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Heretic: Treasure Chest - PLEASE FILL IN SLOTS!

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And for me, your test level works flawlessly. We're going to need a third opinion here.

I'm running "hereticp -file resource.wad test3.wad" directly in Windows XP. The sound doesn't work this way but I don't see how texture rendering could be affected.

The "last modified" timestamp on my heretic.wad is March 22, '96.

If the problem that you're having is still specifically related to bluefra4 and bluefred, then you should know that I'm quite sure it's those two textures that I didn't correctly fix in the second last revision, and which I did fix properly in the very last revision. Are you absolutely, positively certain that you're loading the file from my last link? I've downloaded that file for myself and guaranteed that it works.

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Hmm. I'm not entirely sure why this is happening. I'm going to try one more time to download your fix.

Edit: this is mind boggling. I've downloaded the file a 3rd time, and tried again, and it still has issues.

The specific error is "R_GenerateLookup: Collumn without a patch" for BLUEFRA3, BLUEFRA4, and BLUEFRED

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Once upon a time, a friend's computer lost the ability to boot up completely. After countless hours spent with tech support, numerous diagnostic programs that turned up nothing, several formattings and reinstallations from scratch, and the eventual outright replacement of the harddrive, RAM, and motherboard, the same problem persisted. Finally the problem was declared as "technically impossible" and he got his entire computer replaced; fortunately it was still on warranty.

This comes to mind because it's another one of those "technically impossible" situations. The textures simply don't have columns without patches. The patch width matches the texture width in all cases, the texture entries all refer to the correct patch numbers, the entries in pnames all correctly refer to the names of the patches, and the patches don't have naming conflicts anymore.

It's beyond my ability to diagnose this, but maybe we can still eliminate other variables. My heretic.wad's "last modified" timestamp is March 22, '96. The wad also works for me in ZDoom - does it for you? Does it work with a clean install of hereticp?

And can someone else download Ler's test level and my last resource.wad and run them in Hereticp?

Also I just tried running resource.wad and test3.wad together in the original, unmodified Heretic engine and it works there too.

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My last modified on my heretic.wad is March 14th; slightly different but I doubt anything significant.

Zdoom runs it fine, as does wHeretic. This is ridiculous :(.

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I tried the new resource and the test3 wads in Heretic and HereticP and it worked fine for me. There were no column/patch errors like in the previous version.

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This must be some weird problem with my computer. I wondered if having my wads be in different folders was the problem, so I copied them to my Heretic+ folder. Then it started complaining about the FLATS, of all things. ESSLMRF1, specifically. I'm just going to cede and say that the wad works even though it doesn't work for me because my problems seem to be unrelated to the texture resource.

Edit: Does anyone want to do compatibility checking? I think we should preferably have 2-3 people. I'm apparently opted out of this.

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ler said...
Does anyone want to do compatibility checking?

I'll try it out. I assume it's just playing through the levels?

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Making sure it works in Heretic+, is the main thing. Just play through (no monsters is fine, we're testing the level not the item placement). If something breaks, say so.

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There could be some bits out of place in the texture wad, but it's beyond my ability to find and fix them. This could still be a big problem if your computer isn't the only one that's apparently unable to run the wad.

Have you tried downloading Heretic+ again and starting a new Heretic+ folder from scratch?

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Huzzah! It's perfect. It was apparently the texture wad, because I tried the older one and that didn't work in my new install of heretic+. No more problems, thank god. I'm uploading this one right away.

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I am having a bit of trouble getting the levels to load in Heretic+. Is there some sort of command for it to load the right level? I have to load it up with DosBox so I am not really sure how to tell it to load a custom wad. I tried something like; hereticp- e1m2.wad but when I go to E1M2, it's just the normal Heretic level.

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Er, it's a -file param just like any other port.

e.g. hereticp -file resource.wad e3m7.wad -warp 3 7 -skill 4 -respawn
etc.

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Thanks, it works now. I'm sorry for sounding ignorant but I have not used a source port for Doom outside windows before. I'll let you know what I find out, compatibility wise.

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Good idea to make a site for the finished maps.

For the levelnames.txt;

My map (E1M8) is called:
Paura nella città dei morti viventi
(which is italian for: Terror in the city of the living dead)

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Done. This is a good time to mention I will be gone until next Sunday, and a little bit after that, due to me going to a convention in Sacramento, CA.

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t.v. said:

My map (E1M8) is called:
Paura nella città dei morti viventi
(which is italian for: Terror in the city of the living dead)

That's the most longest level name that I've ever seen for any WAD! Is that even going to fit on the screen without getting cut off?

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Unlike in the DOOM games, in Heretic the intermission level names are hard-coded into the executable, so to replace them a HHE would be required (plus a MapInfo for engines that don't support these). The binary hack wouldn't allow such a long name (as names can't be much longer than those of the original levels), and while MapInfo wouldn't have such a restriction and Heretic's font is a bit smaller than DOOM's, such a long name might indeed not fit on the screen, unless engines that use MapInfo apply "word-wrapping".

A workaround could be to use an acronym instead of the name, and leave the name only in the text file. I remember I did that for some automap level names for AV that were too long (AV's Map21 also has 6 words in its name, although the total number of letters is less). So it would appear as:

E1M8: P.N.C.D.M.V.

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Ok, I tested all the episode 1 maps and here is the data I have collected by testing them with Heretic+:

E1M2-R_FlatNumForName : CITFLAT1 not found.

E1M3-R_FlatNumForName : FLOOR01C not found.

E1M5-This one ran and I have to say it is a fantastic map :)
It is a bit laggy when you look at the whole thing but it works fine in Heretic+. There were some texture misalignments that I noticed such as the rocks outside but nothing too serious. I was not able to beat it however because I got to a room in the North-East corner where the walls open up to two more rooms with flickering lights but I could not press the switch that was in there and I did not see an immediate way of continuing. I am not sure if this switch is a secret or not but that's the point I got up to. In the same room there are a couple more misalignments and the ceilings of the shelves are not metal when they look like they should be. I'll try playing it again later to double check if it's beatable but I assume it is.

E1M7-R_FlatNumForName : FLAT503B not found.

E1M8-This one ran as well and it was also fun. I only saw a couple of problems with this map. One being a garbled mess of a texture above the green key door, almost like someone threw up over the edge of the building and it got frozen in mid air. The other was just the final exit room where all the sparkles are; I think the walls should not appear on the map to add to the void feel.

E1M9-Too many sound sequences.

I am not sure why there were a bunch complaining about missing names but it could be something to do with the texture pack or maybe I forgot to do something. I'll continue to try more levels though.

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There are two things that make Kaiser's map unfinishable in anything other than ZDoom.

There’s also a Boom feature in there.

The first ZDoom thing is the pair of switches Lord_Z mentions. It's because they are placed right on top of teleporter linedefs.

The other ZDoom thing is a pair of D1 line type's used as switches (the blue key requiring switches).

The Boom thing (tied to the D1 swtich effect) is that he's used a Boom conveyor belt for the Voodoo doll outside of the map.

Something tells me that some graphics (flat's in this case) have accidently been deleted or corrupted in the resource wad following Creaphis last update, which seems to be a trend :p (sorry, bad joke).

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I'm getting back to work on my map. I started out by picking a name, it's "Crimson Garden". Yes I accomplished something!

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I have tested the rest of the maps but I think there must be either something wrong with the texture pack or Heretic+ just can't read it. Most of these maps could not open due to a "missing" texture. Here they are anyway, I don't know how much help they will be:

E2M1-R_FlatNumForName : FMOSSRCD not found.

E2M5-R_FlatNumForName : REDWALF2 not found.

E2M6-R_FlatNumForName : FLOOR2G2 not found.

E2M8-There is still a Doom Builder 3D start on this level but after deleting it, it worked fine. However this level has many problems. In the starting room, the textures are garbled and the ammo sitting on the windowsills beyond the staircase near the start look strange because they do not lower with the lifts. A bad glitch is if you activate the second windowsill lift around the corner. After the lift comes down the windows open up revealing a garbled sky and there are two sectors up here that travel with the lift, creating a HOM. I do not see a reason for these platforms to move at all but that is just a sign of what's to come. After that hall and the room with the quartz flasks, you have to use and elevator to get to the higher area. Up here there are two switches that need pushing. Again, activating the lift to get up to the switch, lowers just about all the raised bits of floor around it and creates a huge mess of HOM's. After pushing the two switches here, you get teleported to a castle top with a big pit in the middle. Falling in this pit causes a major crash in Heretic+. After going around this pit there is another teleporter and this leads to the second castle. The walls of this castle are not attached to the walls of the containing sector thus causing the sky to bleed mercilessly into the ground. I have seen this problem in my own maps when I was getting started with mapping and it just needs to be reattached. I did not see a way to continue here so I hit the wall randomly, looked outwards to a third castle and saw that something moved. I hit it again and saw that the castle I was on moved too. I then realized that this whole room seemed to have the same lift tag and the entire thing started raising and lowering. I gave up here because I could not take anymore. This map needs some serious revamping.

E2M9-2-This map was another of the few that actually worked but I have to say that it is not much to look at. It needs some decorations as it is aesthetically boring. It is just massive long rooms after one another. After the large metal staircase there is a switch that needs aligning and the ice later on in the level is not slippery. I did not notice anything else in particular but this one needs more detailing.

E3M2-R_FlatNumForName : FLAT502E not found.

E3M4-R_FlatNumForName : ESSLMRF4 not found.

E3M6-R_FlatNumForName : FLAT517B not found.

E3M7-R_FlatNumForName : FLOOR09H not found.

E3M8-R_FlatNumForName : ESSLMRF3 not found.

E3M9-This one needs to be renamed as E3M9 because in Doom Builder it is still listed as E1M9. I am sure you can do this ler, it's only a small adjustment. Other than that: R_FlatNumForName : SNDFLAt7 not found.

E4M1-Too many ambient sound sequences.

E4M2-R_FlatNumForName : FLAT504F not found.

e4m4-R_FlatNumForName : FMOSSRCA not found.

E4M4-This is the same map as e4m4 but it has less stuff on it. I don't think we need both of these on the map list.

E5M1-R_FlatNumForName : FLOOR00H not found.

Phew, that was long. I don't think we will be able to use Kaiser's map if it has ZDoom stuff in it. It sucks to lose a map. Maybe it can be redone to work in Heretic+?

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The Heretic engine is based on Doom v1.2, and PWAD flat support was added in a later version of the Doom engine.

To make the flats work in Heretic+, use:

deutex -heretic heretic-dir -flats -append pwad-path

heretic-dir is the path to the directory with heretic.wad
pwad-path is the path to the PWAD file to append flats to

For example:

deutex -heretic d:\games\heretic\ -flats -append d:\desktop\cemetary.wad

Make sure you're using a copy of the resource PWAD because DeuTex will add Heretic's flats to it.

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Lord_Z: I must confess that Detailing (and Doors) are really not my strong point, when i was still making it, i was at the time just concentrating on finishing it, i look back on it and pretty much agree with what you say. I want to at least try to re-vamp it, if i can't, then prehaps it can be taken off (I feel i've improved while making E4M9) Trouble is, if i do want to re-vamp, i'd like to know what i can at least try to do to make it look better.

Regarding E4M9, i've kind of wandered off it, building wise, it's almost done, just have to add detail, change the lighting and add monsters, ammo and health.

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OmegaJ4 said...
i'd like to know what i can at least try to do to make it look better.

Well, in this case there are a few things to consider. First off, I don't think the rooms need to be nearly as tall as they are. The starting area would look good as a smaller cave and opens up into the larger room. Secondly, I would say that in those big open rooms with lots of lava, there could be islands or cliffs on the walls to hold enemies or something. This would also make it feel less empty. Speaking of cliffs, I think the rock faces of all the rooms could be made to look more natural by adding a few more vertices and moving them around. As it is there is one large line for a long stretch of cliff. Height variations are also good, such as cracks in the walkways or a small river/pool (For stuff like this it is wise to use a smaller grid as it looks like you did most of this map on 32x32). There are long stretches of walkway that don't have anything and it would look good to add of these here and there. The walls themselves are also a bit bare. There are banners and stain glass windows that can be added to break up the walls. However, in a cliff map such as this, it would be better to use things like cliff platforms where things like enemies and decorations can stand. I don't want to tell you exactly what to put in so I hope you'll experiment and find what you like. As you say, you'll get more practice and become better at doing this kind of thing with time. It would take a bit of work but this map does have some potential. Just remember, these things are my opinions but I hope they will help you get some ideas :)

(While I think of it, lines Lines 58 and 747 are missing textures.)

myk said...
To make the flats work in Heretic+, use:

deutex -heretic heretic-dir -flats -append pwad-path

heretic-dir is the path to the directory with heretic.wad
pwad-path is the path to the PWAD file to append flats to

Thanks, I will try this out later.

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I'm taking your advice and having a go at adding some "Islands" around the large lava areas and i'm trying to curve some of the walls. (I've curved two walls, and they seem to have come out looking okay)

That, and i fixed Linedef's 58 and 747

Thank you for the tips, i'll try my best to improve it!

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