The biggest flaws of Heretic (as compared to Doom)

[Woolie Wool]

On 11/1/2017 at 9:45 PM, galileo31dos01 said:

I think it does happen, some weeks ago I summoned him as a friend and when he died, everything else suddenly died. For this reason I couldn't tell how many of them are necessary to kill a cyberdemon/spiderdemon. 

If you want to find out, create a DECORATE clone of D'Sparil without the A_Sor2DthInit and A_Sor2DthLoop functions.

[galileo31dos01]

1 hour ago, Woolie Wool said:

If you want to find out, create a DECORATE clone of D'Sparil without the A_Sor2DthInit and A_Sor2DthLoop functions.

How do I make that work? 

[xdarkmasterx]

11 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

How do I make that work? 

make text file called, "decorate", copy this into file

 

Quote

 

ACTOR Sorcerer3 : Sorcerer2 replaces Sorcerer2

 

{

states

{

death:

stop

 

}
}

 

and "summon sorcerer3"

 

 

 

and drag drop file into zdom executeble, now he wont not die properly so wont kill all monster when he dei

[Woolie Wool]

That would almost certainly cause the enemies to still die because the actor will still call the relevant action functions which are native to Sorcerer2.

20 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

How do I make that work? 

ACTOR Sorcerer2NoKillMonsters : Sorcerer2 replaces Sorcerer2
{
    States
    {
        Death:
            SDTH A 8
            SDTH B 8
            SDTH C 8 A_PlaySound("dsparil/scream", CHAN_BODY, 1, FALSE, ATTN_NONE)
        DeathLoop:
            SDTH DE 7
            SDTH F 7
            SDTH G 6 A_PlaySound("dsparil/explode", CHAN_BODY, 1, FALSE, ATTN_NONE)
            SDTH H 6
            SDTH I 18
            SDTH J 6 A_NoBlocking
            SDTH K 6 A_PlaySound("dsparil/bones", CHAN_BODY, 1, FALSE, ATTN_NONE)
            SDTH LMN 6
            SDTH O -1 A_BossDeath
            Stop
    }
}

 

The death animation won't be as fancy because A_Sor2DthLoop loops certain frames of the death animation seven times and I have no idea which frames those are or the inclination to experiment with it but this should work.

 

[Gez]

14 minutes ago, Woolie Wool said:

The death animation won't be as fancy because A_Sor2DthLoop loops certain frames of the death animation seven times

Unsurprisingly, those are the frames starting from DeathLoop.

 

The ZDoom wiki even points out that an identical result can be achieved with

SDTH DEFDEFDEFDEFDEFDEFDEF 7

instead of

	DeathLoop:
		SDTH DE 7
		SDTH F 7 A_Sor2DthLoop

 

[Woolie Wool]

Yes, but I don't know how many without reinstalling the Heretic iwad and killing D'Sparil a bunch of times to watch him die and count the frames.

[galileo31dos01]

What @Woolie Wool proposed works totally fine, also I didn't notice any issues in D'Sparil's death. 

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Isn't A_Sor2DthInit the only thing you need to get rid of? I remember all monsters dying the moment D'sparil enters his death animation not while looping the electrocution or blowing up.

 

Edit : Looks like it also sets special1 to 7 to control how many times the electrocution loops.

[Average]

I love Heretic.  I played it before Doom so obviously nostalgia gets in there but I have never felt that Heretic was any more flawed than Doom.  Both games come from the same 'stable' but both offer their own thing.

 

I think the music in Heretic is much better than the MIDI metal of Doom.  When I first played Doom I couldn't get the music to play back for a really long time.  When I eventually did get to play Doom with music I found it totally jarring.  Heretic's music (for me) is much more fitting.

 

I like the hand drawn art of Heretic.  The monsters may not have as many frames of animation as Doom but at least they're not based on photographs of foam models. :P  Seriously though, I don't find the art any less realistic than Doom's.  Let's face it, they're both pretty cartoony. 

 

I tend to play both Doom and Heretic using GZDoom.  In my opinion, Heretic works wonderfully and looks beautiful with bloom and ambient occlusion and using the Heijl Dawson tone map.  These 'small' tweaks, to my mind, mitigate the issue of a limited texture set.

 

Bonus random thought:  If Doom had come out after Heretic I wonder what the Heretic World forum would be like!

[Da Werecat]

Doom would be misunderstood as an ugly Heretic clone, and Hereticworld would be dead by now.

 

I think.

[DoctorGenesis]

6 hours ago, Average said:

I like the hand drawn art of Heretic.  The monsters may not have as many frames of animation as Doom but at least they're not based on photographs of foam models. :P  Seriously though, I don't find the art any less realistic than Doom's.  Let's face it, they're both pretty cartoony.

You say cartoony like it is a bad thing. :(

[Woolie Wool]

I like Heretic's art, the problem is that there is just not enough of it.

[Average]

Just now, DoctorGenesis said:

You say cartoony like it is a bad thing. :(

That wasn't my intention.  Sorry. :)

 

The cartoony sprites and palette are one of the reasons why I like Heretic and Doom waaaaay more than todays photo-realistic FPS games. :)

[reflex17]

Spoiler

The biggest flaw of Heretic is that it's actually better than Doom and just like, nobody understands, man. lol. Especially in terms of a custom mapper's standpoint, the gameplay elements added in it can add a lot of depth to what's going on. Stuff like the Tome or Wings are a consideration when one is making a map so that can be fun to think about when building a level. I can see why someone might prefer Doom for sure, stuff like the total lack of hitscan enemies stands out for example. I really like Raven's level design asthetic but Doom and Doom2 are more 'unique' in what they presented in the long run I guess. Romero, Hall and Petersen really delivered with Doom and D2 the full range of what was possible for quite a few years. Every other game had to be a 'Doom killer' to be worthy of anything, like if the first three weapons were a pistol, shotgun and machine gun everyone called ripoff right away hahaha.

 

With very little storyline exposition to go on the Raven games were thematic powerhouses, Hexen is amazing, but like a lot of you have said already that game in particular feels like it 'could have been better' in some ways... It treads on the line of being just a little bit too 'puzzley' for my tastes, like Dark Forces, but both these games are still nearly beyond compare for level design imo.

 

Duke3d, Blood, Shadow Warrior and Quake are 'better' than Heretic, I'd say, and their engines are vastly superior in terms of flexibility. I dunno, I'm a huge fan of all these games sure, but I just prefer Heretic because I like fantasy over sci-fi just in general. After a bit though you just want an SSG again ehehehe ^_^ It's a double edge sword, from my recollection it was harder to make maps in Blood and SW as compared to Duke3d, the tagging systems got really complicated but in turn much more flexible for it. There's a Matt chat with Tom Hall where Mr. Hall brings up a good point, as the games got more complex, id and Apogee both grew as companies, and it got harder to communicate amongst everyone to get ideas across. Whether or not the games suffered I suppose is up to the players... Grand Theft Auto 3 was one of the first really big 3d open world games, and folks seem to remember a game like that before Daggerfall for example.

 

I've seen id say Doom was made a little cartoony on purpose as well, wolf3d was kind of like that too intentionally I bet. My friend and I talk about Blizzard's art style in the same terms from time to time, their games deal with a lot of dark storylines but everything is all colorful and junk like that. The more time goes on, the more I appreciate that there's only 100 textures in Heretic, it's an interesting limitation and yeah, all the community art is totally rad anyway, so no problems there. Hexen also can be quite tough to texture for, it seems like literally 50% of the textures are gears and switches etc. The atmosphere in Hexen is so fine tuned that with the base assets it can be difficult to make something more than what's already done better in the IWAD.

 

Of course much of this is just my opinion, I always wanted to make levels for Dark Forces but the one editor I could find was difficult to use and had limited documentation. There's a lot of different reasons for the popularity of a game or lack, I suppose... Lately I map for Hexen because it has jumping as a mechanic and that being understood it can be really fun to design around. It's funny how folks tell jokes about Doomguy having no knees so he can't jump at all, but when I think about it, if Doom had jumping in the first place that would've been bad. Platforming in 3d spaces is a dicey thing if it's not done proper, and id at the time was all about cutting out elements in the game that detracted from the core idea. Out of all the Doom engine games Heretic is my favorite but it's just so hard to decide sometimes. No matter how many usermaps are made I've always wished there were more for Heretic... that's never been an issue with the Green Marine hehehe

 

TLDR: I couldn't let this thread go without saying something... Flaw in Heretic? Lack of user content? Is that a thing that can exist? Hell I don't know.

 

The levels can be 'samey' I guess, and I don't really like the expansion pack very much.

 

[Graf Zahl]

On 11/4/2017 at 1:22 AM, Pegg said:

Isn't A_Sor2DthInit the only thing you need to get rid of? I remember all monsters dying the moment D'sparil enters his death animation not while looping the electrocution or blowing up.

 

Edit : Looks like it also sets special1 to 7 to control how many times the electrocution loops.

Correct. So all you need is a ZScript replacement like this

 

class AltSorcerer2 : Sorcerer2
{
    States
    {
    Death:
        SDTH A 8 A_Sor2DthInit;
        SDTH B 8;
        SDTH C 8 A_PlaySound("dsparil/scream", CHAN_BODY, 1, false, ATTN_NONE);
    DeathLoop:
        SDTH DE 7;
        SDTH F 7 { special1 = 7; }
        SDTH G 6 A_PlaySound("dsparil/explode", CHAN_BODY, 1, false, ATTN_NONE);
        SDTH H 6;
        SDTH I 18;
        SDTH J 6 A_NoBlocking;
        SDTH K 6 A_PlaySound("dsparil/bones", CHAN_BODY, 1, false, ATTN_NONE);
        SDTH LMN 6;
        SDTH O -1 A_BossDeath;
        Stop;
    }

}

 

No more hacks needed.

 

[Arctangent]

you uh

 

you replaced the wrong function there, graf

[dickkickem]

Heretic really doesn't have much of a variety of weapons you can choose from, along with the fact that the setting is weird. 

[_42_]

Heretic is just as good as Doom to me. 

[Jon]

Really limited collection of textures.  That said I'm amazed at what has been achieved despite that, both in the IWAD and PWADs.