Heretic: Unabridged v0.2 (Hell's Maw)

[Beed28]

Inspired by Drake Raider's Blanket Doom, this mod aims to change Heretic's episodes so that each one is played as a sprawling, seamless map made out of all the maps of the retrospective episode. Much like Blanket Doom, only three keys are spread out across the episode, and as you collect them, you can access more areas and activate all of the special switches across the map (five in City of the Damned, number may vary in later episodes) to unlock the door leading to the final area.

The game will autosave each time you collect one of the three keys as well as activating each of the special switches. The game will also autosave when you approach the door to the final area once all special switches are activated, and it will also autosave upon picking up [redacted].

Oh, and using a Chaos Device will take you to a special travel hub where you can quickly warp to any of the areas as long as you've unlocked them. Use them wisely!

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v0.2
-Hell's Maw released.
-General: Reworked hub portals; the teleportation and music change are now in one script instead of separately activated linedefs.
-City of the Damned: Added Player 5-8 starts.
-City of the Damned: Slight tweak to the E1M4 passages leading off into E1M7 so that the wall texture offsets surrounding the entrances are closer to the original E1M4.

v0.1
-Initial release, only covers City of the Damned.

DOWNLOAD
v0.2: https://www.sendspace.com/file/0aeizf

[SallazarSpellcaster]

This was lots of fun, and even though it's mostly unchanged, it made the City of the Damned feel really cool.

Great job at making the place feel like a cohesive, actual city. And kudos for making the Chaos Device actually useful.

[Zhs2]

I never did get to test the Chaos Device (Guncaster doesn't have those), but this is pretty cool. Kudos to you for the use of ACS to moderate the experience.

[Alexandra]

This is fantastic. I love how area titles pop up and the music changes appropriately as you travel around.

Since Heretic is so easy I think difficulty 5 and perhaps a pickups-give-half-the-usual-resources script (haven't made/tested the latter yet) would be good ideas. Playing on diff 5 I was shocked at how little damage common enemies did when I had armor. I never think of armor as being particularly powerful in Doom 1 or 2.

[Beed28]

Thanks for the kind words everybody!

I'm not really changing up the difficulty from the original (you can use Custom Doom and make yourself weaker if you want to make it harder). In the mean time, I've started work on adapting Hell's Maw, the second episode. Look out for it!

[Alexandra]

Oh, hehe, I wasn't suggesting changes to the mod, just what players might want to run with.

Personally I will be running with this in MAPINFO to see how it goes:

Code: Select all

skill nightmare
{
   AmmoFactor = .5
   DropAmmoFactor = .5
   FastMonsters
   SpawnFilter = Nightmare
   Name = "$MNU_BLACKPLAGUE"
}

I didn't know Dehacked was Doom-only, heh. That's what I normally use for decreased ammo.

Update: final stats. Of course a single secret would elude me.

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Curious: why did the map autosave/track the player getting the wings?

Half ammo was a good improvement but I was still swimming in it by the end. Weapons take longer to fill up again so it creates a rhythm where if you go heavy on the crossbow or whatnot in a certain fight you need to lay off it for a good while to let ammo replenish. The wand ended up fairly useful for sniping and filling in ammo gaps. OTOH I abused the melee gauntlets for the first third or so, so that may have thrown things off a bit. Episode 1 only has 3 ammo types, too, so I'm curious if the more diverse later episodes would allow more frequent ammo usage since it would be spread across more weapons.

If I could be bothered to learn some basic scripting I would like to greatly reduce the spawning of artifacts (Quartz Flask, etc.) so that any given placement only has a 20% (maybe less?) chance of showing up. That'd make artifacts feel much more rare and valuable. (Ring of invincibility, of which there are 7 or 8, completely trivializes boss fights...) I'm not sure if that would screw up the end-of-level tally or if ZDoom would intelligently adjust it. It may also lead to anticlimactic situations where you find a secret area and there are no items, but no biggie.

Anyway, this was fun. Thanks again.

[Beed28]

Nearly didn't see your edit. I'm glad you had fun! And you missed the one remaining enemy too...

About the Wings of Wrath autosave; this was to add incentive for finding and "beating" the secret level; the wings are the reward you get, and they were made infinite like in Hexen. All the other (single player) Wings of Wrath artifacts were substituted with something else (like a Chaos Device).

In vanilla Heretic, normally you can only carry one of each artifact to the next level (except the wings, which can't be carried over at all), but this no longer applies here obviously, so of course you would end up with a huge stockpile of items by the time you reach the final level.

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In other news, Hell's Maw is nearly complete, I just need to do some testing. Regarding the Firemace and its unique spawning properties, there's a separate spawner for each of the three levels it appeared in (for single player, at least), so each of those three areas has a 75% chance of containing a Firemace somewhere.

[Alexandra]

And you missed the one remaining enemy too...

Purely intentional. I left one to warn the rest of my coming.

About the Wings of Wrath autosave; this was to add incentive for finding and "beating" the secret level; the wings are the reward you get, and they were made infinite like in Hexen. All the other (single player) Wings of Wrath artifacts were substituted with something else (like a Chaos Device).

Oh that's sensible. I figured they were still limited duration, which made me value them less.

In vanilla Heretic, normally you can only carry one of each artifact to the next level (except the wings, which can't be carried over at all), but this no longer applies here obviously, so of course you would end up with a huge stockpile of items by the time you reach the final level.

Right. Do you think maybe that's a balance issue that should be fixed in the interests of keeping the gameplay more engaging? One megamap with 172(!) items up for grabs is going to play out differently than the same terrain split between 9 levels combined with a feature that limits interlevel hoarding. And in a game that already trends toward being overly easy...

Turns out (as I'm sure you know, hehe) it's very easy to implement randomized, limited artifact spawns in decorate. Here are the initial numbers I'll be testing in skill 5:

100% spawnrate
Wings of Wrath

80%
Chaos Device (high due to its special utility in your mod)

50%
Time Bomb

40%
Bag of Holding (don't want player to go without this; luckily there are many spawn chances in the map)
Map Scroll
Torch

30%
Morph Ovum

25%
Mystic Urn
Shadowsphere

20%
Ring of Invulnerability
Tome of Power

15%
Quartz Flask

This results in an average of 50 items on skill 5, plus or minus 5.

code for above:

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Code: Select all

actor BagOfHoldingReplacer : RandomSpawner 8
{
    DropItem "BagOfHolding", 102, 1 // 40%
}

actor MorphOvumReplacer : RandomSpawner 30
{
    DropItem "ArtiEgg", 77, 1 // 30%
}

actor MysticUrnReplacer : RandomSpawner 32
{
    DropItem "ArtiSuperHealth", 64, 1 // 25%
}

actor TorchReplacer : RandomSpawner 33
{
    DropItem "ArtiTorch", 100, 1 // 40%
}

actor TimeBombReplacer : RandomSpawner 34
{
    DropItem "ArtiTimeBomb", 128, 1 // 50%
}

actor MapScrollReplacer : RandomSpawner 35
{
    DropItem "SuperMap", 100, 1 // 40%
}

actor ChaosDeviceReplacer : RandomSpawner 36
{
    DropItem "ArtiTeleport", 204, 1 // 80%
}

actor ShadowsphereReplacer : RandomSpawner 75
{
    DropItem "ArtiInvisibility", 64, 1 // 25%
}

actor QuartzReplacer : RandomSpawner 82
{
    DropItem "ArtiHealth", 39, 1 // 15%
}

actor WingsOfWrathReplacer : RandomSpawner 83
{
    DropItem "ArtiFly", 255, 1 // 100%
}

actor RingOfInvulnerabilityReplacer : RandomSpawner 84
{
    DropItem "ArtiInvulnerability", 51, 1 // 20%
}

actor TomeOfPowerReplacer : RandomSpawner 86
{
    DropItem "ArtiTomeOfPower", 51, 1 // 20%
}

When next I have time to mess around I'll also try removing a few of the Silver Shields, which seemed too numerous in my first half-ammo playthrough.

To be clear, I don't mean to tell ya how to make your mod. I just think its gameplay experience could possibly be improved if the item balance were further investigated. Come to think of it, it might be really neat to have an option that lets the player choose between full spawns and more restricted.

[Beed28]

Yeah, I'm quite terrible at item balance. I currently have no plans of putting that into my mod right at this moment, though.

Anyway, I've finally got off of my lazy butt and released the update. v0.2 is now live.

v0.2: https://www.sendspace.com/file/0aeizf

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v0.2
-Hell's Maw released.
-General: Reworked hub portals; the teleportation and music change are now in one script instead of separately activated linedefs.
-City of the Damned: Added Player 5-8 starts.
-City of the Damned: Slight tweak to the E1M4 passages leading off into E1M7 so that the wall texture offsets surrounding the entrances are closer to the original E1M4.

[Drake Raider]

Thanks for the reference. I had hoped to do something like this at some point for fastheretic, but wanted to know I could first. I'll give it a play as soon as I can!

EDIT: I think I'm gonna take some influence from the way you did this in possible future updates, as well.