ZDoom

Description:
Heretic-to-Hexen is a mod for Hexen that brings Heretic's maps to Hexen. Maps were heavily modified to work with Hexen assets, as well as containing new features from Hexen and new map progression. All weapons and enemies have been modified in an attempt to balance the experience due to the differing map designs between games. Currently only 2 episodes are complete, although the other episodes are included in the menu and in the mod, they are not playable. The mod will be updated episodically as I complete them. It may be a while before Episode 3 is complete. Please play and comment below, I would really appreciate any feedback on this. Future updates may adjust previous episodes, fix bugs and re-balance game play according to feedback.

Details:
Sourceport: GZDoom (any of the more recent versions should work. Tested on 4.3.3)
Iwad required: Hexen.wad
Crouching: Disabled
Jumping: Enabled
Renderer: Hardware recommended.
Sector Light Mode: Standard recommended.
HUD: Fullscreen Hud or Alt Hud

Download:
Heretic-To-Hexen-v2.zip
Heretic-To-Hexen-v1.1.zip

Screenshots:

Spoiler:

---

[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/6XvXyJ3[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/9fsy5Z6[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/MAJYM2L[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/mHGC8Oh[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/BQc1YDO[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/SlJVg63[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/jWZc1VM[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/CAYeGE9[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/tzfDYcD[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/UfjJFOF[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/ODw02dW[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/MUcGyLX[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/wD4YPyb[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/2TiDAET[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/rLzLR1d[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/g8wTrqH[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/w0LBW42[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/Ohjgay8[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/VVxkyeQ[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/oCodfMB[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/k9ZeP9u[/imgur]
[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/nOJC4Hk[/imgur]

Changelog:

Spoiler:

---

- v2: episode 2 release, lighting changes to episode 1, weapon changes, enemy health changes.
- v1.1: re-textured every map of episode 1.
- v1: episode 1 release.

Credits:
Id Software for the Doom engine.
Raven Software for Heretic and Hexen.
RockstarRaccoon for modified weapon sprite.
Made using Slade 3 and GZDoomBuilder.

Awesome conversion! But still need a good balancing, since player characters seems too overpowered.
Hope that you'll keep going; await for new episodes.

Thanks! Yeah balance is a tough thing to achieve for hexen weapons. I like where it's at now but it could definitely be improved. If you have any suggestions, it'll help a lot.

Honestly, it's hard for me to give any specific advice, not knowing how deep changes you plan to make.

For me your project, even at its current stage, seems pretend on total conversion rather than just mappack. Anyway Heretic levels looks incredibly cool in Hexen world.

And as I has wrote above - player weapons seems too overpowered, especially 1st weapons. And I doubt that giving more range weapons with unlimited ammo is a good idea. Hope that's just temporal placeholder.

Are you talking about the Frost shards? It's weaker than the fighters fist at distance, though it's melee is about as strong. I like it and as long as the player has blue mana, they will never use the starting weapons anyway as they are entirely outclassed. The mage may be the only class in which this isn't the case but I found it interesting that I switch between mage weapons frequently while playing despite how ever much ammo I have. The only other thin g I could do balance wise for the mage is weaken the melee a bit for the Frost shards, as it one shots ettins haha. The weapons were not made more powerful but the way. Just weak enemies were given less health. However, all higher tier enemies were given more health.

I renamed the DECORATE to DECORAT so it won't be loaded and tested it with vanilla weapons and enemy health values. Turns out it was still manageable and also enjoyable, at least for me. Apart from errors about dynamic lights attached to non existant actors and I think the Frost Shards not spawning (I fixed the latter myself via the DoomEdNums MAPINFO property) it worked flawlessly. I know I can just comment everything out except the new TeleSmoke etc., but it was a quick test.

@deathzero021 I'd recommend offering the gameplay portion as an optional download so for those interested it could also be used with the vanilla Hexen maps

Edit: imo your conversion and thus Doom/Heretic style episodes fit Hexen better than Hubs for some reason. Having each of the 4 pieces of armor available in each map surely was a contributing factor. In the original game, armor was sort of a niche gimmick, while the concept sounded great on paper, it didn't work out so well in practice. There are Crystal Vials and Quartz Flasks everywhere and the armor pieces were so few and far between that at the point you found a new one, your previous was most likely destroyed. It made the most sense to avoid all at first and save them for when you complete the hub so you got the most out of it. And even then, your protection didn't last long. You sure hit a sweet spot there

+1 for the advice to make maps and gameplay reworks as module features.

Interesting premise! I will say off the bat tho, both E1M1 and E1M3 can have progression skipped. E1M1, you can jump to the lefthand secret area where the Tome was in Heretic, and bypass needing the key. In E1M3, you can jump into the well, than atop the Maulotaur statue, than up the ledge.

Released Episode 2. A lot more effort went into it this time around. A handful of new areas and a big addition to the secret map (E2M9 is definitely worth checking out!)



I also took more creative liberties when it came to episode 2's texturing and overall style. Went with a "Fire & Ice" approach.



Other noteworthy changes include redoing all of the lighting in episode 1 using dynamic lights to provide most of the visibility. I think the darker lighting feels much more Hexen than Heretic's vanilla lighting does, while also being more modern too. A few areas are a bit heavy in the usage of dynamic lights so performance might dip down a little but the lowest I got was down to 80 fps in one map, the rest of them are well over 100 fps on a mid-range modern gaming PC.



Also made some significant changes to weapon balance. All the weapons' functionality was reprogrammed in decorate but isn't obvious to the player other than some animation timing changes. Enemy health has also been adjusted again. Overall I think it's more balanced, a bit faster paced with a good progression with each classes 4 weapons. Random damage values have been removed from player weapons too, however enemy attacks are left unchanged.



Well that about covers everything I think. I'm really not sure if I'll get around to releasing Episode 3. Maybe some day far in the future, but for now I have a bigger main project that I want to devote most my time to for now. But I'm not ruling out the possibility that I'll work on Episode 3 occasionally. I do want to finish this mod but it's a big time investment and I'd rather spend that time on something original. If I do finish this mod, I'll finish it off with 3 episodes and cut the 2 expansion episodes out.

that was great. You do an excellent job with lightings placement. It really gives good felling to level. On the other hands everyone of them is dark as night - its little monotonous. Too bad there is no more furniture in the levels, but maybe you want to keep heretic fidelity. Strongest point of hexen levels are decoration and interactive elements, breaking glass, cutting trees, burning trees. Bell ring. Side opening doors (i was disappointed the doors in you mod opening up ).

on the other hand, its heretic levels I know them by heart (esp Episode1). I think you would be better with making your own levels, decorate them as you want, and just borrow heavy from interesting levels bits.
And please in your level dont copy hexen puzzle philosophy - refrain from mirroring same location twice or (quadrupling :/) and 6x switches/key hunt to open single door.

is this mod still being worked on or anything? i'm just curious cause i don't know of anything from this at all. and it's kind of interesting to see these 2 games sorta come together like this

MrRumbleRoses wrote: ↑Sat May 09, 2020 12:37 pm is this mod still being worked on or anything? i'm just curious cause i don't know of anything from this at all. and it's kind of interesting to see these 2 games sorta come together like this

It would be great if worked with Wrath of Cronos mod.

I mean it would be great if you could play the Heretic episodes and then play the Hexen ones with the same character level progression.