Video Of Heretic Alpha Version

[patrik]

Accidently by browsing various Heretic related videos from YouTube, I stumbled upon this:



Firstly, what? ID Soft licensed DooM engine to 2 companies? What is other one? Rogue for Strife? I doubt development of it began so soon.

Secondly, this preview makes me think Heretic was supposed to be more complex, than what we finally got. I mean statusbar seems to have empty slots that I think indicate presence of armor parts like in HeXen. Also "Mana" for ammo counter. Maybe there was common ammo type for all weapons?

Oh and BTW, have anybody tried recreating look of this prototype gargoyle? I never liked their final appearance, because they seem to me too "cute".

[Dancso]

I get the feeling those slots on the statusbar would be the actual slots of your inventory, maybe even a holding limit was planned. (per type, not per-stack as it turned out to be)
I think the mana thing was just a fantasy version of the word "ammo", given how pretty much every weapon in heretic is of magical nature.. sharing ammo types would've been a pretty bad idea to begin with.
Though, the review did mention double the amount of weapons as there were in doom so that might be a reason to think some weapons were to share ammo.

[patrik]

Commentator actually mentions "powered up mode resulting into double amount of weapons". But yeah, "Mana" was propably just fancy fantasy sounding name for ammo at this stage (but still reminded me bit of HeXen).
Other intriguing thing is the "Kills" counter. I am wondering if quantity of killed monsters somehow affected gameplay at this stage. Because otherwise, why would they feel need to display it all the time? Or was this statusbar never meant for final release, just for debugging purposes?

EDIT:
I can recognize almost all levels from these screenshots (0:34 looks like protype of E1M5 Cathedral with different textures) except for 2:34. Seems like it was supposed to be part of 3rd episode, but doesnt remind me of anything. Any clues?

[TheMightyHeracross]

Firstly, what? ID Soft licensed DooM engine to 2 companies? What is other one? Rogue for Strife? I doubt development of it began so soon.

Strife was actually being worked on earlier by Cygnus Studios before the staff "mutinied" (as Romero put it) and became Rogue Software. This delayed the release, I'd expect, and the Doom Wiki's Strife page says "from 1994 to 1996," although it has no source.

[Xeotroid]

I wonder what Strife would look like without that delay or how popular it would be - if it was released in 94, it wouldn't get basically burried under Duke Nukem and Quake.

[SFJake]

He says that they would have cut the inventory if it slowed down the gameplay too much.

Its too bad if the game had a few more RPG features. I hate this mindset of "slowing down gameplay too much". The game is already a fast paced shoot-them-all game, adding some RPG features on top can often enhance the game (as long as you don't make them a waste of time to actually go through).

[Project Shadowcat]

He says that they would have cut the inventory if it slowed down the gameplay too much.

Its too bad if the game had a few more RPG features. I hate this mindset of "slowing down gameplay too much". The game is already a fast paced shoot-them-all game, adding some RPG features on top can often enhance the game (as long as you don't make them a waste of time to actually go through).

Emphasis mine. When you do not allow a player to go through their inventory quickly enough, it will not only slow the pace of the game, even during a fierce fight, it will frustrate the player. Heretic did it just right.

[patrik]

I wonder what Strife would look like without that delay or how popular it would be - if it was released in 94, it wouldn't get basically burried under Duke Nukem and Quake.

It would propably end up looking more closer to DooM, akin to Heretic. Too bad we dont have anybody to ask, as Romero tend to answer only questions regarding DooM.

[Hellser]

Too bad we dont have anybody to ask, as Romero tend to answer only questions regarding DooM.

Romero had no involvement with the Strife Team...

[patrik]

Romero had no involvement with the Strife Team...

Well, he is not officially credited, but article about Strife from DooM Wiki mentions that:

id Software helped the company get set up in the same office building, and helped fill out its staff with programmer James Monroe, a longtime friend of John Romero, and level designer Tim Willits.

So maybe he could have bit of insight.

[patrik]

This is bit off topic, but still connected to same series of games, so why not?
I was playing Heretic II and checked Credits out of curiosity and only now I noticed this (emphasised in green box by me):

Whomever decided to not call the game "Hecatomb"

This looks like Raven were jesting Romero. Especially after knowing he posted about this in his .Plan page from 1997:

May 7, 1997
------------------------------------------------
Whoa, long break away from updating the .plan!

Daikatana is rocking along very well, the E3 demo
is gonna be really cool.

I'm a bit disappointed that Hexen 2 is being
named just that. I thought that Hecatomb would
have been a really great name and carried the
naming convention of the series to a logical end.
Doesn't this sound great: Heretic, Hexen, Hecatomb?
Heretic, Hexen, Hexen 2. Whatever.

For those not knowing: Hecatomb was originally supposed to be sequel to HeXen concieved by John Romero. But I presume after he left Id, connections with Raven got severed. I am pretty sure he got no influence on HeXen II.

P.S. It really makes me sad there is still no legal way to obtain digital copy of Heretic II and HeXen II's expansion pack Portal Of Praevus, so new players cant enjoy them (and I already gave up waiting for release of its source code). With this luck, it is propable we will get Praevus sooner than Heretic II. (At least we finally got re-release HeXen 1's expansion pack Deathkings Of Dark Citadel.) I just dont understand why Activision cant release it. Is it in any kind of copyright limbo?

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Heretic II CDs aren't particularly rare or expensive, but you'll probably have to follow these instructions to make it not mess up on a newer system.

Portal of Praevus is rather pricy to come by, though. (Although the prices seem to have come down a bit from a year or two ago).

[Dynamo]

It almost looks like the golem ghost was meant to be its own enemy....

[patrik]

Heretic II CDs aren't particularly rare or expensive, but you'll probably have to follow these instructions to make it not mess up on a newer system.

There is also unofficial "1.07 patch", which already should have that OpenGL glitch fix included and it also adds support for widescreen resolutions, but I havent tried it yet.

It almost looks like the golem ghost was meant to be its own enemy....

That would be really cool, but that screenshot placing it next to golems, just makes me think that at that stage of development there was just no corpse for golems.

[Enjay]

I wonder what Strife would look like without that delay or how popular it would be - if it was released in 94, it wouldn't get basically burried under Duke Nukem and Quake.

Yes, that would be interesting to go back and run an alternative timeline on. Strife, as we know, was tech that was rapidly being left behind at the time of its release (a little short of a month before Quake IIRC). If it had come out earlier when "Doom clones" were still the thing, and actually ran on the Doom engine like most of the other clones didn't, yet was clearly a different type of game in its own right, who knows what its reception might have been like?

As it turned out, many people didn't even notice the release of Strife 1n 1996, fewer still bought it, or even played the demo, and for a long time it was basically forgotten about. I remember when I released one of my WADs (Marine Assault in 2003 maybe?) that used the Crusader sprites, I was asked where the sprites that look a bit like an ED209 came from. Many people simply didn't know the game. It didn't really start getting remembered about until enough people had managed to pick up a copy via "abandonware" and support for it in source ports started appearing (in which Randi and ZDoom were significant, of course) that many people started remembering or being aware of the game.