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Hisymak

Can you get the keys out of usual sequence in vanilla Heretic levels without cheating?

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I would believe that everyone who played Heretic has noticed, that in each level, you always get the keys in this order: yellow-green-blue, and there is never any chance to get for example green key earlier than yellow and so on. That for example prevented double or triple locked doors, and getting keys in random order, which was quite common in Doom levels.

As a kid, I played Heretic really lot, I knew every level in the first 3 episodes pretty well, and sometimes I was trying to find a way gow to get the keys out of the usual sequence, by exploiting some overlooked level design error or shortcut. However, in none of the level I could manage that, so I assumed the level designers were really very extremely careful to prevent this. I wanted to do that mostly because I was curious how it would look like on the status bar and whether the game would break or react unexpectedly. Later, eventually I managed that, when I got to know about cheats. I was a little disappointed that nothing special happened when I picked up a key without having its pre-requisite.

So is there any single level design error or any way to get the keys in wrong sequence in all original 5 episodes of Heretic? Using vanilla program and no cheats, of course.

 

By the way, when I found out about custom levels of Heretic and started playing them, I was a little annoyed that in many cases, the level authors did not respect the given sequence and put the keys in any order. I assumed that was the given Heretic rule. On a related note, I was also annoyed, that custom level authors made the metal skull doors openable without a key (while in vanilla levels they always needed a key) and oppositely the wooden doors requiring a key. Or that they made the stone doors openable manually (while in vanilla they always required pressing a switch to open).

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15 minutes ago, Hisymak said:

I would believe that everyone who played Heretic has noticed, that in each level, you always get the keys in this order: yellow-green-blue

wait what no i absolutely did not notice that

my goodness that is quite peculiar design

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On 1/1/2019 at 5:03 PM, Hisymak said:

Or that they made the stone doors openable manually (while in vanilla they always required pressing a switch to open).

While I try to keep all of those conventions in mind when making Heretic maps I think this is the one that comes closest to annoying me when I see it broken.  E1M1 had a pretty clear setup of showing the player "oh, see this door?  A door of this type is sealed by a remote mechanism, see?" and I don't think they ever used it for anything else (not even decorations, I don't think?)  It was one of those cases where the choice of graphic seemed to be meant to convey a particular message to the player about what the thing did, sort of like "lava floors hurt you".  Speaking of which, odd use of teleport glitters is another thing that comes to mind.

 

Although there were occasionally some pretty strange choices of textures for "this is a door, not even a secret door, just a door".  I can't quite recall if CHAINMAN and HORSES were ever used for non-locked doors or just locked ones, but the yellow key door in The Cathedral certainly sticks in my mind.

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9 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

While I try to keep all of those conventions in mind when making Heretic maps I think this is the one that comes closest to annoying me when I see it broken.  E1M1 had a pretty clear setup of showing the player "oh, see this door?  A door of this type is sealed by a remote mechanism, see?" and I don't think they ever used it for anything else (not even decorations, I don't think?)  It was one of those cases where the choice of graphic seemed to be meant to convey a particular message to the player about what the thing did, sort of like "lava floors hurt you".  Speaking of which, odd use of teleport glitters is another thing that comes to mind.

 

Although there were occasionally some pretty strange choices of textures for "this is a door, not even a secret door, just a door".  I can't quite recall if CHAINMAN and HORSES were ever used for non-locked doors or just locked ones, but the yellow key door in The Cathedral certainly sticks in my mind.

E4M4 uses DMNMSK on automatic doors couple of times and E2M7 uses CHAINMAN on a secret door (linedef 963 & 964). In E4M9, there's a glowing sector of fire that doesn't damage the player.

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On 1/1/2019 at 11:03 PM, Hisymak said:

So is there any single level design error or any way to get the keys in wrong sequence in all original 5 episodes of Heretic? Using vanilla program and no cheats, of course.

Well, due to the silence, I consider there's really no way. Level designers and testers were just thorough enough to prevent that.

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In E2M5, you can strafe-jump to the blue key platform without the green key. Also, I found this video:

 

 

E3M1 can be finished without the keys by tornado jumping.

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2 hours ago, ASD said:

E3M1 can be finished without the keys by tornado jumping.


which also allows you to get the Hellstaff secret in E3M1 early.

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Thanks for interesting answers!

6 hours ago, ASD said:

In E2M5, you can strafe-jump to the blue key platform without the green key.

Ah, yes, I confirmed that myself with GZDoom. Can the same be reproduced with vanilla?

Actually when I was playing Heretic as a small kid, I had absolutely no idea about straferunning and rocket-jumping and things like this. I think that there was no global awareness about the straferunning technique in the early years of Heretic/Doom.

6 hours ago, ASD said:

E3M1 can be finished without the keys by tornado jumping.

Yeah, I think I discovered this shortcut even as a kid. However, it was still more fun for me to play through all the level.

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The jump works in vanilla. Recorded a demo of it on DOS Heretic v1.3. E2M5JUMP.7z

 

Just found out you can skip the green key in E2M3 and grab the blue key by using the wings.

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On 1/1/2019 at 4:19 PM, bonnie said:

wait what no i absolutely did not notice that

my goodness that is quite peculiar design

Descent does this with blue --> yellow --> red in every level. Pretty much all of my Wolfenstein maps (except for nonlinear ones that let you collect keys in any order) do it too--usually I do silver --> gold or with four keys, iron -> bronze -> silver -> gold, or in Operation Serpent with its Doom-style colored keycards I used Descent's progression.

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