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

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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.8 - Reloading? Monster addons?!?!

Post by Ryuhi »

the reloads are supposed to be a bit slow as they are continuous, yet can be interrupted by either kicking, firing, or weapon swapping. The only exception really is the firemace, but it makes sense in terms of its animation and ammo capacity. I do plan to update the pickup text, i havent really done much with the language file but its next on my todo list (along with more varied pickup sounds.)

The monster pack is actually still very early, so there are a few randomizers in place due to the uneven number of variations and balance between the two games. I will be making alternative versions of a few of the higher tier monsters to fill the roles of each doom monster better (as of right now, there is a modified serpent rider replacing the archvile, I didnt mention him in the list because he is going to be changed pretty heavily by next release.) Hexen monsters are a good idea though, I can definitely find some variety in there.
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mutator
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.8 - Reloading? Monster addons?!?!

Post by mutator »

Ryuhi, are you going to play with Ironlich abit more? it is able to fly...ironlich in heretic don't fly
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hammer oz
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.8 - Reloading? Monster addons?!?!

Post by hammer oz »

Greetings just tried out this gem and so far I am enjoying it. I came up with some ideas for reload animations while playing as well as other things.

. To me i just doesn't feel right having the dragonclaw being the fast fireing weapon like it is now and felt better being the slow hard hitting type.
. An idea popped into my head for the reload animation of the ethereall crossbow in duel arrow mode. You could make it so each bolt that appears slides to the left and right.
. Would it be possible to add an option to have some of the original sounds re added back into the game
.Not sure if the reload animation for the dragonclaw is finished but if it is not for the reload animation you could have it that he hold up an energy orb infront of the weapon and the orb is then absorbed.
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hammer oz
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.8 - Reloading? Monster addons?!?!

Post by hammer oz »

Probably just me but the fireing sound for the firemace seems to be really loud also that reload animation is damn sexy :D
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.8 - Reloading? Monster addons?!?!

Post by Ryuhi »

mutator wrote:Ryuhi, are you going to play with Ironlich abit more? it is able to fly...ironlich in heretic don't fly
The monsters addon is still going to be worked on quite a bit, my goal is to have a 1:1 replacement available for every doom monster. I'll also be retooling and rebalancing a lot of them (looking at you, serpent rider) and the iron lich is going to have a whole new attack combo since his whirlwind can be straight up cancerous on some of doom's tighter maps. I DO like them having the ability to fly though, it certainly aids a lot of their ambush spots (especially since they're replacing pain elementals.)
hammer oz wrote:Greetings just tried out this gem and so far I am enjoying it. I came up with some ideas for reload animations while playing as well as other things.

. To me i just doesn't feel right having the dragonclaw being the fast fireing weapon like it is now and felt better being the slow hard hitting type.
. An idea popped into my head for the reload animation of the ethereall crossbow in duel arrow mode. You could make it so each bolt that appears slides to the left and right.
. Would it be possible to add an option to have some of the original sounds re added back into the game
.Not sure if the reload animation for the dragonclaw is finished but if it is not for the reload animation you could have it that he hold up an energy orb infront of the weapon and the orb is then absorbed.
The Crossbow mode switch animation is fairly temporary, I will have a better one in the next release. I mostly implemented the one i did just to make it more visible which mode you are currently in, but I have a pretty good idea for where to go from there :)
The dragonclaw's current niche is that of a high speed, high capacity machine gun essentially. The ammo itself actually does a pretty wide spread with damage (5-40,) but i could always scale that back a tad. Its secondary fire shoots multiple shots at a time in a spiraling pattern, sacrificing speed for power (4-32 per projectile, so 16-128 if all 4 connect!) I do plan to retool the powered fire again as its current ripper balance is still too powerful (ripper is really hard to balance goddammit)
As for the reload, I actually like where it's at now. I purposely tried to give every weapon a unique reload animation (barring the Phoenix Rod and Sidhe Wrath, since they're supposed to be similar) but of course nothing is set in stone.... :wink:
Glad you liked the firemace reload by the way, I put a lot of effort into that one 8-) I'm pretty garbage at photoshop so the fact it came out as good as it did pleases me greatly.
I do plan to have the full original sound pool to work with, but won't be reverting too much to its original stock sounds. a lot of them will be used more for differentiating firing types, enemy projectiles, and so on.

thanks for the input guys, glad you're enjoying things so far :D
Ts879
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.8 - Reloading? Monster addons?!?!

Post by Ts879 »

Well I like what you've done so far at improving the mod, especially the cross bow mode switch. But I think you should make the mode switch thing be alt fire and turn the time stop ability into an item. That way we can use other weapons during the time stop.

Other than that the only other thing I would like to see is powered version of the alt fire, when the time is used and maybe a couple of more weapons. But so far everything looks really good, can't wait for the next update!
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.8 - Reloading? Monster addons?!?!

Post by Ryuhi »

Is anyone interested in playtesting/bugreporting? I'm making plenty of progress but I keep missing issues between revisions.

That said, two new systems on the way: Headshots for HDMonsters, and a Magic system for the core mod!

also:
But I think you should make the mode switch thing be alt fire and turn the time stop ability into an item. That way we can use other weapons during the time stop.
I plan to give it a proper altfire and rework the time freeze a bit, but not as an item.....
Someone64
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.8 - Reloading? Monster addons?!?!

Post by Someone64 »

I haven't really caught any bugs so far and I'm having quite a lot of fun with it. I'm excited for the completion of the monster pack! This is going to be quite fun with the Heretic Upstart Mapping Project recently released.
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-Ghost-
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.8 - Reloading? Monster addons?!?!

Post by -Ghost- »

Here's a texture pack I found awhile ago; I usually use it when I'm playing Heretic/Hexen styled mods in regular Doom: viewtopic.php?f=46&t=31134

It changes over all the textures to be Hexen 2's and for the most part looks pretty good. I think there's a couple missing textures, but it replaces almost everything for that dungeon-y feel. It goes pretty well with those mod, now I just need a good music replacer to fit the theme!
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.9 - THE MAGIC SYSTEM IS BORN!

Post by Ryuhi »

Just updated the original post with the v0.9/v0.2 release of the core mod + monsters respectively, with quite a bit of good stuff added to both!
If anyone would be willing to help me script a system for cycling through spells rather than having to assign a keybind for each one, it would be GREATLY appreciated. Ive been trying to figure out how to do it and its been eluding me, so for now, pukename keys will have to do :(
On the bright side, I'm kinda learning a bit more ACS!

As always, feel free to let me know what you guys think/let me know of any bugs or issues/give opinions on my crappiness and or awesomeness.
Someone64
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.9 - THE MAGIC SYSTEM IS BORN!

Post by Someone64 »

I think the universal headshots need to be optional in order to retain compatiblity with monster packs as it'll make fighting monsters that aren't specifically blacklisted too easy/nonsensical. Also, question. Are the items still collectible in Heretic? Actually in general the option for use of mana system or collection system would be really nice. Also I think the mana system needs balancing. Maybe it would be better if you turned what previously dropped these items into mana droppers instead of using regen so the item drops become a universal pool for whatever of the 4 items you want to use since they're now spells that use the same resource.

Would you be capable of making it so that the universal headshot system creates a menu with a list of available monsters along with toggles for them? It's a longshot but still. (Also, why aren't things like Cacodemons and Pain Elementals included in the blacklist? Quite Odd. Also are are Revenants included?)

You should probably also tone the headshot damage multiplier down to something more reasonable. Taking down tanky enemies is trivial with the wand now. If it's big enough of an issue without an easy solution I think you should just package the headshot script with your monster pack instead of the weapons pack then balance it specifically for it.
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.9 - THE MAGIC SYSTEM IS BORN!

Post by Ryuhi »

the magic system is still in its early stages, I plan to flesh it out with more spells and CVAR options as I get more familiar with ACS. in regards to making it optional, i'll likely do two different player classes (one more traditional item based, the other mana based) to suit the two styles of gameplay. I actually added the ability to trade health for mana fairly late in the patch, so I may go back and retool the passive regen rate to be a bit lower to compensate.

The goal with the magic system is to give more utility to items. It sounds like a weird concept, but otherwise a thrifty player will have a hard time using a particularly powerful item unless they absolutely need to, saving it for an overwhelming situation that..... might never happen. Meanwhile on the inverse, there may be an item thats specifically suited to a situation, but the player would be more willing to just soldier through without it rather than deplete their inventory. Or maybe it only needs to be activated for a few seconds, making the rest of the duration a bit of a waste. I'm personally pretty awful about all of them, which is why I adapted the items I did first. I tend to stack them like crazy instead of actually using them. The next up is the time stopper (crossbow will get a proper alt fire.)

The headshot system is fantastic, but its main flaw is that projectile based enemies can "shoot themselves in the head" if they aim upward, which is why a lot of enemies like revenants were blacklisted by the original author. My workaround was to make the headshot boxes +Spectral, and give (almost) all of the player's projectiles the same tag in order to allow him to score headshots, but have enemy projectiles pass harmlessly through headshot hitboxes. There is likely a cleaner fix for this, so future versions will have that fixed a bit. I'll likely re-evaluate the headshot damage to x2 base (with gold wand being x3) down from their current x3 and x6 (there was some bad math in there for the gold wand tbh) I was able to iron out a few of the ridiculously powerful "head popping" attacks to not do obscene damage from the headshot boxes (namely the Hellstaff altfire) so hopefully I'll have everything to a good level soon.

Thats exactly the type of critique I was looking for though, I've been burning myself out playtesting so I forget things a lot :(

Edit: Eh, what the heck. It's 7am and I just posted it last night, might as well do a quickfix:

- Gold Wand Bomb can no longer headshot. still does plenty of damage on its own~
- Headshot base damage bonus set to 2x
- Gold Wand shot headshot damage set to 3x
- Mana regen set to 1 mana per 2 seconds.
- Gauntlets should be less likely to self kill by slipping through the failsafe.

Hotfix posted, feel free to redownload v0.9 and replace :D
Someone64
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.9 - THE MAGIC SYSTEM IS BORN!

Post by Someone64 »

Fair points. I still do think the headshot system should either be optional or only be for the monster pack as it's quite odd to find heads in more eccentric monster packs' monsters that clearly shouldn't. Also oftentimes the head for said monster would be way too low due to mod authors not designing their monsters for this particular script. I feel like it's less of a universal mod and more like a great pre-made plug-n-play implementation for use by mod authors wanting monsters with headshots.

I do love the idea of splitting the mana system with player classes. Also, the balance patch is pretty nice.
Last edited by Someone64 on Sat Oct 07, 2017 10:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ryuhi
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.9 - THE MAGIC SYSTEM IS BORN!

Post by Ryuhi »

Thats a good point, the headshot boxes are always positioned based off of the top of the collision box for the calling actor, so sometimes that is not always where the "critical" damage should be on the actual enemy sprite. When i was testing out the old/convoluted method for headshot actors, i was toying with the idea of "focus crystals" on the ghost/construct enemies as being their "headshot" hitbox, and having them at various places like their left shoulder, abdomen, right knee, etc. In the end I may move the mod over to the addon, and then further customize it in that fashion.
Someone64
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Re: Heretical Doom v0.9 - THE MAGIC SYSTEM IS BORN!

Post by Someone64 »

Ooh the idea of focus crystals is really interesting. I think something like that could be a solution to enemies that shouldn't really have headshots like Cacodemons. The way mods like Brutal Doom handles it is not having hitboxes on them but giving them a LOT less health to compensate and make them balanced with enemies that CAN be headshotted but visible interesting weak points sound way more cool.
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