Faithless: Trilogy - BETA 1a released!

[ReaperAA]

1 minute ago, Not Jabba said:

Probably not yet, because there are more changes to the player class and more new weapons in Faithless Trilogy. I will patch it in the future. I've played FT unmodded though, and it's great.

 

Oh ok. My bad for answering their question without knowledge.

[Gez]

On Willowwood I found the secret that let me jump into the backpack ophidian's ruined cabin, but I guess I ran too fast into it as I ended up behind the two dead trees.

Spoiler

Got stuck there, had to noclip away.

 

In Treasury, this secret wall can be triggered repeatedly, causing a big stone clonk sound every time.

Spoiler

 

 

[plums]

FYI also getting the gradual choppiness on Willowwood, so I think the weather is the likely culprit. For some reason I was having a hard time reproducing it in The Bell Tower, but this one is easy to reproduce, turn on FPS display (vid_fps 1), go map e2m4, then just hold backwards for a little bit to warp between Willowwood and The Iron Fortress a bunch. Your FPS should drop a lot after a bunch of back and forth, or at least mine does...

[Jimmy]

I remember fixing a performance issue with the weather that cropped up with Faithless E1's original release - the weather system would kick in again and again on repeat visits to maps that had it, resulting in the map getting rainier and rainier as the episode went on. I at least fixed the weather particles spawning over and over but I think performance is still taking a hit. It's @Gutawer's code so I'm not entirely sure what I can do to optimise it much further.

[NeoWorm]

I played and enjoyed it quite a lot till I stumbled upon the Chaos Wyverns. They are really nasty. I think too nasty, it's fireball attack is extremely quick and hits like truck, in the ice cloister (I think) I died to it multiple times before I even realized it's the Chaos Wyvern shooting at me. It's breath attack is straight up unfair, if the Wyvern catches you in bad position it will decimate you before you can do anything. 

[Gez]

Another secret wall that can be activated repeatedly and that probably shouldn't:

Spoiler

In Sunless Temple.

If you push it three times, it gets stuck on the torch and just plays the moving sound forever while not moving.

 

 

Chaos Wyvern aren't so bad IMO.

[plums]

I think I figured out the weather script problems: change line 87 in zscript.zsc to this

 

if (Weather_enabled && !last_weather) {

Unfortunately doesn't affect save games that are already choppy.

Edited November 7, 2020 by plums

[Fletcher`]

I should add support to my heretic weapon mod for this. :o

[Gez]

5 hours ago, plums said:

Unfortunately doesn't affect save games that are already choppy.

The console command "remove" can be used to get rid of unwanted actors. Disable weather effects (it's in the menu) then run these three lines:

 

remove Weather_RainDropSpawner

remove Weather_SnowFlakeSpawner

remove SoundRainQuiet

 

Do that in each map you have already accessed. Then you can turn weather effects back on.

[Gez]

After testing, it's the SoundRainQuiet that really need removing. The spawner get rid of themselves when disabling weather effects, but not the rain sounds. I didn't get very choppy performances but I had over 2200 of the buggers in Willowwood when I tried. And don't worry, turning weather effects back on brought rain sounds back.

[boris]

Played a bit and it's pretty good so far. Right now I'm stuck in Willowwood and have no idea what to do. I opened the doors to the woods, but there are bars blocking the path.

 

Issues I've found:

 

You can get stuck behind some shrubbers in the treasury, around 600, 1100:

 

 

The string for MERCI_PUZZLE_GREENKEY_1 says "The green key is lowered in the fortress" instead of "The green key is lowered in the iron fortress".

[Gez]

1 hour ago, boris said:

Played a bit and it's pretty good so far. Right now I'm stuck in Willowwood and have no idea what to do. I opened the doors to the woods, but there are bars blocking the path.

Do you have access to an unlit bull brazier? Look for a way to lit it on fire. Like, some sort of portable fire item (not a weapon).

[Renzokuken]

I burned through Episode 1 in a night and it was glorious.
Then I started Episode 2 and it's the platonic ideal of everything I ever wanted out out Heretic and Hexen. Willowwood especially is just *chef's kiss*

That said, I'm stumped.

 

Spoiler

How do I progress into the treasury? I've gotten 4 of the planets, but I can't find anyway to open the door to go further inside.

 

[Jimmy]

Spoiler

You might need to open up two more portals in the Iron Fortress. This is done by first finding the yellow key, then one of two yellow switches to make an elevator to the top floor of the Fortress accessible. A bell is here that you can ring to open the portals.

 

[Renzokuken]

3 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

  Hide contents

You might need to open up two more portals in the Iron Fortress. This is done by first finding the yellow key, then one of two yellow switches to make an elevator to the top floor of the Fortress accessible. A bell is here that you can ring to open the portals.

 

 

Spoiler

Aaah, I think I missed one of the other portals, because I did ring the bell.

This is some of the finest work I've ever seen done with the Heretic/Hexen assets, and it's been an absolute joy to explore these maps. I was aware of Episode 1 back when it released but never looked too deep into it. I'm really glad I waited now, because the further I go the better it gets. The detailing is phenomenal, and the maps signpost things enough that I rarely get lost or have to go switch hunting in the same way that Hexen usually expects.

[Gez]

I conquered most of the third hub now, just the cloister of ichor to explore, check the secret level to see if the chapel's door finally opened, and see what awaits in the audience room once I've finished exploring everything everywhere else. I love how you've used the Shadowcaster textures to create the aesthetics of the green, blue, and red worlds.

 

Found a couple of minor oddities:

 

In the mana flow, the big waterway empties into a scrolling grate. Probably an oversight, with the grate sector being given the same scrolling effect as the water. You gotta look straight down or gaze at the textured automap to notice it, though.

 

In cloister of tears, this area looks like it was meant to be open sky. It rains in it, and the light level is higher -- but it's still a solid rock roof above.

 

Also I'm a bit annoyed that the hitbox for the various chaos serpents is a bit too short. Now I remember to aim at their feet because projectiles sent at their heads just sail gracefully through their cranium without any consequence to either serpent or projectile.

[Gez]

I found that the ice lich isn't distinguishable enough from its standard counterpart. Here's an edit that tries to make the big ol' skull less metallic-looking and change the color of its crownpiece thingie:

Metallic details (like the scratches and dents on the face) have been smoothed out, manually and by blending a little bit with a thoroughly smudged copy layer. Then more contrast increased, and then subtle blending with the Hexen ICE01 texture rotated 45°, as well as a ton of random manipulations.

[boris]

So I finished episode 2, here's the playlist, took me nearly 7 hours to complete it (on medium difficulty).

 

 

Was a great ride and took me much longer than I expected, since I finished episode 1 in under 2 hours back in the days. I'm notoriously bad at using the inventory (and had a bit of a hard time navigating it, beacuse of the HUD scaling I'm using), but this time around I tried to use it more often, which definitely helped. The difficulty ramp was pretty good, easy at the beginning (which you can see on my inventory), then steadily rising. It's a bit crazy how the upper tier enemies can kill you pretty much instantly, even when you're at full health.

 

Spoiler

 

What to do was mostly clear, what I struggled with was the puzzle with the rotating switches and the bull braziers. And by the time I killed the Avatar in E2M5 I already forgot that hitting the gong told me that the iron doors are opened in the hub, so that had me stumped for a bit.

 

I also found the secret map, although I have no idea how :P

 

I killed the boss without actually hitting him, just by using the powered up D'Sparil staff and a Maultaur artifact.

 

 

Two bugs I found:

 

Spoiler

 

The grade linedef is not blocking, so you can just walk through it.

 

 

 

The melting ice block puzzle (which is really cool, no pun intended) in E2M7, when only the leftmost block is moving there is no sound.

 

 

 

[plums]

3 hours ago, boris said:

It's a bit crazy how the upper tier enemies can kill you pretty much instantly, even when you're at full health.

I agree that the damage on some of the higher enemies is a little much. That said you can get up to 200 health with the elixir vitae and miracle potions, and those enemies are still vulnerable to morph ovums (ova?) and bouncing bombs.

 

Speaking of artifacts, bag of plenty + tome of power + staff of D'Sparil = a fun time :)

[TheEvilGrin]

I'm not done with E2 yet. I couldn't solve the puzzle with the maulotaurs so I had a look into the code. The variable "ThisBullBeLitFam" made me chuckle quite a bit.

Oh and that would be great if you could make the text that prints in the unholy font stay longer, I didn't have time to read it and had to leave and re-enter the level.

 

[boris]

50 minutes ago, TheEvilGrin said:

Oh and that would be great if you could make the text that prints in the unholy font stay longer, I didn't have time to read it and had to leave and re-enter the level.

 

You can just open the console (with the key left to "1") and read the messages again. I use that quite a lot myself.

[plums]

A few graphics edits if you want them:

 

* The Shadowcaster XLIVING textures tile horribly, so I fixed that.

 

* The belt buckle on the Cultist's death sprite kept looking like gold wand ammo in my peripheral vision. Not that gold wand ammo is even that important, but the "pick up all the shiny things" crow part of my brain kept getting fooled. So I edited the last few frames to make it covered in blood. If you use them, don't forget to adjust the sprite offsets.

 

fthedits.zip

 

Will write more later, but this is hands down my favourite Heretic wad ever, and in my top 5 megawads for any Doom engine game. I'm already looking forward to playing it again.

[NeoWorm]

I've done something quite similar to Gez not that long ago. Added some icicles too.

 

I also have some newer more varied and ornate 3D chests if you are interested. I think they would fit well in Treasury map.

[Fonze]

I been playing through this and so far I'm having a ton of fun! The level of immersion from the well-crafted atmosphere, good map flow, interesting layouts/progression, great, thematic/atmospheric tunes, and polish is just grand; great job with this!

There were a couple things I wanted to note, but I have the memory of a moth near a bright light so I seem to have forgotten them, though I do remember one of the smaller observations:

Is the combination puzzle in e1m7 supposed to have the correct solution on it at the start or is that an oversight left over from dev? Honestly it could work either way, on one hand it would make the most logic sense to have them start off as either the same symbol or jumbled, but on the other hand it's the type of puzzle that's only effective the first time around so it's somewhat fitting and comical that it already has the correct solution on it, given that new players will likely fiddle with the combination and lock themselves out (so to speak) before figuring out what they're supposed to do, effectively creating their own puzzle 🙃

 

Anyway, again idr any of the more important stuff I wanted to say but if you're interested here is a playthrough on anarchist difficulty of E1:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

[Legit]

Hello, I decided to play this awesome wad with my brother using GZDoom in LAN but our game crashes when going back to the hub from the docks.
We used GZDoom 4.4.2 and 4.5.0 Both versions crashed. We also tried to change the net mode but still.

I am attaching the crash report. 

Hope it helps!

CrashReport.zip

[Jimmy]

I'm afraid I didn't completely multiplayer-proof this set and I'm nowhere near certain how well it gets along with GZDoom's netplay. Any number of factors could be the cause of the crash. You might be better off reporting this crash to the GZDoom devs directly!

[plums]

Here's a whole lot more words about Faithless!

 

There's a type of map I call sightseeing maps, where you can basically wander around from one place to the next while always finding monsters to fight and other things to do. The best of these maps offer freedom to explore while having enough direction that you're not usually lost or wondering what to do next. I love these kinds of maps and Faithless is just full of them, often quite large and yet always "easy" to play through in the sense that they don't require a lot of mental energy to get immersed and enjoy. It's just a fantastic collection of maps. Anyone who remotely enjoys adventure or exploration in Doom and co. should absolutely play these. And I think there are enough positive changes to the usual bestiary that even people who don't normally like it Heretic will enjoy it, but without it feeling like a different game.

 

I remember many years ago, before I went on a Doom hiatus, that you made a wad with few jungle-themed levels, and stated that it was a conscious effort to avoid making maps that were square and boxy. What tremendous progress Faithless is from back then!

 

Bugs etc., all extremely minor. Slight spoilers for anyone else reading!

• The GZDoom `secret` command has some errors in some maps: On E2M7, it shows the //E2M8 comment; on E3M1 and E3M2, some of the secrets show up as yellow, which I think means the secret sector for them isn't correct; on E3M9, secret #2 didn't turn green until I had also found secret #1 (which I think isn't how it's supposed to work?)
• In the final boss room fight(s), it's possible to beat one phase of the fight very quickly, making the boss teleport out and nothing happens for awhile. Since this is presumably where people are going to use up all the supplies they've been hoarding, this might happen for a lot of people.
• The ending text is the same whether or not you fight *****. I assume you know this, but just in case.
• Not sure if the end graphics are final or just placeholders since they're very sketch-like. If they are final, they don't contrast nearly enough with the font, making the text really hard to read.
• The Cloister of Tears music has a looooooong fadeout, that could stand to be trimmed. Right now it ends up with several seconds of just silence.
• In E2 I only found 4 strongbox keys even after going back and getting all the secrets. Not a problem as long as you're sure the other two are there somewhere, since E2M0 needs them all for a secret.
• The start of E3M1 looks like it's probably supposed to be a trident near D'Sparil's Crypt, it could be made more obvious with some points on the tips though.
• In E3 once the Cloisters are accessible, I went back to The Mana Flow from the back, and there was a Shadowbeast who just ignored me when I killed all the other things nearby. https://i.ibb.co/Gx2cm1v/Screenshot-Heretic-20201108-185624.png
• I did a cool thing in E2M9 that I'm pretty sure wasn't intended, I don't want you to fix it though so I'm not saying how :p  It cost me a ring of invulnerability so it's not like it was free.

 

I was able to grab both the Phoenix Rod and the Staff of D'Sparil :D.

 

 

Assorted grumbles:

• My only substantial complaint is that I really dislike enemies taking more/less damage from certain weapons when there's absolutely no in-game feedback about that happening. I'd suggest either capping the damage change to ±50%, or having some kind of audio/visual cue when that happens. (If you're planning to release a manual or something with this, that details these resistances/vulnerabilities, that's fine too.) Hexen's Wendigos weren't originally immune to frost shards, after all. (Also I just typoed and wrote "frost sharts" lol, that sounds extremely uncomfortable!)
• There are *a lot* of artifact types in E2 and E3. Not really a problem, but often I was using stuff like the pod egg just to get rid of them. I like that you offer discs of repulsion instead of timebombs in E3, though I wish there were more places to knock things off of ledges -- they would have been a lot of fun in Vulture's Point!
• E1 and E3 were pretty balanced for health, but in E2 I was absolutely drowning in it. The E2M0 bonus map was neat but I basically ignored it because I had so much health that I didn't care. I was very glad to get an early bag of holding though.
• The secret maps for E2 and E3 were easy to find, which is not a problem, but reinforces my opinion about the E1 secret map being too hidden.
• On the other hand, getting the Phoenix Rod in the Iron Fortress is extremely hidden for what it gives, given that you can't get it until pretty late anyhow.
• The Fallen enemies look a little crude IMO, not sure if you can smooth them out a bit...
• Boo to Hexen dart shooter tiles as switches! :p

 

Other stuff:

• The first map by @Not Jabba was great, although I wish it wasn't quite so wand-heavy early on. I think I get what you were going for there, trying to make the player feel threatened and have to rely on artifacts, but for every moment like that it offered there was at least one where you could just safely and slowly plink things to death.
• Speaking of wands, I liked the Sapphire Jade Wand, it was a nice new low-tier weapon.
• The episodic format works well to prevent mass item hoarding that can happen in Hexen.
• Ambient sounds make a huge impact on atmosphere, good to see you didn't skimp out on those.
• Breakable hanging pots in E2M9! :D
• I appreciate that most weapons were available in several places, excellent decision.
• Most Chaos Wyverns weren't too hard to deal with, but the one in Tears kept just wrecking me, and I ended up using an invulnerability just to deal with it.
• I like that you snuck a BFG attack in with tomed Soulverge :)

Edited November 12, 2020 by plums

[Gez]

16 minutes ago, plums said:

In E2 I only found 4 strongbox keys even after going back and getting all the secrets. Not a problem as long as you're sure the other two are there somewhere, since E2M0 needs them all for a secret.

I can confirm they're all in there, as I did find everything! In fact I even had a surplus chest key.

 

IIRC, one of the strongbox keys is hidden in a hanging pot, and another is in a chest.

[NeoWorm]

4 minutes ago, Gez said:

IIRC, one of the strongbox keys is hidden in a hanging pot, and another is in a chest.

The hanging pot completely got me. And I made that sprite.

[Caleb13]

I think I found a bug in Vulture's point: there is portal that leads back to Fractured Monastery behind the blue key. But it doesn't reopen after the blue key fight with the super-heresiarch. I play in Gzdoom 4.4.2.