deathzero021

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.

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.

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 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

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

Now when you say hub.. You mean a hub like in hexen? So will keys and switches carry over from map to map? Just curious. Looks great.

Loved this map. One of the most impressive maps in terms of scale, atmosphere and architecture that I've seen. I got a little lost playing it before finding the red key, mostly due to the optional area leading to the blue armor, but I eventually found where I had to go. I could not use the yellow skull key to activate objects, the message said I needed a yellow card key, so I had to use the console to get a yellow card to progress. Other than that, I love the creepy horror music, the dark ambience of the map and the slow start. Really makes me feel like I just awoke in hell and have to punch my way through lesser demons before the elite find me and all hell breaks loose. Unfortunately I could not finish the map. Most of the combat is well paced and manageable on UV. That last room after picking up the red skull was pretty tough though, the cyberdemon and the archviles killed me a few times. After that I went outside to what I assume is the final fight with huge waves of enemies. The revenants were really doing some damage to me, and just a huge blizzard of projectiles slowly chew my health apart. I would keep trying to finish it if it weren't for the awful performance in this section of the map. Most of the map runs decently enough. I usually get around 45-60 fps most of the map with some of the higher points being close to 100, but the outside battle is slow as hell. 20 fps, stuttering frames. It makes me nauseous trying to play it, which is a shame, considering how much I enjoyed the map up until than. Not sure what kind of PC you were testing this on but I don't see this as playable on a mid-range gaming PC. I played on the latest build of gzdoom with all post-processing effects off, I tried low fov and "rendering quality" on speed. Nothing could improve the frame rate there (which is normal in large maps). Maybe some day I'll be able to finish this. Either way, this map is awesome and anyone who loves the hell theme and horror aspects of Doom should give it a try.

Played through the full map (mostly) but got stuck on the lift as well. I also could not get the keys to work either. only the purple key will work, the other keys don't so I had to clip through the doors. Despite being broken and incompletable, it's a nice looking map with plenty of gzdoom details that I appreciate. It's a bit on the easy side, I played on UV and did not die a single time. However, with fast monsters, that helps to boost the difficulty a bit. Overall good map, I never felt too lost either. Each area of the map was easy to recognize and was distinct from other parts of the map so I never felt confused. There's a lot of space to fight though which leads to the easy combat, as well as tons of ammo. I got to the lift section with 600 plasma and plenty of rockets. Anyway, hope you fix the issue with the lift.

Gorgeous map. I love the music too. Only played for a few minutes but seems pretty fun. My only issue so far is the poor performance I'm experiencing. The beginning of the map is really bad, I was getting 30-40 fps. It improves later on though and feels more playable. It is a bit inconsistent though and being a gamer who uses a 144hz monitor, I can really feel the framerates jumping all over the place as I move around. It's a shame cause it does hurt the experience but Im not sure if there's anything that can be done to improve on that considering most large, detailed maps have similar issues. I'll still play through it though when I get the time.

Cool i downloaded that example. While testing my map in Chocolate Doom, everything was smooth until the red door, it crashed on an error that said "P_AddActivePlat: No more plats!" Does anyone know what this means and how i can fix it? I don't get this issue with GZDoom. Edit: updated the link with a new version of the map. Still have that crash on Chocolate Doom though.

Hello fellow Doom fans. I just recently joined this site and spent most of today lurking before posting this up. I've been playing Doom for as long as I can remember but I didn't get into community made content until about 2 years ago. Currently i'm running GzDoom with Brutal Doom and HD Texture Pack. After playing so many great pwads from the top 100 list, i decided to give mapping a shot. I have some background in creating small independent games so this isn't my first time creating game content but it is the first time i've ever used a sector-based map editor. Anyway on to the map, currently it doesn't have much of a name or a theme, it was more of a test of what i can do with Doom Builder. The wad only contains Map01 and should be used with Doom2 as a base. I've only tested it with the latest version of GzDoom but i did not make use of any special zDoom features. Some details: - Does not contain new graphics, sounds or music. - Does have different enemy sets for Easy, Normal and Hard. - Not multiplayer tested - Some rooms are a little too dark, this will be edited later but for now turn up the brightness if necessary. - Contains 5 secrets - A complete run through of the level took me 8 minutes on Hard. - Made in 3 days - There are some rooms that work best with jumping enabled (but has been tested to work without it) I'm open to any sort of criticism so bring it at me. Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vp9u18zjmjix6s0/Death%27s%20Map%20%28doom2%29%20%28v2%29.zip EDIT [7-14-13]: I've updated the map. Improved the doors, added a lot of extra ceiling decorations, threw in some monsters and a bunch of other minor stuff. p.s. if i broke any rules by posting this i apologize. Edit: here are some screenshots:

@BlueFireZ88: Thanks for the link. Time to give this another go.

@schwerpunk: thanks for the excellent feedback :D also the demo shows you died in the 3rd room. Is that an error with the demo or did that really happen? kinda looks like it got a little wonky at the end. i noticed that i left some doors without checking unpegged. it bothers me to, not sure how i forgot them, just too many doors lol. I'm not sure what you mean by "flush with the wall" but i assume you mean they are flat along the wall and not pushed in like most of the other doors. that was simply laziness on my part, the doors are gonna be the first thing I edit on this map. (when i first started using Doom Builder i was having a lot of trouble with doors, it's pathetic i know) I made use of the traps to limit the number of enemies that are thrown at the player all at once. The last area shows what i mean the most. I wanted an easy starting map but my next map will be a little more difficult than that. Also if anyone has any good examples for better traps I'll gladly take a look at it.

@BloodyAcid: that is a nice edit you did and i can definitely see what you mean. I'm still getting the hang of designing good looking maps for Doom and playing through the Doom64 maps recently i've noticed just how good the Doom engine can look when making good use of varying ceiling heights and shapes. (some of the outdoor areas in Doom64 look awesome) I ended up using a lot of pillars and candles because i didn't know what else to do. some of the rooms i put in some ceiling lights but I couldn't help but notice the short supply of light textures. I'm not sure if I'll continue to edit this map or just move onto a new map and carry over some of this experience/info. As for compatibility, I wasn't sure how many people still run Doom on DOSbox but I do have DOSbox so I'll start using it for testing if it'll help. I also felt the level was quite easy for me but it is an intro map so I don't think it should be too hard. I forgot to mention the few rooms with some platforming-like design, again it was tested with ZDoom so i was making a lot of use of the jump key but i stopped with the platforms about half way through making the level realizing many people probably don't use the jump key. Thanks for the quick replies. I'll be sure to upload screenshots next time. (or later today)

I liked the article. i agree with it completely. for me, Classic Doom is my favorite FPS of all time. Simplicity and design are it's strong points and the fact that it was created to be fast and fun, while today's games move so slowly because they want you to look at all the fancy environments they spent huge amounts of money to make, they aren't nearly as fun. Bad cutscenes/story and realism is what made me lose interest in modern FPSs.