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

[JasmairoQY]

>A lot of these features DO break map design (part of the reason I removed the flight spell to stymie it just a tad)

Which was kinda silly considering that Lvl 2 you get the Alt for the Staff to break the game, and if that is not enough there is the amulet of protection spell + phoenix jumping. Havent tested if the vortex effect of powered Alt Staff can attract keys too.

Flying was kinda another thing to set Heretic apart from Doom, and if only there were more Fly based maps out there, you can have the Heretic equivalent of the 3D game "Descent".

[JasmairoQY]

The Shock Combo does have some kind of auto targeting with the Hellstaff combo, right? Sometimes it seems like it tries to fire at the targets rather than being random.

But to be honest i dont find it too useful when the enemies can walk into the point of origin where the bullets are coming and cancel the effect like it was nothing, long before it reaches its full potential.

When i mean point of origin i mean when you already did the combo sequence and the image of a phoenix start showing up and growing larger, which is then interrupted by enemies just walking to it casually, before it gets remotelly bigger. Wasnt talking about the magma ball before the combo is made because of course it that thing has a hitbox to be used against enemies AND to be shot by your bullets to begin the combo.

[JasmairoQY]

If you keep getting messages that the mod makes you a fucking god or whatever, then just add more enemies or make situations where going all out doesn't feel dirty and instead feels like the best move possible regardless if you burn all your ammo in a single area.

Then again, when you clear an area and backtrack for heal and mana, or just switch between staff and gauntlet spells to prepare with shields, hp and even flachettes, it means that you will always be prepare for whatever its ahead and thus the danger is minimal. In one hand the players are doing the best they can at all times which is good, the problem is that the payoff doesnt justify the preparation.

Maybe the introduccion of an enemy that punish players that take too long? But then it would turn into a speedrun, even if trying to turn the game more fast paced and less turtling up could work.

Maybe an enemy that shows up after you have used the Tome of Power 3 times (or long enough), which are eldritch abominations from other dimensions who want to feed on your power. You love to be overpowered? That is ok. Here is an enemy who strong enough to take you on at your full strength.

Enemies with Manaburn could be an option. You may as well use your mana yourself before the enemy depletes it. Not sure if the enemy should mana drain you on hit or slow by proximity.

[Ryuhi]

Which was kinda silly considering that Lvl 2 you get the Alt for the Staff to break the game, and if that is not enough there is the amulet of protection spell + phoenix jumping. Havent tested if the vortex effect of powered Alt Staff can attract keys too.

Note that I said just a tad. Also you absolutely cannot pull in keys with any of the gravitational effects, they are assigned to specific items and required gross hacks to be able to do.

When i mean point of origin i mean when you already did the combo sequence and the image of a phoenix start showing up and growing larger, which is then interrupted by enemies just walking to it casually, before it gets remotelly bigger. Wasnt talking about the magma ball before the combo is made because of course it that thing has a hitbox to be used against enemies AND to be shot by your bullets to begin the combo.

I've never had this happen in testing, and I use the combos a lot... I actually had to freeze the game and spawn an enemy inside of the detonation to verify it. I will gladly correct this in the future, so thanks for the heads up! Also yes, both the hellstaff and dragonclaw combos have at least some level of tracking associated to them.

As for enemies, the mod is designed to be modular and not replace any monsters so as to be compatible with other monster mods. If you think everything is too easy, I highly recommend using colorful hell and selecting the hidden difficulty, its quite a challenge even with all the tools you are given. The Heretical Doom Monsters addon is something that is tailored specifically to the main mod itself, and as I progress further into it, there will be more mod specific interactions like the ones you have requested.

[JasmairoQY]

Well, i use the Shock Combos on really dense enemy packs or Maulotaurs, and i tend to do it as closely as possible (via Firemace Alt Fire and Time Stop if needed) so all the shots are not wasted. Unfortunately maulotaurs just move forward a bit they cancel it as well other monsters that do not get hitstun in time by the first shots of the shock combo.

If you werent going to fix it then i might have just solve it by just aiming at the ceiling and hope the combo shots rain down from there.

I see you want to do a melee focus mod in the future. Can i suggest something as dumb as Firemace Pinball? Where you use the Kick Dance to push a giant Firemace shot (or maybe the magma ball from Phoenix Shot Alt) to push the ball back and forth between you an the enemy. It does more dmg the more it bounces around with walls and enemies, but if you dont hit an enemy in the next 5 seconds the ball despawns.

if that is too dumb then you can always introduce an Enchant System™ for the staff, with the power of a particular ranged weapon for additional effects and consume the ammo in the process.

[JasmairoQY]

I've never had this happen in testing, and I use the combos a lot... I actually had to freeze the game and spawn an enemy inside of the detonation to verify it. I will gladly correct this in the future, so thanks for the heads up! Also yes, both the hellstaff and dragonclaw combos have at least some level of tracking associated to them.

On the subject of Shock Combos, i forgot to mention that the Claw Combo bullets do not have enough turning speed to hit a single target most of the time, like a maulotaur. They more or less end up orbiting the target despite the size should be big enough to be hit at some point.

[Ryuhi]

they actually have a pretty wide turning angle, but I have seen that on rare occasion... I have been considering a failsafe. Its pretty rare, but I know a way to prevent it, so I'll roll it into the next version.

[AvzinElkein]

I dunno if you already knew this, but I dunno if there's a problem with playing Strife with it; I saw something wrong here as per this:

[Ryuhi]

admittedly, I havent been testing strife anywhere near as much as the others, so I'll be cleaning it up quite a bit for next patch. thanks for the report!

[AvzinElkein]

admittedly, I havent been testing strife anywhere near as much as the others, so I'll be cleaning it up quite a bit for next patch. thanks for the report!

Yes, I tried both classic and Veteran editions of Strife. Also, you're welcome! Also, the Health Bonus message still says +3 health (but it does correctly give +1 health).

[JasmairoQY]

Got 2....bugs? i think? while playing "HereticalDoomMonsters 0.3a" with Vanguard.wad with Plutonia as base, on Sorcerer difficult.

1)The Ophidians (serpents) that shoot with their staff dropped an active missile when i killed it. No ammo for "missile" weapons, just a Cyberdemon rocket that didnt move and as soon it appeared it was affected by gravity and exploded on hitting the floor from the ophidian i killed. Never happened before so i dont think its a troll attack they do only on high difficults.

2)The Maulotaurs do not render the ground attack, only the lightning effect that iluminates the attack is rendered but not the sprites that would should up on Heretic.

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You know, if you get bored with developing Heretical Doom, you can always make a RPG version where you instead let the player specialize on an specific weapon at the expense of making the others do less damage, become useless, or just change to serve up for a combo mechanism for the weapon they are spending their points into.

[Ryuhi]

Got 2....bugs? i think? while playing "HereticalDoomMonsters 0.3a" with Vanguard.wad with Plutonia as base, on Sorcerer difficult.

1)The Ophidians (serpents) that shoot with their staff dropped an active missile when i killed it. No ammo for "missile" weapons, just a Cyberdemon rocket that didnt move and as soon it appeared it was affected by gravity and exploded on hitting the floor from the ophidian i killed. Never happened before so i dont think its a troll attack they do only on high difficults.

2)The Maulotaurs do not render the ground attack, only the lightning effect that iluminates the attack is rendered but not the sprites that would should up on Heretic.

--

You know, if you get bored with developing Heretical Doom, you can always make a RPG version where you instead let the player specialize on an specific weapon at the expense of making the others do less damage, become useless, or just change to serve up for a combo mechanism for the weapon they are spending their points into.

Thank you for reminding me about that Ophidian bug, it was a renaming issue that i screwed up in doom wads. The maulotaur effects have been restored for the next version, there were a lot of dependencies on assets existing in the heretic.wad with both parts of the mod, so I've been trying to restore (and even replace) most of them. Even though the main mod has been my focus for a while, I have been working on the monster mod here and there, so hopefully I'll have something ready to go soon.

As for other mod ideas... I already have two completely different projects that I have laid groundwork for, and will hopefully have something to show for within a few months.

[JasmairoQY]

I noticed that using the GIVE ALL command permanently taints any Mystic Urns you have for the rest of the map (not sure for rest of the game), with the version that auto heals you on place when you "die" and doesn't teleport you.

Even if you deplete all 25 stacks the cheat gives you, any urn you find or make or your own with the staff is that version and not yours.

I was about to ask why the melee staff attacks arent silent, but then i remember that vanilla doom and heretic all attacks are noisy and only Brutal Doom had silent melee.

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Is it too OP to ask for Time Stop to also make you Intangible, so you can actually get out of being stuck with too many enemies?

Is there any Endless Wave Survival map that could go along with Heretical Doom?

[Ryuhi]

Give all unfortunately breaks a lot of things in a lot of mods, so I'd definitely recommend not using it pretty much ever. If you need to for testing purposes or anything like that, its usually better to just use the individual versions (give weapons, give ammo, etc) or just idkfa.

As for intangibility, its something that CAN be done in the system but can cause a lot of issues for when you come out of it, so its usually only used in specific scenarios. The dash attack timed hit comb for the staff uses it to go through enemies and resolidify on the other end, for example. Having it work as a simple toggle would cause a lot more problems than you might expect, so I would use the Chaos Device or a pole vault when you need to zip out of harms way.

I was never one for wave maps, so I don't really have any recommendations unfortunately. I do enjoy it with Megawads that are on the more difficult side like Ancient Aliens and Sunlust though.

Update: a LOT of progress on rebalancing for the next update, so anyone with any concerns in regards with anything, feel free to let me know!

[Beezle]

Is there any Endless Wave Survival map that could go along with Heretical Doom?

The only Single Player mapset that I can think of like that is Stronghold, however its not compatible with mods but I'd still highly recommend it when you have a chance. There is one mod by TDRR I found not too long ago which turns DM maps into Invasion maps, but gotta warn you to be careful with any cramped maps as you might get a Cyberdemon in a really cramped hallway or something like that, here's the link to the thread: viewtopic.php?f=43&t=61047 , pair it with any CTF or DM mapset and load the wad and Supreme Invasion before Heretical Doom or whichever mod.