deathzero021

Just released the FINAL version containing Episode 3. This brought many new additions to gameplay as well, such as elemental affinities, changes to poison mechanics, and a whole bunch more. Here's some new screenshots of episode 3:

In Episode 3, are the doors in the red world supposed to be opened with the red key? Because I couldn't get them opened and after having done everything else in all the other maps, I noclipped through them. Also, got D'sparil's robes but have no idea how to access the Audience Chambers...

o_o That's bizarre. I can't imagine why or how that's happening. I'll have to do some testing on clean gzdoom installs with different versions to see if I can reproduce that bug and track it down. Sorry about that. Edit: Tested a few clean installs of gzdoom from 3.0 to the latest official release. All work as intended. So the issue must be on your end. Probably a conflict with another mod you are loading up. Make sure there are no other decorate files being auto-loaded. If there really are NO other files being loaded, than I don't have a clue what could be causing it. I'm not aware of any console vars being able to have that kind of effect.

7-8 shots? What version of gzdoom are you running? And are you using any other mods? The fire spell usually kills Ettins in 1 hit. It even kills Green Chaos Serpents in 1 hit. So something isn't working right on your end. Likewise with the serpent staff, it's pretty powerful despite the slower fire rate.

Released Episode 2. A lot more effort went into it this time around. A handful of new areas and a big addition to the secret map (E2M9 is definitely worth checking out!) I also took more creative liberties when it came to episode 2's texturing and overall style. Went with a "Fire & Ice" approach. Other noteworthy changes include redoing all of the lighting in episode 1 using dynamic lights to provide most of the visibility. I think the darker lighting feels much more Hexen than Heretic's vanilla lighting does, while also being more modern too. A few areas are a bit heavy in the usage of dynamic lights so performance might dip down a little but the lowest I got was down to 80 fps in one map, the rest of them are well over 100 fps on a mid-range modern gaming PC. Also made some significant changes to weapon balance. All the weapons' functionality was reprogrammed in decorate but isn't obvious to the player other than some animation timing changes. Enemy health has also been adjusted again. Overall I think it's more balanced, a bit faster paced with a good progression with each classes 4 weapons. Random damage values have been removed from player weapons too, however enemy attacks are left unchanged. Well that about covers everything I think. I'm really not sure if I'll get around to releasing Episode 3. Maybe some day far in the future, but for now I have a bigger main project that I want to devote most my time to for now. But I'm not ruling out the possibility that I'll work on Episode 3 occasionally. I do want to finish this mod but it's a big time investment and I'd rather spend that time on something original. If I do finish this mod, I'll finish it off with 3 episodes and cut the 2 expansion episodes out.

Cool. I played through it on Skill 4 and it was pretty fun. Some great texturing and level detail. I also enjoyed the smart use of 3d floors, they served the level design well and weren't used solely for flair. Wish I saw stuff like that more often in mods. Was kinda easy though, allowing the player to take items with them between maps meant I ended up with 5 full heals and 12 quartz by the final map, and nearly full ammo. Some areas appeared to completely lack enemies at times. Seemed like the focus was on the mini-boss type enemies found through out, which were a little frustrating. The one sorcerer that throws lightning at you is incredibly overpowered. His projectiles are super fast and nearly kill the player in one or two hits. Luckily they don't have too much health so as long as I had a tome I could get through them. Overall great maps. I gotta admit, I was really hoping for another map when I stepped through that demonic portal in the end ;)

Played on skill 4. Was a fun little map. Only died once at the final battle, though I liked the false exit leading to the boss. Tome up and that encounter is pretty quick. Overall, I liked the design of the map. It's pretty small though, so it's a bit of an odd case. Seems like the layout would be great for a first map in an episode or megawad, but the combat design fits a single self contained level but doesn't have enough time to feel like a natural progression of difficulty takes place. I'd play more of stuff like this if you make a full episode in this style. Pretty good overall.

Jeeezus. This is some incredibly ambitious mapping. I usually shy away from urban-style, large non-linear maps because most of the time they are confusing to navigate, disappointing in combat and overall poor quality. But these maps are seriously impressive. I haven't gotten through all of them yet. Just completed map 5 and I'm having a blast. Combat is a bit of a mixed bag sometimes but it's not terrible. The action holds up pretty well overall. My biggest complaint would be hit-scanners damaging me from so far away that I can't even recognize where it's coming from. For being Boom compatible, these maps are fairly well detailed. I noticed a handful of clever tricks I hadn't see before (or at least I haven't seen them in a long time.) There are some texture issues though, misaligned textures, odd choices that don't mesh well together, and ones that appear to have a different resolution but overall these occur rarely and aren't too distracting. Also I wish a little more effort would have gone into the lighting, some areas appeared very flat making it hard to differentiate openings in some walls and such. Overall, excellent work here. I can't imagine the amount of time this must have taken. Minor oversights are to be expected in maps of this size but you still managed to keep those issues to a minimum. Also the amount of secrets is greatly appreciated. I rarely spend much time hunting for secrets in most maps, but they're so well designed here. Most secrets here are visible before you encounter them, and I really like that approach. It peaks the player's interest and makes them want to figure out how to get there to collect the item. Well I'm gonna continue playing this all the way through. Just wanted to drop in and leave some positive feedback.

Thanks for checking it out. I'm glad you liked some things about it at least. I guess I understand where you are coming from with the crossbow, but honestly making it hitscan was the first thing I did with this mod, as the vanilla crossbow has terrible range and accuracy due to how slow the projectiles are. Yeah, making faster projectiles could help with this but I really enjoy the immediate explosive results of hitscan. I actually don't like the tomed attacks for those weapons, they often don't feel useful. yeah the flamethrower is powerful but it's short range makes it too risky, and the other 2 weapons just lack a powerful feeling and have questionable use. I decided to go with tomed attacks that are more inline with the primary use of those weapons and just crank them up to 11. Although that gives me an idea for a potential future update. Perhaps I could add in alt fires for the tomed attacks that are similar to vanilla tomed attacks but also rebalanced to be a bit more impactful. Maybe even add a similar alt fire for untomed attacks too, like a mini version of the vanilla tomed attacks. Hmm.. Oh and for the staff, I just disliked the autofire on it, actually makes it feel harder to successfully hit your target and NOT take damage yourself. This way you can more reliably run in, hit a monster, and back out without accidentally refiring and missing the timing. I suppose this says more about my play-style though than anything else haha. Edit: Fixed the autoaim issue for the GoldWand's powered up attack. Link should be updated.

Might help if you explain what the mod is or does. I did test it out anyway though. So as far as I can tell, only the starting weapons were changed, and Heretic items were added in. I didn't really enjoy the changes made to the starting weapons. they feel floaty and have even less impact than vanilla Hexen. The Fighter attacking quickly like that isn't satisfying at all, feels more like slapping enemies rapidly versus the PUNCHIER vanilla combo attacks. I thought it was weird that the Cleric gets 2 different maces for starting weapons, and a really weird punch alt attack. Same issues as the Fighter though, attack rate is too high for too little impact. I'd rather just smash in a monster's head with one moderately swift attack than autofire spam a thousand smacks until they plop over. Finally the starting weapon for the mage looks cool, but takes up literally half the screen. Also there appears to be some miscalculation with the projectiles it spawns, they are significantly lower than the crosshairs, though i suppose that's not a big deal for autoaim users. (tested in gzdoom) Anyway those are my thoughts. I suppose our preferences to combat are polar opposites, so don't take my criticism too seriously :P

Download: Dropbox So recently I was playing The Wayfarer for Heretic and while I appreciated the weapon modifications, it still didn't feel like it was enough to really save the combat at times. I've always felt the weapons in Heretic were a little boring and in some cases, awful. The combat can drag on at times due to the low damage of the weapons. So I decided to throw together a small and simple weapon rebalance mod tailored to my preferences. I'm not claiming this to be a "superior" balance of Heretic's weapons, just my personal taste in balance. Either way, I thought I'd share it in case anyone might enjoy it the same. In general, the weapons are a bit stronger, so DPS has increased for the most part. This results in faster combat and a slight conservation of ammo. Enemy health has been adjusted a bit as well but overall this mod will make the game easier, so I recommend playing at a higher difficulty than you usually would. The weapons balance is inspired from Doom's weapons even more so than Heretic originally was, as it's just more satisfying to me. This mod changes: - Weapon fire rates - Projectile damage and speed - Powered up functionality has changed for all weapons - Enemy health slightly adjusted Requires: Zdoom-based source port. Should work on just about any Zdoom-based source port that is compatible with decorate. Although I only tested it on recent gzDoom builds, so I recommend gzDoom for now, until further testing. Uses only vanilla assets, so no sounds or graphics are included. Thus, there isn't much to show off in screenshots. Perhaps I'll throw together a video later, if I continue working on this. In the future, I may rebalance the enemies as well to compensate for the increased strength of the player, although it isn't a necessity. Let me know what you think of it and if you have any further suggestions! Download: Dropbox Changelog: -v1.1 fixes the autoaim issue for the GoldWand's powered up attack.

Thanks for playing guys. I do plan on continuing this. Currently I am working on a different Hexen/Heretic inspired standalone mod for GZdoom. It has heavy RPG elements and a slowed-down survival horror approach to gameplay. As you can imagine, that's a project that's taking a lot of time. However, I can still spend some time here and there on this project. My next goal for this project is to re-balance the weapons some more (the ice spell is simply too powerful) and finish Episode 2 which I started not long after releasing Episode 1. I'll post some screenshots and additional information soon.

I see what you mean. You're very observant haha. I shall correct that in an update. Thanks for pointing it out. To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to texturing and it is a bit lackluster in some areas, I do plan on going over the maps again and improve on that regard. (maybe include some additional textures which I feel may be needed in some areas, or minor texture edits to break up monotony in some areas..) Edit: Spent some time re-texturing the first map, I think it made a big difference. I will have to go through the other maps and improve on the texturing there as well. I'll update the wad once completed. Thanks again Gez for pointing that out. New Screenshot: Edit2: re-textured all the maps of episode 1. Download link has been updated.

Honestly the point of the project was to do away with hexen-like puzzles, but use hexen assets for something more action oriented. True, I kept the heretic maps mostly faithful but that was the intention. More than anything, this was a learning experience for me. The game play changes will be a base for future hexen mods I'll work on. Thus, I didn't build maps from scratch. Thanks for trying it out. Edit: @Gez I really don't see what you mean. Perhaps it looks unusual to you because I have my saturation turned up to 1.5 (i just prefer more colorful textures and sprites) Here's a similar screenshot with saturation at 1.0

Description: Heretic-to-Hexen is a mod for Hexen that brings Heretic's maps to Hexen. Maps were heavily modified to work with Hexen assets, as well as containing new features from Hexen and new map progression. All weapons and enemies have been modified in an attempt to balance the experience due to the differing map designs between games. The final version 3.0 contains 3 episodes. I have no plans to do the expansion episodes. version 3 includes many more changes to gameplay. Most notably all monsters now have an elemental affinity, which makes them weaker to some attacks but more resistant to others. Poison also works differently, standing in poison swamps will slowly drain health, the longer you stand in it, the longer the poison will persist. Any healing item can be used to cure poison. The boots artifact has also been changed, it no longer boosts speed but instead provide protection from dangerous terrain. The maps are much darker than vanilla and rely heavily on dynamic lights and hardware rendering. Element Mechanics: Physical/Melee - Ettins and Centaurs are purely physical monsters. They deal melee damage and are resistant to melee attacks but take more damage from magic attacks. Magic - Magic attacks are generally colored purple or dark blue. They are powerful against physical monsters. Magic Wraiths and Magic Bishops are resistant to magic attacks but take more damage from melee attacks. Fire - Generally colored red and orange, fire attacks deal extra damage to ice monsters. Fire monsters such as Fire Afrits, Fire Wraiths and Fire Wendigos take extra damage from poison attacks and are resistant to Fire and Ice attacks. Ice - Generally colored cyan or light blue, ice attacks deal extra damage to lightning monsters. Ice monsters such as Ice Afrits, Ice Stalkers and Ice Wendigos take extra damage from fire attacks and are resistant to Ice and Lightning attacks. Lightning - Generally colored yellow, lightning attacks deal extra damage to poison monsters. Lightning monsters such as Lightning Serpents and Lightning Bishops take extra damage from ice attacks and are resistant to Lightning and Poison attacks. Poison - Generally colored green, poison attacks deal extra damage to fire monsters and have a lingering effect. Poison monsters such as Poison Stalkers and Poison Serpents take extra damage from lightning attacks and are resistant to Poison and Fire attacks. Details: Sourceport: GZDoom (must be version 4.10 or above!) Iwad required: Hexen.wad Crouching: Disabled Jumping: Enabled Renderer: Hardware recommended. Sector Light Mode: Software HUD: Fullscreen Hud or Alt Hud Download: Heretic-To-Hexen-v3.zip Screenshots: Changelog: Credits: Id Software for the Doom engine. Raven Software for Heretic and Hexen. RockstarRaccoon for modified weapon sprite. Made using Slade 3 and GZDoomBuilder.