Walpurgis 1.0A (For Doom/Heretic/Hexen) [FULL 1.0 Release]

[tegarchoff]

Hi, first time poster here. First, I thank you for this mod, it's actually great Sir! I got Hexen + Heretic from GoG and I'm already modding it for a playthrough, and I've chosen this mod for that purpose. I've got something to report though, I tried the Druid class and she has the dagger held the wrong way? Pointing upwards instead of down.

This bums me a little as I'm using the upscaled sprites from a mod called 'Hexen Bastardized', that I downloaded from ModDB, and it's also holding the knife the wrong way. I've tinkered with Doom mods a little in the past, so I unpacked the files. I can see the right sprite of the Dagger (I can't remember the name now), but can't figure the way to fix it. Perhaps now it's held that way by design?

Maybe someone can give me a hand here. It's a minor thing I know.

[eharper256]

Hi, first time poster here. First, I thank you for this mod, it's actually great Sir! I got Hexen + Heretic from GoG and I'm already modding it for a playthrough, and I've chosen this mod for that purpose. I've got something to report though, I tried the Druid class and she has the dagger held the wrong way? Pointing upwards instead of down.

This bums me a little as I'm using the upscaled sprites from a mod called 'Hexen Bastardized', that I downloaded from ModDB, and it's also holding the knife the wrong way. I've tinkered with Doom mods a little in the past, so I unpacked the files. I can see the right sprite of the Dagger (I can't remember the name now), but can't figure the way to fix it. Perhaps now it's held that way by design?

Maybe someone can give me a hand here. It's a minor thing I know.

He's definately using an old version of Walpurgis, so I would go speak to author of that pack.

Also, rude, didn't ask me nicely to use it. I'm not too worried, mind, but it's polite to ask these things, yes?

In any case, the Baselard was changed to be held facing up in 0.99 since several people stated they would prefer it that way (and it didn't match the animations that were improved in a prior version).

[tegarchoff]

Oh, so it's as I suspected, it's like that by design. Yeah, that bastardized file is from 2024, and I see you've updated your mod recently.

Also, yeah, I don't see anyone credited in the file description, or any .txt file inside the mod. I believe it's also bundled with the game's WADs files and I don't think that's legal, at least I'm pretty sure in Doom mods it isn't. I'm sure the author meant no harm, but I know it's common courtesy to credit other's work in your mod. I'll try to contact the creator, but first I'll try to tinker further with it, I know the sprite is called 'B5LRA0.png', I'll try to see which is the correct sprite in your mod and may be by renaming it in the upscaled file it will work. I hope.

Thanks for the quick reply, Sir, and for your amazing work.

[eharper256]

Oh, so it's as I suspected, it's like that by design. Yeah, that bastardized file is from 2024, and I see you've updated your mod recently.

Also, yeah, I don't see anyone credited in the file description, or any .txt file inside the mod. I believe it's also bundled with the game's WADs files and I don't think that's legal, at least I'm pretty sure in Doom mods it isn't. I'm sure the author meant no harm, but I know it's common courtesy to credit other's work in your mod. I'll try to contact the creator, but first I'll try to tinker further with it, I know the sprite is called 'B5LRA0.png', I'll try to see which is the correct sprite in your mod and may be by renaming it in the upscaled file it will work. I hope.

Thanks for the quick reply, Sir, and for your amazing work.

Yep, bundling iwads of any type is illegal. It's probably a good thing it hasn't got much attention, else the looming hammer of the Bethesda legal department would be glaring.

If you insist on using the Hi-Res one, simply rename that sprite to B5LRQ0.png instead. The old one was never removed, I just added a new one and changed the code so it uses it.

Personally I only use HD textures (and even then, HD is relative, I use the 2x sized hand-redrawn ones like the DHTP ALT pack, rather than some gross AI upscaling). The pixelation is half the charm, or at least it is if you ever played the originals back in the 90's.

[eharper256]

I've heard from Doomworld that you can indeed run the Heretic.wad, then the new heretic_ex.wad, and then Walp in that order and apparently it works fine.

[tegarchoff]

[quote=eharper256 post_id=1262078 time=1754916939 user_id=23366]
Yep, bundling iwads of any type is illegal. It's probably a good thing it hasn't got much attention, else the looming hammer of the Bethesda legal department would be glaring.

If you insist on using the Hi-Res one, simply rename that sprite to B5LRQ0.png instead. The old one was never removed, I just added a new one and changed the code so it uses it.

Personally I only use HD textures (and even then, HD is relative, I use the 2x sized hand-redrawn ones like the DHTP ALT pack, rather than some gross AI upscaling). The pixelation is half the charm, or at least it is if you ever played the originals back in the 90's.
[/quote]

Thanks for your reply. I managed to change the sprite, though I think I renamed it to 'B7LRQ0.png', or something like that. It's working fine. Here's how it looks now:

[spoiler][imgur]https://imgur.com/MYDejWX[/imgur][/spoiler]

[spoiler][imgur]https://imgur.com/ahc6Ogk[/imgur][/spoiler]

I know this screenshots might induce vomiting in some, with all the reshade and pbr upscaled textures and sprites, sorry

I played the originals, all the way back in 1997 I believe, and finish them both. Hexen was the first game that jumpscared me, I remember a really dark room, thinking I was alone and then an Etting smacking me out of nowhere. Boy those were the days.

Thing is, I've been itching for a long time to replay it with those upscaled PBR textures. I value consistency a lot, so I really don't like to play with high-res textures and pixelated sprites, it has to be either all low-res and pixelated, or high-res and upscaled. I found that Bastardized mod a while back (that's how I found out about Walpurgis) and thought that it would be cool to use it's upscaled file.

As someone perfectly said when reviewing Doom RTX: That's more like the Doom that I remember. And I think that's how it works for me: when I boot up Project Brutality, with upscaled pbr textures, neural upscaled sprites, Relite mod and some nice reshade ambient light with a CRT shader, I think to myself 'Yeah, this is more like the Doom that blew my head back in the mid 90s'.

P.S.: Apparently, I couln't figure out how to properly put spoilers and images tags, sorry. I seem to have lost my forum skills, which were last used back in 2011 when I was in charge of banning cheaters in a CoD4 forum. Man it's been too long.

P.S.2: Whoa the jpeg compression is really doing a number in those screenshots.

P.S.3: Sorry for the minimap mod. I need to rest my cognitive skills as much as I can, Hunt Showdown 6* lobbies are tough when you're 45.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried playing Walpurgis in GZDoom-powered 'Hands of Necromancy'? I reckon the setting would be a perfect match!

[eharper256]

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried playing Walpurgis in GZDoom-powered 'Hands of Necromancy'? I reckon the setting would be a perfect match!

I imagine Walpurgis/GZDoom would have a hernia and explode.

It's very unlikely that HoN uses the same references and pointers so lots of the code would just not work sadly.

[eharper256]

snip

I'm generally of a 'whatever floats your boat' sort of mindset, there's no correct way to play, so I'm glad others can enjoy Walp in a myriad of ways.

The only thing that makes me go "u wot" is indeed the minimap mod. Getting hopelessly lost and confused is part of the Hexen experience.

Feel free to post the modified upscaled file on this topic, and I'll link it in the first post.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

It's very unlikely that HoN uses the same references and pointers so lots of the code would just not work sadly.

I went ahead and tried anyway: combat works great (as Baratus, anyway), but none of the pick-up items (weapons, ammo) get replaced. Oh well...

[eharper256]

It's very unlikely that HoN uses the same references and pointers so lots of the code would just not work sadly.

I went ahead and tried anyway: combat works great (as Baratus, anyway), but none of the pick-up items (weapons, ammo) get replaced. Oh well...

Makes sense, Walp doesn't know what it's looking for in HoN's code, so just shrugs and replaces whatever it can (i.e. Player classes).

Such is fun of writing code. People always go "Why aren't you doing what I'm telling you!!" but the code IS doing exactly what you ask, you have to find out why your instructions are flawed.

[tegarchoff]

[quote=eharper256 post_id=1262155 time=1755155636 user_id=23366]
[quote=tegarchoff post_id=1262128 time=1755053754 user_id=41681]
snip
[/quote]
I'm generally of a 'whatever floats your boat' sort of mindset, there's no correct way to play, so I'm glad others can enjoy Walp in a myriad of ways.

The only thing that makes me go "u wot" is indeed the minimap mod. Getting hopelessly lost and confused is part of the Hexen experience.

Feel free to post the modified upscaled file on this topic, and I'll link it in the first post.
[/quote]

First, sorry for the very very very late reply.

Now, about that upscaled file, indeed, it was made for a previously version for sure. Some enemies weren't upscaled, and some weapon's attacks also were off, mostly the horizontal ones. Some enemies, when they rotated... oh my god. Their faces. The stuff of nightmares. I still wake up screaming at night. THEIR FACES.

So, I decided to take that task upon myself, I googled, and ended up getting Topaz Pixelsomething. The interface is very simple, so I send the whole Sprites folder, selected 'low res', it said it was for images with visible pixelation and stuff, made them all x4 in size... and I grew a full beard waiting for it to finish. After a couple hours or so, it was done. Or so I thought. Boy was I wrong.

Some sprites looked ok-ish. Some were ok to be fair. But most featured a strange outline, sometimes grey, sometimes cyan. All if not most weapons featured that, or a transparent... thing. And some monster faces... THEIR FACES. AGAIN.

But I'm resilient. I persevered. Batch processed the outlines. Learned how to clean, sometimes to the point of obsession, stray pixels. Experimented with the upscaler. I find out that different methods yield better results in some sprites, and worse in others. Sometimes creative AI is best, others not so much. Sometimes you have to use both. It was a really interesting process. At least for me, it's the first time I'm tinkering with sprites. Some results were amazing, for real, it got me thinking 'how the hell did it figure out that detail for that torch, it wasn't there' or 'why the 'wet' look in the green serpent, almost like it's sweating'. Perhaps this is common knowledge here, but for me it's a first.

Anyways, trying to keep this brief, I'll try to do the upscaling. I don't have a lot of free time, so progress will be slow. I'm taking the 'when I see something off, I'll work on it' approach. Still miles to go. The Druid is like 80% finished. I'm focusing mostly in the idle sprites for the weapons (because idle sprites are the upscaler weird-pixeling-artifacting tool), when you're swinging it's very difficult to spot something off. In the most outrageous cases I add motion blur, it looks fine. I'll do the Hexen monsters as I'm finding them, I've had some really good results on most of them. Then I'll do a playthorugh with another character in Heretic, properly upscale their weapons and the bestiary there. I'm really liking the mod so far

Since my dumb brain still hasn't figured out how to properly add spoilers and img tags, I'll try to link some screenshots of the work in progress:

Some beautiful Reshade (Relite kills the framerate in the 5th visit to the 7 Portals, so I had to resort to some GI shaders to simulate the Light Bleed included in Relite):

https://i.imgur.com/7WZZ84T.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/F7zEmxk.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/L1qTQgM.jpeg

Bunch of leg skippers:

https://i.imgur.com/4uIS9tr.jpeg

Bunch of dead leg skippers:

https://i.imgur.com/0nqYMLx.jpeg

Something happened here:

https://i.imgur.com/JeVpBBn.jpeg

When I have the Druid and the Hexen Bestiary, at least, ready, I'll upload the file, so you can link it in the first page. Right now I wouldn't dare to call it even a WIP, as I'm still learning how to upscale correctly and efficiently.

And please, if someone can tell me how to properly use BBCode, I'd appreciate it. Even though Use BBCode is ON in the control panel, it says off here under the smilies. One mod was kind enough to correct them in my first post, but as I'm not a native English speaker I tend to edit my posts a lot to correct typos and stuff

P.S.: I had to get rid of the minimap, it died whenever I revisited a map

[eharper256]

Note that the held Torch is not part of Walp of course (you can tell it's using the old Fighter fist when you're playing the Crusader in the first shot). You just activate it like an item (I think holding it is something from WoC, I prefer to think the Walp torch is a magic hands-free one that floats above you lol).

Generally, I get the feeling that the re-shade is now a step too far myself, too gussyed up for my tastes. Too dark and gloomy, and not at all how I remember Hexen (lol). And the upscaler is doing the usual upscaling things, and losing weird little details here and there (notable especially on the shield's nails, the handle of the baselard). And boy those wolf claws have turned to plastic rather than pixelated fur I spent a while on.

But, again, I respect the work you've put in. I'd especially like to see how it handles the more unusual areas of Hexen- you ALWAYS see these things demonstrated in Winnowing Hall; but give us a view of Guardian of Ice, and the little castle and monastery in Hub 2, or heck, see how Penumbra looks in it, which is one of the more visually impressive Hexen wads.

But most of all, make sure you have fun actually playing rather than just spriting! Part of the reason I often ended up with breaks between working on Walp patches was so that I could make sure I enjoyed playing again.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Small issue: if I disable Walpurgis Bestiary in the options, then the monster health scaling option in 'Adjust Difficulty Settings" becomes greyed out.

Also, is there a way to disable the custom enemies like the Fallen One? I thought disabling '(Add Elite Monster Spawns)' would do the trick, but apparently not. The only way to prevent them from spawning is to disable Walpurgis Bestiary altogether, which leads to the problem above as well as the visual glitches the mod warns me about and even unexpected ones like the protagonist no longer taunting.

[eharper256]

Small issue: if I disable Walpurgis Bestiary in the options, then the monster health scaling option in 'Adjust Difficulty Settings" becomes greyed out.

Also, is there a way to disable the custom enemies like the Fallen One? I thought disabling '(Add Elite Monster Spawns)' would do the trick, but apparently not. The only way to prevent them from spawning is to disable Walpurgis Bestiary altogether, which leads to the problem above as well as the visual glitches the mod warns me about and even unexpected ones like the protagonist no longer taunting.

You can't have your cake and a donut as well, I'm afraid. Monster health scaling won't work on the Vanilla bestiary, because it's the vanilla bestiary.

Health scaling works because I set my bestiary's Health property to acknowledge your CVAR choice, but the Vanilla HP is fixed. So it's greyed out since it doesn't work.

The code literally goes "I shall replace this monster with nothing" with the bestiary off. Therefore, no other adjustments can occur either; it's a compatibility mode for you to use your own bestiary mods, really.

The Goblin/Fallen (among a few other things) are not actually elites, but alternate spawns to increase variety (i.e. you can turn off elites but still see Satyrs and Orks in Hexen, just not Satyr Gladiators and Orc Lords). The taunting is also intrinsically tied to the bestiary.

---

Basically, when a monster dies, it gives a behind-the-scenes death token to the player, which the code looks at to determine whether to taunt or not- it has several checks to make sure it's not spamming the player by ensuring a time and kill delay and a % chance... and again, vanilla monsters don't do that. This is kind of needed as by default the player actor is not aware of and does not track or care that they killed a monster.

Whilst, in theory, stuff like taunts could be based around monitoring the total level kill count instead, you come across other problems that way, like 'when do you poll it?' and 'where do I store comparision information?' and it ends up being a lot more clunky (and taunts will happen randomly rather than directly when you kill stuff, much less satisfying and kind of awkward).

Could I add a setting to ensure that only alternate spawns don't happen? I could... but every spawn option like that increases the code complexity by orders of magnitude, and those spawners are already thousands of lines of code due to the fun spaghetti of Dimensional Instability.