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

[eharper256]

And heres a new video of me checking out Realms of Chronos, a community hub that came out last week:

Looks pretty interesting, though there's a platforming section (not in the video) I wasn't terribly fond of.

You can check it out here.

[struukduuker]

Hey thanks for the video!

Its always nice to see someone else play for a change, and also nice to see the Myrm surviving fine in UV difficulty Doom levels against BD monsters.

The large blue potions must be a thing of the level itself, so I guess they would have been reducing your numbers of Quartzine Flasks.
The mod assumes its replacing regular Doom drops, so when you get things like that the levels own resources will take priority, I believe.
And those cyberdemons must have alot of HP to survive that many Quietus Torpedoes.

If I'm starting to get videos I guess I now just need Mr.Icarus-sempai to notice me.

As an aside, you might want to cross-post it on the Doomworld Walpurgis topic as well; maybe get a little bit exposure that way, right?

Posted it at DW. I guess I'll be making some more videos with the different classes. I do have to say that the cleric 3 piece weapon secondary fire is very OP lol. It kills those cyber demons in 1 or 2 shots lol.

[eharper256]

Posted it at DW. I guess I'll be making some more videos with the different classes. I do have to say that the cleric 3 piece weapon secondary fire is very OP lol. It kills those cyber demons in 1 or 2 shots lol.

It is also the most expensive one, mana-wise, but yeah, I do probably need to nerf the Crusader's Crux Calicus Vortex a bit.

Arguably, the Tertiary Quietus fire is more effective against cyberdemons... assuming all the projectiles decide to go for the cyber; which could be an issue in that map I suppose.

A charged up Quietus torpedo is an amazing way to annihilate a group of mid-tiers because it can hit such a huge area with good damage, but overall its around like 4-5 Doom Rockets worth against cybers as they also naturally resist area damage. So the performance is about what I'd expect. The same will probably apply to if you do a Magister run; rapid fire Agnus shuriken will likely hose them down quicker than the hellfire cones will.

[eharper256]

I've created a Walpurgis Discord channel in case people would prefer to use that platform to give their feedback, since that seems to be quite common around these forums at the moment.

The invite link is here:
https://discord.gg/rxsKfFp

Edit: Please note this is a temporary invite!

[Gen5lock131]

Just wanted to say that I'm having a lot of fun with your mods mate. Cheers and thanks for all your hard work!

[eharper256]

Just wanted to say that I'm having a lot of fun with your mods mate. Cheers and thanks for all your hard work!

Thanks for playing them! I appreciate it!

[eharper256]

Well; its encouraging I've not had any bug reports about the Druid! No news is good news, and all that. I may still add a few tweaks to the Ichival Fire modes regardless.

Anyways, in case anyone is wondering what's next...

After a bit more cooldown period from modding; I shall be looking at three things:
A) Upgrading Bosses in all three games.
First up will probably making Zedek, Menelkir and Tradactus use actual Walp attacks and upgrade their behaviours and make them less into 'I mince this dude with a burst of ultimate with the Mystic Ambit active' and proceed. Making the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind, as well as Iron Lich and Maulataur do more things is probably afterwards. If you have suggestions of what you'd like to see in bosses, let me know!

B) Alternate in-slot weapons.
This will come after the above, most likely, CVAR options where you'll be able to have alternate in-slot options (or both). For example, this might include replacing Algor for Aestus, fire spells instead of ice, for the Magisters who want to be pyromaniacs. This part is still in preliminary planning, but let me know if you have other ideas.

C) Druid upgrades
Once I've got a good idea of what people think she plays like, ideally.

With all this in place, we'll be very close to what I envisioned for the 1.0 release!

[TOFM]

It not show the keys of doom in the hud

[eharper256]

It not show the keys of doom in the hud

As its using the Hexen interface; they show up in the Map screen; as you can see here:

Just double checked as you can see; and there doesn't seem to be any issue with that.

I might consider some form of mini icons again like the basic Doom/Heretic HUD, but the issue is how to show the Hexen keys in that case (which is why it does this anyways).

As another option for tracking keys, Hellscape Navigator works fine with Walpurgis, and I use it all the time, so that's an idea.

[eharper256]

So, I'm back from my week off of doing little besides playing Fire Emblem hacks and No Man's Sky, and since there are no other thoughts or suggestions, I guess we'll get started with the Boss updates first and foremost.

My current thoughts are arming Zedek with the Vorpal Axe and having behaviour similar to the new Ettin Sarg. Tradactus will get a Lightbringer and Firestorm Font. And Menelkir will be fireball obsessed. The challenge is to make sure that they still work in any level that introduces them normally without breaking the game. Its due to this that I probably can't do too much with Korax.

But I guess we'll see how that goes...

[Gen5lock131]

I have been playing around with it on heretic and hexen some more. So far I don't personally have much to complain or add about. It makes playing the game on the maximum difficulties fairly well.

[eharper256]

I have been playing around with it on heretic and hexen some more. So far I don't personally have much to complain or add about. It makes playing the game on the maximum difficulties fairly well.

Just hearing that is actually quite pleasing, to be honest.

As some might be aware, I'm a scrub that doesn't play any UV/Nightmare equivalent in most cases, especially in most 2010's/2020's Doom maps, which are way harder than most 00's and 90's ones, so Walp is primarily tested at Skill 3/HMP level from my end. If it still works well at higher levels, that's a good thing and I always appreciate feedback on it since I suck too much to play it myself.

[Crudux Cruo]

So i've been playing the druid and there were things i liked, things i didnt.

1.) the baselard.
the melee is meh. Not nearly as interesting or as polished as other melee weapons. Also would like poison to be more obviously affecting a monster, maybe some particle effect every time a monster pain chances from poison or a tint or something.
the throwing is ok i guess. I don't feel much enjoyment playing with this weapon.

2.) the amulet
Transformation graphics are fine, but the creature is the ROTT snout and some ambiguously detailed claws. very underwhelming. the iceball is fine, but seems disconnected from the character of the beast? I get it, its a werewolf thing. idk, the blood claws could be helpful, and I would like to see this weapon upgraded to a level three or even level 4 weapon in terms of usefulness. also, the color blindness is somewhat boring and unnecessary, and i'd hope i'd be a little bigger as a werething. the ground pound is not super useful as well.

3.) the serpent staff is interesting, but perhaps a little too powerful with it's splash damage. would like a more serpentine projectile, and perhaps twin projectiles with more localized damage and less explosive sounds. The poison cloud is somewhat disappointing.

4.) the bow.
Easily the most disappointing and unbalanced at the moment. The primary is basically a long distance flame hammer but costs FAR MORE, the secondary is definitely underpowered and reminiscent of the old mage staff but neutered, and the tertiary is definitely overpowered. the graphics are fine, perhaps a little too big and less impressive than the others, but mainly this weapon is underpowered.

overview:

I think the ultimate should be beastmode and not the bow, it simply doesn't make logical sense for the character. The bow would seem like the second weapon and not an ultimate. the serpent staff is reasonable in function but can use more balance. Overall i would just say giving the druid a second pass before beginning upgrades would be a good thing.

[Crudux Cruo]

Also as a side note, this is currently my favorite hexen mod and everything has been very well balanced and this mod has come a long way, and I want to thank you for working on this. At some point i'd like to review the upgrades and such and reevaluate everything because SOOOOO much has changed. so it's worth a re-review.

[eharper256]

So i've been playing the druid and there were things i liked, things i didnt.

Thanks for giving me feedback on the Druid!

1.) the baselard.
the melee is meh. Not nearly as interesting or as polished as other melee weapons. Also would like poison to be more obviously affecting a monster, maybe some particle effect every time a monster pain chances from poison or a tint or something.
the throwing is ok i guess. I don't feel much enjoyment playing with this weapon.

I'd say that the Baselard did suffer from being completely sprited from scratch and I often thought whilst making it "Note to self; melee weapon spriting is a pain in the ass". So I probably lost a bit of motivation making it more polished. Its something for me to revisit in future.

Poison damage proccing an effect on the monster actually either requires a full re-write of EACH monster's code adding in pain.poison state; or creating a sub-routine item which is given to them similar to how the Hebiko Hypnosis works, so its doable but quite alot of extra work.

I personally love the throwing and like using the Baselard in general. It's my favourite starter weapon, even though its weak, in fact! But maybe that's just me always being a guy that liked throwing weapon characters in games.

2.) the amulet
Transformation graphics are fine, but the creature is the ROTT snout and some ambiguously detailed claws. very underwhelming. the iceball is fine, but seems disconnected from the character of the beast? I get it, its a werewolf thing. idk, the blood claws could be helpful, and I would like to see this weapon upgraded to a level three or even level 4 weapon in terms of usefulness. also, the color blindness is somewhat boring and unnecessary, and i'd hope i'd be a little bigger as a werething. the ground pound is not super useful as well.

For starters; its actually not the ROTT snout; I made that snout from scratch. Finding reference pictures of dog snouts from above and nice looking fur textures was surprisingly hard. The ROTT snout is only about 20 pixels tall and looks pretty awful in GZDoom at 1080p (I tried using it to begin with). Yes, it probably does need more claw/dog leg sprites, but again, like the Baselard, I was getting a bit of Spriting Fatigue after making the transformation sequence (lol).

The Ice-Ball was originally Ice Breath; but that looked absolutely awful. I mean terrible. So I re-pitched it as it being a magical ice werewolf that can still use magic. Having Ice Breath also made the wolf have serious problems with ranged combat in Doom (which is still an issue to an extent, but less so with the ball) which is a problem when its the shotgun/chaingun replacement.

I'm most surprised about you saying that about the Ground Pound though... its a super-powerful clutch move. The Druid in Wolf Form is insanely fast, so zipping around and ground slamming hordes with it as you pass by is very strong. I honestly thought I'd have to nerf it!

Keep in mind you can disable the color-blindness in the options menu. If everyone hates it, which seems to be default, I'll make the full-colour mode the default I guess.

3.) the serpent staff is interesting, but perhaps a little too powerful with it's splash damage. would like a more serpentine projectile, and perhaps twin projectiles with more localized damage and less explosive sounds. The poison cloud is somewhat disappointing.

Its a very serpentine projectile? Have you watched fly off into the sky and seen it all snake like? I guess it doesn't show in close quarters very much, but its very snake like (see the demonstration video on the Hebiko and you'll see it!).

I wanted it to be a powerful ranged weapon to make up for the wolf form not having such, in the same way the fighter hammer makes up for the axe, but maybe I overcompensated.

Again, Poison Cloud works best when you're abusing your high speed to weave between enemies and drop them in strategic locations. Its also an instant hoard and archvile stopper since its almost guaranteed to cause pain states. But yeah, I guess arguments can be made for just 'killing them quicker' with the primary. I have a tendancy to design cool things over useful things sometimes, as was evident back with the Bloodscourge Helicopters Mode when that was a thing.

4.) the bow.
Easily the most disappointing and unbalanced at the moment. The primary is basically a long distance flame hammer but costs FAR MORE, the secondary is definitely underpowered and reminiscent of the old mage staff but neutered, and the tertiary is definitely overpowered. the graphics are fine, perhaps a little too big and less impressive than the others, but mainly this weapon is underpowered.

Yep, I know Ichival needs tweaks. Very much does. In actual fact, the Tertiary was suddenly made in a couple of hours after the effect I actually wanted it to do with it was dropped after I failed to make it work the millionth time (a ricochet arrow). Another victim of self-imposed time limits...

The Primary is considerably stronger with alot more splash than the hammer, but I suppose I can see the resemblence.

overview:

I think the ultimate should be beastmode and not the bow, it simply doesn't make logical sense for the character. The bow would seem like the second weapon and not an ultimate. the serpent staff is reasonable in function but can use more balance. Overall i would just say giving the druid a second pass before beginning upgrades would be a good thing.

I mean, that would require a huge re-write to change the wolf-mode into the ultimate. And new weapon fragments, which means new UI pieces and graphics. So that's probably not happening unfortunately. I wanted beast form to be an accessible and widely used power for the Druid, but not the exclusive focus, as it is the case with tabletop D&D druids (who are big toolboxes), so that's why it became the 2nd weapon.

You are right about it needing alot more balance and polish; as I mentioned on the release, this is precisely why it didn't come pre-baked with upgrades!

Thanks for the feedback, I do appreciate it.