To which I agree save for the latter point. I personally enjoy Heretic's style. But you are right that Heretic is probably the hardest to map for. Where as Doom sort of goes for this abstract-like design, Heretic goes for a hint of realism. The fact that it only has a handful of textures makes it even harder to convincingly produce something recognizable to what the mapper intends.Graf Zahl wrote:It's a fact that due to its limited texture set Heretic is probably the hardest to map for of the Doom engine games. Give this to a skilled mapper and you may get good results (e.g. Chris Lutz has done some amazing work with the original texture set) But this requires quite some skill in detailing a level to make it look good. But where in Doom, Hexen or Strife you may get away with clever use of textures, that's nearly impossible with Heretic's garish looking stock set. I personally find the original levels mostly unpleasant to look at, especially the later episodes.
Try playing Episode 1 and name the maps according to what you see rather than what's on the automap / intermission. Then go back and look at the names. I personally went ".. yeah, I can see that being some docks. Or some dungeons."