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Fletcher`

Hocusdoom RELEASED (in /idgames)

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This looks freakin' awesome. I never played the sidescroller, but I love the new textures and things. DON'T LET THIS DIE. I'll repeat it:

DON'T LET THIS FAIL.

Okay one more time:

DON'T LET THIS PROJECT DIE.

okay, that's all.

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Nevan said:

My friggin' childhood


Freakin' this. you just kicked me in the stomach with nostalgia.

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Don't know what Hocus Pocus is, but I'm interested because this mod looks friggin' insane, in a good way. In fact, I'd say that it's downright beautiful.

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Very nice surreal world, things and creatures. However, I'm not sure what makes the right "Hocus Pocus" balance, but don't you think that the basic weapon is horribly underpowered? Each of the numerous enemies needs a lot of hits to die, and the weapon doesn't even fire automatically, you must press the fire key repeatedly. I think you should do something about it. Just for the sake of better balance. I realize there are powerups and stuff, but I still found the beginning shooting to be uncomfortably tedious.

Or the player would at least encounter weaker enemies early on.

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scifista42 said:

Very nice surreal world, things and creatures. However, I'm not sure what makes the right "Hocus Pocus" balance, but don't you think that the basic weapon is horribly underpowered? Each of the numerous enemies needs a lot of hits to die, and the weapon doesn't even fire automatically, you must press the fire key repeatedly. I think you should do something about it. Just for the sake of better balance. I realize there are powerups and stuff, but I still found the beginning shooting to be uncomfortably tedious.

Or the player would at least encounter weaker enemies early on.

On normal difficulty, most enemies have 4 hit points. Easy mode everything's halved; on hard they're all doubled. So on hard, yes, it'll take a while. I might add more powerups for that difficulty.

In later maps there'll a powerup that basically doubles your damage output.

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Holy crap! Not only does this mod look amazing, but I had forgotten the original game even existed until I Googled it and saw the screenshots. I still don't remember a thing about the game—only that I played it as a kid—but I certainly remember those switches, gems, the goofy heads on the wall...! Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Edit - Ooh, and I can buy it for only $6? Tempting... I should download the shareware version for sure.

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Clonehunter said:

Don't know what Hocus Pocus is, but I'm interested because this mod looks friggin' insane, in a good way. In fact, I'd say that it's downright beautiful.


A cool little platformer. Gameplay and controls were kinda mediocre to be honest, but the background graphics were super-cute and the music was super-catchy.


Salt-Man Z said:

Edit - Ooh, and I can buy it for only $6?

Also on GOG.

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Good grief, 40 levels? Here's hoping you have the dedication to finish them all. Thumbs up! :D

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This looks super trippy and awesome, but I have no idea how to run the demo. Normally I just drag the wad + deh files onto zDoom.exe - however with this I get tons of missing textures. Not sure what to do.

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rf this is looking gorgeous. But, as already said, gameplay seriously needs balancing. You're introducing new mechanics and health system, giving no time to the player to get used to it.

The very first horde has 6 monsters with 4 hit points each (24 in total), against 10 hit points for the player. At the first room of map 01 out of 40? Why? When I gave my first steps out the first scene, I had 2 health points. Didnt find any health inside the castle, either. You could start with 1 hit point monsters. The visuals and music are so good that nobody will mind to start just wondering around a bit, killing easy monsters and figuring out how the game works. This is the kind of project that HAS to be fun, and you have another 39 maps to develop difficulty anyway.

Also, I don't know how hocus pocus works, but remember that players will be 99% doomers, so everyone will be happy if you let us just hold the fire button. Tapping the fire button so many times gets boring, specially with 4 hit points per enemy.

I hope you don't mind this criticism, I'm only saying all this because I'm really hyped by this project and want to play it :)
And balancing it is so close, anyway.


One last little nitpick: monsters have some black borders that don't really match the other visual style, I'm no graphic artist, but I think it would look better with other colors instead of black. I made a test with the gargoyle:


Again, hope you don't mind these suggestions and wish you good luck with this project, looking forward to play it!

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Darch said:

One last little nitpick: monsters have some black borders that don't really match the other visual style, I'm no graphic artist, but I think it would look better with other colors instead of black. I made a test with the gargoyle:
http://i.imgur.com/1TSm7Qi.png

This complaint's more against the original artists than rf`, really. Hocus Pocus had beautiful backdrops, but its sprites all had black borders like that.

Actually, I'd probably recommend keeping that for authenticity's sake, but that's me.

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Just played through the first 2 levels (and started the third) after downloading and playing the original shareware game for a while. Anyway, this WAD is amazing!

I have no problem with the black-outlined baddies; I think they look adorable! As for the monsters' hit points, I played on easy and thought it felt about perfect. I realize (I think) you're duplicating the hit point levels from the original game, but three dimensions makes it more difficult already, IMO.

A couple of things I hope to see implemented:

• A crystal counter. I didn't see one, which kept me thinking, "Is this the last crystal? What if there's more treasure?"
• Autofire. I realize that one of the powerups does this, but maybe allow a slower autofire by default.
• Some way for autoaim to give enemies priority over destructible walls. There were a couple times where I would start destroying a wall (autofire would be nice here, too) and it would reveal a monster, but my shots would continue to fire at the walls, presumably because they were closer?

I'll say it again: this is absolutely brilliant! Like others have said, I really hope you're able to see this through. Just fantastic work so far!

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Obsidian said:

Good grief, 40 levels? Here's hoping you have the dedication to finish them all. Thumbs up! :D

It will be a labor of love.

Darch said:

rf this is looking gorgeous. But, as already said, gameplay seriously needs balancing. You're introducing new mechanics and health system, giving no time to the player to get used to it.

The very first horde has 6 monsters with 4 hit points each (24 in total), against 10 hit points for the player. At the first room of map 01 out of 40? Why? When I gave my first steps out the first scene, I had 2 health points. Didnt find any health inside the castle, either. You could start with 1 hit point monsters. The visuals and music are so good that nobody will mind to start just wondering around a bit, killing easy monsters and figuring out how the game works. This is the kind of project that HAS to be fun, and you have another 39 maps to develop difficulty anyway.

I may revamp that map to be a little more lenient in the beginning. I realize that many monsters at once is a bit much to start out for someone who never played it--then again the original game was not always that forgiving either.


Also, I don't know how hocus pocus works, but remember that players will be 99% doomers, so everyone will be happy if you let us just hold the fire button. Tapping the fire button so many times gets boring, specially with 4 hit points per enemy.

I'd have to completely rework the weapons, given that you're supposed to find more lightning upgrades in order to fire faster. I had to compensate given the original game only let you fire one shot per screen, plus any extra powerups you got.


I hope you don't mind this criticism, I'm only saying all this because I'm really hyped by this project and want to play it :)
And balancing it is so close, anyway.

No problem! Helpful criticism should help me make this better!


One last little nitpick: monsters have some black borders that don't really match the other visual style, I'm no graphic artist, but I think it would look better with other colors instead of black.

As someone else pointed out, that was an art decision held over from the original game. Besides, it helps them stand out better from the rest of the map.

Salt-Man Z said:

• A crystal counter. I didn't see one, which kept me thinking, "Is this the last crystal? What if there's more treasure?"

The main hud has a crystal counter. I forgot to add one to the fullscreen one. I honestly don't know what to do about the ALThud though.


• Autofire. I realize that one of the powerups does this, but maybe allow a slower autofire by default.

I'm not sure how I want to approach this given what I just said earlier.


• Some way for autoaim to give enemies priority over destructible walls. There were a couple times where I would start destroying a wall (autofire would be nice here, too) and it would reveal a monster, but my shots would continue to fire at the walls, presumably because they were closer?

I'm wondering if making all shots slightly homing, or have a larger radius will help with this? Also giving breakable blocks +NEVERTARGET to prevent them from being homed in on? I'm not entirely sure how that flag works to be honest.

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I hope you continue with that labor, because this looks damn fun, and verrrrry interesting for a Doom mod - I'm really looking forward to this one!

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rf` said:

The main hud has a crystal counter. I forgot to add one to the fullscreen one. I honestly don't know what to do about the ALThud though.

Give them the +COUNTITEM flag and they'll be taken care of by the built-in item counter.

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Gez said:

Give them the +COUNTITEM flag and they'll be taken care of by the built-in item counter.

I could do that since regular treasure isn't counted with it.

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You could also use the built-in score system by making treasure scoreitems.

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My livestream channel moderator used to love this game, and I've briefly played a bit of Hocus Pocus myself, so I might end up playing the finished version of this wad. I'll certainly keep my eye on this one, 40 levels and all! Looks interesting to see Doom so....colourful and bright.

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Those screenshots look amazing.
But i cant but feel a bit odd about those old-school realistic hexen style hands going up against the cartoon style enemies.

This must be tedious mod to build and complete.

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FireFish said:

Those screenshots look amazing.
But i cant but feel a bit odd about those old-school realistic hexen style hands going up against the cartoon style enemies.

It does look a little goofy in the screencaps, but in-game I think it actually looks just right.

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I dunno, Hocus was supposed to be a late-teens/early-20s guy, as I recall, so seeing hands so veiny that they make him look like a 60-year-old strikes me as a bit off.

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I haven't really had a chance to change the hands yet. If anyone is willing to 'youthify' them, let me know. :P

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Wooooah, I remember these screenshots floating from the Doom General PYP thread from a while ago. Definitely have to try this out, amazing job so far!

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Just wanted to say that this looks totally badass and I loved me some Hocus Pocus back in the day. Thank you for this blatant nostalgia trip <3

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Never heard of this game, but your mod looks amazing. A couple of points:

1. What's the point of introducing high-hitpoint monsters on the hardest difficulty, then providing power-ups to overcome them? You may as well just use more monsters with the normal hitpoints, or introduce higher tier monsters sooner.

2. Consider this an opportunity to fix common complaints about the original game, not replicate them. I can't imagine that many people want games with 1980s difficulty (i.e. cheap with a steep curve). Provide a gradual introduction with a decent learning/difficulty curve. Bring people into it, don't turn them away.

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Darch said:

One last little nitpick: monsters have some black borders that don't really match the other visual style, I'm no graphic artist, but I think it would look better with other colors instead of black. I made a test with the gargoyle:


I actually thought the black borders added a bit of flavor to the design. Even if that's how they always were, it's actually a fairly fitting style choice, imo.

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