Heretical Doom v1.5 - Cyberdemons and Maulotaurs, oh my!

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Cryomundus
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.5 - LAST VERSION FOR A BIT I SWEAR

Post by Cryomundus »

Well, for starters I really, REALLY like this. Like, holy shit why hasn't this existed sooner?

However, I have a few things to say:

-Restore the ammo cost back to 5 for the pheonix rod, 10 is far too costly, since you only get 5 ammo from the small pickups, so you need to grab 2 for 1 shot. Also, considering that the ammo cost for the basic shot for the alt-fire is just 11, the standard really needs to be dropped back to what it was previously. And since you can just pick up all the ammo for exp, you can easily starve players of valuable ammo like this.

-Make the arrow bundle give 12 instead of 8, as that's far too little for so useful a weapon. Especially once you unlock the time freeze altfire, you'll start to burn through ammo like crazy, and 8 will leave players ammo starved.

-Picking up an Armor Bonus says "Armor Bonus +1 Health"

-The "cake mine" alt-fire for the FireMace looks extremely out of place. Why not recolor the weird explody orb thing and use that instead? You could have it pulsate and give off gas so it looks like its attracting monsters.

-The player could stand to take reduced damage from FireMace Orbs. Especially once you power it up, it's really easy to severly wound/kill yourself with that thing.

-Given how little health you start out with, you might want to give the BrutalArtiHealth back it's ability to restore health if yours drops too low.

-I kinda get that the weapons slots are authentic to how they were in Heretic, but this is doom, you might want to mimic Doom's weapon slots instead. (crossbow/Firemace in 3, DragonClaw in 4, Pheonix Rod in 5, Hellstaff in 6, and the future bfg replacement in 7)

-I'm not really that much of a fan of having the megasphere be replaced by a invulnerability ring. I mean, carry-able items are nice and all, but actually navigating to what you need when you need is actually a massive pain. To give you an idea of how much, I once played a map that had you aboard a starship, and the finale teleported you to the front of it in the middle of 10 archviles. You also got a BFG and a InvulnerabilitySphere as well, and once you moved off the teleporter, you got both of them. Now, if that BFG and the InvulnerabilitySphere where items I had to use, that room would be absolutely infuriating to complete, moreso if I had a bunch of other items and I also had to dodge as well.

-If anything, give the player usable items via the backpacks, and make the map-placed spheres/items "use on touch" like how the are in regular doom. I get that it's like Heretic, but Doom is a completely different beast when compared to Heretic or Hexen.

Also I think you must have removed a bunch of files or condensed them for 0.5 cuz I cannot for life of me locate where you have the player info stored nor where you have the spawners for stuff. I'm really confused as to how the heck this is still working, actually.

With that said, I actually love like literally everything else, even the staff is fun to use! And the level up system thats tied to the items rather than the monsters is freaking brilliant too! And unlocking alt-fires by leveling is very, very clever, now I've got a very good reason to completely clean out a map of ammo. There's so much more I could talk about, but it's like 4 am and I should really be in bed.

Apologies if this comes off as a bit harsh, I wanted to get my thoughts down before I forgot it in the morning.
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.5 - LAST VERSION FOR A BIT I SWEAR

Post by Ryuhi »

I appreciate the input! The ammo balancing situation is something I have to keep revisiting, since different wads will leave you either with far too much ammo or nowhere near enough. I was thinking of adding the Krater of MIght as an item so that you can stockpile ammo a bit, but in the meantime its a dangerous dance. My main problem with upping the crossbow ammo again is that there are MILLIONS of ShotgunGuys in standard doom maps. I may readjust the altfire to be a bit less expensive, but the primary volley does 120-340dmg per burst, and for only 1 bolt. I still plan to tinker with ammo in the future, so I'll definitely take your suggestions into consideration.

The cake isn't out of place, its Devils Food! :D

i just noticed that typo, mine eyes weep.

The firemace is, all in all, a very crowd control oriented weapon. My primary ideas for its application have been revolving around abusing its gravity arc and bouncing capabilities to foil ambushes and rain destruction on foes from 2 rooms over (as long as there's a conveniently placed window or ledge) or even going for trick shots around corners. I feel the explosion self damage is appropriate to balance such a balance breaking weapon... If you are in the thick of things and need high sustained damage output, the Hellstaff and DragonClaw can handle pretty much any situation between their three fire modes (and the tomed fire for the phoenix staff is possibly a little TOO good right now, wink wink)
If you're interested in the damage calculations in the game, i'd recommend playing with DamNums. it's been invaluable to figuring out how much damage each attack is actually doing.
-EDIT - I could always make an artifact that reduces or nulls the self damage from the explosive weapons, i'll throw it on the list for my next artifact batch. I do plan to have a proper megasphere on there as well, so no worries there.

Items will always be usable, at least for Corvus. I do plan to make additional characters in the future and keep it as a rolling mod, and maybe someone else will have autouse items. that said, there should be programmable keys for pretty much every usable item in the game (i keep the quartz flask, tome of power, amulet of protection, and chaos device all bound on z,x,c,v) Part of the reason i made the chaos device so available is because i feel its underappreciated as a "get out of jail free" card in a lot of maps. As long as the maps have any kind of multiplayer support, it should be impossible to get stuck that way, too. In any case, be sure to bind any ones you want quick access to!

The way I made multi-wad support was by using the FILTER directory, then having things like the player class and spawners all load in relation to the iwad they are patching. I'm still going over the minor details with a fine tooth comb, but everything should be at least servicable for heretic and hexen/dd, with chex quest and strife on the horizon.

I can't take all the credit for some of that stuff as i cannibalized it from the parent mod Brutal Heretic RPG V2, but I'm glad my ideas have been working out mostly positive.
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Cryomundus
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.5 - LAST VERSION FOR A BIT I SWEAR

Post by Cryomundus »

shotgun ammo is really hard to balance anyway simply due to mappers providing enough ammo for SSG use, since that uses 2 ammo per shot. I suppose you could do something like reduce the ammo cap to 40/80, reduce the ammo for the boltbundles to 3 each, keep the crossbow at 4 and make the quiver give 10. It would still lower the overall amount of arrows you would get, at least, that would be the idea.

-I'd really consider making the invuln and the radsuit replacements use on touch since those are usually placed in situations where the player is expected to be protected and not have to fiddle with inventory or pressing another button. Yeah, the buttons to use them are nice and all, but when things are truly hectic the first thing you're gonne be doing is dodging not looking for the specific button you have bound to use invuln/radsuit. You just grab it and you have it, that's it. That's not to say the players can't find bonus carry-able invuln rings and/rad amulets in bags of holding, just that the ones out on the map are auto-used.

Actually I use both JPHUD and DamNums.
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.5 - LAST VERSION FOR A BIT I SWEAR

Post by Ryuhi »

The placement you mentioned made me think that the Megasphere replacement I finally settle on could be something like that, maybe a instant use reflect/Invul + super speed kind of thing. I was also wondering what people thought of the length for the inventory bar, I can probably get away with up to 6 items, but wanted to keep it at 4 to look cleanest. Maybe i can move it to the bottom center and make it more slots like in the default alternate hud?

Once I learn how to do Cvars, I plan to have one for high tier powerups to be auto use or stored in inventory. I'm still incredibly inexperienced at ACS though, so that might take some time to implement.

the SSG comment is a good point. I've considered making 2 versions of each weapon and having them have the shotgun/SSG relationship, but i've still got to finish balancing everything now before i get caught up in completely destroying that balance later. :D I will shift the ammo pickups back up a bit to be more in line with the other items (and reduce the rocket cost)

EDIT: Actually playing heretic with the mod really put it more into perspective, since there are far less crossbows and far more arrow drops :x
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.5 - LAST VERSION FOR A BIT I SWEAR

Post by Ryuhi »

Just uploaded a small bugfix for the current version:

Code: Select all

Doom
-Fixed backpack spawner issue
-Reverted megasphere to stock one (for now)
-Increased ammo from crossbow quivers a bit (15, 10xp)
-Self Damage from firemace reduced slightly (0.9)

Heretic
-Increased ammo from crossbow quivers a bit (15, 10xp)
-Self Damage from firemace reduced slightly (0.9)

Hexen
-Increased Crossbow ammo from red mana to 10.
-Self Damage from firemace reduced slightly (0.9)

Overall
-Crossbow Altfire reduced to 10 ammo.  Duration also increased slightly to 6 seconds.
-Reverted changes to Phoenix Rod ammo usage (5 for normal shot)
-Replaced cake with a submerged orb due to popular demand
-Many artifacts now give experience
-Fixed typo for armor bonus item pickup
-Replaced RoosterRoaster with a gold colored variant to 
Simply redownload the new version, should still be compatible with any current save files
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.6 - The Souls of the Damned

Post by Ryuhi »

V0.6 is up, now with a new BFG replacer, the "Sidhe's Wrath!" Also a few new items, the flechette system has been expanded, and a bit of minor balancing/tweaking as always.

As always, let me know if I accidentally broke anything in the process~
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Dr_Cosmobyte
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.6 - The Souls of the Damned

Post by Dr_Cosmobyte »

This is pure fun. Keep up the good work.
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-Ghost-
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.6 - The Souls of the Damned

Post by -Ghost- »

One minor thing, not sure if this is my HUD scaling options, but the crosshairs are huge for me and make it hard to aim properly. Could we have the option of just using the regular GzDoom crosshair if we want?
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.6 - The Souls of the Damned

Post by Ryuhi »

The version i just uploaded should have MUCH smaller crosshairs, so they shouldnt need as excessive scaling anymore (though they can still be adjusted through scaling obviously) If you don't want to use them and prefer a standard crosshair, select "Force Default Crosshair" and then select the crosshair of your choice.
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Cryomundus
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.6 - The Souls of the Damned

Post by Cryomundus »

I think you may have uploaded the wrong file, cuz I didn't get anything called "Sidhe's Wrath!". Also, you uploaded a .zip file instead of usual .rar that has a .pk3/CREDITS/CHANGELOG in it.
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.6 - The Souls of the Damned

Post by Ryuhi »

whoops, yeah i see that. corrected version has been uploaded
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mutator
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.6 - The Souls of the Damned

Post by mutator »

megasphere is now megasphere from vanilla doom...is it going to stay like this or it's something you didn't know? by the way it's nice mod
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.6 - The Souls of the Damned

Post by Ryuhi »

mutator wrote:megasphere is now megasphere from vanilla doom...is it going to stay like this or it's something you didn't know? by the way it's nice mod
the megasphere replacement should be in as of v0.6.

also thanks, glad you're enjoying it!
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.7 - I playtested this time I swear!

Post by Ryuhi »

0.7 has a LOT of housekeeping as well as some new bells and whistles, so be sure to check it out and let me know what you think! Heretic and Hexen can be added to the 100% list, while Strife is still in testing (though certainly playable.)

Please report any bugs you encounter and/or enjoy the updated mod in whichever order you desire!
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mutator
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.7 - I playtested this time I swear!

Post by mutator »

It's awesome mod but can you please add ALL heretic monsters as addon with their ambience and sounds? I think it would be great addon
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