Heretic Element Storm v0.91

[DavidB1000]

Yeah! Thanks! I'll post anything that I can think of after testing the first couple of levels.
NVM

[Maelstrom]

@zitro: Thanx for asking all this I've got some answers to your questions hope you enjoy if you have any more queries I'm happy to answer them If you havent already watch the Teaser Trailer created by StarScream it shows of all the weapons and their tomed fires also all the powerups and alot of random battle scenes.

1. Bosses are easy to hard, depends how they attack you and how many other units are surrounding them. But you have a point they are a bit easy cause you can use the right element against them, I may make them a bit more resistant.

2. The switch speed is already really fast, it's pretty much instant, but most weapons do normal damage to all the elements so you just have to use the most logical weapon for each battle, u'd be surprised how easy it still is.

3. 11 weapons 1 for each of the elements and a non-element weapon. The skulltag testers have agreed that they are mostly balanced.
The weapons are as follows.
__________________________
Meteor Wand - Fires a Meteor at the Enemy - Tomed: Launches a grenade that explodes in a ring of fire.
Tidal Staff - Rapid fires waves of water at the enemy - Tomed: Spawns a bunch of rain clouds on the ceiling, that drop rain damaging enemies.
Tremor Staff - Launches rocks that bounce around like grenades - Tomed: Launches two underground seeker missiles that when they hit a target launch a spike up from beneath the ground spearing the enemy.
Tornado Claw - Fires rapid fire blasts at the enemy - Tomed: Fires 3 wandering tornado that Ripper through enemies.
Steel Crossbow - Fires steel bolts that are really fast - Tomed: Becomes rapid fire, feels very much like a machinegun.
Glass Wand - Fires a see through blast at the enemy - Tomed: Creates a set of 5 shields that reflect enemy fire and fire normal glass blasts at the enemy. So creates a turret that defends you.
Acidscourge - Fires lumps of acid at the enemy at random speeds - Tomed: Launches 3 ripper acid clouds that poison enemies.
Energy Gauntlets - Fires two bolts of energy outwards - Tomed: Launches a flurry of electricity bolts.
Holy Rod - Fires a ripper beam of light - Tomed: Launches a burst of light which explodes into many little rippering particles that float through the air for a short time.
Unholy Rod - Fires 3 dark blasts outwards - Tomed: Wraithverge attack but with Doom Lost Souls recoloured black.

4. There are no alt-fires but there are tomed fires which are pretty much the alt-fires

5. D'Sparil will be very difficult and alot of testers want him to change elements as you fight him, though I am still considering this. He will have some interesting decorated attacks, such as the Fire Lich as seen as above, geez that Fire Spiral attack took ages to make work properly.

@DavidB1000: Ok, no problem

[DavidB1000]

Well, here's my couple of cents.

Hmm, so far, no major issues, except for the fact I can't Aim. So, yeah, I used infinite Ammo every so often.
Oh, yeah, that led me to discover that the acid weapon isn't affected by infinite ammo at all. Um, what? How does that happen?

Oh yeah, the glass weapon is awesome, although I run through a lot of ammo with every weapon against I guess light monsters? They're not glass, but no matter what weapon I hit them with, they just don't die easily, so yeah, light.
A couple of dark element gargoyles were annoying, but hey, those were the only two dark elements I found.

Oh, the water staff doesn't seem to do any real noticable damage at all. It takes awhile to even kill fire monsters. Or at least, somewhat long time.
Oh, same with the claw of air. That's an awesome weapon but even against earth monsters, it takes a lot more to kill them.

The energy monsters seem to die by everything somewhat easy but maybe I'm just lucky.
Oh, what's the alt-fire for the ammo-less blue energy blast? Seems to do nothing different. Maybe slightly bigger.

[Maelstrom]

Light monsters shouldn't be that much harder kill, they revive enemies that's the most annoying part, cept they can't revive glass. Dark should be the ones that worry you cause they are damn near impossible to see, and they regenerate if you don't keep shooting at them.

Because to make acid works it uses a A_TakeInventory and A_CheckInventory, so infinite ammo or not it will still take ammo.
Hmm strange people on Skulltag believed Water and Air to be too good, I may consider making them more powerful in the next release but that may throw them out of balance.

Also Earth is resilient to Air so why you were shooting it with air is not my fault. lol
Energy is easy to kill because they take damage from their own element only one thing does low damage to them and that's water. Energy takes 3 times damage from its own element, though if you kill it with its own element it overcharges and implodes dealing explosion damage to all around it.

The Non-Element weapon secondary fire is a direct energy beam instead of a spiraling one and it does slightly more damage.

If you read some more of the first post it can help understand a few more things like the elemental bonus's and stuff.

[neoworm]

One thing so far - I got stucked in secret in E2M1 where you need to use Wings of Wrath to get out. You should make only Nimbus sphere to replace Wings of wrath.

[Maelstrom]

Oh shit I never even thought about that whatsoever, good point thanx for that neoworm. Nimbus Sphere will always replace Wings of Wrath in next version. I didn't realise there were any parts in Heretic where you actually needed them.

[DavidB1000]

Looking at the elemental damage, something here is really off. Water should receive double damage from fire, it's the most logical thing for elemental damage.
Earth Vs. Air. Air should do double damage vs. Earth, and Earth should do double damage against air.
Fire shouldn't do anything at all against earth. Rocks are earth, and let's put it this way, lava doesn't melt some rocks.

These are logical elemental weaknesses. Why did you change everything around? No wonder I can't hurt anything...also, despite what you say, whatever that monster was that looks like glass, but doesn't die as easily or bounce projectiles back in your face...is really difficult. I want to say it's steel, but it shrugs off everything.
Air vs. Acid? Wait a minute. Radiation and Acid are even more dangerous when high winds are involved! What?
Also, it's good to know the energy creatures die easy.
There's no other obvious weirdness I can think of. Except Steel is somewhat resistance to acid. And is outright immune to radiation.
Hope you don't kick me off the team for not understanding things.

[neoworm]

Looking at the elemental damage, something here is really off. Water should receive double damage from fire, it's the most logical thing for elemental damage.

Its not Fire is very easy to extinguish by water, but I just dont see why water should be vulnerable to fire. Try to use flamethrower to vaporize puddle of water - it wont work well.

Earth Vs. Air. Air should do double damage vs. Earth, and Earth should do double damage against air.
Fire shouldn't do anything at all against earth. Rocks are earth, and let's put it this way, lava doesn't melt some rocks.

Earth vulnerable to air is logical (atmospheric corrosion) but again I dont see why it should be air vulnerable to earth. Killing wind with rock...

[Imp Hunter]

I has a similar wad ideia some weeks ago

Excelent work Maelstorm! Can i be Beta Tester too?

[Maelstrom]

@Neoworm/DavidB1000: Ok the reason why some of the elements dont sound like they work is because I needed to make a circle, If you notice they make a complete circle otherwise the wad is totally and utterly unbalanced.

Fire beats Earth beats Air beats Acid beats Steel beats Glass beats Energy beats Water beats Fire
Then there is just Light and Dark which are seperate elements which beat each other. My original idea was to go with logical weakness's but my problem was each element needed to beat one and each element needed to be weak by one. So Earth is pretty much Nature, I dont know how that beats Air but it was actually the last one left so it had to be. Air beats Acid, think of acid as gas or some kind of vapour. Acid beats steel it melts it down or corrodes it. Steel beats glass it shatteres it. Glass reflects energy back at it which destroys it. Energy electrocutes the water, even though this really has no effect it just kills whats in the water. And Water beats Fire cause that's an obvious one. Finally cause I think of Earth as Nature what does Fire do to Nature Tress and stuff, It Burns it. The only one I found illogical was Earth beating earth but that was because it was the last one left :S

Also no don't worry about not understanding things, people have their own views on elements, take a look at the Skulltag forum aswell some people said other things should beat other things, this is just how it ended up in the end, I have changed it round so much before I finally got started with it. But in the end I needed a balance so it has to make a complete circle of weakness and resistances. Steel is actually friggin annoying to kill with anything, acid does actually kill it faster though if you use linetarget and check the damages.

@ImpHunter: Yeah no problem I'll pm you with a link.

[DavidB1000]

Ah, thanks for the explanation.
To Neoworm, I don't know about you, but if I go after a pool of water with a flamethrower, say goodbye to the water, fast.

1300 degree temperature is going to vaporize water fast.

Anyway, Maelstrom, thanks again, that does make sense. Although I fail to see how the "logical way" would throw off the elemental balance, but, I guess.

Earth Vs Air, well, Earth to me means rock, but, earth elemental damage is greater against air because it's a staple of all RPGs. Just like fire and water.

[Maelstrom]

Yeah alot of it does seem wrong, but it makes fighting enemies unbalanced, because you will end up with one element which has no weakness, making it an annoying prick of an element to take down. My original version had two elements with no resistances and 1 with on weakness. That's when I decided I need to make a perfect circle to even it all up so each element has a weakness and resistance, and this is what it ended up with. Personally the only one I really didn't like was the Earth beating Air one, but that was the last two I had left and it was like, well guess that has to be it then.

[Ganryu]

I have an idea if you want D'sparil to have multiple elemental weaknesses that change.

Put some kind of icon or an indicator on the stage that shows which element D'sparil is currently aligned to, and then have that change according to a script. This way the players might even be forced to focus on something other that the boss himself. Especially if the elemental indicator is not immidiately near where the boss is.

[Maelstrom]

Everyone has different ideas, someone wants him to change his element so his robes change colour every time he teleports, but the problem with some of these ideas, is that it may require editing map e3m8 to add ACS, which I can't do because this is made to run with any Heretic mod.

Your idea is good but is something that could be done better with like a map that is designed to work with this mod. Because if I have to edit e3m8 it ruins this mods capability with running with any other Heretic mod including that Heretic Treasure Chest Map Pack which is coming out soon.

Unless your idea can be done with World ACS which I ain't good with. I'm probably going to be unable to do that.

EDIT: I'm putting up vids as I complete every Lich, Maulotaur and D'sparil, you can watch them as they go up on my Youtube Channel, not that it looks snazzy or anything just that I'm putting the vids up there cause I'm not putting links to all of them up here.

http://au.youtube.com/user/Maelstrom7777

Also I have planned for a Final Release Trailer which will show everything in the mod. But more on that when I'm actually closer to finishing it

[zitro]

I agree, the elements are probably more logical than the RPG games, and this is the way to make things balanced.

I think I could be pretty useful as a beta tester since i tend to be very picky with numbers, probabilities, balancing things out (i commented a lot in AEOD for balance concerns and suggestions), but I'm quite busy with finals. Maybe next week, I'll see if I'm interested.

It looks like a fantastic project, I'm definitively interested in playing it.