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Chaos Crew: What Next?

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After releasing Caverns of Darkness and Phobos: Anomaly Reborn, Chris Lutz and the Chaos Crew are pondering what direction they'll take in their next project. The Chaos Crew website has been updated with a few notes on the recent P:AR release, as well as ideas for a new and possibly gothic-themed project. It will use ZDoom and it may even be a Heretic episode that utilizes a hub system - this is all still up in the air though. Check out the site for more information!

As a result of playing around with Undying, I think I'm in the mood to create something a little more gothic than the P:AR maps; CoD had some reasonably cool ruined church structures, and man, I do love making ruins.

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Well, folks -- what do you guys think? Sound interesting? And does anyone still play Heretic anymore? I would love some ideas and comments if anyone cares...

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I have been playing through Heretic again using JHeretic-really nice. A good ZDoom Heretic map would be nice to play through as well.

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One of P:AR's small deficiencies is that the textures don't match the awesome architecture... I think with a gothic texture set, you'd be able to make even cooler stuff. Go for it!

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I'd love to see a new heretic episode. Doom has enough projects on the way. ;)

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Yeah i love heretic. It's cool as hell. Plus I'm badass at DM in heretic.. :p

Athough, if you find Heretic to cartoony, why not go with Zdoom hexen?

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kristus said:

Athough, if you find Heretic to cartoony, why not go with Zdoom hexen?

I thought about Hexen, but I really don't like the character system. Four weapons? -- c'mon, there needs to be more ways to whoup ass. And in playing around with Heretic lately, it does seem too cartoony; and man, the weapons suck ass, too. It's kind of sad when the most realized weapons (i.e. the weapons that "feel" like they ought to) are the staff and the default pea-shooter wand.

So basically, I don't know what I'm going to do -- but I'm pretty sure I'm going to need some help. I think what I would like to do is recreate the 1920's gothic feel of Undying using the Doom engine, but that's going to mean (at minimum) new weapon sprites and probably some new monster sprites (even if they are taken from Heretic/Hexen or other games). I guess I need to think about it some more...but I'm pretty sure that the Chaos Crew is going to be asking for a few more members pretty soon. Also, I need to find a way to add some ZDoom hoopla to my levels, since I am not going to take the time to learn to use WA or some other editor for primary construction.

BTW, are there any Doom or Doom 2 wads out there that use some of the Heretic/Hexen monster or weapon sprites? I can look around for some other weapon sprites on my own, but I'm wondering if someone has taken the trouble to convert any existing (gothic) monsters from other games.

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I think what I would like to do is recreate the 1920's gothic feel of Undying


Blood anyone? :)

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What I used to do was make a map in Waded (the editor I used to use before I switched to win2k) and then use zwadconv (I think that's the name of that util, it's avaliable on the zdoom site) to convert it to hexen format and then add in ACS and other ZDoom such things in wauthor. Unless you previously used a ZDoom editable editor (whicvh is wa, deep and zeth I believe) there's no way ou can add zdoom stuff without opening the map up in a new editor unless you get someone else to do it of course.

On a related note, wauthor is quite easy to use and the interface is non cluttered for the most part it's quite easy to add zdoom extras to a map, though you'll have to do a fiar bit of visualizing on the initial map (before you add zdoom stuff) when it comes to slopes especially.

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BTW isn't it possible to add the weapons from Doom, by just adding the sprites?

I played some wad that had added the "tome of power" to hexen. that was cool. :p

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Stay with Doom. Its pointless to use Heretic unless you want some of the weapons or monsters. If you want those, you can always have a simple resource wad for them and load them into Doom like I did with Underworld Beta 4. You can have an autoexe.cfg for the binds of the weapons if you need. This lets you just about double the amount of weapons (if you feel thats necessary, I only added a couple with new graphics).

EDIT: Ebola beat me to posting and mentioned my idea of bringing over weapons... but bringing doom into heretic sounds more interesting...

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I've got a wad with all the Heretic sprites converted to the Doom palette, and another with the Hexen sprites converted. Let me know if you need 'em.

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Ultimate DooMer said:

Did you catch the ones released last year?


Yep, very cool stuff, I enjoyed them quite a bit. Compared to the amount of doom/doom2 episodes I have though, my heretic collection is rather small. :)

[EDIT] Hmm, I really should pick up undying one of these days..

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I don't have Heretic, used to have it, didn't like it too much. My only request is that you try to make your project for doom.wad or doom2.wad. Otherwise, I don't be able to play it. Hell, you can make it for JDOOM for all I care because I'm getting a Geforce FX.

P.S. For those who are graphics card/hardware gurus, will it be enough to have an AGP 4X (YES you heard me, NOT 8X but 4X and Windows 98 SE ant NOT Windows XP!) motherboard with the Geforce FX card to run DOOM III in at least 1024*768 OpenGL, if not more?

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I'm fine with Heretic or Hexen even 'cause I have 'em both. You will reach a larger audience with Doom2 however. Doom2 with some new textures can do the Gothic thing just as well.

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Virgil said:
P.S. For those who are graphics card/hardware gurus, will it be enough to have an AGP 4X (YES you heard me, NOT 8X but 4X and Windows 98 SE and NOT Windows XP!) motherboard with the Geforce FX card to run DOOM III in at least 1024*768 OpenGL, if not more? [/B]

I don't think so... not that I am a guru at anything, but I doubt you'll get 20 fps at 640x480x16.
I have a Geforce4 Ti4600/Win98se and I'm worried...
Carmack made great note that the graphics would run threaded. I think you'll miss that expected performance.
I hope I'm wrong though, be a shame that so many DOOMers wouldn't be able to play the next DOOM.

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Opulent, I can't play it at the moment (and by a lot), and sure as Hell won't upgrade just because of a new game... maybe I'll do that if other factors come into play... *shrug*

I don't see why the new game has to necessarily appeal to the players of the older version. Technically they are different things. Even the people here in the "DOOM community" with the latest hardware have been upgrading for DOOM III (the ones fully interested in it, I mean.)

What should id have done? Aimed the specs required at the "average" DOOM player in 2001-2002? Doesn't make much sense... What is that average player anyway?

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A Heretic episode sounds to me like a really good idea. There is plenty of cool stuff that can be done with the basic elements of Heretic (possibly with an hhe patch too). And the weapons don't suck. I think it should be made to work if possible with the original exe, or else with any limit-removing port (so people can choose between jHeretic and Zdoom, and may even be able to record demos).

Lutz said:

BTW, are there any Doom or Doom 2 wads out there that use some of the Heretic/Hexen monster or weapon sprites?

Herian 2.

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Unfortunately Herian 2 was a bit of a dissapointment.

A grand project that could really have set off to somewhere great let down by monotonous boring levels and the lack of music.



Hey I got an Idea: Now, we're talking gothic textures what about a GothicSP megawad? In the style of Gothicdm. Of course this lends itself more to a community effort.

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Where Hexen/Heretic are let down for me are the monsters/weapons, the early monsters are very weak but killing them is boring (its all pfft pfft pfft from some weakass wand). But thats fixable.

Virgil said:

P.S. For those who are graphics card/hardware gurus, will it be enough to have an AGP 4X (YES you heard me, NOT 8X but 4X and Windows 98 SE ant NOT Windows XP!) motherboard with the Geforce FX card to run DOOM III in at least 1024*768 OpenGL, if not more?


The nVidia unified driver still supports win98se, so from a software standpoint I can't see why not. Whether it'd work with agp 4x I don't know, my GF4 states 4x but still works with agp 2x,it's noticeably slower at high res in Jedi Knight2(motherboard locks up with agp 4x enabled, VIA pos).

You really need a motherboard running DDR also, PC133 would really limit the GFFX. I haven't heard a release date for DOOM ]I[ from id (or system specs for that matter, except > geforce class card required), it'll pay to wait and see.

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Well the first want in Heretic isn't exactly any fun to use.. (except with the tome of power, then it's a cool weapon) but neither is the pistol in Doom.

Personally i like the weapons in Heretic very much.

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The wand is quite useful IMO, as it can shoot through things (only 1 other weapon can do that), which is a great asset on skill 5. When tomed up, it's good for fighting maulotaurs as the tome doesn't change it's behaviour that much.

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Agreed; on skill 5 in Heretic, I find myself using the wand a lot, even when I have plenty of other weapons and ammo. It's quick and accurate, and great when you are darting in and out of cover. (In general, I'd say Heretic is better balanced on skill 5 than on skill 4 - each of the weapons has its value, and all the enemies can pose a real threat.)

It's a bit off-topic (since Herian2 is only potentially relevant to the question of graphics resources) but I didn't find Herian2 too disappointing at all. IIRC, NIN music was supplied with it, and it seemed to fit the mood reasonably well.

EDIT: The file in the archives for Herian2 doesn't include the sprites or the music. I've no idea if they can still be downloaded from anywhere.

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NiGHTMARE said:

I've got a wad with all the Heretic sprites converted to the Doom palette, and another with the Hexen sprites converted. Let me know if you need 'em.

I'd love to check them out; could you post a link somewhere?

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Lutz said:

I'd love to check them out; could you post a link somewhere?

http://uk.geocities.com/nb_nmare/sprites.html

Let me know when you've got them, as I had to delete some stuff to make space :)

Oh, and before anyone says it; yes, 'eww, geos**ties', etc, etc.

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IMO a ZDoom Heretic map would kick ass. I say go for it. Lord knows Heretic is an underappreciated game (IMHO).

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NiGHTMARE said:

http://uk.geocities.com/nb_nmare/sprites.html

I got the Hexen sprites, but the Heretic .ZIP file appears to be corrupted. However, don't worry about it -- I think the Hexen sprites are all I'm going to need.

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