do have to use my Icons to defeat him though. Compared to D'Speril he seems to be such a pansy and lazy too always teleporting away and when you have enough mana he is easily defeated. Korax doesn't even ride on a Serpent and he doesn't even get up and start walking around like D'Speril does. Is Korax what happens when a Serpent Rider merges with the Serpent that he is suppose to ride? To me Korax seems to be more of a pet that Korax uses like the Maulotaurs in Heretic because he is too afraid or lazy to challenge the games hero's. The Heriesiarchs' on the otherhand are way cooler and would make a better Korax if they made them tougher and put them on a serpent large enough. I have not played Hexen 2, I hate Quake 1's mouse aiming, so I do not know how powerful Eidolon is. Is he more powerful than D'Speril and Korax or is he a pansy as well? Does he get up and start walking around? I assume that with the pictures that I have seen and the You Tube videos that I have watched that Eidolon can grow larger than he originally was. What are your comments and complaints about the three serpent riders? I want to know what you think on this matter.


I'm not actually sure what was Korax's deal, but he was probably one of those "more talk" type of villains.

Eidolon on other hand gives a pretty nasty fight from what I recall when I played through Hexen 2 ages and ages ago. Obviously a lot more powerful.

The other factor with thise three guys also is that, well, they kinda fight against different heroes, so the actualy powerfullnes can also be questioned in the terms to compare against the heroes they fight against. The hexen heroes get access to so much more powerful weapons and artifacts than that of heretic (apart from the tome obviously). I mean really, D'sparil could be easymode by spamming the first serpent mode with gas clouds and then the second could be handleded with the homing ghosts of the wraithforge easily.

Now imagine trying to kill Korax with heretic weapons. I'd imagine it to be much more harder due of the burst damage output differences.

Honestly, Korax would be a better boss if he'd take more hits and actually would activate the abilities it has way more often. But in the end, he just ended up being too slow and fragile. Way too easy to burst damage down.

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printz said:

PK3 and ZIP files have the same format, which is ZIP. RAR is something else and ZDoom doesn't read it. And yeah, I'm pretty sure the ZDoom guys were influenced by Quake 3 when they added support, but still, the trivia is interesting, because the header in the ZIP format file is "PK".

The format was originally created in 1989 by Phil Katz, and was first implemented in PKWARE's PKZIP utility [...]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_%28file_format%29

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If the Heretic end-game screen is anything to go by, it's plausible that the Heresiarch (or at least his sprite-set) was supposed to be Korax but the plan changed somewhere along the line.

I still wanna see someone frankensprite a Heresiarch riding Korax, just to see if it can be done. ;)

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Halfblind said:

First Issue, Why isn't Raven often never credited for their resources by Doom mappers and modders as a whole.?


I don't think they're "never" credited. What makes you believe that Raven is credited less than other sources? If you really want an answer, then my guess is that when people need to credit them they just become lazy.

Second Issue, I was looking at some of my favorite Heretic wads at the Wiki and nowhere in the pages did they mention that the wad used Hexen textures and flats.


How is this a major problem? Why can't you just edit yourself?

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Regarding the first issue, about crediting Raven for resources: I think the average person making Doom modifications is in highschool, where copyright law is your last concern, and everything on the internet is free and yours to use.

Amusingly, I've seen university professors rip images from google and use them on their slides without credit (by studying afterwards, googling a lecture topic and Hey that looks familiar!).

Copyright isn't really the issue here, Raven isn't going to go after modders unless it's something terribly grievous (that is a major part of your hiring pool, to boot), and I've never heard of professors having wars over the use of teaching material (usually those folk are more than happy to share stuff). It's more of a morality issue in these minor cases, and I think frowned upon by most people in society and this community to not give props to what you based your work upon or even used in your work.

But yeah, lots of young people around here who just don't have experience with these issues I think.

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In your second point, there is one flawed assumption: that the wiki is authoritative. If you want to see the real credits, you have to go to the source and check the TXT file that's zipped up with the PWAD. For example, idgames/levels/heretic/Ports/htchest.zip contains this:

Additional Credits to : Raven software, id software.


In other cases where the PWAD only contains some new level map(s) and no other resources, they may or may not list id/Raven in the credits. Maybe you were looking at some of those.

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Halfblind said:

Fifth issue, Whats up with Korax in Hexen? Compared to D'Sparil in Heretic, he doesn't seem to be as cool. Isn't Korax suppose to be more powerful? I do have to use my Icons to defeat him though. Compared to D'Speril he seems to be such a pansy and lazy too always teleporting away and when you have enough mana he is easily defeated. Korax doesn't even ride on a Serpent and he doesn't even get up and start walking around like D'Speril does. Is Korax what happens when a Serpent Rider merges with the Serpent that he is suppose to ride? To me Korax seems to be more of a pet that Korax uses like the Maulotaurs in Heretic because he is too afraid or lazy to challenge the games hero's. The Heriesiarchs' on the otherhand are way cooler and would make a better Korax if they made them tougher and put them on a serpent large enough. I have not played Hexen 2, I hate Quake 1's mouse aiming, so I do not know how powerful Eidolon is. Is he more powerful than D'Speril and Korax or is he a pansy as well? Does he get up and start walking around? I assume that with the pictures that I have seen and the You Tube videos that I have watched that Eidolon can grow larger than he originally was. What are your comments and complaints about the three serpent riders? I want to know what you think on this matter.


Yes, korax is retarded!
I always thought that the heresiarch was D'Sparil's brother!
Why don't you make a mod that has changes?
I can help but not with art!

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Halfblind said:

I understand Zdoom can launch wads in .pk3 files and .zip files without extracting them.
I tried .rar files but it did not work.
Is there any other types of files that Zdoom can run wads with?


Another file compression format is 7zip (*.7z)

Halfblind said:

Fourth issue, Why does native Zdoom not have a multiplayer launcher yet and are they going to insert one. I know that other ports like Zdamian and Skulltag have one so why hasn't Randy inserted one natively into a new version of Zdoom. I can still use Zdamian and the command line though to launch and join network games.


There are no plans to incorporate something like that. Besides that, doing it from the command line is simple enough.

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Xaser said:

If the Heretic end-game screen is anything to go by, it's plausible that the Heresiarch (or at least his sprite-set) was supposed to be Korax but the plan changed somewhere along the line.


I'm pretty sure that the thing at the end of Heretic is Eidolon, as he appears bright red in Hexen2

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Hexen's manual states that D'Sparil kept a Chaos Serpent as a mount. Which implies it was his thing. But I recall reading somewhere on these forums that the Heresiarch was meant to be Korax and Korax as his mount. This would explain the Heresiarch in the end of Heretic, it's suppose to be Korax, witnessing the victory of Corvus. Also, at the end of Hexen you see a red demonic hand holding Korax, which I'm sure is Eidolon, and showing he controls Korax like a puppet.

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Halfblind said:
Sixth issue, What is the differences between Doom and Doom 2. Other than 1 new weapon, new monsters and a different naming convention for the map names. Between the two games I cannot tell any differences. Between Heretic and Hexen I notice large differences such as different engine lighting, fog, animated skies and polly objects. But I cannot tell any differences between the doom games.

That's the idea. They were meant to be two parts of the same game, much like the the Lord of the Rings books and movies pretty much form one book or one movie split in parts. The game was split for commercial reasons but offers a consistent experience throughout.

To me the maps arn't any better and the textures don't look better either.

As the ancients must have said ages ago, you can't perfect perfection!

Does the engine draw the walls and ceilings differently? Does it increase the amount of visible plains? Or is Doom 2 not that different from Doom 1 at all?

If you look at the (DOS) executable file of any version of DOOM (such as v1.9) in the different parts (shareware DOOM, registered DOOM and DOOM II) you'll find that the files are identical except for the file name. Some features are game specific (like the episode sequence in DOOM, or the piercing player death scream or the presence of the megashpere in DOOM II) but they are present in the code in either case, even if they are never called during runtime.

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