Hexen: Cult of Despair - A WoC campaign (New 1.4A Version!)

[Nightgaunt]

I also noticed that the on moddb there's a 3.14 recently added.
So, is it an officially release?

[Exeor]

I also noticed that the on moddb there's a 3.14 recently added.
So, is it an officially release?

I think it is more about an early build than an official release, also checked that Tethis fixed that visual bug where the Swamp Stalker Leader used the Ice Stalker sprites in that build, so nice!

By the way, I have been working in some minor details to make the whole experience better: The Zombie Fodder enemy now uses a different color palette (credits to Project Malice!), since the Necromancer class has a skill in the conjuror path where it can summon an ally zombie after killing a monster with the same sprites, this can make it confusing to tell enemy zombies from friendly ones, specially in some areas like the Horror Grotto, so this was the result:
On the left the enemy version with the new sprites and on the right the allied version of the necromancer:



As a silly immersion, there are now more villagers walking around the towns, and they will attack you if you hit them (as in Strife) so be good and don't do anything to them!

https://gyazo.com/a726ed91e2255dcbae47157180ea912d

[Nightgaunt]

This is shaping up as the real Hexen III, looks great Exeor, as usual!

Anyway, I found a very old build of your campaign installed on a old PC I restored.
I played around a bit and it was already very good.
I do not want to try the new build, I'd hate to have spoilers!

My only gripes were:
1) The starting town music...that was a bit too cheesy, almost tavern-like. I think a very gloomy/dark ambient music would be more suited, where's the DESPAIR?

About the music, I encourage you again to contact this YouTube guy, check out this Ice Grotto remix, it would make an AWESOME dungeon music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djZaXaECDq4


2) This is WoC related, I noticed the horrendous World of Warcraft icons in the leveling up menu look so low resolution even on 1920x1080, is there a problem on my side?


By the way, I heard the cultists have modified Blood's cultists voice-lines, that was a cool touch

[Exeor]

This is shaping up as the real Hexen III, looks great Exeor, as usual!

Anyway, I found a very old build of your campaign installed on a old PC I restored.
I played around a bit and it was already very good.
I do not want to try the new build, I'd hate to have spoilers!

My only gripes were:
1) The starting town music...that was a bit too cheesy, almost tavern-like. I think a very gloomy/dark ambient music would be more suited, where's the DESPAIR?

About the music, I encourage you again to contact this YouTube guy, check out this Ice Grotto remix, it would make an AWESOME dungeon music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djZaXaECDq4


2) This is WoC related, I noticed the horrendous World of Warcraft icons in the leveling up menu look so low resolution even on 1920x1080, is there a problem on my side?


By the way, I heard the cultists have modified Blood's cultists voice-lines, that was a cool touch

Yeah, in the current build there is a new music for that town (from Demon's Crest game), I think the organ fits better for the mysterious ambience of the world instead of a happy and cozy music from final fantasy 4. I have plans to add some music from Castlevania 64 or Bloodstained too.
That guy makes really good remixes, I want to use the Ice Grotto and Shadow Wood remixes in the future for some areas
Yep, the WoW icons have a low resolution but it never bothered me too much.
Those cultists appear in doom when playing with the WoC patch, in the original they replaced zombieman, shotgunners and chaingunners (I slightly changed some of their stats for Cult of Despair, but they act pretty much the same). But yeah, it is funny how they talk with the Blood quotes with a lower tone

[Colerx]

By the way, I have been working in some minor details to make the whole experience better: The Zombie Fodder enemy now uses a different color palette (credits to Project Malice!), since the Necromancer class has a skill in the conjuror path where it can summon an ally zombie after killing a monster with the same sprites, this can make it confusing to tell enemy zombies from friendly ones, specially in some areas like the Horror Grotto, so this was the result:
On the left the enemy version with the new sprites and on the right the allied version of the necromancer:
----
As a silly immersion, there are now more villagers walking around the towns, and they will attack you if you hit them (as in Strife) so be good and don't do anything to them!

https://gyazo.com/a726ed91e2255dcbae47157180ea912d

I didn't notice this!! lol I like them!!!

[Colerx]

I've finally finished the basic version of that damn torch viewtopic.php?f=37&t=72013
in case you want to include it! there is a little note about WOC tough.. that artifact torch really drove me mad...
probably the best thing, if they like it, should be to let woc devs include it directly , and if they want obviously. but I'm not sure if they are still active here.. anyway keep on the good work!

[Nightgaunt]

I think Thetis really should work more on the sprite quality.

Weapons are so low res, and have few and skippy frames. Compare to Brutal Heretic, it's another world.

[Nightgaunt]

Anything new to show up?

[Exeor]

Anything new to show up?

Progress has slowed down a bit this month, but I finished the third Heretic Gate in the wasteland (you will need the Blue Parthoris Gizmo from a subquest), improved the level design of some dungeons and specially caves and fixed a rare case where the Hell Smith boss could get stuck in one of the four pillars with the charge attack, he also stops charging after a while so he doesn't need to hit a wall anymore. This was solved by replacing "A_SkullAttack" with "A_MinotaurCharge" in the code.

https://gyazo.com/5849215f3f0c2028287c13e06927063b

Another small fix I did: The Friendly Familiar Egg costs 3 Golden Tokens but it actually took four from your inventory. My bad!
And finally a few more screenshots:

[Colerx]

Very niceeee Exeor!!!

[Nightgaunt]

Looks amazing as ausual!!! Hype grows!

By the way, I saw that the new GZdoom update gave hexen full widescreen support with weapon sprites not being cut-off or stretched. How this is going to interact with WoC?

[Exeor]

Looks amazing as ausual!!! Hype grows!

By the way, I saw that the new GZdoom update gave hexen full widescreen support with weapon sprites not being cut-off or stretched. How this is going to interact with WoC?

Yeah, I saw that, glad Hexen/Heretic finally get some love!

I have tested gzdoom 4.6.0 and it runs fine with WoC and also with my mod, but the weapon sprites don't appear on widescreen for some reason (I think they use a different sprite name and that is why they aren't affected by the new update), I hope Tethis fixes this in the future!

On another note, Hidden Basement is finally finished with more details around, you will notice the new update adds more diverse textures to caves and dungeons

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Also I have been working in a new subquest where you will have to kill a new breed of brown chaos serpents called "Plague Serpent" in the wasteland tunnels, they are used in the extra monster file when playing WoC with Doom originally, so I wanted to give them some kind of use in my mod, they act like this:

https://gyazo.com/3169785ebaf29cb91d303c67ba3a7e39

[Nightgaunt]

Looks great!

That new serpent breed looks nasty, I like how it fires gas clouds.

[ELPoder36]

Hello creative genius! I greet you again and I congratulate your project and work again. I wanted to ask you something, in my case I always liked to play with high difficulty, but I understand that a creator must be regulated to please everyone, but they were thinking as something interesting to give it a creative touch and more strategic action and this is to incorporate enemies that have status-altering spells or Buffs / Debuffs. Thetis in the version before his last work had included enemies equivalent to Arch-vile such as the Hierophant that fired when playing a pink curse that slowed us down and diminished the damage. Another example was in the Hexen style an equivalent to the Bishop who was a Priest who healed his own ... How about trying to add enemies that have skills like that to make the game difficult and that one must go through those supports first to win in an enemy zone? would add an interesting touch, don't you think?

[Exeor]

Hello creative genius! I greet you again and I congratulate your project and work again. I wanted to ask you something, in my case I always liked to play with high difficulty, but I understand that a creator must be regulated to please everyone, but they were thinking as something interesting to give it a creative touch and more strategic action and this is to incorporate enemies that have status-altering spells or Buffs / Debuffs. Thetis in the version before his last work had included enemies equivalent to Arch-vile such as the Hierophant that fired when playing a pink curse that slowed us down and diminished the damage. Another example was in the Hexen style an equivalent to the Bishop who was a Priest who healed his own ... How about trying to add enemies that have skills like that to make the game difficult and that one must go through those supports first to win in an enemy zone? would add an interesting touch, don't you think?

Hi ELPoder36!
Yeah, enemies like the Hierophant will appear later in the campaign, I want to make sure almost all WoC enemies from Tethis's addons spawn in some level or dungeons.
I also have plans for all Disciples/Bishops variants in the game, in fact, Priests appear in the Cultist Fortress already. The rest of them have not come out yet because I don't want to overwhelm the player with all the variants at once, new enemies make the player feel like they are progressing in their adventure, that is why I'm taking my time with the remaining monsters

Here you can see how the Priest is healing the Disciple:


About the skills, I'm coding new enemies from scratch that bring new strategies without being the typical enemy that only throws a fireball at you, here I coded the Oblivion Knight, an elite version of the Undead Warrior that can heal himself sometimes when he detects you attacked him (the gif is old but most of the code remains the same), so in the end I want to take this opportunity to create more enemies that support others in combat so that you prioritize them first

https://gyazo.com/4ac14ae2b9a428285ddaf77eaf0d1f90