Serpent's Wake for Heretic (v1.1 uploaded to archive)

[hervoheebo]

Screens in spoiler (I don't know how to make small thumbnails anymore....)

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, I wouldn't usually make threads about my own wad but it was uploaded to the archive last December and still hasn't got votes or reviews, so maybe it was missed...

Ok, so SW is a brand new episode for Heretic, replacing the third one. But here's the catch: each of the "pure" skill levels (Yellowbellies, Bringest, Smite-Meister) represents a different variation of each map so you could say there are 27 levels to play in total. I haven't paid attention to anything in the last 10 years or so, so I don't know if this has been tried before or not.

Things can be skill-flagged, so naturally this means different monsters and items at different places, and keys too, but voodoo doll conveyor belts allow for some interesting scripts that can effectively change geometry too and other tricks besides. Starting spot of the first map on each quest to demonstrate: https://i.imgur.com/w7n52da.gif

Some maps are short, others medium-length and others very long. Brotip: you don't need to explore everywhere on the first try!

 

Serpent's Wake facts:

-Game: Heretic

-Maps: 9 (E3M1-E3M9)

-New graphics: lots

-New music: Midis from the internet, some finetuned a bit

-Skill level support: Hell yes!

-New sounds, demos, monsters: No!

-Port Compatibility: Effectively, it looks like ZDoom/GZDoom is the only real choice. No ZDoom-specific features are used, but support for Heretic with dolls movable by conveyor belts is a must, and this decimated basically every other port out, from my testing... Zdoomisms? ZDoom 2.8.1 works fine for me. Make sure scrollers are set at Raven speeds.

 

Game rules: No jumping, no crouching. Freelook if you want. Feel feel to fly if you find the Wings of Wrath. Of course, rules are made to be broken, but these are the intended limitations.

Other stuff should be covered by the readme file. Archive link:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/heretic/Ports/swake

 

Version 1.1:

An updated release has been submitted to the archive and should be available shortly. Here are the notes:

General
                        -Incorrect music credit corrected in SWAKEMAP.txt
                        (Human 4 changed to Human 3)
                        -Textures ROCKTOPG, ROCKVINE and ROKVINEB changed
                         so the underlying rock texture is based on the 
                         new BRWNRCKS

E3M1 The Portal
                        -Changed a few lines to use the changed ROCKTOPG 
                        texture

E3M3 The Crypt
                        -Exit changed: switch opens a door which lets a 
                        doll scroll to an exit line, another doll dies on 
                        quest B to make this a death exit so that the 
                        player's inventory is cleared for the next map
                        (Death exit's side effects can be circumvented
                        by becoming invulnerable beforehand!)

E3M4 Wilderness
                        -Greater Runes in the key palace changed to C only,
                        from A or B or C
                        -Duplicate player 2 starts changed to players 3 
                        and 4 starts
                        -Secret exit room's teleporter access delayed a bit
                        -Secret exit island's floor raised 8 units so that 
                        you can't walk back up after stepping out

E3M6 Menhir Lands
                        -Music changed: 3 iterations each loop with 
                        differences for each one
                        -Some texture/flat changes
                        -A: 2 tomes of power removed, 1 wand crystal added,
                        more monsters added to yellow key trap, with
                        the Gargoyles changed to Fire Gargoyles since
                        their area can't be entered or left anymore 
                        (see below)
                        -Red-blue fork room: thin slice of roof corrected. 
                        Missing texture added. Torch corrected (C)
                        -Decorative stalactites near the end that were 
                        mistakenly flagged for C only have been enabled 
                        for all quests
                        -Ledge near the five standing stones (sector 21)
                        changes to impassable lines so the player can't
                        be flung to the inescapable decorative area

E3M7 Fortress of Arrogance
                        -Music changed: 3 iterations each loop with 
                        differences for each one
                        -A couple of non-slippery pieces of ice in the 
                        upper area made slippery

E3M8 Zodiac Hold
                        -Quest B: door cycle changed:

                        unchanged:
                        A: close South open North, close East open South,
                           close West open East, close North  open West

                        old:
                        B: close North open South, close West open East,
                           close East    open West, close South  open North

                        new:
                        B: close East open South, close West open East,       
                           close North open West, close South  open North

                        unchanged:
                        C: close West open East,   close North open West,
                           close South open North, close East open South

 

External link to the original 1.0 release for historical purposes: https://www.mediafire.com/file/i7266fqf35u4nb3/swake.zip/file

 

Edited May 25, 2020 by hervoheebo : Version 1.1's existence might interest the world's heretic players, both of us!

[TravyB]

I'll be getting to this very shortly, looks awesome. 

 

[Fonze]

Looks great! Hopefully I'll get time to play this soon! I love the idea of making drastically different stuff for each difficulty, and it's always super interesting to see difficulty-specific dynamic architecture, so I'm interested to see what you've done in here. Screenies look nice as well :D

[plums]

Man I'm trying to avoid getting sucked in to playing Doom-engine games all the time again or overcommitting to anything on DW, but then here comes this lost little puppy of a Heretic episode with no reviews... I'll have to give it a shot once I'm done with Preacher.

[Jimmy]

HOLY SHIT.

[ReaperAA]

12 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

HOLY SHIT.

 

[Lüt]

This looks very good, and I'll be playing it when I have time later this week, but for now, about this point...

21 hours ago, hervoheebo said:

Well, I wouldn't usually make threads about my own wad but it was uploaded to the archive last December and still hasn't got votes or reviews, so maybe it was missed...

...you don't need to have any apprehension about posting your own projects to this forum. The whole point of WADs & Mods is for people to share what they're working on, and the most exciting topics we can hope to get here are project releases. Dropping a file into the archive isn't going to get much attention, because the archive isn't where the discussion is - it's in this forum. Doomworld used to feature new archive releases in a regular review series called The /newstuff Chronicles, but that hasn't been active for over a year, so most new releases will just slip by unless somebody brings attention to them. And sure, there's places where self-promo may be frowned upon, but this forum is made for WAD authors to do exactly that, so any humility in that regard is misplaced here. It's good you finally made a topic, hopefully now your project will get some of the attention it deserves.

[SilverMiner]

As great as a Twilight Forest mod for Minecraft

[hervoheebo]

4 hours ago, Lüt said:

This looks very good, and I'll be playing it when I have time later this week, but for now, about this point...

...you don't need to have any apprehension about posting your own projects to this forum. The whole point of WADs & Mods is for people to share what they're working on, and the most exciting topics we can hope to get here are project releases. Dropping a file into the archive isn't going to get much attention, because the archive isn't where the discussion is - it's in this forum. Doomworld used to feature new archive releases in a regular review series called The /newstuff Chronicles, but that hasn't been active for over a year, so most new releases will just slip by unless somebody brings attention to them. And sure, there's places where self-promo may be frowned upon, but this forum is made for WAD authors to do exactly that, so any humility in that regard is misplaced here. It's good you finally made a topic, hopefully now your project will get some of the attention it deserves.

Yep.. just taking my policy of uploading, then disappearing until next time as far as possible.. Couldn't find newstuff, so that was a problem, not that it could keep up with the volume of uploads anyway. Hell, can't find the front page anymore, just the forums ... :D

 

Cool there's so much interest. Three variations for each level was a lot of work but interesting too. I must warn you that this gave a perfect opportunity for some gimmicky hijinks since one set-up doesn't define the entire level.

[Rince-wind]

This is some really creative and out-there stuff here, the long climb at the end of Fortress of Arrogance was especially memorable

[Caleb13]

Huh, some of the maps were certainly unusual, particularly E3M9. There are several stuck UWs and golems in the exit room of E3M8 (the bars open there when you kill Dsparil), you should check that out. I played quest A in GZdoom 4.2.4.

[eye.lid]

oh wow. This looks great! Downloading now. I might post a vid later

[Caleb13]

I finished quest C today and I encountered some bugs in it:

 

E3M6: there is HOM in sector 1459, it's visible if you stand in sector 1778.

 

E3M7: teleporter (sector 718) loops to itself. Is that intentional?

 

And... starting the different quests is rather counter-intuitive. It's clear the mod is targeted at Zdoom port, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to add MENUDEF lump to change the start menus accordingly?

[hervoheebo]

E3M8 stuck monsters: One was in the middle of a blocking line (to confine the minotaur in B), others were halfway between different-height sectors. Probably placed the monsters haphazardly and didn't realize the height differences since the same flat was used on both heights, and since they're ghosts didn't notice them in-game... and I must say that I didn't pay too much attention into ensuring all monsters are reachable or killable in E3M8 since they all die once D'Sparil dies

E3M6 hom: noted... could not squash all the HOMs here

E3M7 teleporter: It's intentional, there's a 32 unit wide opening into a secret room the opposite of this teleporter. The way you are meant to access it in C is by walking onto the tile, then walking straight forward so you'll fit through exactly.

 

Regarding menus: Well, it was never meant to be for specifically ZDoom, but when I began to test for different ports it became clear that what ports could run Heretic just did what they wanted with the scrollers and dolls... So, I don't really know if it's a ZDoomism or not. In practice it probably doesn't matter since I couldn't find a compatible port outside of the ZDoom family but I would like to avoid using any specific features to them. Mapinfo is there because afaik there isn't a deh/bex equivalent for Heretic. If menudef just changes the menu items while still using the skill levels and without relying on (more) zdoom-specific features then I guess it might be ok. Still, this is kind of a proof-of-concept for skill level alterations. If you have some new menu items, the player might think it's just some ZDoom magic making the changes when it's actually nothing more than the skill flags for things. 

[Hisymak]

This looks really interesting and promising, I'm always looking for some good Heretic stuff. So I tried this, finished first two levels and tried the first level with all three quests.

On 2/15/2020 at 5:21 PM, hervoheebo said:

New music: Midis from the internet, some finetuned a bit

Well, this is one thing I appreciate on any Heretic WADs the most! Unfortunately, for some reason, about 90% of (Vanilla-compatible) Heretic WADs do not have any custom music, and stick only to the original Vanilla music tracks, sometimes borrow some music mostly from Hexen/Hexen2, sometimes Doom. I really do not like that, as I desire to listen to some new music, and listening to the stock tracks 1000 times repeatedly makes me a headache, so I turn music volume down or completely off. You made a good job finding some good and fitting music for this project and that really doubles its value (at least for me).

On 2/15/2020 at 5:21 PM, hervoheebo said:

New graphics: lots

If all or at least some of the new graphics is made by you, then hats off to you. I like vivid colourful graphics, that Heretic offers on its own to some degree. I especially liked the title and intermission picture, too.

On 2/15/2020 at 5:21 PM, hervoheebo said:

Things can be skill-flagged, so naturally this means different monsters and items at different places, and keys too, but voodoo doll conveyor belts allow for some interesting scripts that can effectively change geometry too and other tricks besides.

Well, this is really an innovative idea, I don't remember playing anything similar made to this degree. It's really interesting experience to replay same map in three different variations. I'm looking forward to play and enjoy the complete episode.

[Manhs]

I'm at e3m9, good maps! I thought with the "different layout" system with difficulty level, it could have been short maps but not at all, e3m4 is massive! (Quest A/"easy)
Nice atmosphere, a bit weird with some musics to me but it's very enjoyable! 

Not sure if it was reported but in e3m4, when 4 pillars appear to block us in the room where some enemies appear, i was able to go back and stay behind the pillars but good thing, after a moment, it will be opened.
Screenshot of it:

 

Spoiler

Thanks for this stuff!

[NightFright]

Wow, lately we are really spoiled with Heretic episodes. And they are all good. A short break from Doom can't hurt!

[hervoheebo]

Music: Hmmm, that's interesting, I didn't know it was that hard to find midis. I have some dump of vgmusic.com from around 2011, and usually when I play a new game I check the midis there to see if there's anything suitable for Doom stuff and copy them elsewhere. I do recall from earlier that Doom and Heretic/Hexen midis are considered overused so avoided them without good justification. From last time I also gathered that more whimsical music and graphics aren't unwelcome even in Doom 2, so the usual boundaries were crossed a bit there.

 

The graphics were done by myself in GIMP, then downscaled and converted to Heretic's palette and often touched up a bit afterwards. Unfortunately I only remembered in the end a good trick for wrangling certain colors like the blue which in heretic basically changes from blue to cyan... If you convert directly it'll be hard to get the right colors to appear since a wrong mix will be interpreted as something outside of the palette with bad results. More specifically the sky graphics, for some of them the base graphic is in grayscale and then posterized. The shades of grey can then be directly colored with each shade of the blue palette. Well, that's a good trick to remember if you need to work with the stubborn Doom blues :)

 

E3M4 is indeed rather big. I eventually got error messages about the nodebuilder failing. I tried and searched but could only get rid of it by reducing lines or sectors so the final map is somewhat of a compromise. The main idea is that you find enough switches to build the exit bridge, but you don't need to find them all. So the point is that when you play through the wad on a different skill, you can take a different path through the map on top of the various skill level differences.

You are meant to be trapped in the key mini-dungeons until the scripted event is over but it's not impossible to subvert them, looks like it's easier there because you don't drop down and the closing of the bars is delayed because it's done within the doll script. In that case I guess the enemies will bunch up near the entrances which makes for a different challenge.

[Manhs]

Yeah, e3m4 is cool for that, i found the secret exit yesterday.

Finished e3m6 now, in Quest A, there is a bit too many tome of power, i finished the map with 4 or 5, i lost a lot of ammo but there isnt really big danger, like small room who block me with a ton of enemies, big spaces help a lot.
Normal ammo could be enough i think or maybe if it's made for Elven wand start but still, normal ammo could avoid spamming too powerful attacks with this difficulty Quest, it should be ok (i keep my weapons after the maps). The maulotaur was blocked in the lava part (platform), i had just to spam him without problem...

Well, that's just me, accessible maps and not too hard are a good thing too!

edit: it depends of the maps anyway, last map was challenging, nice idea! Thanks for this expansion! :)

Edited February 29, 2020 by Manhs

[Hisymak]

Finally finished all the levels on Quest A. Here are some comments regarding maps and music:

Level 1 and 2: Nice small maps, and I loved the music there too. Music in the second level sounded familiar, but needed to look into text file to find it's from Warcraft2.

Level 3: Ooh, that fire animation was impressive.

Level 4: Damn that was enormously HUGE, not sure, but probably the biggest Heretic level I have played ever. Needed to split playing to two days. I'm used to explore whole levels and did not know I did not need to do all parts, so probably I found all the bridge switches and most of secrets and stuff. The music was not much special (Hexen2), but at least it was rather ambient and not annoying for several hours of gameplay. There were some performance problems, especially sound effects were delayed probably due to number of object in the map. The best part of this map was the theatre stage where you got a (green? IIRC) key, I loved this original idea.

Secret level: Well, I managed to find the secret exit in previous level, but I did not play through this level. Simply because the map was totally unaplayable due to insane FPS lags. When all the nitrogolems shooted homed shots on me, there were thousands of flying projectiles and game dropped to less than 5 FPS, so I just said "no" to this insanity.

Level 5: Nice small map, a deserved rest after the previous huge map. I liked how non-linear it was, I especially mean I could go through it very freely, getting into places behind locked doors without even having the key, only eventually needed to collect all keys to reach the exit. The music was rather a sad tune, and in this map I finally realized how much all the world was devastated and floating around the sky. I was confused by the ending sequence, was I supposed to be killed before exiting for forced wand start in next map? I only heard some exploding sounds but stayed alive, so I commited phoenix rod suicide for more fun with wand-start next map.

Level 6: The map itself was good, but the music was rather annoying, especially for its very short lenght compared to gameplay time. The music was less than one minute long and became extremely repetitive. On the other hand, it at least reminded me of my good old memories playing through Pokémon Emerald, making me tempting to find my old save where I beat most of Battle Frontier. Heh.

Level 7: Pretty similar case, map was good, but the music was too much short. Probably it's not always so easy to find a good fitting music, but I suggest you to find music with length proportional to gameplay length. Like, tracks long less than a minute are usabe for maps that take no longer than 10 minutes to beat.

Level 8: This really VERY resembled Minecraft Cube Survival maps (map designed as several different cubes with various biomes/resources floating in the void), I wonder if you got inspiration there. This map was the hardest (by difficulty) of all, not only because of forced death after the previous map. I liked the progression, like I needed to visit all the cubes in order to gather resources to be able beat D'Sparil (especially Wings of Wrath). This map was also some test of my patience, especially because of randomly closing and openings entrances to cubes, the windy cube, and falling off icy floors. The ending looked nice too.

 

Speaking about music overally, I noticed you chose Legend of Zelda music for most of the tracks, which I liked, I feel it adds to the Quest-y gameplay atmosphere.

I'm indeed going to replay this with Quest B and C to get some different interesting experience, but probably won't spend so much time on the longer maps. I only wonder how the progression can be made different on the last level.

Lastly, I must say, excellent work, I really enjoyed this.

Edited March 6, 2020 by Hisymak

[hervoheebo]

The fire is one of the teleport sparkles, they are just differently colored but have separate sprites so the other sparkle can still be used. The fire pentagram in level 3 is basically from Diablo 2: http://www.d2tomb.com/sshots/552-01.jpg The ceiling has to be low or the fire will look messed up, which limits applications.

 

In level 4 it might have been better to railroad the start more tightly, now you can go any way from the start and miss the bridge... there's no text or other exposition available so the free switch is like there to show you how the level works. There is a trail of goodies leading to the bridge area that is intended to make you go there first. A better way might have been having the first switch be mandatory, which also opens a door or something that will let you leave to the level proper. The start was originally in the waterfall crypt near the theater but it would be too confusing for the bridge and key palace to be on the other side of the level. Player 2-4 starts are still separate though, near the various crypt structures in the level, since the previous level is also a crypt... thought it might be interesting for everyone to be scattered in the start and having to meet up near some landmark. Well, that's what I thought, but I accidentally placed three player 2 starts and none for players 3 and 4!!! That's a bad mess-up, it unfortunately looks like there'll have to be a new version at some point.

The music is the Winnowing Hall remix from hexen 2, and modified a bit with power drums and brass. It's indeed a bit hard of a choice since the level is so long and the same song plays constantly. It was chosen because the original song is quintessential Hexen to me and conveys the beginning of a dark and great adventure, and this level is rather adventuresome... Performance in this level was an issue behind the scenes too like I mentioned. Lots of flowers and stuff had to be optimized to reduce the line count. The forest area was originally a leafy forest like: https://i.imgur.com/FRJZ1BZ.png, but it reduced performance even more, used up way more lines and needed some hanging sprite graphics to mask blind spots in the canopy... would have been the hanging skulls, but would have reduced performance even more probably, and used more lines if the height would have been controlled by holes in the ceiling like in level 6 with the vines... So it was changed into a dead pine forest. 

 

It's probably fair to call level 9 more of an aesthetic statement than a proper level, I would really not be surprised at unfavorable comparisons with Gothic99. The concept is basically a lot of monsters and fireballs in the sky... I remember playing Mock2 and it had a cool level with low gravity and a ton of cacodemons on the other side. The projectiles looked impressive in the darkness. So it's basically like that. It would have been a lot more simpler in gameplay and structural terms (not to mention performance) for the level to be indoors, but I just had to have it outdoors. You can't have things like doors here, since the point is that you can fly over anything. So there is this weird system with the mystery switches that cost health, requiring you to fly back and forth between the health fountain in the beginning. It is unfortunate that the performance is so low, I don't know what is bottlenecking it if anything, I tried culling all kinds of things but the performance remained shaky. It might just be the extreme size and the fact that there are almost no walls that can block your line of sight. I think I had better performance in software mode, which is by the way what the lighting is made in mind with. 

 

For level 5, the original concept was that it's a stealth level for all quests, but thought it was really difficult to make just one version of that so the other two are different. It's basically a scavenger hunt like 4 but on a smaller scale. Thought it might be a bit short, but it might be good after 4 and before 6 which is also a bit long. There are a few things which were added to extend the length. The door in the inn originally just opened up to the void but the floor was added there to add an extra area. The key doors were also retrofitted in. They don't mostly block exclusive areas, but just give more and easier routes as you get keys. Since the keys can mostly be collected in any order, they can also make playthroughs different even in the same quest. I have to admit here too that the town square was designed as a place first and level second, you know with the ruins, road and statue foot, so I thought this might be the weakest link.

I thought that the end could be a suicide exit but decided against it since there's no special reason the next level should start with an empty inventory (FYI: maps are tested with wand start). The explosions are from squishing pods and sabreclaws, just for the effect since the next level starts right after the dam has exploded. By the way, the death exit in level 7 can be circumvented by using a ring beforehand, so you'll enter the last level with your previous inventory.

 

That's interesting about the music, I did try all kinds of tunes but this was the only one that felt right to me. It's all about the reflecting puddles, I was really adamant on having those... also the choice of soundfont might make a difference, I'm currently using "Arachno Soundfont" and "sYnerGi GS v1.1". It's tricky with the length of music tracks, since game tracks tend to be a few minutes long at most. It might be a good idea to edit some tracks and do the Doom thing.. you know, where the song plays through once, then some instrument gets added. Repeat that a few times and you have some subtle length added. 

 

In the final level, the original plan was that the bosses were maulotaurs but decided that it would be a waste not to use D'Sparil so the maps were moved from episode 2 to 3 as well. Originally the environment was supposed to be more active, like with more moving floors and stuff in the element rooms. The focus shifted to D'Sparil so in the final version mostly only the doors change. I think the other quests are interesting too. Well, let's just say that D'Sparil's teleport destinations are skill-flagged too.

The length of the cycle was shortened with the idea that you never have to wait for long for a particular door to open, but that the status of nearby doors will nevertheless influence what path you'll take. I haven't played Minecraft so I don't know what those levels are like. The idea is more like how in Hexen you have the elemental guardians in the Seven Portals hub, in one space... the general idea was always that it's some castle place high up sort of like the final levels in Heretic 2. It's also similar to the Palace of Winds dungeon in Zelda: Minish Cap, which is where the music's from. ...the vaguely Egyptian music was extended to the textures and pillars and stuff... the ancient world in general, to be reminiscent of places like Greece with the pillars, Egypt with the hieroglyphs, Persia with the circular upper window frames and China with the runes. To contrast with the medieval style places down below which are newer but considered not as good or civilized. 

 

You have some tricky gimmicks here like the ice/polished metal and the wind room where you have to jump with the tailwind and push pods into holes to get to the items, but then again, you could just phoenix jump. It was a calculated move though, like with the "frozen throne" in level 7 and the lava level in "The Journey" since I feel like you need to have some unusual challenges that diverge from the usual gameplay in order for the game to feel more varied and memorable. Stuff like the sneaking parts in Ocarina of Time or the board game in Banjo Kazooie, which I thought were dumb and annoying but now feel are important to their respective games. Contrast with a game like Diablo 2 which is often heckled as repetitive since you essentially do the same things from beginning to end. Of course the design paradigm is totally different in Diablo, and Doom/Heretic as well. I might've gone too far in a few places ....... :)

[Hisymak]

Played through all Quest B and started Quest C. Some comments:

Level 4 on quest B was very easy, just plenty of normal golems and a few other monsters. Since I already knew I needed to find only several bridge switches and not all of them, and I knew also where to find them, I could skip most part of the map and go for my targets directly. As a result, I finished this map in about 16 minutes (!).

Retrospectively, I realized that this map is supposed to be played on Wand start. There's almost no ammo and weapons in this level, just staff/wand, phoenix rod and pleeenty of Tomes of Power. And I'm supposed to save ammo and use tomed staff/wand/phoenix rod all the time. I just blasted through it with all my weapons carried from previous level, which felt like piece of cake. If there was something like forced wand start, it could have been more challenge.

Level 5: oh well, I got unpleasantly surprised, that I was constantly losing my health and eventually died after some time. I realized I needed to play fast through this level, and enchanted shields, which were all around, were practically protecting me from death. Actually, original and interesting style of gameplay, never encountered anything like this. Not necessarily bad design, but I myself feel rather unfomfortable when I'm under pressure and need to play fast way, I prefer relaxed and exploration style of gameplay, where I'm not pushed in any way and can explore and pick up all items and secrets around the map. Luckily, I could do this in Quest A already, so I knew the map and did not really mind blasting through it in about 3 minutes this time. Good you made this for Quest B instead of A.

Level 8: the one thing that I really hated, was that for most of the time, most of the entrance doors into cubes were closed. For example, a cube has 3 doors, only one was open and two other were closed at same time. I needed to spend LOT of time only waiting for the doors to open, like, I spent 50 minutes playing this level, and at least 20 minutes of the time I spent purely waiting for doors to open. So annoying test of my patience. I understand you want to somehow randomize player's progress through this map, but better would be, if more (for example 2 of 3) doors are opened at same time. Not sure, but I feel, that in Quest A, it was not that big problem, is there any difference? Otherwise, I liked how you made the fight with D'Sparil different from Quest A. Nice work.

Level 3 on quest C: I was very pleased by this level, especially how much different the progression was from quest A and B. Very nicely done, probably the best example of per-quest progress variation across this wad (but other levels were done well too). I enjoyed this.

Level 4 on quest C: Really hard compared to quest B, so many tough monsters (iron liches, disciples and others all around the level). I guess this will give me some challenge, did not start yet.

Still looking forward to the rest of this wad.

[hervoheebo]

Level 4 B, C: That's indeed the trick, there's little ammo to be found. It might not be a bad idea to do a forced death exit from 3 for B only. The runes near the key palace are active in B by accident, mostly the means of killing are supposed to be:

-tomed staff

-tomed phoenix rod

-timebombs & other artifacts

-infighting

Then there's the gauntlets, which make this level very easy if you rush them since it's difficult to die against golems when you constantly have tomed gauntlets. I have to admit that I tend to go for the gauntlets quickly when playing this level, and across all quests there is the temptation to just go for the easy and familiar switches. Well, I don't know if there's anything that can or should fix that, the idea however is that you just bounce from place to place exploring different places. I call this the "Zelda" or "Oblivion" level because of the large outdoors vibe, and because you collect "items" from dungeons which enable you to explore more. The "Hidden Valley" with the pine forest is basically from my Zelda experience too. You can see this area from a few places, but you need a key (or an ironlich tornado) to actually enter it proper, trying to leave the forest will just transport you back like in Link's Awakening. This preview thing is because I used to be stuck in Link's Awakening for a really long time near the beginning, you can't go far without the power bracelet. There are bits and pieces of the world that you could see beyond the immovable rocks, and the atlas in the library has a full map and place names for the rest of the world, so it was like seeing glimpses of the larger world without being able to get to it which felt like a big mystery. So that's why you need a key to enter the valley and why you are intended to collect at least one key to hit enough switches, so that you'd visit this valley, although it's not necessary since there are more switches elsewhere too.

 

The engine and gameplay really aren't built for an open-world level like this but maybe because of that I find it kind of interesting.

In A the monsters are "basic" and there are more teleporting monsters. The point is that if you can see the monsters from far away, you'll just snipe them from safety, and in Heretic, no monster possesses a hitscan attack so they'll have trouble retaliating. Note that I don't condone the liberal placing of zombies in outdoors Doom levels! Having to play Industrial Zone should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. ...So in A there are more of these teleports, like encounters in an RPG... you walk along and suddenly monsters appear. Although, in real terms, since the level is so spacious there is little to stop you from just running past every monster, especially in...

B: the approach is that you are in melee all the time and most monsters are melee. This is another way of dealing with the long-range issue. It's like in Zelda where you are running around killing stuff with a sword. 

In C there are stronger monsters but also far less of them. The preferred weapons are phoenix rod and hellstaff because they become inaccurate at long ranges which encourages you to get in closer with the monsters.

 

Level 5 B: Like I said the original plan was that all variations are sneaking levels, but that was changed. The idea is that the three variations are each somehow unpleasant and unsettling... the atmospheres of the levels in this wad are supposed to go like dark-bright-dark-bright. This one is of course dark. The gimmick in B is that you cyclically lose health, then regain it. This is like periods of vulnerability, or "regenerating health". There are big shields all around to collect, of course. When I found out that the ZDoom version I was using had its own ideas for scroller speeds, all of them had to be re-examined across all levels so the health system changed a bit here because there was some kind of desyncing trouble with it. The idea is that the cycle stays constant and that you die only when all of the vials have been used up. I think there are actually two separate dolls that get damaged and healed now so it may result in the player dying quicker than intended. Still, I've never died here because of the time limit so I can't say, but of course every level is also easier for me since I know what to do and where to go, usually. Make sure that scrollers are set to Raven speeds.

 

Level 8 B: I don't think the door cycles should be broken for any variation although I had some strange troubles with them earlier.. It might just be that the cycle for B has been set up in an unfortunate way, say in that an adjacent door has to wait for the maximum time before it opens... for example if it's like:

(open)

[closed]

 

I:     (1) [2] [3] (4) 

II:    (1) (2) [3] [4] 

III:   [1] (2) (3) (4)

IIII:  [1] [2] (3) [4]

 

So let's say the cycle is at phase IIII and you are waiting at a 1 door. It opens, but the adjacent 3 door which you want to pass through closes this cycle, and it's closed during the next cycle as well, so in total you have to wait from cycle IIII to III to pass through a 1 door into the adjacent 3 door. It might be like that, not sure... Not much thought was put into the specifics of the different cycles so it might be indeed possible that the openings are in an awkward order.

I'm sure you figured it out already, but for D'sparil the idea here is that you see him at the beginning, but you have to run from him, collect items and then fight back. Once he teleports he's around the icy canyon area at the top.

 

Level 3 C: I think there was a danger that the variations would go like this from easy to hard: normal, gimmick, bigger gimmick. This is probably the biggest example, for the later levels the order of doing the variations was varied since the point is that you can play the quests in any order... so it's not like that since I decided to play C, all I'm getting is this weird gimmick stuff. Also I should note that the variations were largely done in an ad hoc manner. The brown rock tunnel in the crypt and the small green locked room near it might seem like they are there because of C, but that's not it, the pit and the key stuff here in C were done just because it seemed cool.

 

 

 

 

 

[hervoheebo]

An updated version has been made but not uploaded to the archive yet, you can check it out here if you want:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/xea91um9j08b91y/swake11.rar/file

 

Included are the wad, copies of the changed midis and patch notes which are also below:

Patch Changes:

General
-Textures ROCKTOPG, ROCKVINE and ROKVINEB changed so the underlying rock texture is based on the new BRWNRCKS (this and the contrast versions were changed at the last minute because the original set-up used an unmodified heretic texture)

 

E3M1 The Portal
-Changed a few lines to use the changed ROCKTOPG texture

 

E3M3 The Crypt
-Exit changed: switch opens a door which lets a doll scroll to an exit line, another doll dies on quest B to make this a death exit so that the player's inventory is cleared for the next map

 

E3M4 Wilderness
-Greater Runes in the key palace changed to C only, from A & B & C
-Duplicate player 2 starts changed to players 3 and 4 starts
-Secret exit room's teleporter access delayed a bit
-Secret exit island's floor raised 8 units so that you can't walk back up after stepping out

 

E3M6 Menhir Lands
-Music changed: 3 iterations each loop with differences for each one
-Some texture/flat changes
-Easy: 2 tomes of power removed, 1 wand crystal added, more monsters added to yellow key trap

 

E3M7 Fortress of Arrogance
-Music changed: 3 iterations each loop with differences for each one
-Decorative stalactites near the end that were mistakenly flagged for C only have been enabled for all quests

 

E3M8 Zodiac Hold
-Quest B: door cycle changed:

  A: close South open North       close East open South   close West    open East      close North  open West

 

  old:
  B: close North open South       close West open East       close East    open West      close South  open North
  new:

  B: close East open South       close West open East       close North    open West      close South  open North

  C: close West open East       close North open West   close South    open North      close East open South

[Hisymak]

Ooh, good, so this actually got an update!

I don't think I would play through whole thing once again, but at least quickly ran through it to see what was changed.

5 hours ago, hervoheebo said:

-Exit changed: switch opens a door which lets a doll scroll to an exit line, another doll dies on quest B to make this a death exit so that the player's inventory is cleared for the next map

That is certainly a good idea, considering the 4th level in quest B is purely designed for start with clean inventory. However, just wondering, why I was receiving Wings of Wrath during the ending sequence in quest A, did that have any purpose? Maybe you can just shorten the exit delay for quests A and C.

5 hours ago, hervoheebo said:

E3M6 Menhir Lands

-Music changed: 3 iterations each loop with differences for each one

So I listened to the music. It's a good idea based on my comment that the music is too short and gets repetitive, but I did not much like how it was made.

Basically for most part you were randomly removing various instruments, making the music sound less polyphonic and poorer, I could hear the original music to its full strength only for a short part. So here I'd like to suggest my idea how you could do this music better:

1st iteration: Use the original unchanged music track as is. I'd like to hear the music to its full strength to get a good first impression.

2nd iteration: Use 3rd iteration from your version. Basically I imagine the 2nd iteration to be a bit richer with some extra instruments or tones (I especially liked the addition of trumpet), with a prolonged cool-down part in the ending of this iteration.

3rd iteration: Use 2nd iteration from your version. It should be a warm-up iteration, that brings the music back to its original strength.

5 hours ago, hervoheebo said:

E3M7 Fortress of Arrogance
-Music changed: 3 iterations each loop with differences for each one

The first iteration seems to be the original unchanged track. I did not much like how you changed the lead instrument for both iterations 2 and 3, I like better the original piano version. So again some suggestion from me:

1st iteration: Use the original unchanged music track as is.

2nd iteration: Could be a bit richer with some extra tones and a slight instrument changes, but I would not add the Aahs instrument there at all, but try for example different kind of piano or basically some lesser change than what you did.

3rd iteration: Could be as is, adding the Aahs lead instrument and drums, as this is going to be most graduated iteration.

5 hours ago, hervoheebo said:

E3M8 Zodiac Hold
-Quest B: door cycle changed:

I briefly tried it and looks better now: mostly 2 of 3 doors in same room are opened at same time, which is okay.

 

Thank you for good work!

Edited April 15, 2020 by Hisymak

[hervoheebo]

Revision 1 link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/1bgvj3twur4njd0/swake11r1.rar/file

E3M3 exit: Wings were there just to fill time as an effect like in E3M7 but I forgot that with another doll and conveyor belt the exit can be quickened for A and C so now those skills exit almost immediately while B has to wait a bit to die first.

E3M6 music: Changed, notes: by original track I assume you meant the modified version to begin with, this is the original: https://www.vgmusic.com/music/console/nintendo/gba/PkmRS-120.mid

Changes are otherwise done according to given specifications except for a Crash Cymbal 2 in the beginning of the quiet part.

E3M7 music: Changed:

1st: No changes

2nd: Lead Piano removed in favor of Orchestral Strings (harp). Lead Choir removed.

3rd:  Lead Piano removed in favor of Orchestral Strings (harp). Lead Choir volume decreased

Well, I was waiting on your report on the rest before rolling out the patch but it looks like there wasn't anything noteworthy about the rest. So I'll also give my PostMortem about some things. 

(Big post, I'll try putting it in a spoiler, this editor is not really working for me.....)

 

Graphics

 

When starting out, the low amount of textures in Heretic compared to Doom/2 was kind of shocking. It seems that in the beginning I didn't mean to have custom made textures for every little thing, just essentials like grass. However in the end a lot of graphics were made. Possibly easier than in Doom at least with my tools... Doom has a lot of these weird hyper-realistic textures made from photos. Whereas all of the walls and flats in Heretic look hand-made to me. The colors are also brighter with a lot of primaries like green and blue, looking not unlike Warcraft 2. ...For example, you have the main green shade here in heretic, the really bright green. If you base things like grass and trees on it, it doesn't look a bit out of place, whereas using the bright green in Doom which is used in things like the BFG blast and green armor looks really crude. I didn't decide to change the palette although that might have been a possibility too. This wad has a lot of dark areas where the palette's tendency to fade into pure black comes into play, which looks a lot like Hexen. In general the levels bounced like dark-bright-dark-bright in terms of tone and atmosphere. This was because in The Journey some people said that the first episode was nicer with the bright orange sky and stuff, and then the other two were almost completely under a dark or black sky or indoors, only letting up on the final level. It wasn't completely unintended since the idea was like that you sink deeper and deeper into darkness before resurfacing but this time something different was done.

The sky is a blue space thingy with asteroids, in the end not looking very different from the last sky in TJ. The asteroids harken to the Quake 2 sky which I felt was cool and memorable with the asteroids. You might notice that the rocks spiral around the view-point. The 360 degrees sky trick was used for this, I didn't find any documentation, so just had to figure it out from the wad... I think you have to change the textures file so that the sky textures consists of 4 consecutive patches or something. And you had better believe I got a little bored of dotting every single star and glow by the end of it.
Well, anyway, some other colors were tried at first. Purple was my first choice like in TJ for the last level, but the palette disagreed again, there weren't enough colors. Red was kinda cool... but the combination of green grass made it looks like Christmas. Yellow looked way too heavy and oppressive, like you'd choke. Another idea was to have stuff like blue grass and trees. But it was changed to mostly normal colors for the environment because the idea for the world is much like "Outland" in the Warcraft series. Like a weird red orc desert world with giant mushrooms and stuff, and then it gets blown away, and you get floating islands and stuff, like in here. The point is that this is more like a normal world that got blown up. I think that if a setting is too weird to begin with, people lose interest. So it's like a mix of classical fantasy and with some slightly more unusual stuff.

 

Music

 

From previously I got the idea that more unusual and bombastic music tracks are appreciated and that Doom tracks especially are considered boring. This influenced the choice of tracks.
E3M1 was always going to be the Dark World, I think it establishes the mood well.
E3M2's choice was also unchanged. This is the "bright" level so it's slightly ironic and nostalgia-evoking.
E3M3 is the Royal Crypt in Minish Cap which is a remix of the Zelda 1 dungeon theme to begin with.. The "Fake Doors" at the end are in reference to the fake doors in the Royal Crypt.
E3M4 is a Hexen 2 track which is a remixed Hexen 1 track. This was a tricky choice because the level is so long. Some other possibilities were "Orc 2" from Warcraft 2, and the overworld in Link's Awakening... since this is like a Zelda level. In the end Roma 2 was chosen because it feels adventuresome, doesn't get too annoying even after 30 minutes of play and it fits decently with the varied environments in this level.
E3M9 Ended up with the cool Pokémon League midi I found.
E3M5 This was also an early choice that stuck the whole way. This is actually the daytime track in Xenoblade, but the nighttime one is probably impossible to do in midi. I modified the midi to change a few notes in the "Goldenrod" part because they sounded wrong to me when comparing with the original track. When I always ran around in the empty level while making it with this track playing, it probably influenced the idea for a stealth level
E3M6 Some other choices were tried but this was the only one that felt right. Like I said the reflecting puddles are the key to it all
E3M7 No other choices considered
E3M8 Nothing else here either, I think. The original track has a lengthy "intro" part which isn't included in the loop, but here the whole track is looped after one (?) repeat of the intended looping part, but this doesn't sound too bad I think and adds some variety. I wanted to change the drums to orchestral snares but doing that messed with other drum notes... you know, changing shit to timpanis and stuff. 
Title: Zelda 2 title was considered, but it has a part of the original Zelda theme, which is probably too recognizable and specific.
Intermission: "Orc War Room" from Warcraft 2 was considered, but I found this nice Great Palace midi.
Victory: Wind Fish staircase theme in Link's Awakening was also considered.

 

Gameplay

 

This is the big one. We have to go a bit further back to see where it all started. Initially, in TJ, I meant to do a different skill level system. The levels were as such: I'm Too Young To Die, Hurt Me Plenty, Ultra-Violence, Evil Unleashed!, Nightmare!. The idea was that the lower skill levels usually went to waste since nobody plays them since it's basically considered a grievous insult to imply playing on lower than UV. So the difficulties were shifted up by one... lowest is still ITYTD because of the special rules. UV (old HMP) was meant to be "normal". Evil Unleashed!, named after the old Doom subtitle was like a bridge between UV and NM. It had an exclamation mark but not blood on the graphic to signify this. The idea with EU was to make subtle but important changes... like in "Midspan", when you hit the switch in the middle part, the door on the opposite side opens. The pain elemental was meant as an EU element, since you have to break line of sight or quickly kill it in melee to avoid a flood of lost souls. So small changes like that for the harder, and also considerably less ammo. For me the essence of Doom is survival action horror. That's also why the levels were small and fights in close quarters. However, I couldn't procure any testers so the different skill level idea was scrapped. This was when I got the idea for different set-ups for every skill. The thing in E1M3 of Doom, where the lamps are missing on harder skills, that was like a "Dangerous Dave moment" for me. Later I checked out some old Doom shovelware CDs and in one of the guides this same idea is outright given; different experience for every skill level. Damn, they stole my idea! Well, anyway, I fortunately decided to leave it out of TJ, with 32 levels, and save it for the next one.

 

To begin with I felt that the different skills thing would fit Heretic better because it's a fantasy-themed game, and in fantasy games you often have randomized things... in RPGs, probably deriving from D&D, randomization brings some abstraction and unpredictablility, to minimize the amount of minute fiddling in a tabletop setting. For this the model is more like both of the Diablo games. In many other games too, I feel levels that are different from one playthrough to the next are quintessential to the fantasy genre. This was also the reason the variations are set up like they are, with every one being of roughly the same difficulty, and no intended themes for each skill level. You could even play through the episode and play every map on a random skill level. When I realized that you could make scripts with voodoo dolls and scrollers, that really sealed the deal. The possibilites would be endless. In general I don't like it when games have all these different difficulty levels and stuff, because it means there isn't one definite version of the game that everyone plays, but since we have the skill system, we might as well try to make the most of it, since a wad with no skill level support feels incomplete. 

 

As for the naming of this system, I don't know if it's been seriously done before, so I thought it had to be given a specific name, because if you just go on calling them skill levels, people will just play on the second hardest and never touch the other two. The name "Quest" was chosen because in games like Mario and Zelda, they say like "We present you a second quest", and then the game starts again but some things are different. One choice was to call the variations "First", "Second" and "Third" Quests, but this heavily implies that you should play them in that specific order, which is not the case. Then, Quests I, II and III were also considered, but this has the same problem of implying the correct order. I ended up with "Quest A", "Quest B" and "Quest C" since the letters are often used to present alternate choices. Something like Quest "Alpha", "Beta" and "Gamma" was also considered but I thought that people would forget and mix them up especially if the actual letters were used. I should also mention again that the menu graphics aren't changed because unlike in Doom where many menu items exist as bitmaps, in Heretic they are apparently dynamically constructed from strings within the executable. While this is undeniably "smarter", it makes problems for us because, as far as I know, there is no equivalent of Dehacked for Heretic.
Well, the naming seems a partial success, because many people seem to play in A first which means they read and understand the description of the changes, but my idea was that you would just pick one at random to begin with.

 

So like I said, the idea was that all of the skills are on equal standing... you could play any one of them, or two, or all three. A major point was that one variation shouldn't feel like a subset of another, and that "exclusive" content should be kept to the minimum. By this I mean that there shouldn't be some cool-looking area that you just can't get to in that quest, and you have to play it on a different one. But then there is another area that you can't get to... like just jerking the player around, I think it would feel really frustrating. One major exception I think is the tower in E3M2. Since the rock tunnel is blocked in C, there's a small corridor leading to the wall and tower in the starting area to compensate. But I felt that taking this too far would feel like you're just playing 3 incomplete versions instead of one good defining one, so having 3 variations would feel like having less, instead of more. Also respecting the player's time by making sure that all of the skills are satisfying on their own. 

 

In TJ I was kind of on auto-pilot mode in terms of monster distribution... really common to have just a big room where a lot of monsters wake up at once, kind of restlessly paced, and mostly relying on deaf flags instead of bothering to do sound blocking correctly. So in SW, it's common to have rooms and sections that are basically empty. I realized when making the variations that if every place had monsters and items on every skill, it would feel samey, so it's not only a question of pacing. The point is also that the same area is seen differently... that poll where Containment Area won the title of best Doom/2 level, I think it was really interesting how it was noted that some maps are levels, others places. A  large focus was on making the maps in SW feel like places, and then the variations add the "level" aspect to that. Outdoor areas were especially excruciatingly detailed also because I think it should be important that the places felt "cool", interesting... If you're like me, you basically live and breathe the original Doom/2 maps. They are highly abstract but you know them so long and well that they start to feel like places. Having variations like this would be interesting there, I think, but these new levels don't have the benefit of familiarity and nostalgia so the visuals and gimmicks have to make up for that in order to make the player care about the maps. By gimmicks I mean certain fun stuff like you'd see in Duke Nukem 3D, like the big door in E3M3 that gradually casts a light as it opens, the bellows in E3M2 that cause a metal item to be forged in the smithy inside when you jump on top.. stuff like that.

So, with the variations thing, where do we go from here? The general idea of going through the same areas in a different manner has been seen in other games like I said. 

 

In Hexen, you have skill settings like in Doom and Heretic, which do have a few interesting effects seldom seen, because few people play on the lower settings. The bigger difference is the choice of class. There are actually some subtle changes in monster spawns depending on the class, but I think it's good that this was kept to a small degree because it would undermine the meaning of the class... you have similar, comparable situations which you tackle differently depending on your class. A difficult room might be easy when playing as a different class. So, the idea here is that the areas are the same but the player character's abilities are different. This is also partly done in the SW system, because what weapons and items you get are dictated by the thing flags: in E3M4 B, you are mostly a melee guy beating up the enemies with a staff for instance. This sort of approach where the player character mostly changes can also be seen in the Diablo games and especially Titan Quest, where the geography is always the same, and things like monster and chest spawns can change slightly, and of course randomly dropping items. 

The namesake of the quest system partly comes from Zelda 1 and Ocarina of Time, with the "second quest" and "Master Quest". I haven't actually played these "variations" but from second-hand sources I know that dungeon layouts are changed, and at least in some versions of MQ, the world is mirrored as a cheap difference.

 

The system in SW is kind of meta, the thing about parallel dimensions is just thrown in to tie the quest system to the game world. However, in some games the variations are tied to the world's internal logic more tightly. Games generally work on allegories, creating arbitrary systems and comparing them to real-world phenomena to make them more relatable and easier to understand. In practice you might have seasons. You have the same area, but you can play it in spring, summer, autumn and winter. Some games like Oracle of Seasons/Ages and Banjo Kazooie come to mind. A problem here might be, with seasons specifically, that the changes are limited in scope and can be predictable. You know the usual stuff: the water dries up in summer, leaves fall into pits in autumn, the water freezes in winter, blah blah. It's like a "heh" moment, but with limited potential, I think. The system of cycling through the variations can also be a problem... if it takes long, like a month per season, then people'll complain that they have to wait for 3 months to play all four seasons, and then naturally there aren't many differences to avoid pissing people off. Then, you could just arbitrarily cycle through the seasons, but then the real-world analogue falls flat. I mean, you don't just decide to change to summer on a whim, you'll just have to deal with the current season until it ends. 

 

The name "seasons" is of course also allegorical, it doesn't literally have to be the same four seasons we know. In the RTS Earth 2150, the planet is careening to the sun and exploding in about six months' time and to reflect this the campaign cycles to the next tileset at specific points: winter, early spring, spring, summer, desert, volcanic, lava pits. Since the campaign works in a tiered structure where all of the missions in a given season have to be played (not necessarily won) to make the next season come, this is not utilized for much in terms of variations for the same area, but I think the potential is interesting. At least the good old main base goes through the seasons with the rest of the planet.

 

Then there area more possibilities too, of course. The general idea is simply that you have something in common, but something different too. Even UV Tyson and NM Secrets could be considered variations. 

 

Last note
It kind of annoys me how passive the Maulotaur is. Mostly he just walks around instead of attacking. Like D'Sparil, he will walk off ledges, though, so you can "bullfight" a maulotaur by dawdling around a pit to bait him, then dodging once he charges, making him fall into the pit. Olé!!!!

[Hisymak]

On 4/19/2020 at 4:24 PM, hervoheebo said:

E3M6 music: Changed, notes: by original track I assume you meant the modified version to begin with, this is the original: https://www.vgmusic.com/music/console/nintendo/gba/PkmRS-120.mid 

Thanks, I really appreciate you took account of my comments and remade the track. I tried it and sounds definitely better, just yet one small note. In your previous 3-iteration version you prolonged the 3rd iteration by adding about 30 seconds "outro" part, but this extra part is missing in this new version, while I was expecting it to be included between 2nd and 3rd iteration. Not a big deal, but you might consider re-adding this part to get some extra track length, as you took some effort creating this part anyway.

And yes, I meant "your" original version that was playing in the first release.

On 4/19/2020 at 4:24 PM, hervoheebo said:

E3M7 music: Changed:
3rd:  Lead Piano removed in favor of Orchestral Strings (harp). Lead Choir volume decreased

This one is fine too, maybe I would make the lead choir a bit louder in 3rd iteration (not much, I mean something between the previous and this version).

On 4/19/2020 at 4:24 PM, hervoheebo said:

(Big post, I'll try putting it in a spoiler, this editor is not really working for me.....)

Ah yes, really long reading, but I read through all of it. Interesting to read through some "behind the scenes" and history of such a project.

As I understood, you were probably referring to some Doom2 megawad you made earlier? Haven't played through it, so I was a bit out of context. Have you made any more stuff? I'm especially interested in Heretic, as I like it and it was my first 3D game I had before Doom, and I like the fantasy theme, the weapons, graphics, gameplay etc. Even through Heretic has a few weaker sides compared to Doom, most importantly more limited bestiary.

On 4/19/2020 at 4:24 PM, hervoheebo said:

Well, the naming seems a partial success, because many people seem to play in A first which means they read and understand the description of the changes, but my idea was that you would just pick one at random to begin with.

To be honest, I feel like this is something completely unavoidable. Unless you have some randomization technique, I mean that for example the game would randomly shuffle the different quests in the menu so that a player would purely randomly pick one, and the quests are not called like "A","B","C", but something strictly non-ordinal, for example "Red quest", "Green quest", "Blue quest".

Starting off with "Quest A" feels something like a natural thing to me, like I always tend to try out the first class (Fighter) offered in Hexen when I play the game with any custom wad for first time and similar examples. I can actually say, that I'm rather thankful for playing Quest A for the first time. For the first 3 levles the selected quest does not matter, the gameplay mechanics is roughly same for all three. But for level 4 this is a fundamental difference. Quest A looks to be the most "normal" one, Quest B is extraordinary one as you do not have weapons, and Quest C has lot of tough monsters. And the most importantly, level 5 Quest B has the special mechanics of constantly losing health and you must be fast enough to not die. I cannot imagine myself playing Quest B as first, I would hate level 5 as I would be completely disabled from relaxed and explorative gameplay I'm used to. But because I played Quest A first and got familiar with the level, I didn't mean that.

[hervoheebo]

Music: I'll add back in the outro, I thought that was counted among the bad parts. For the other one I'll raise the choir volume a bit. What are you using to play the midis, by the way. I'm bouncing between Arachno Soundfont, Synergi 1.1 GS and SGM-180. It can be really frustrating with midis when soundfonts just do what they want with the volumes, one size has to fit all, it's a bit like trying to make maps work with all ports.

 

The previous releases are: Deimos Deja Vu in 2010 or something, 9 maps for The Ultimate Doom, first release limit-removing, updated version vanilla. The Journey in 2016, 32 maps for Doom 2, limit-removing.

 

With the quests I was actually thinking if there's any port that can change skills without starting a new game... like same inventory, but the skill is random within a given range. The new 3-4 B transition would be pointless, but the levels are balanced around wand start out of convenience (for me) anyway. So if wand start is ok, it should be possible to launch each map separately and have some simple program append a random skill parameter and appropriate warp to the chosen port. I don't know if any current frontends have that feature though.

 

I think it's interesting if the level 5 B time limit is that strict though... like I said it wasn't intended to be a practical time limit, just a consequence of not being able to place unlimited things in a level, although nuts.wad would like to differ. It might be a desyncing issue where you die earlier than you should or just that I've never stuck around enough while testing it, again a consequence for lack of testers. Well, I did have a tester for this, but after the first impressions we unfortunately lost contact with each other, so I waited for 2 months and then finished the rest myself. I still have not heard from him, I wonder what happened...

I think I will try to run some tests to see what's happening in 5 B

[Hisymak]

11 hours ago, hervoheebo said:

I think it's interesting if the level 5 B time limit is that strict though... like I said it wasn't intended to be a practical time limit, just a consequence of not being able to place unlimited things in a level, although nuts.wad would like to differ. It might be a desyncing issue where you die earlier than you should or just that I've never stuck around enough while testing it, again a consequence for lack of testers. Well, I did have a tester for this, but after the first impressions we unfortunately lost contact with each other, so I waited for 2 months and then finished the rest myself. I still have not heard from him, I wonder what happened...

I think I will try to run some tests to see what's happening in 5 B

Well, in my opinion, there's nothing that wrong with the map itself, I think it is quite balanced and there are just enough enchanted shields to survive for the time needed to play through the level, and it can be beaten without too big difficulties. This is rather about my personal preference and style of gameplay, as I said, I prefer relaxed and explorative gameplay without being pushed to hurry, so I can feel uncomfortable when some kind of time limit is pushing me to play more aggressively. I can give an example: I always hated the mega health in Quake 1, because when I got it and had health over 100, it started dropping by one continuously to reach 100, and I felt the mega health was useless because it would wear off very quickly. When I play through various megawads, I always tend to get 100% kills, items and secrets and can spend some significant time trying hard to find those utterly hidden secrets.

So in other words, just don't worry about that, I don't feel there is anything wrong from technical point of view.

11 hours ago, hervoheebo said:

I'll add back in the outro, I thought that was counted among the bad parts.

I actually liked it, I think that addition of this part with lower tempo can make the track more varied, breaking the monotonousness if the overall track tempo.

11 hours ago, hervoheebo said:

For the other one I'll raise the choir volume a bit.

That was actually the most minor thing to mention, if you feel the volume balance is just fine on your end, don't bother changing that again.

11 hours ago, hervoheebo said:

What are you using to play the midis, by the way. I'm bouncing between Arachno Soundfont, Synergi 1.1 GS and SGM-180. It can be really frustrating with midis when soundfonts just do what they want with the volumes, one size has to fit all, it's a bit like trying to make maps work with all ports.

Probably you would not guess that, but I am using OPL Synth emulation for all the time I play anything with GZDoom. From my very early childhood I played DOS Games with a Sound Blaster-based sound card which outputed this kind of sound, and I got used to it so much, that it feels to be like it's the most natural way of how computer games music should sound like.

The default OPL soundfont that comes with Doom or Heretic is not very good on its own, so believe or not, I created my own OPL soundfont to please myself when I listen to any MIDI music in GZDoom. It's publicly available: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/97388-update-hisymaks-genmidi-an-enhanced-genmidi-lump-for-opl-synth/

If you even wanted to try it out with SWake music, remember to switch to Dosbox OPL3 core and increase number of emulated OPL chips from 2 to 8 under advanced sound options. For example I really like how the Warcraft 2 music in E3M2 sounds like, and by the way, it's Human Theme 3 (not 4) as you mentioned in the readme file.

[hervoheebo]

Hmm yes I get what you mean, I do hate the megahealth... so you take it, and rush in order to not waste it, but then you make a mistake and get hurt because you're rushing. Lose some of the extra HP but armor is also lost, bringing the usefulness of the powerup into question. It feels like it's made with DM in mind.

 

That soundfont is quite good and impressive I think, you named specific instruments like choir and trumpet, so I assumed you used a more hi-fi font, but the different instruments are distinct with this too while also being consistent with the OPL "feel". My first brush with Doom was with Doom 2 on a Windows 98 computer, the music being what I later knew to be "OPL". For a time afterwards I played on Win XP with the default soundfont we all know and love. So it was really nostalgic when I tried playing Doom 2 in Dosbox and it emulated that old music, I don't think ZDoom had the option yet at that time. So I sometimes use OPL too... it's kind of an interesting question of which is "right"... The game is otherwise very low-fidelity, limited colors and texture resolution and stuff. So is a high-quality soundfont out of place? Hexen's CD music is something like that, so maybe not. So when it comes to balancing the midis for different fonts, I think OPL is a good one to test with also because I think it's somewhat commonly used. And, I fear, the default Windows soundfont is too, I mean, it's a good reference font but I'd rather use something else for listening.

 

Speaking of music I just remembered that at one point I was thinking of making SynthFont arrangements of every map's track for TJ and making a wad or pk3 or whatever of those. The idea was scrapped but some of those arranges were made, including tracks that were switched out. They probably count as digital music so I don't know if they can be shared easily