UNBELIEVER - a Heretic megaWAD (/idgames RELEASE!)

[Not Jabba]

The teleporter maze took me a while to figure out too. I figured out the alcoves showed the direction you're supposed to go the first time through the maze, but then I got confused because I was reading the tridents as left, right, back (based on how they're pointing as I'm looking straight into the alcove) rather than the way they're supposed to be read as north, south, east. It's definitely the most difficult puzzle in the episode, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people ended up getting there by trial and error instead.

 

I like the idea of having to light three candles instead of one at the beginning. Definitely easier to pick up on what you need to do that way.

 

Overall, E3 was my favorite; the minesweeper map was the most interesting.

[scwiba]

Hey UNBELIEVERS! A new version is uploaded! If you're checking the WAD out, please update to this version, as it contains a lot of bugfixes and a huge overhaul to E3M1.

 

Still a few things on the agenda before a release candidate. For starters, if anyone is aware of a way to make E3M8 play correctly in ZDoom-family ports, please let me know.

[scwiba]

Surprise update! I didn't expect to get Beta 3 out so soon but there were a bunch of things I noticed immediately after releasing the last one that I wanted to fix, but more importantly I was provided with some DECORATE code to make the gasbags and crushers on E3M8 behave more like they do in vanilla, so that map now plays mostly as it should in ZDoom/GZDoom.

 

This version also has some fairly major changes to E1M3 that I think makes it a much more interesting map to play.

[Maul]

Hi @Ryath, good news! I tried Faithless recently, now it's Unbeliever's turn. Did you join our Heretic/Hexen Discord? https://discord.gg/X86ySZr I have an idea to create a separate channel for your project to help you get direct feedback from players if you’re interested. Would be nice if you will be there to support some more unbelievers through the new episodes. Let me know.

[scwiba]

35 minutes ago, Deimos_X said:

Hi @Ryath, good news! I tried Faithless recently, now it's Unbeliever's turn. Did you join our Heretic/Hexen Discord? https://discord.gg/X86ySZr I have an idea to create a separate channel for your project to help you get direct feedback from players if you’re interested. Would be nice if you will be there to support some more unbelievers through the new episodes. Let me know.

Didn't know there was a Heretic/Hexen Discord but I've joined it now. If you want to create a channel for UnBeliever, I'm happy to stop by and chat.

[scwiba]

Well, here it is: a proper release candidate! As always, the full list of changes is in the OP.

[Manhs]

3th episode is about special puzzles but it was fun, original!

Fun wad! thanks :)

[Count651]

Gonna give this a play now. The screenshots certainly look faithful.

[Count651]

I've only played 3 maps so far and holy crap I can tell I'm gonna like this. They look good without resorting to overdetailing and they play very well. Everything about it is great.

[holaareola]

Just a quick line to say this looks and sounds great. I really like the themed episode ideas, and designing around the Heretic powerups.  Just wish I had more time to play. Sigh, added to the list...

[Count651]

Finished the first episode today. Great stuff, I really like the gimmicky/puzzle concepts of this episode. They really lend themselves well to heretic thanks to its broad selection of items and powerups that mix up the gameplay. I'd love to see people make more heretic wads like this.

[scwiba]

On 6/16/2019 at 11:01 PM, Count651 said:

Finished the first episode today. Great stuff, I really like the gimmicky/puzzle concepts of this episode. They really lend themselves well to heretic thanks to its broad selection of items and powerups that mix up the gameplay. I'd love to see people make more heretic wads like this.

Thanks! I didn't really think of E1 as being particularly puzzly... but if you like puzzles, you should love E3.

 

I really should get around to putting out RC2. Maybe this week.

[Count651]

Finished the wad, great stuff! Probably one of the best heretic wads I've played, honestly. I loved the puzzle episode, lots of really original and cool ideas in here. I especially liked the Voodoo Cube, I don't believe I've ever seen someone do anything like this before in a Doom wad. Leap of the faithless was also pretty sweet.

I liked the secret Wings of Wrath hidden behind the exit which allow you to cheat your way out of the whole map, very cheeky. Unfortuntely for me, I didn't get them until after I had finished the map.

 

The only thing that rubbed me the wrong was the D'sparil fights, E1M8 and E3M8 in particular. I found them to be pretty frustrating and mostly had to save scum and hope I got lucky . Perhaps this isn't so much your fault though as it is Raven's for making D'sparil one of the most tedious fights in any Id tech game; at least in my opinion anyway.

 

Other than that one issue this was a great wad and I think it deserves more attention. I might just recommend this for a cacoward, even.

[Not Jabba]

Hey, just letting you know I created a patch for The Wayfarer's Tome to include the requested fixes. I've replayed all of UnBeliever with the mod -- I don't guarantee that balance is perfect, but it was a fun playthrough. I also noticed the overhaul of E3M1 -- nice work on that :)

[scwiba]

Release Candidate 2 has arrived! This version includes a lot of balance tweaks, plus deathmatch starts and a handy script by @anotak that protects inexperienced players from accidentally breaking the maps by jumping and crouching. I'm also super happy to reiterate that you can now safely play through all of UnBeliever with @Not Jabba's killer gameplay mod, The Wayfarer's Tome. Just keep in mind that Wayfarer's Tome does power up most of the weapons, so things may be a tad easier overall.

[scwiba]

Sneaky little update: RC3! Not much has been changed here, but there were a couple bugs I noticed on my latest playthrough that I wanted to stomp, including a chaos device on the last map left over from a test run I did, which might give the player the impression they should use it at some point (when in fact I had modified the map specifically so that you can't use the chaos device to escape the final battle). This is likely to be the last version before release.

[Master O]

How do you guys tackle e1m8 on Thou Art a Smite-Master?  Enemies quickly start overwhelming the player in that confined space.  

[Not Jabba]

1 hour ago, Master O said:

How do you guys tackle e1m8 on Thou Art a Smite-Master?  Enemies quickly start overwhelming the player in that confined space.  

The goal of the map is to kill D'Sparil before the bars lower and release the Sabreclaws. I think killing the Liches makes things worse.

[Shanoa]

Well, well I haven't played Heretic in forever, this megawad is a pretty good incentive to dive back in.

[scwiba]

29 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

The goal of the map is to kill D'Sparil before the bars lower and release the Sabreclaws. I think killing the Liches makes things worse.

Yep. If you're getting overwhelmed you're doing something wrong. Either taking too long (which gets you a horde of sabreclaws), or killing the liches (which results in loads of disciples).

[scwiba]

It's done! UnBeliever is now on /idgames. This will be the final version, so if you haven't already given it a play, there's no excuse now! Thank you to everyone who played and helped out along the way.

 

By the way, did anyone ever find the secret map in the E5M1 slot? It's a leftover from Episode 2: Limited Linedefs and is super dumb and pointless, but I figured it was time to point it out in case no one ever noticed it.

[Master O]

2 hours ago, Ryath said:

It's done! UnBeliever is now on /idgames. This will be the final version, so if you haven't already given it a play, there's no excuse now! Thank you to everyone who played and helped out along the way.

 

By the way, did anyone ever find the secret map in the E5M1 slot? It's a leftover from Episode 2: Limited Linedefs and is super dumb and pointless, but I figured it was time to point it out in case no one ever noticed it.

 

Personally speaking, I'm on E3M2 and have a question:  In E3M2, what am I supposed to do after the yellow key door? I can get to the two switches that lower the pillar's lift, but after that, I don't see any other switches.  It's probably something dumb that I'm missing. 

[scwiba]

1 hour ago, Master O said:

 

Personally speaking, I'm on E3M2 and have a question:  In E3M2, what am I supposed to do after the yellow key door? I can get to the two switches that lower the pillar's lift, but after that, I don't see any other switches.  It's probably something dumb that I'm missing. 

Once you step onto the lift to that pillar, a switch should rise on top of it. That switch raises the water level, giving you access to one of the side areas.

[Miss Bubbles]

This wad was an absolute blast to play! I just finished it last night after playing each episode in their entirety back to back over 3 days and wow, I want more haha! From the get go with Episode 1 I enjoyed the simple aesthetics and small maps, and as I continued I couldn't help finding myself smiling at the variety of combat scenarios and clever utilization of Heretic's power-ups. Episode 2 was probably my least favorite but only because the other two episodes were so well made; it was still a ton of fun to play through. The maps, again, were short but sweet in their execution of gameplay and aesthetics. There was one I recall where you kept raising a pool of water in the center higher and higher, re-using it to access new parts of the map; I loved that! I was a little bit skeptical of Episode 3 as I played through the first map, but it managed to remain fun and fresh. Don't get me wrong, the puzzles in the first map were fine, I was just concerned that this was going to be a slog since puzzles are a tricky thing to pull off. That being said, you did an amazing job with not only instructing the player on what they needed to do, but also utilizing Heretic's mechanics and sector properties in such creative and fun ways.

Overall, this was a complete joy to play through, and any gripes I may have had were minor. Boss fights were quite challenging but fair, if somewhat tedious due to the sheer amount of health that the Heretic boss monsters have. For the most part I seemed to miss out on the secrets but I typically don't spend a long time looking for them. I played on Smite-Meister (I don't care for fast monsters and increased ammo :P) and I found the balancing of ammo, health, and power-ups was also decent. I never had too much of anything or ever found myself being too overwhelmed by the encounters. So again, props to you for creating not only such a well balanced and fun wad, but a creative and original one as well! I will have to nominate this for a Cacoward :)

[scwiba]

23 hours ago, Miss Bubbles said:

This wad was an absolute blast to play! [...]

Wow, thanks so much for this. It's always good to hear that people are enjoying Episode 3 with all its weird concepty gameplay.

 

I've definitely been bitten by the Heretic mapping bug! I'm working on a followup Heretic WAD right now, though it will be very different from UnBeliever.

[UnknDoomer]

Fairly hardcore WAD. Notable mainly for it's puzzles. A number of decisions made at the levels leave a controversial impression and in this sense, the work on the general level is a couple of bars lower than the Doom 64 WAD.

 

Settings and features:

 

* I did not collect 100% of secrets.

* Compact maps, especially throughout the entire 2 episode, a moderate number of opponents on those.

* The entire 3 episode is devoted to puzzles.

* Passed in combo with the Heretical Doom, modern magister, magister difficulty (4 of 6).

 

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=56762

 

Boot sequence:

 

[Global.Autoload]

 

path = E:\Games\Old\Doom\unbeliev.wad

path = E:\Games\Old\Doom\HereticalDoom_1.5.pk3

path = E:\Games\Old\Doom\HereticalDoomMonsters_0.4a.pk3

 

* E1M8: Cult of Tag 666. There is a "clue" on this map, which is possibly false one - don't kill the lichs (steel heads), only D'Sparil. If you kill all the heads, then a lot of magicians will appear. If you leave the starting rectangle then the partitions, that do not allow hordes of opponents of 150+ in total, enter into the small location will rush towards you. In order to be able to pass this map, I recommend that you save 3 golden eggs, which temporarily turn the player into the ultimate version of the chicken + 1 helmet for flying. By other hand in a direct fight with most of opponents in the form of a chicken at best 1 enemy die in 2-3 seconds. Beating the level in this case without this items looks not possible. It is also a fact that the exit from the location appears after a while, if, apparently, a certain part of the opponents has been destroyed or the timer has expired - in my case it was a number of magicians, all lychees, but D'Sparil, along with his lizard, remained alive. 64 killed out of 179 possible. From here, as well as from the epilogue, can conclude that in fact to leave the level you need to kill the liches, not D'Sparil, and the "hint" is misleading the player.

 

? Getting to the switch at the beginning of the E3M1 seems impossible - the distance is too long to jump. In the case of using the Heretical Doom you can throw a couple of green flasks and then run - an explosion will drop you to the switch.

 

1. All switches, except the one to the right of the entrance, are traps. Blue key.

2. <-, ->, <-, <-, back. This is the correct sequence for obtaining the yellow key in the location with waterfalls.

 

 

3. The correct passages in the fire location are indicated by the flashing red arrows.

 

 

* E3M2. The many switches that are sometimes just hidden behind the walls also regularly require good enough reaction. You need to think a little to be able to pass this level. As a hint I leave the correct route to the teleport, which leads to the blue key.

 

* E3M3. The logic here is similar to the "Mineswipper" game. The numbers represent the number of dangerous areas behind a particular wall and are tied to the color of the floor. However, there is an easier/cheat kind way. If you open the map then in GzDoom you will see areas that are marked with lava. It's not worth opening sections that lead to one.

 

* E3M5.

 

1. To pick up the green key lower all initially available platforms.

2. Next adjust the platforms to pick up the yellow key from the side closest to it. You will need the following levels:

 

 

Brown.

 

 

Blue.

 

 

Green.

 

3. After you get the second key unlock the door. Next it remains to adjust the platforms for the passage to the blue key.

 

 

Brown.

 

 

Blue.

 

 

Green.

 

 

Light brown.

 

* E3M6. The map is completely broken if you use Heretical Doom. It remains to run with noclip. Learn more about why in E3M9 description.

 

Ryuhi, Heretical Doom author:

Quote

Ryuhi Yestarday, in 0:13

its not high priority, but still useful to have for future compatibility

[0:14]

Heretic especially doesn't have a lot of mapsets going for it, so I do plan to address as many of them as I can at a later time

 

 

E1M9 (secret) - can get here from E1M6, about it below, in the pros. An extremely compact level that can be completed in less than a minute. The only secret is hidden behind a wall, which in turn after a platform to the left of the starting point. It is marked with a small yellow icon.

 

E2M9 (secret) - you can get to this secret level through the teleport, which will open at the very end of E2M4. It is enough to press all the levers to unlock it.

 

E3M9 (secret) - to get here from E3M4 you need to do 3 steps.

 

 

1. Get helmets that allow you to fly. You will get 9 of them as you progress through the level.

2. Using the helmet enter the labyrinth with moving platforms from the other side in order to fly into the location marked on the map.

3. The main entrance opens two switches - one opens the door, the other moves the waterfall. In the case of a secret exit only the one that moves the waterfalls is needed, i.e. further one. Focus on the nearby lava waterfall. Stand at the switch. After it starts to descend wait about 5-6 seconds, press the switch and move to the secret exit.

 

Heretical Doom turned out to be incompatible with the element that is present on this secret map - the mirror reflection of the hero is always static and it is useless to shoot at him. The essence of the task boils down to the fact that you need to shoot at the character opposite, opening the doors in time so that he has time to slip through those. There is nothing to do here without a pack of flasks to restore health. As a result I used the air helmet to leave the level (1 item is transferred between the levels). You cannot pass this level with 1 bottle - you can check this fact by leaving only one line like this [Global.Autoload] path = E:\Games\Old\Doom\unbeliev.wad and typing in the console (~) "map e3m9".

 

Pros:

 

+ E1M5 - Flight of Necrofancy. The entire fairly compact level is built around the ability to fly with the appropriate item. In the original Heretic this option was almost always optional that sometimes lead to secrets. It's active use in other WADs is also not something that I've seen. In case of the final battle in E1M6, it can simplify things, 1 brown bottle is useful to speed up the attack speed and reload. For E1M7 1 helmet is useful from this map.

 

 

+ E1M6 - Optional Escort Mission. Another interesting solution. You need to lead 1 red gargoyle alive to the end of the maze through the entire level to open the passage to the secret level. Gargoyle can be killed by other enemies or damaged on the bars. It makes sense to save more often. When she gets to the last section behind the door (after pressing the last switch) you need to kill her. Otherwise, for example, if the gargoyle dies somewhere earlier, the door will not open.

 

 

+ E1M7 - Choose Thy Destiny. A map consisting of arenas where you have to fight more and more dangerous opponents in 6 rounds. Before the round starts you can choose a selection of 1 of 2 sets of items and weapons. If you saved the helmet from E1M5 then use it in the last round with brown creatures - in addition to them 2 minotaurs will be waiting for you. Eggs are also useful. Keep in mind that even in flight minotaurs can reach you by making a kind of jump and hitting with a hammer.

 

+ E2M7 - Upstream Battle. A moving tower-waterfall. In each section there are different opponents, objects and switches, which allow you to raise the tower even higher. In many ways the level resembles one of those that could be seen in "The Master Levels for Doom II".

 

+ E3M6 - Voodoo Cube. An interesting concept for interacting with the player's mirror image.

 

Contras:

 

- E3M7 - Leap of the Faithless. A completely annoying concept map in my opinion, tied to the fact that the lich (steel head) must release a whirlwind, which will throw you at one or another specific point on the map. Head does not always release a whirlwind, hero can be killed by, or have a small supply of health at the time of the start, etc. In general there are many derivatives that can make the map impassable. In addition this element is combined with the need to perform several extremely problematic jumps from the point of view of implementation.

 

- E3M8 - Light The Fuse. Another unsuccessful map, forming a bad ending. If you do not have a flying helmet, then, with a high probability, D'Sparil will kill you in 1 second. If you have a mystical urn (gray item with a symbol) to recover, then, in the case of the Heretical Doom, where it acts as +1 life, it will move you to lava at the beginning of the location. In a regular Heretic, you will die ~ 0,5 seconds late. The entire location in front of the boss is completely filled with green spheres, which cannot be moved to leave at least a small area free from explosions. The only hypothetical non-cheating, but extremely methodical way to kill the boss is not to jump down into the location and shoot at the nearest accessible spheres from above. Sooner or late, the blast wave will probably finish off one.

 

* Sometimes towards the extreme compactness of a number of levels will not be to everyone's liking, in particular, because, unlike the WAD for Doom 64, where it looked atmospheric in the overall picture. In this regard WAD loses to both the original Heretic and a number of other wads, like the same "Faithless" or "The Quest for Crystal Skulls", which also have small levels, but more balanced in this aspect.

Edited February 6, 2021 by UnknDoomer