Hands of Necromancy [Full game released!]

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Putting the Necromancy in Hands of Necromancy? Nice!

[peewee_RotA]

v1.5 is going into Beta soon - Important Information here!
The following changes will be introduced:
• Introducing Map Markers for Key Doors and Portals
• Fix for the switch of one of the map13 lifts
• Pull fixes from GZDoom, post-4.8.2
• New movement code - the player starts and stops moving a lot quicker, less "sliding" - this change will be optional
• New Special item: Hand of Necromancy (It raises the dead)
• "Classic" mode - which removes the new Hand of Necromancy and makes the gameplay more similar to what it was before this update

Important Information - Please Read!
The development team is going to need to be able to push rapid changes to this branch, if things aren't properly working. As such, please don't start any long-term play-throughs with saves you intend to keep - please keep using the release branches for that. When this version is released we will, as always, make a branch for those who save on the release version. We will *NOT* be introducing savegame compatibility for the beta branch! The beta will also only be on Steam!

(Update: The beta is now live)

YAY!!!! I had put a raise the dead ability on the scythe at a high level in the mod. So I'm really excited to see how it works in the base game!

[RKD]

Sounds pretty cool! I'm excited to try these new changes

[peewee_RotA]

The beta movement is back to hexen speed. So I had to do a speedrun.

I died on the boss, but it was fun.

https://youtu.be/3U6LYpKqyns

[peewee_RotA]

Got episode 1 run down to 13:26. Without any morph powers!

[Emmanuelexe]

For people who played the beta 1.5 a little, does it look still balanced with the new item who raise the deads

Also news:

Hands of Necromancy will have a sale of -50% with an event on itch.io: https://twitter.com/frechou_games/statu ... 3786393600

[peewee_RotA]

For people who played the beta 1.5 a little, does it look still balanced with the new item who raise the deads

Still evaluating. The two main situations I've run into is

A) They didn't help against the bosses. They don't really take agro, and they are better meat shields for the boss than for the player. (You can see this in my latest speedrun above)

B) It's really hard to get the one you want to raise. They even raise behind walls. (This seems to be because it is just iterating on all actors and checking distance, not checking line of sight). I sent a question to Rachael about this section (mostly wondering if it cleared actions and args on the thing) and sent a sample of how XRPG and Feat of Necromancy raise dead. But I only included the radius example. In XRPG there is actually a way to choose.

This "spell" fires a really fast missile that then does an A_RadiusGive (which can handle line of sight, etc.). The radius from the missile is pretty small so it basically raises the closest corpse to where it lands. Being able to aim it is a big help.
https://github.com/cabbruzzese/xrpg/blo ... ng.zs#L646

For the HON item you would have to handle this with a hitscan instead of a missile. That way you can immediately know if it worked in order to consume the item only on a success.

[peewee_RotA]

Will there be Ultimate Doom Builder support?

(My hobbled together configs don't work too great )

[Rachael]

Will there be Ultimate Doom Builder support?

(My hobbled together configs don't work too great )

[url]steam://install/1943390[/url]

[MoKuM]

Hello.

First, I want to thank everyone involved for this wonderful game - well done!

I have a strange problem running the itch.io version with the latest GZDoom (v4.8.2). The game starts in some kind of testing level with weapons and potions in front of the character. The loaded map is "MAP01 - The Countryside" but it is very different from the starting level of the original HoN executable. What could be the cause of this behavior?

EDIT:

For now, I removed the definition of the testmap in the mapinfo and the game works as expected.

[Rachael]

Oh no, thank you for telling us about this we will look into it.

The testmap was an important dev tool for the game and was used extensively for testing new enemies and items and such. But we opted not to remove it simply because it does provide some value to modders, as well, and did not make a significant impact on the overall size of the total distribution for the game, there simply was more benefits to leaving it in than removing it. But it was never meant to be accessible outside of using the console or via startup parameters i.e. from a map editor.

[Emmanuelexe]

For people who played the beta 1.5 a little, does it look still balanced with the new item who raise the deads

Still evaluating. The two main situations I've run into is [...]

Now, the closest enemy to you, will be the one who will be revived

[peewee_RotA]

Now, the closest enemy to you, will be the one who will be revived

Great! I've found ways to use them in speed runs to take aggro. So far it really adds to the experience.

[Sinael]

Good lighting is what makes or breaks the visuals of the videogame levels. The contrast between bright and dark areas is one of the major things that made Doom look so good for its time, and I feel that HoN really fails in that regard - the maps look really bland with very low variation in light levels - it's pretty even all around in each given map.

What IMO needs to be done to rectify that:
1) The higher contrast in light levels between areas under open sky (should be made brighter, maybe added light tint) and "indoors" (should be made darker/lighter depending on presence of light sources).
2) Things that cover the sky also should have very distinct shadows in sectors below them. The maps do this, but only some times, forgetting about it in other places. This should be brought to consistency.
3) Add some sector-shadows that correspond to the present lightsource (sun and moon counts for outdoors) which is fairly common detailing technique in usermaps. Again, they exist in some places, but not others.

Good example would be the way Golden Souls 2 handled lighting in its Day/Night/Dusk maps.

[Emmanuelexe]

It will be very hard to get some of the mappers back to the project for this kind of details, they are making other stuff now and the budget doesnt allow me to commission to remake all the maps just for the light stuff, we will just release 1.5 in live soon and we will see what happens.