ETTiNGRiNDER

Set core type to "dynamic" and cycles to "max". CPU type should be fine left on default. Turn off any extra "high quality" filter methods in the rendering (they take more processing power and are garbage anyway). You will have to experiment yourself between using directx/opengl/software rendering for the DOSBox screen setting and see what seems to work best. You might also have to experiment with what balance you pick between the resolution you have Quake itself render at, and what resolution you have DOSBox itself resize that to. Ideally screen stretching is something you delegate to your monitor but if you have to do it in software I suspect it's generally faster if you set Quake to a low resolution and have DOSBox scale that up. But, Those are worse specs than my system so I can't guarantee you'll ever get it acceptable. If you what you really want is a "chocolate" type of port instead of using DOSBox, you might like TyrQuake, it's fairly old now but also one of the more "pure" implementations as I recall.

Stranger revivals have happened, but I have my doubts that a new Keen would be worth it to either the developers or the fans. As I recall, Tom Hall once said he'd wanted a new Commander Keen game to be a 3D game something like Mario 64. I suppose taking the franchise in that direction could possibly work if it were to ever happen. But if it were just some fake-retro imitation to cater to the niche audience that remembers and is nostalgic for the original Keen series... eh, I'd rather stick with the modding community for that.

@Gez I just went investigating and am unsurprised to report that it's a Chocolate Heretic inaccuracy. In vanilla, changing the map name does indeed alter both automap and intermission name with one string.

If you make a patch using SotSR, run Chocolate Heretic with an additional "-hhever 1.3" parameter.

Very likely, though I would've expected it to quit instead of freeze. Make sure your HHE.INI uses the values listed near the top of this page (and that the offsets aren't being given in the file more than once with different values, i.e. remove the old Heretic v1.0 ones). http://ettingrinder.youfailit.net/heretic-hhe.html If it still has problems when given those settings, then I can only reiterate to make sure that it can actually access the HERETIC.EXE file.

If you want to make it work in vanilla, HHE is still your best bet, unless you want to screw around with something wacky like a hex editor and IPS patches (which most players might not know how to use unless they're also into the ROMhacking scene, and won't be supported in Chocolate Heretic the way HHE is). Have you tried running HHE via DOSBox? It's a DOS program so if you've got anything newer than Windows XP that's your best bet for running it. You'll want to have an install of Heretic in the directory you mount as your DOSBox drive too so that HHE can read from/write to it. Although I will note, HHE never supported Shadow of the Serpent Riders entirely right. I think map names should all be editable with the SotSR INI that's out there but I can't guarantee you this 100% without checking. Regardless, there are also limitations to what your string lengths can be since you're replacing fixed data in the EXE. Various ports have their own ways of defining stuff. There's ZMAPINFO for (G)ZDoom and Doomsday has its own map definition format as well that I've used before in my WADs but I'd have to open one up and dig around in it again to remember exactly what I did for that. Not sure about other ports but those are the major relevant ones for Heretic at the moment, anyway.

Using the space as some sort of replacement for the news frontpage that used to exist before the site overhaul could be good.

@Krull: See the last paragraph in my post. I'm also assuming DeHackEd means DeHackEd, not BEX or anything.

It depends on what type of attack. Melee: No. Bullet attacks: No. Explosions/BFG spray: No. Projectiles: Yes, set the damage field on the projectile. (Deals x times 1d8 damage) Ramming attacks (i.e. lost soul): Yes, set the damage field on the enemy that performs the ramming attack. (Deals x times 1d8 damage) When you get more familiar with the program, some clever exceptions can be made like stacking more than one melee strike into a single tic with 0-length frames, but those are more advanced topics and it holds true that there are no clean/easy ways to adjust things like that in DeHackEd.

I've seen one of those before with a caption suggesting a spoof on the Civilization games. No idea if that was the original intent but it does seem fitting.

Good hub designs. I'm moderately satisfied with the stuff I come up with in my Heretic maps but whenever I dust off my Hexen project I have trouble figuring out any way to use the hub system more interestingly than "a bunch of self-contained maps that can be played in varying orders" without falling to the other side of "a mess of pointless crossovers and backtrackings that are there just because". I think part of it is that it requires more planning ahead to pull off well, which I'm kind of bad at.