Marscaleb

There's an automap mode in Doom Builder? I can't find it... I just did a search and found a video where someone used that mode, but it was tied to a button I don't have. Am I using an outdated copy, or is there some option that has hidden that toolbar?

Because what I'm trying to do is examine the geometry in a more pure state. I'm not talking about permanently disabling everything. But the extra lines and boxes get in the way of seeing the lines themselves, especially in tight regions.

Is there a way to disable the normals from being displayed on the map? By which I mean: that short line that sticks out of every wall-line to show which way is the "front" of the wall. Can I turn that off? I know you it's important, but sometimes its in the way. Also, is there a way to not display the nodes? Or any sector line that is flat to adjacent sectors? Basically like, a way to display the lines as they are shown in the auto-map in-game, but with textures and lighting?

Heretic seems to make more use of strong saturated colors, especially for things like all the powerups that are all over the maps, projectiles, enemies, etc. Wheras Hexen doesn't use as much of the "bright" colors, the vibrant reds and the vibrant greens etc. But when you really compare the two, Hexen puts a lot more subtle coloring into its art. A slime-covered wall in heretic is a grey wall with big splotches of bright green slime. A slime-covered wall in Hexen is a grey-ish green-ish wall. So I get why someone would say that Heretic is more colorful than Hexen; you really have to look closely to see the more refined use of color that's going on in Hexen. But once all the enemies are killed and the power-ups are collected, the Heretic maps start to look more drab and dull than the Hexen maps do. I'd love to see them release some sort of remastered version. It doesn't need updated graphics, but an updated interface would be nice. Even just a version that plays nice with modern systems would be nice. Hell, I'd even settle for a DOS-Box version that comes from a legitimate site that I'm not worried is going to give my computer herpes.

Perhaps the problem is that it doesn't have enough muddy colors. For a medieval setting, you are going to have a lot of stone textures, and they only have their basic grey for regular stone, and then a tan-brown for alternate stones. So most of the game is just a basic gray. Compare that to the Hexen palatte, which retains most of the same colors, but shortens the vibrant colors (used mostly for magic effects anyway) and gives some more muddy colors. And the Hexen textures used those to add little pieces of detail to the textures. Of course, Hexen had fewer levels that were supposed to look like they were in a castle and more that were "outside" so the game doesn't look as grey, but still. Compare that further with the Hexen II palette and the vibrant colors are almost non-existant. There are four colors with four shades for some full-bright magic effects, and after that only the red and gold colors even get bright. But then again, ShadowCaster has even fewer muddy shades than Heretic, and nobody ever complains about that game's aesthetics, so what do I know?

That's what we need for Heretic mods, some weak fodder enemies! Though I never considered the chaingunner to be fodder; he may have only 70 HP but he will f*** you up hard!

That made sense in Karnov on the NES. It doesn't make so much sense in a game that uses a keyboard. (But it is good to know; thank you!)

Yeah but it becomes a problem when you are trying to navigate that stuff in the heat of battle. Sure, selecting a tome of power right before a tough section is good, but I rarely selected anything other than a quartz flask just so that I could hit that in the heat of the moment. Vanilla Heretic didn't let you bind artifacts to specific keys, and that was a HUGE problem. I would have used the inventory a lot more if I didn't have to always keep the health queued up to use in an emergency. Compare that to Duke 3D, which did a similar inventory system, but also had hot keys for all the items. When I needed that portable med kit, it was always one button away. (Not to mention, I could actually turn off the jetpack and save it for later.) In my opinion, the inventory in Heretic was basically useless because I couldn't *really* use stuff whenever I wanted it.

I'm glad someone else noticed the palette. The palette in Doom is honestly not good. All of Id's games seem to have problems with their palettes, really, except maybe for the first Quake. Ditto. Because the two games are so compatible, I kind of want to be scientific about this. I want to try some wads that swap content between the games. People keep bringing up the weapons. If you played Heretic with Doom's weapons, how would it feel? People mention the aesthetic. Well, how would the maps look if you kept the layouts the same, but re-textured them with Doom's textures? (Can't just do a simple swap, you need to replace them intentionally.) Or perhaps take it the other way; start with some classic Doom maps, re-texture them with Heretic/Hexen art, and replace the monsters/weapons with Heretic ones. Is it still a fun map design? And then start swapping things back and forth. How does it play with Heretic monsters and Doom weapons, or with Doom monsters and Heretic weapons? Also, I will definitely admit that the sound design in Heretic is lacking. It demonstrates clearly how much sound design plays into a satisfying experience. The crossbow shouldn't sound like a shotgun, but it just isn't as satisfying to hear that soft "whipp-peh!" compared to that deep guttural "K-CHOOM!" (The same comparison can also be made to Doom 3's plasma rifle. Pitiful.) And the dragon claw, wow, that's a horrible sound. That said, the sounds in Hexen are some of the best I've heard in any video game. I don't know what happened to Raven between those two games.

Okay, I know that this is really just a matter of taste, but I just find Doom so much more fun to play than Heretic. But that said, I SHOULD like Heretic more. I like Heretic's theme better, and I'd rather play a game where I run around a fantasy world than one where I run around military bases. Heretic has some more interesting powerups and you can even activate them when you need them. But yet, I just have more fun playing Doom than I do Heretic. Even though I've played Doom so much more and neither Doom nor Doom II have many surprises left for me, I am more enticed by the idea of playing through Doom yet again on a new system than to play through Heretic. And yes, this is all just a subjective thing, and I'm not going to knock anyone who thinks Heretic is more fun. But still, I can't quite put my finger on why I like Doom more. Any thoughts? What is it that Doom is doing better than even Heretic, a nearly identical game (mechanically speaking) just can't quite do as well?

So wait, it doesn't actually detect that it has passed the player? The video made it sound like it could turn before its move counter hits zero.

Something else I've thought of that I don't get about this code. If an enemy walks past the player, it turns around. How does it know if it has walked past the player? I mean otherwise the player could easily walk around in circles around a monster. Perhaps not perpetually, but often enough the move counter would get set to a high enough value that a simple side-step could have a demon keep walking in the wrong direction for a long time. So how does the code detect that it has walked past the player?

I would. It just seems disconnected from the experience people were going for. Look at it outside of the code itself. If you were playing any kind of shooting game and you shot an enemy and they didn't react, wouldn't you think it was a bug?

What could cause them to be set to NODIR at this point?

Okay, I get it now. Honestly I'm pretty impressed; the one designation of not allowing them to choose a direction opposite of their current movement is such a tiny little thing, and yet it enables them to follow corridors. How did anyone think that up? Or was it just some sort of happy accident... I'm still a little curious about some other things. This is more about the specific code than the general process, but I'm wondering how they determine "second best option," or rather, how they determine that with optimal code. I can't think of how to do that without running a massive series of if statements that check all eight directions. I think I found the code that does this in P_NewChaseDir. I see it creates an array just called "d" (which it gives an array length of 3 but only uses the second two?) and it sets one to be either north or south and one to be either east or west. (I'm guessing a quick check of player position being greater or smaller in X and Y?) But I don't understand the logic of what it is doing; how it is quickly determining each possible route to the player and whether or not it is viable.