Not Jabba

Saying that MIDI is a low-quality format because it uses old sounds is kind of like saying that Doom maps are all low-quality because they run on an old engine. They're not worse, just different, and saying otherwise would be a huge disservice to people like stewboy and Mechadon who have spent years mastering their respective crafts. What they have in common is that the people making them are working under a specific set of limitations, which is why they go together -- both MIDIs and Doom levels are based on technology from the same era. MIDIs sound Doomy. Obviously that doesn't mean you *have* to use a MIDI in a Doom level. As many people have already pointed out, you can do whatever you want, and that's totally ok. That said, if your goal is to create something that feels polished, you may want to give some thought to how the elements of your composition work together. The more your level is like vanilla Doom, the more fitting a MIDI will be. The less your level is like vanilla Doom, the easier it will be to use an OGG or MP3.

The preferred method seems to be getting a few trusted people to playtest as you go, then doing a public beta stage for a month or so before final release, and that seems to work very well for most wads. If you're a beginner mapper (which I think you're not, though I can't remember what you've made?), then I'd recommend releasing partial betas to make sure you're on the right track. EDIT: A couple of other benefits of partial betas: -If you don't have private testers yet, it's a good way to find them. The people who show the most interest in your work and give the most thoughtful feedback will be the best ones to ask for private testing. -It seems to be a good motivator. Large megawad projects that are tested in stages (Jenesis, Hellbound, Eternal Doom) always seem to get completed. Maybe it's just that the positive feedback keeps the mappers going?

Abounding Nice Colors Immerse Even Naysaying Troopers, Although Lively Indignation Ensues -- 'Nuff Said! MASTERMIND (Oops, already taken. Give me a sec.) PAIN ELEMENTAL

Sounds like you are actually resizing, not cropping. If you want it to look good, you have to create an image (or find an existing image) that is already at the right size.

Slade can do this. Use Shift-click or CTRL-click to highlight every PNG you want to change, and then you can convert them all at once using the same method you would for a single image.

Well said! This is why I've been using conveyors/dummy sectors for all my effects so far, even though I'm mapping in Hexen format. Boom-style compatibility just feels right.

(Inspired by the Demon/Spectre use thread and rdwpa's old Theoretical Discussion threads, which I have blatantly ripped off the header from :P) (See also: Heretic Artifacts) The biggest complaints about Heretic's bestiary are A) all the monsters are basically the same, and B) they all have mid-range health that's too high relative to the power of most of the weapons, making them tedious to kill. Even the most die-hard Heretic fans tend to acknowledge that the game could benefit a huge amount from an expanded bestiary. So what do you think would make it better? Which monsters would you add to make the combat more dynamic? Would you rather see fodder enemies that go down quickly and can be used in swarms, or more miniboss enemies with randomized attacks like the Iron Lich? Which existing monsters are the most useful or interesting? What are some strategic ways to use the existing monsters that people may not have thought of? Bonus question: suppose you took the approach of making the player's weapons more powerful so that the existing enemies were less grindy? How would that change the needs of the bestiary? My favorite Heretic enemies to use are the Nitrogolem and Disciple. The Nitrogolem is weaker than the Revenant and its attack is easier to dodge, but it's still more dangerous than conventional projectile shooters. I really like that combination of high-damage semi-fodder enemy, because it lets you use a lot of them at once to keep the player under pressure without requiring lots of cover or feeling unfair, and also because it's a good way to control the player's combat focus -- Nitrogolems are usually the first enemies a player will shoot for, which gives you a good way to control the flow of a map. Disciples have a simple but effective attack pattern that also requires good dodging skills; they're dangerous both as lone enemies in close quarters and as group enemies in larger areas. In some ways, I think they're a better, more versatile enemy than their Doom counterpart, the Cacodemon -- and they may be the only Heretic enemy I can say that about. Some ideas I've been thinking about for new monsters: -A melee enemy that is actually powerful enough to create pressure for the player until it goes down. I've been experimenting with this, and it seems like the ideal combination is significant base speed, better-than-default melee range, and some sort of special power, like being a ghost, having a charge attack, or putting on random bursts of much higher speed to make it more dangerous for players to turn their back on the monster. -Low-health Sidhe zombies that use player weapons like the Elven Wand, Ethereal Crossbow, or Dragon Claw. -I really liked the Viper enemy from Echelon, and it seems like with a good reskin, it might make an interesting Ophidian enemy. The flamethrower attack with the long volleys of randomly spreading fireballs make it sort of like a Mancubus/Arachnotron cross, capable of pinning the player down to some extent but also allowing it to be more mobile and easier to use in larger groups.

Just thought I'd make another thread to go with the Heretic monsters one, because artifacts are a whole other interesting can of worms. The inventory system is the biggest thing that makes Heretic into its own unique game instead of just a reskin of Doom, and I feel like as a mapper, I don't have the greatest handle on some of the artifacts yet. Is Heretic simply not Heretic without the high level of randomness introduced by the inventory? What are some of the more interesting uses for each artifact? Are there any artis that are just pointless novelties, or do they all have an important purpose? If you could add one or two more artifacts to the game, what would they be? Tome of Power: This is the big one, obviously -- the powered weapons are one of the key elements of strategy in Heretic combat, and using a Tome dramatically alters gameplay for a whopping 40 seconds. There's nothing remotely like it in Doom. As awesome as it is to be able to pull it out of the inventory in times of dire need, I don't think I'm alone in feeling that the Tome is unbalanced, and one problem with Heretic is that gameplay is too slow and annoying without it but is absurdly easy with it. I've attempted to address this in Wayfarer by creating the Sigil, a version of the artifact that activates instantly and lasts for a much shorter period of time. My feeling is that this makes larger battles more balanced and turns them into more of a tactical challenge, since the artifact usually doesn't last long enough to wipe out all the enemies in an area. Morph Ovum: This is the next most interesting artifact, imo. Aside from just being funny, it gives players a great way to thin out heavy opposition in a pinch or punch through a wall of enemies when cornered. With Heretic's bestiary, there aren't any individual enemies that are ideal to use it on (either they're too weak to bother or it doesn't affect them), so it's purely a crowd control measure. Shadowsphere: It was a great idea to add the ghost powerup in addition to making enemies aim poorly (which is at best a mixed blessing for any experienced player) so that it would be more useful in combat, but the implementation was pretty lousy. Becoming immune to exactly one type of enemy is better than nothing, but not very interesting in terms of strategy. I've thought a lot about how to make this artifact better but haven't had any success. I think ideally, I would want the player to be immune to melee attacks from the Gargoyle, Golem, and Sabreclaw, as well as Gargoyle fireballs and UW green axes --but red axes *would* hit. This would make the sphere useful in a wider range of situations but would not allow you to ignore UWs completely as you currently can. Unfortunately, I can't find a way to make enemy melee attacks go through a ghost player; you can give the THRUGHOST flag to weapons, but not monsters. Additionally, the more attacks you make ghosts immune to, the more you potentially screw up monster infighting, which may have been why the Heretic designers largely abandoned the idea. Mystic Urn/Quartz Flasks: Simple but nice. I like that the Urn doesn't grant super health like the Soulsphere does; Heretic isn't really set up to accommodate a player with that much health, and not being able to tank your way through a battle forces you to rely on inventory management, which is exactly what Heretic wants you to do. Time Bomb of the Ancients: Cool in theory, and I'm sure many players use them to great effect. I've never really gotten the hang of them, and I prefer to just use weapons. I suppose they're most effective against very large groups of enemies, but in that case I'd rather use a Tome. Ring of Invincibility: Immensely overpowered in the context of Heretic, and should rarely if ever be given outside of difficult secrets. A powerup of this nature really requires a large array of powerful monsters like Doom has. Additionally, Doom's invulnerability powerup allows for more control over gameplay because it activates on pickup, which often requires players to think on the spot and decide how best to use it tactically, even in situations without extremely powerful monsters. In Heretic, it's just a way that players can choose to be lazy. Torch: Suffers the same problems as the Lite-Amp Goggles, which are that it is rarely useful and tends to destroy the aesthetics of a map. It's slightly better than the Goggles because of the flicker, but still, I think it would be much better to have the arti only light up a certain radius around the player, gradually fading out as the light gets farther away. Not sure how to implement this. Chaos Device and Wings of Wrath: Both very interesting, but very hard to use because they make it so easy to break a map -- not just in terms of passability issues, but more importantly, they let players circumvent even the most well-designed combat setups. As a result, they severely limit what mappers can do in terms of level layout and flow. The Chaos Device is a pretty interesting last resort for a player who's about to die, but it doesn't do anything that a carefully planned system of teleports can't do better. Aside from another way to cheaply escape from combat, the only really good use I can think of for the Wings is to open up otherwise unreachable secret areas. But to allow these benefits at all, a mapper has to specifically design maps to accommodate the use of the artifacts. The Wings work with this philosophy because they don't transfer between levels. The Chaos Device does transfer between levels and can therefore break anything at any time. I've addressed this problem in my tweaks for Wayfarer by not allowing it to transfer. Heh. I didn't think this post was mostly going to turn into a discussion of gameplay balancing problems, but there you have it. Heretic's inventory system is the biggest thing that makes it unique, but also the biggest thing that makes it difficult to make maps for.

This is relevant to my interests. Assuming you're teleporting the player back to an area they've already been and cannot put the trigger on the other side, exactly how far does it have to be ahead of the teleport line to be safe? (nm, I think you answered this -- half the player's hitbox +1, say?)

Thanks! I'll look into that. After messing around with the Lich some more, it looks like the Shadowsphere does effectively make you immune to the tornado. It can still technically damage you, but it loses the "heat-seaking" ability and fires off course, so it will almost never hit. In fact, if you activate a Shadowsphere with a tornado coming at you, it can have the appearance of deflecting the attack. The first time I tested, I activated the sphere with the tornado coming at me and then just stood there, so it hit me. But if you activate it with an oncoming tornado and then step to the side, it will just go straight past you. Hard to believe I never noticed this before, but I rarely use the Shadowsphere because of its other limitations. Given that the artifact is very useful against both a common enemy (UWs) and a miniboss (Iron Lich), it seems unnecessary to change it further -- although if I ever find a good, clean way to grant immunity to Sabreclaw swipes, I'll implement it.

Thanks guys! Lots of interesting stuff to think about here.

Looks like that's not true...but it's definitely an interesting idea. I hate those tornadoes, and an artifact that grants immunity to them would be fantastic. Anyway, looks like it's actually the ice ball you get immunity to, and the shards from its detonation can still hurt you. So if you have the Shadowsphere active, you can be hurt by the tornadoes, the fire, and the shards, but not the initial ice projectile, which is not an especially useful attack to have immunity against. It does protect you from getting hit by multiple shards from one attack detonation, but the ice ball is an easy attack to dodge. True, but regular UWs could still do the latter pretty reliably. Another idea: suppose the player were immune to Weredragon fireballs and green axes, but not red axes. Then you could have Weredragons take on the role you're describing for Ghost UWs. Overall, I think it could be worth it to give the Shadowsphere more depth. I've pretty much scrapped my ideas for changing the artifact for now though, since I can't change the melee attacks. It feels kind of ridiculous to mess around with making some magic-looking projectiles be "magic" and some be "not magic" when I can't stop the only truly mundane attacks (claws and blades) from hitting a ghost player.

Ha, brilliant! I hadn't thought of that. A monster like that would be awesome to have, and it's something I'd like to get around to eventually. It would require some seriously badass sprites, so hopefully I'll be up to the challenge by then. I've done some of this in Wayfarer, but I settled for less of a health increase because I felt like it would make him a pain to kill, and wouldn't really be in line with his threat level (basically, the same complaints people have about Barons of Hell). You're right about the melee attack -- I hadn't given it much thought until now, but it ought to be more powerful.

It's silly to put Spectres in broad daylight, but I also hate suddenly running into them in a uniformly dark room because there was basically no way to know they were there. My favorite Spectre usage in wads I've played is when they're in a primarily dark area with brighter patches or slow flickering light, so you can see them at times and know they're there, but then they pass into the darkness and you have to either triangulate or use gun flashes to keep track of where they are. It makes for a more tense situation.

Just so everybody knows, the Review Center is fully functional at this point. I've had no trouble claiming or submitting.

None of these are "wrong," but the first one is likely to annoy a lot of people. Backtracking is frustrating and unnecessary, because you can always use teleporters or a better layout to avoid it. Mazey little hallways don't give players room to maneuver, and they probably all look the same, which is confusing. If you make a level that's mazelike, it's better to have more visual variety (it should probably be more rooms than hallways) and more space for movement, with a feeling of complex interconnectedness rather than just being funneled through a bunch of hallways. Ancient Aliens map 31 and Threnody map 08 are good examples of interesting nonlinearity.

Imo, it isn't good to officially publish a map that you know is noobish. The ideal scenarios are: 1) If you have the game design know-how, keep working on it until you think it's good, and then post a beta on the forums to get feedback. 2) If you're not so sure what you're doing, get as far as you can with it, and then post a beta on the forums to get feedback. 3) Treat it as a "sketch," scrap it, and keep making more throw-away sketches until you have something you're happy with, and then post a beta on the forums to get feedback. If you've never made a map before, community feedback should always come before publication. Just make the map you want to make! If you want to use port features because that's the kind of map you want to play, that's totally fine. The only real mistake is if your map has no real reason for being a port map, and you unknowingly used port features to replicate something that could easily be done without the port.

I've been trying to think of what the equivalent sort of ultra-abstract setting for Heretic or Hexen would look like. The fantasy setting for those games arguably feels less versatile, but I tend to think that's just because it hasn't been explored and experimented with nearly as much as Doom's tech/hell combo.

Gez found a way to fix this. For posterity, here's the solution for temporarily increasing monster speed: See: BCHR A 0 A_CheckFlag(ALWAYSFAST, "SpeedBurstCheck") BCHR A 0 A_Jump (16, "SpeedBurst") BCHR AABB 3 FAST A_Chase BCHR C 0 A_PlaySoundEx("Butcher/Step", "SoundSlot7", 0) BCHR CCDD 3 FAST A_Chase BCHR A 0 A_PlaySoundEx("Butcher/Step", "SoundSlot7", 0) Loop Melee: BCHR EF 6 A_FaceTarget BCHR G 0 A_PlaySound("Butcher/Miss") BCHR G 10 A_CustomMeleeAttack (random (18, 81), "Butcher/Melee") Goto See SpeedBurst: BCHR A 0 A_ChangeFlag (ALWAYSFAST, true) BCHR A 0 A_SetArg (0, 12) Goto See +2 SpeedBurstCheck: BCHR A 0 A_SetArg (0, args[0] - 1) BCHR A 0 A_JumpIf (args[0] < 1, "SpeedBurstRemove") Goto See +2 SpeedBurstRemove: BCHR A 0 A_ChangeFlag (ALWAYSFAST, false) Goto See +2

Looks like that code is crashing ZDoom; I'm not getting any specific error messages for the crash, and based on the A_SetArg wiki page, it doesn't look like we're using anything specific to a dev build of GZDoom. Sending you a PM with a link to the wad in case you want to look at it directly.

Thanks for the response! Let me paste my new code to make sure I'm following you: See: BCHR A 0 A_CountdownArg (0, "SpeedBurstRemove") BCHR A 0 A_Jump (50, "SpeedBurst") BCHR AABB 3 FAST A_Chase BCHR C 0 A_PlaySoundEx("Butcher/Step", "SoundSlot7", 0) BCHR CCDD 3 FAST A_Chase BCHR A 0 A_PlaySoundEx("Butcher/Step", "SoundSlot7", 0) Loop SpeedBurst: BCHR A 0 A_ChangeFlag (ALWAYSFAST, true) BCHR A 0 A_SetArg (0, 35) Goto See SpeedBurstRemove: BCHR A 0 A_ChangeFlag (ALWAYSFAST, false) Goto See When I tested that, the monster died as soon as it went into the See state. I think this must have something to do with A_CountdownArg, because the page you linked me to says it defaults to the Death state. What am I missing?

Hey all, I'm trying to create a monster (using Decorate) that randomly gets speed boosts for a few seconds every once in awhile. I'm aware that you can give powerups to monsters, so I thought it would be pretty easy -- just call A_Jump with a small chance of occurrence during the See state, jump to a state that gives a monster my custom PowerupGiver, and have that PowerupGiver automatically grant the Speed powerup. It doesn't seem to work though. I've confirmed that my setup works with powerups like Ghost, but it doesn't seem to work with Speed. Any idea why, or how to fix it? Here's all the relevant Decorate:

I was tempted to open up parts of the water at times, but it would be hard to make it look right, and it would screw up a lot of the combat, especially with the melee Golems, unless I redesign the whole area. Glad you liked the lighting effects -- there are a couple more in E1M2, though not as dramatic. It was a lot of work, but I think it's worth it, and it's something I want to keep doing in my levels when new areas open up with brighter lighting. Can you double-check that? I didn't set them to be taken away, and I couldn't replicate your issue when I tested just now -- one of each artifact was carried over from M1 to M2. On a related note, I'm going to set the Chaos Device so that it doesn't transfer between levels, because it's easy to break things with it like the Wings of Wrath. But all other artifacts will transfer normally. There will be a couple of custom enemies starting in E1M4.

Thanks again for all the feedback! That's a lot to chew on, and very helpful. Everything you said about retrying on skill 4 jives with my experience -- on that setting, I felt like I could run into the middle of every fight, which got me killed a decent number of times, but mostly it just made everything really fun. That's about what I'm going for, and I think for the maps to be that fun on skill 4, skill 5 is going to have to be an extra layer of challenge that a player chooses to take on, not the default (I wonder if you normally favor it because Heretic is so easy?). In any case, I will add some health to both maps, though I think for now I won't add armor to either. Based on your comments yesterday, I added 8 more Crystal Vials on E1M1 (one in the storage rooms, four in the Crossbow room, and three in the smaller Weredragon cave before the final room). I think I ended with about 25 health on my first skill 4 playthrough (not counting the blue room secret), so hopefully that should be about right. I appreciate your comments today about health placement -- they are super helpful. When I approach that big harbor battle on its own terms, it's my favorite thing I've made so far. But it seems pretty clear that I need to make some changes to how the player can approach the fight, from both sides. Any suggestions you have would be helpful. As for the ending, this may sound weird, but I do like a good anticlimax or a more relaxed denouement every once in awhile -- like the ending of Return of the King or The Amber Spyglass, or the way the villain dies in Riddick. The big fights in E1M2 are the harbor battle, the blue key grab, and the green key room, and I'll probably keep the final fight the same as it is. Most levels will probably have larger final battles. I see what you mean about the Weredragon in the dark, but I think the actual problems are A) Weredragon fireballs aren't lit, and B) Weredragons don't light up when they fire. Both of those problems have been fixed since the last beta, and that makes it easier to use Weredragons in dark caves, which is where they belong. Also, ammo pickups are now lit like in Elf Gets Pissed, which should make it easier to find what you need on the fly. Heh. Fair point, and maybe I can edit it to look better, but for what it's worth, that decoration is straight out of Hexen. (Edit: Actually, I think that's not the decoration I meant to rip. Oops.) Again, thanks for taking so much time to go over this and write up your thoughts. I'll see what I can do!

I'm not sure what you mean. All five projectiles spawn at the same time, but as with the original weapon, the side projectiles are slower than the center one. You deal the maximum possible damage at point blank range, although if you dish out more damage than is actually needed to kill the enemy, some of the side projectiles will pass through the dying body and hit something else. Thanks for the points about the harbor area in E1M2. It dawned on me after the first beta that the lift could be used to screw up the large outdoor battle, but nobody else mentioned it as a problem until now. I'm considering a few possible fixes for that, but haven't thought of anything I'm totally satisfied with yet. Out of curiosity, did you come from the north (the side with the lift), or did you come from the south and just run around all the enemies to get to the lift?