Hocusdoom RELEASED (/idgames pending)

[wildweasel]

Just to let everyone know, Hocusdoom has been uploaded to incoming, so should show up within a few days! When its officially accepted I will post the link.

Congrats on finally hitting Release status.

[ravage]

Wow, it's really happening! Any further changes compared to RC1?

No, actually. Its the same. From the people I've asked, nobody found anything that needed fixing yet. But you know, time will tell. :P

[Tormentor667]

FINALLY!

[NightFright]

Time to play right now, then. And vote this up for Cacowards while there's still time (if there is)!

[ravage]

FINALLY!

No thanks to you, mr, 'I don't want to test it I want wait to play the final version.' :P

[Tormentor667]

FINALLY!

No thanks to you, mr, 'I don't want to test it I want wait to play the final version.'

Well, I actually played parts of it from time to time and I just don’t wanted to spoil myself. I have such a strong memory and binding when it comes to Hocus Pocus (played it a hundred times in my youth) that I simply felt like waiting for the final product is the right decision from a player‘s point of view and now I can. Christmas is saved!

[CGA Gillian Seed]

Well that endoom is getting added for sure!

Looking through the music fixes you've worked on and I gotta say I like most of them--except the jill of the jungle version.

My apologies about the late response! Was occupied with some stuff happening irl and have missed out on quite a bit here, but yeaaah here's my late response!

Glad ya liked the ENDOOM screen, I'm relieved to hear about that. Very surprised to see it included in the latest update! That truly warms my heart, like for real. Thank you!
As for the Music tracks, 3 out of 4 ain't shabby! Yeah, the Map30 track I did was more of a cover than anything so it may not be to everyone's tastes, but it is fun practice on my end nonetheless! It would be neat if GZDoom had support for VGM/VGZ playback, because I did actually manage to find a proper rip of the Funky Theme online (including the rest of the JoTJ soundtrack) with the correct sounding hi-hats, correct snare drums, and everything, but GZDoom can't play the VGZ unfortunately which is kind of a bummer.
Apparently from what I've researched, early versions of JotJ uses a different music player (a better one at that). The playback behavior acts strange in later versions of the game. The Hi-Hats are supposed to play at different set volumes, but later versions of the game (version 1.2d for example) switched the music playback routine, causing Note Velocity to be ignored entirely which is downright odd. This ends up making the FM instruments play at full volume throughout, which is not the intended behavior. It's no wonder why I was having trouble getting my rips of the original track to sound proper in the past.
That explains why various rips of the original Funky track sound noticeably different from upload to upload on the net. I can record a clean sounding version of the correct rip, make it into an .ogg file, and make a slight update to the secret level tracks.

I'm also really happy about this mod's state of release, though I should mention an issue I came across. When picking up the Rapid Fire powerup for example, the screen normally should have this effect here:

...but with the latest version I downloaded, this effect is messed up and placed at an incorrect position. Changing the aspect ratio within GZDoom's ingame options doesn't seem to remedy this.

The earlier versions of Hocus Pocus Doom didn't have this issue as far as I can tell. (With the exception of the 5:4 aspect ratio, but that's a different matter altogether)
Now even though this mod is technically released and not in Beta anymore, I do personally feel that it isn't truly final either until everything possible is ironed out, ('cause you may never know, there could be other bugs hiding deep within until somebody finds 'em) . I will still be happy to contribute to any fixes later down the line through future patches!

Something else I should point out, and it's to do with Secret Level Map10:

---

After playing the original DarkWolf, because of nostalgic reasons, and going through closer inspection on how the sounds are triggered, I've also come to realize that in Map10: DarkWolf Castle, the Dark Wizard's red bombs that they throw at the player do not have a bouncing sound like they do in the original DarkWolf game, which in turn lacks a bit of that impact. The Green Orks/Grey Orks also are missing a second sound that they make when they die. They're supposed to have two random dying sounds, not just one. The DarkWolf "Bug" enemies are supposed to have their own dying sound too, which isn't present in Hocus Pocus Doom atm. The Dark Wizards in the original DarkWolf believe it or not, actually share the same dying sound with the Bug enemy, but I personally thought that this was a bit of an odd choice on the game's end and instead... I went and used the player Wizard's ouch SFX (There are 4 of them) as an experiment, to differentiate the Dark Wizard from the other enemies in the map by the sounds he makes. It was a neat touch I thought! I ripped all of the sounds from the game so that they are in their original quality, plus the filesize for each of the sounds is noticeably smaller compared to the ones in the PK3.
I've actually went and modified the PK3 to add in the missing DarkWolf sounds through SLADE, amongst other fixes with the sound design, but I would love to talk to ya Ravage directly when possible (I'll message you through private messages for more details), just to letcha know on what exactly I'm modifying within the PK3 and what else I would like to fix up so that we'll be on the same page here. I've had previous experience with Doom modding, but am still learning new things as I go! Picking things back up at a gradual pace!

With all that said, I also just want to say that I'm super proud of you and also how far this mod has come, (can't believe it's 10 years already, time sure does fly)! I can definitely understand that 10 long years of this mod's development can have ya burnt out, wanting to wrap things up and wanna focus on other projects. A lot of creators have been there at one point, and I can relate to this to a degree.
As you can already tell, I love this game and this mod very much, and want to see it truly perfected, to the point of going outta my way to making patches for the PK3 heheh.

[ravage]

I have no idea what's causing that bug with the rapid fire flash, as I don't see it on my end. Also do note that this project is not completely friendly with 5:4 resolutions.

---

Also, about the darkwolf stuff- I never had the full version until rather recently, so much of that was guesswork and ripping sprites from screenshots etc. There's really no reason to make it 100% accurate for this. But sure, send what you got.

I might work on a patch later down the road to add some things I didn't get to, like that highscores table, but for all intense and purposes, this is finished.

[NightFright]

After staying away from this until it had reached final release status (which was REALLY hard to do), I have now played the first few levels and gotta say you ABSOLUTELY nailed it. This is what I would have expected from an official 3D sequel made by Apogee themselves in the 90s if they had done one. Level design, enemy behavior, shooting (no hitscanners!), sounds, music... it totally takes you back to the old days while still delivering on the visual side. Of course you have a slight advantage if you played the original game since you recognize the game mechanics right away, but it's not like anybody who doesn't know Hocus Doom wouldn't get used to this within a matter of minutes. And it's still so addictive to collect all the treasure, no difference to the original at all. There's also a great visual variety throughout the episodes which cannot be praised enough.

Verdict: That's how you properly transform a 2D jump'n'run to the third dimension, ladies and gentlemen. Congratulations and well done, well done indeed!

[Tormentor667]

FINALLY!

No thanks to you, mr, 'I don't want to test it I want wait to play the final version.'

At least some support Today's headliner: https://www.realm667.com/index.php

[CGA Gillian Seed]

I have no idea what's causing that bug with the rapid fire flash, as I don't see it on my end. Also do note that this project is not completely friendly with 5:4 resolutions.

My monitor is 16:9 (1080p), but yeaaah, the 5:4 aspect ratio is a different issue that has yet to be fixed. I know a couple people with a 5:4 display, but most people I communicate with have either 4:3 or 16:9. I think the 5:4 issue could be fixed through a workaround by extending the height of the flash graphics, but hmmm.
Also, about that rapid fire bug... I have good news! I was able to figure out why this strange bug was happening! The reason why the rapid fire flash effect was rendering incorrectly on my end is because it seems my version of GZDoom (which is the latest stable version) was having some trouble choosing which PNG file to display once picking up a rapid fire powerup. Because the Flame powerup has a similar rendering effect, I imagine that this too would somehow be affected.
This is what I discovered from the latest Hocus Pocus Doom version I've downloaded:

Figured out Rapid Fire Glitch 1.png (8.84 KiB) Viewed 1086 times

The top two highlighted files are what I believe meant for 4:3 resolutions, where as the bottom two files are meant for widescreen resolutions. Because the latter two PNG files have the same filenames as the former two, it seems to cause a bit of conflict on which PNGs GZDoom should load for me. This explains why the flash effect appears to be shifted too far to the left, because that bugged PNG graphic in my previous screencap post is actually the 4:3 graphic being displayed, but loaded within a 16:9 resolution.

Earlier versions of Hocus Pocus Doom had these files named as "R_SCREEN2" & "F_SCREEN2":

Renaming the latter two PNG files in the latest .PK3 with the above filenames fixes the bug on my end, and now I can fully enjoy blasting down those pesky enemies with rapid fire again! Hoping that this mod gets the recognition it truly deserves, because it really is that amazing.

Also, about the Private Messages thing, I was going to try messaging you through PM on here Ravage, but I don't have that feature on my account yet... silly me! Do you have any other means of contact, like Discord, or something along the lines of that matey? Would definitely love to get in more contact with ya Ravage! Also pretty excited to see what other projects/works you have in mind now that this is no longer in Beta!

[wildweasel]

The filenames here would cause conflicts elsewhere - those names are 9 characters long, where most ways to address them only acknowledge the first 8 characters. I'd suggest R_SCREN2 as an alternative.

[CGA Gillian Seed]

The filenames here would cause conflicts elsewhere - those names are 9 characters long, where most ways to address them only acknowledge the first 8 characters. I'd suggest R_SCREN2 as an alternative.

This is true. However, the interesting thing about it is that renaming them to "R_SCREN2" & "F_SCREN2" which fits exactly 8 characters, GZDoom still didn't recognize the 16:9 flash effects with those filenames and only just loaded the 4:3 ones for me, regardless of the resolution I chose.
This very much peaked my curiosity. So upon closer inspection of the PK3, when picking up the Rapid Fire powerup, it is calling for "R_SCREEN" within SBARINFO, highlighted here. This is also where the Flamethrower powerup gets its PNG image called up:

...and because the renamed 16:9 files I've tried out previously which were "R_SCREN2" & "F_SCREN2" to fit exactly 8 characters, it could not find either "R_SCREN2" nor "F_SCREN2" as they are obviously not called here, which resulted in them not being loaded and only the 4:3 flash effects were shown. I've now come to the conclusion that the reason why this bug has been happening to me with the latest PK3 download prior to renaming these files is because of the order the duplicate "R_SCREEN" & "F_SCREEN" filenames were stored in.
The reason why the old 9 character filenames in previous versions of Hocus Pocus Doom somehow worked for me because the 9th character in "R_SCREEN2" & "F_SCREEN2" is ignored when called within SBARINFO, and despite that, the number 2 in the old filenames actually puts them above within filename sort order, which ends up making them get called first.

Disregard my hasty workaround previous post, since I found another workaround solution.
Without renaming these files this time, I instead swapped the order of the files so that the 4:3 "R_SCREEN" & "F_SCREEN" files are the bottom 2 whereas the 16:9 "R_SCREEN" & "F_SCREEN" files are the top 2.

Because the 16:9 files were the ones above the listing, this caused them to be the ones that are called out first. This resulted in fixing the issue for me, and all four files are still 8 characters long. Although, I do still wonder about the duplicate "R_SCREEN" & "F_SCREEN" filenames and whether or not this might cause conflicts in future GZDoom versions.

[NightFright]

Two things I noticed:

1) If you want to use the automap marker, the numbers are almost black, making them basically invisible against the dark background. A brighter color for those numbers might help.

2) You are forcing OPL synth for the MIDI music. Personally I prefer being able to choose the synth by myself. Anyone can change it by deleting the entries at the bottom of SNDINFO inside of the PK3, but maybe it's better to just remove those code lines and instead add readme instructions how to manually switch to OPL if desired. However, I see this is intended for a retro style feeling and I could understand if you wanna leave it the way it is.

[axredneck]

It would be neat if GZDoom had support for VGM/VGZ playback, because I did actually manage to find a proper rip of the Funky Theme online (including the rest of the JoTJ soundtrack) with the correct sounding hi-hats, correct snare drums, and everything, but GZDoom can't play the VGZ unfortunately which is kind of a bummer.

AFAIK GZDoom can play VGM/VGZ but it doesn't support some chips.