Heretic: The Mysteries of Underville [RELEASED]

[Paar]

I would like to introduce my new map for Heretic that I have been working on for some time. I wanted to give myself creative challenge so I chose Doom format to see how many ideas I can come up with. At first I wanted for it to be small, something that would be the size of normal level, but over time the project grew and grew and in the end transformed into something that I hope is close to a quality of an official expansion. You will be the judge if I have succeeded. It should take you around an hour to finish it, maybe a little more.

There are no new weapons and no new enemies, just some new textures. The main attraction is the level itself and it's design, which you will hopefully find appealing and fun. It's largely linear with some areas that are open for exploration. You can choose from three difficulty settings with medium recommended for the first playthrough. The hard setting is for those who are familiar with the level layout otherwise you can expect to run out of ammo and get killed.

The level is direct continuation of the Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders, with Corvus stepping through a portal after defeating all Maulotaurs in the fifth episode. You can find a story introduction in the attached text file if you are interested. I took some liberties with the lore as the original story is very vague.

I will be happy for any feedback you can give me. Plus I would appreciate if you could share a recorded demo of your playthrough so I could see if you played the level as I had intended. It would be a great studying material.

The map is not compatible with the vanilla game as it is simply too large. It was designed specifically for GZDoom but could work in other source ports with some missing effects (didn't test that properly).

The map uses custom difficulty levels (easy, normal, hard). If you start the game through command line with intention to play on "normal", please use command "-skill 2".

No jumping!

Download

---

[HexenMapper]

Looks nice, I'll have a play and do a demo when I get home

[Paar]

Looking forward to your opinion!

[HexenMapper]

Here's some demos for zdoom2.8.1:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/eectbxoq2 ... s.rar/file

Quite a difficult map - I ended up treating it like a slaughtermap and trying to just run through, as there isn't quite enough ammo to kill everything. I played on skill 4 and there was no health that I could see - I didn't get very far!

Design-wise it was pretty cool what I saw and the gameplay was fun although perhaps I should play at a lower skill level, or the map may need to be balanced a bit better. Adding lots of enemies for higher skills means you need to either add more ammo too, and/or some more health as players take more hits while dealing with all the extra enemies.

[Paar]

The high difficulty is intentional as it wouldn't be a proper hard skill level if you could finish without a challenge. The lack of ammo means that you need to abuse as many secrets as you can and you have to rely on your melee attacks, at least in the beginning. That's why I have recommended to play it on medium skill level as you don't have to do that as much.

Of course it is possible to finish it on hard. I did finish it but I knew the map inside out. I wouldn't release a map that could not be finished. Weird thing is that you didn't find any health, I'm sure there are many vials and flasks laying around.

Thank for the demo footage!

[Paar]

Important update regarding difficulty settings. The map uses custom difficulty levels (easy, normal, hard). If you start the game through command line with intention to play on "normal", please use command "-skill 2". If you use "-skill 3" (which is normal in vanilla), you will be playing on "hard" and get frustrated! I have warned you!

[Blue Shadow]

---

Decent map overall. The starting area was a little tricky (died quite a few times), as I'm forced to fight off a lot of monsters while having pretty much next to nothing in-terms of resources. Although it got a little better later on as I started to pick up weapons, ammo and powerups.

The water section (with the machinery and all that, where you get the blue key) is my least favorite part of the map, mainly because I generally dislike fighting on high ledges and platforms, and having to retrace back to where I got to if I happen to have fallen, which I did, unfortunately.

Apart from that, it was fun to play.

[Paar]

I will probably revisit the starting area as you're not the only who has problem with it. I have already put a couple of time bombs in there but could remove a monster or two for it to be less crowded.

When creating the water section I had a suspicion that the player could fall of the ledge and be annoyed. That's why I added another ledge that behaves kind as a shortcut. It's lowered down initially but rises up when you go through the furnace. At that point when you fall down you can take that shortcut and skip maze building and furnace altogether. The question is if it is enough to keep the frustration down.

Thanks for playing, I appreciate it.

[Paar]

I have updated the link with newer version of the map. If you downloaded the previous version and haven't played it yet I suggest downloading the new one.

Changes:

• Fixed a ton of misaligned textures
• A little easier beginning with fewer monsters and more options how to kill them
• Minor changes to monster placements
• More details in some areas