Hocusdoom RELEASED (/idgames pending)

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IDKrisis
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by IDKrisis »

ravage wrote:You actually get the wand just outside of the castle. I might make that a requirement for opening the door so you don't miss it. It makes the fight more balanced as that's what its aimed for.
D'oh! I can't believe I missed it! I've tried the battle again with the wand and it seems to balance the final battle perfectly. Its still VERY hard, but that's how it should be for a final boss. I'd recommend making the change you suggested, as anyone doing without that extra firepower may get bored with the final battle and give up.

Having played all four episodes of Hocusdoom, I have to say that I am amazed at the mapping skills on show here. Given how recently the new levels were added, they are surprisingly low on bugs and glitches and the overall quality of the mod goes beyond what many professional games have achieved. Only a few adjustments remain, and after that, I think you can be proud of what you've achieved. In fact, if you tried making a few levels for vanilla Doom with these skills, you could easily win a Cacoward.
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ravage
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by ravage »

IDKrisis wrote: Having played all four episodes of Hocusdoom, I have to say that I am amazed at the mapping skills on show here. Given how recently the new levels were added, they are surprisingly low on bugs and glitches and the overall quality of the mod goes beyond what many professional games have achieved. Only a few adjustments remain, and after that, I think you can be proud of what you've achieved. In fact, if you tried making a few levels for vanilla Doom with these skills, you could easily win a Cacoward.
Oh, I'm aware. :P
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IDKrisis
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by IDKrisis »

ravage wrote:Oh, I'm aware. :P
Downloaded. :D

Btw, I think I know what might have caused the enemies to get trapped on top of pikes in level 31. In Hocus Doom, enemies are completely invisible and immaterial until they spot the player, then they materialise and attack. If they lose track of the player for a while, they dematerialise again. The room where the bug occurs is located under another room above the fan, which you pass through first. When you pass through the higher room, the enemies in the lower room appear and try to reach you, then vanish some time after you leave. If they vanish too close to the pikes, its possible that when they reappear, they materialise on top of the pikes and get stuck.
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by Talon1024 »

On MAP19, it's possible to get softlocked after defeating the tree demon guarding the silver (IIRC) key. Here's a video demonstrating the issue.
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ravage
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by ravage »

Oooh, did not know that. Gonna fix that real quick.
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by Tormentor667 »

ravage wrote:Oh, I'm aware. :P
:D :D :D
Solarn
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by Solarn »

This is an amazing WAD. It really feels like a whole new game running on the Doom engine, just familiar enough that I can instinctively play it, but different enough not to feel like a reskin or enemy/weapon mod. And the maps are gorgeous, with what feels like more than a bit of Quake influence. Some of the areas in late E1 especially reminded me of Quake's third episode, and not just because both used metallic textures with blue tiled floors (although it helped).
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RichterBelmont12
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by RichterBelmont12 »

Hey ravage My Doom December on my youtube channel has started and I'm here to finish off Hocus Pocus doom but I have two bugs or problems about it its on my videos which wont be uploaded untill next week.

1. Secret level in Episode 4 after finishing it warps me to Episodes 3's Secret level which was odd for me.

2. PHARAOHS ARE THE MOST ANNOYING ENEMY IN THE GAME GAH!!!!! lol

ok Real 2. In the Hall of the Monkey King (Sun Wukong?)there is a glitch where even tho you picked up the Gold Key it still says you need the Gold Key.....Sooo I had to No Clip it to beat it :\

Overall I'm having fun with his mod SIDES THE PHARAOHS!!!! but ya I can't wait to finish it off in Doom December.
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ravage
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by ravage »

RichterBelmont12 wrote:Hey ravage My Doom December on my youtube channel has started and I'm here to finish off Hocus Pocus doom but I have two bugs or problems about it its on my videos which wont be uploaded untill next week.

1. Secret level in Episode 4 after finishing it warps me to Episodes 3's Secret level which was odd for me.

2. PHARAOHS ARE THE MOST ANNOYING ENEMY IN THE GAME GAH!!!!! lol

ok Real 2. In the Hall of the Monkey King (Sun Wukong?)there is a glitch where even tho you picked up the Gold Key it still says you need the Gold Key.....Sooo I had to No Clip it to beat it :\

Overall I'm having fun with his mod SIDES THE PHARAOHS!!!! but ya I can't wait to finish it off in Doom December.
The first one has been fixed for the next update.

Yeah, pharoahs are annoying. :P

And I'll take a look at that glitch! Thanks for having fun so far!
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by ravage »

Sorry for the delay. Moved to Arkansas a few months ago. Things are still a little crazy.



I still need someone good with zscript that would like to take a shot at the highscores table sometime. That's the last major hurdle before a release (other than further bugtesting!)



Current playable version for 01-13-19
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l7gw4xznbok0u ... 9.pk3?dl=1
Ogg versions of music (updated)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h4wlfocvkewtm ... g.pk3?dl=1


changelog for - 01-13-19
  • fixed volume for music in map40
  • added a Death.Massacre state for base enemies. No more deafening explosions or slowdowns when using Massacre cheat
  • fixed an error with map40 pointing to map30. now points to the correct next map.
  • fixed some texture alignments on map02
  • fixed a softlock issue on map19
  • forced the outer door in map39 requiring the power wand, mostly so you can't miss it. The fight practically requires it anyway.
  • lightning upgrades now let you shoot extra shots occasionally, not randomly. more upgrades shoots them more often. ring on the finger will glow when next shot will double. needs testing as it may throw all balancing off?
  • fixed background transparency for menu.
  • added brightmaps for models, sprites, and textures
  • cheaty method of getting read of bloodsplatters permanently. replaced the graphics themselves.
  • added AUTOMAP.TXT
  • fixed trigger for a lowering floor in map07. Now only triggers once.
  • fixed a graphical glitch in map04 with some weird passable walls showing up on a sloped floor.
  • fixed several texture alignments
  • raised one of the crystals higher in map27 so you can just run into it. was confusing when it was lower?
  • fixed several sections of ledges in map38 to be either obvious you can't progress on them, or you can get back in-bounds
  • made progression behind the gold door in map38 more obvious
  • added message on death to hit the use key to continue.
  • Damagefactors for Electro robots changed to 1.0. No more issues with certain shots not doing damage. Not sure why I did that in the first place.
  • new sprites for greater health potions and super health potions to differentiate them from small potions
  • wizard chat no longer pauses music. Thank you Kinsie!
  • wizard chat also no longer has a delay before stopping time.
  • made pharoah shots less aggressive
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ravage
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by ravage »

Quick bump, just found out that my mod was featured on RPS today! https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/0 ... nto-a-fps/
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Tormentor667
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by Tormentor667 »

ravage wrote:Quick bump, just found out that my mod was featured on RPS today! https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/0 ... nto-a-fps/
For a good reason: It's awesome! I just wish I wouldn't have looked at the screenshots, got myself totally spoilered (and hyped)
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by MaxRideWizardLord »

Hello Ravage, I just want to tell you a big thank you for creating all of this! This is a true underrated masterpiece. :D

It's amazing how you give this game a depth, actual trap features to dodge, and attempted to add to each of it's level themes it's unique features referenced to the level's theme, even though at sacrifice of it's initial platforming. :wink:

I'm a big fan of your projects, been playing HPdoom since the time only first episode was created, but decided to make a first post to this thread just now.

If you don't mind, I'll say a bit two cents and feedback, starting with buglist I found.



Since it's early alpha, there is one thing I immediatelly wanted to suggest. PLEASE lower the volume of main menu selector and the firing sound, even when lowering the menu sound and in gameplay sound, it's still too loud untill I lower it a bit too much and can't hear the other enemies, it's just ringing my ears a lot. Especially to enemies that shoot up to 3 and more projectiles at the same time, that is just insane loud, especially the flying enemies that shoots rocks at you that drop 6 projectiles in all directions, like the egg dragon and ptyrodactel NPCs.



Also, since I'm oldschool player, I pick the ULTRA difficulty most of the time, but I found a lot of issues with it. Some monsters were clearly overlooked, so in ULTRA difficulty, once you're out of sight, the flower from the wooden world and lightning rod start to move around even though they did not move in any other difficulty and I doubt they meant to do that. Another issue I found is with the Thunderbolt feature on map37, map38 and map39 (basically last map theme) is REALLY slow, moving like turtle down from the skies, which lost any threat or surprise factor, yet alone feel like actual thunderbolt; I doubt it's intended either.

The another bug I found is that in ULTRA difficulty, the full hud doesn't display the tiny damage done to your heart when, for example, stepping on toxic accid in map13-14, or getting hit by gargoyle in map35-36. Speaking about "tiny damage", the gargoyle from map35-36 sometimes does tiny damage, even with direct hit. I know it's probably meant that it's raining lightning bolts meant to do tiny damage instead of killing, but sometimes the homing cloud just hit me and gone, yet I'm survive; sometimes I able to tank like 5 clouds to face and survive somehow. But to be honest, the "tiny damage" needs to be gone completely, both from all types of enemy attack and all sort of map's traps and damaging features like floor knives and accid, since the warning clearly said that ANYTHING will kill you in one hit. :P However, to make it fair, there should be a way to grab these damn bombs from the accid in map14 without taking damage, since it's placed unreasonably above the accid and after taking like 20-30 minutes, I've dicovered there is literally no way to grab them without getting daamge. To be honest, I hate unavoiable damaging things as this is just unfair, especially for a classic setting game, this is why I also choose the ULTRA difficulty just to be sure I wouldn't get damage even once and if I do, the game punish me by killing me. It would be fair if there would be some kind of pace on floor near the megabomb in accid to step on and do not take any damage if you're fast enough, it isn't need to be very close to megabombs so only fast and skilled players won't take any damage while rushing for the bomb.

The another thing that really saddens me about ULTRA difficulty is that the vast majority of hidden items, which are the healing potions (including the super healing potion) are now gone. There are many cases where I found some very hard to spot on secret area, corner or place\area\spot that is usually hidden behind breakable wall\blocks, and when I break the breakable wall\blocks just to find out there is literally nothing in there. This is just makes no sense and makes me confused, and often just leaves me very dissapointed. For example this one spot on map18
Spoiler:
which is what I meant by confused, since at first I thought it's a place where one gets teleported later on which I could get to later in the game and never found it, or this one tricky spot on map23
Spoiler:
which just left you very dissapointed since that you haven't found anything. What if on ULTRA difficulty we let the player have healing potions and collect them, BUT color them all in yellow color and instead of healing they would just give you points for collecting them instead? As in, they become a liquid gold. :P Like small one would give like 100 points, big one 500 points, and super potion - 5000 points? I believe that would be fair.



Oh, regarding the special items. I have found that these are very, VERY tricky hidden in all around map, often it's very hard to notice them and easy to overlook by accident. By special items I mean - megabombs, weapon potions (i.e. potions that give you special attack power, or temporal powers like rapid fire\flamethrower), Power Wand, secret DOOM weapon (won't say what is it to not create spoilers for others), stuff like that; but mostly megabombs. The thing is, they still give points once you collect them, so someone who do perfect runs like me, missing them is unforgivable for me. So Instead of making them more obvious or give hint where they are, I'd like if there would be more of them and hidden even better (I mean, most of your maps have crapton of all possible secret spots, and overall is parkour paradise), BUT(!) we will have a new item counter which is "special item", and we could see the special item counter in both automap and final score once you collect all of magical crystals? This would give us hint if we actually miss something, and makes the curious of us and perfectionists actually looking for these special items again. We could add all of the healing potions that are now turned in to liquid gold on ULTRA difficulty to this "special item" counter list. To this "special item" we could also add these easter egg\super secret high-point pickup thingies (I have no idea what they are and what they are from, but to give a hint I was talking about these things -
Spoiler:
), since they are more rare, give far too many points, mostly used for quite tricky secret spots and hard to find than average treasure pickups. This way we could not stress out by exploring every god damn corner, hole, column, whatever, just to be absolutely sure that we found and picked up absolutely everything. Still better than explore every single centimeter of the map and wasting hours just to beat a single map anyway. :P



Speaking about the item pickups. I discovered another bug regarding it. All of these wall-mining diamonds, gems and gold, etc, are NOT count included in the actual picked up treasure maximum-counter In fact, each time you break one of these mines filled with treasures, your maximum counter of treasures expands further! Which means, you can hear the Yahoo sound effect of fake-joy when collecting all of the possible treasures on the map, just to hear it again after breaking another mine filled with treasure and collecting it, and again, and again, and again... Not that it bothers me, but what trully bothers me is the fact that I remain uncertain if I totally found ALL of the possible mines filled with precious mineral resources since neither automap nor final credits tell me about it. Oh and by the way, you still get the bonus for "collecting all of the treasures" once you finish a map, EVEN if you trully haven't found all of the treasures and there still left some mines filled with mineral treasures to break and pick up.



Now something completely different. I've just discovered that in so many parts of maps there are simple map errors and lack of textures; a bit of examples I can show is this -
Spoiler:
and this
Spoiler:
, plus many other places where I can just abuse muh parkour skills and get out of map borders or places where I'm not supposed to be, or even have shortcut for necessary items like keys. I don't really want to picture all of them because 1) there are way too many to show and I couldn't remember them all on spot. 2) I don't want (some of) them get fixed. :P Can you please tell me, which programms you used to create such fantastic maps? If you tell me, I can do deep throughout playthrough, discover all of the possible issues with maps and how they can be abused, then fix them all myself and give you the fixed version; of course I would list every single detail I would done and give you feedback, including adding extra tree here and there so the player won't access to necessary items.



And for the last thing on my buglist, please add 5:4 resolution support! I know the game supports both 4:3 and 16:10, but not 5:4, which makes a lot of things feel broken, messy and out of place. Especially when picking up the temporary power potions. Just look at this out of place red and white squares, this also affect main menu as well -
Spoiler:
. While the main menu doesn't bother me that much, the red and white square really makes me feel uncomfortable and feels like the game is kinda broken. I hope I don't ask too much with this one...



Now regarding the balance.


The new flamethrower potion is just BAAAAD. It's useless! It's range is ridiculously small, and it doesn't even feel like flamethrower at all. I would rather avoid and not picking them up, but then as a result it wouldn't summon new enemies to shoot at, so I wouldn't get the bigger score nor bonus for killing all of the monsters... In version 04-07-18 it was amazing. Why it was changed?? I know that it felt like I'm shooting some fireballs, and in your changelog description said the reason why it was changed to make it look and behave more like "flamethrower", but the new flamethrower feels MUCH LESS than the older one... I know it's probably taken from Heretic's phoenix staff's Tomed attack, but it just looks like I'm having a flaming piss... from hand. And the new one feels so, SO underwhelming and underpowered compared to the old one. Besides when picking up the flamethrower potion, a HUGE amount of incredible powerful enemies spawn all around you, so killing them now turn out to be a real agony for you due it's lowered range and low power (as it feels like it was unnecessarily nerfed, too). It feels like flamethrower potion was designed in mind to be a more powerful version than rapidfire potion, considering how rare is it and considering that a really a lot of powerful enemies all around you spawn for you to deal with. If I had the choice, I'd just use a classic lightning bolt even without rapid fire when crapton of enemies spawn around you, at least it have bigger range so I could deal with far enemies that tend to shoot homing projectiles and with flamethrower there is nothing much I could do against them. I know that the old flamethrower would be considered as "overpowered" to some, but come on!! We just get like 3 bottles of these MAXIMUM during the whole of Hocus Pocus game with all of it's 40 levels; and it's only 4th episode exclusive item; so please, let us makes feel ourselves like Flaming-God pyromancer masters at least for these short period of time and wipe out horder of powerful enemies with ease while we given the chance. Please return the old flamethrower back!

If you don't like that it looked less flamethrowery but more like fireballs, you can use StgMark's flamethrower (even if you're not fan of his other projects); he has created, from what I view, the most realistically looking flamethrower I've ever seen so far in doom mods; aside from the fact that flamethrower's projectile has gravity and thus it falling down. Just remove gravity, recolor flaming projectiles in to a more hocus-pocus color-set and make them look more pixelated to keep it a canon-looking for hocus pocus doom, and here you have a flamethrower that behaves like flamethrower, but at the same time doesn't suck. :lol: Although I'd appreciate a lot even if just the 04-07-18 version of flamethrower return back.


The another thing that I really miss is the old Power Wand. I know that powerwand has witnessed tons and tons of changes, including model skin and especially it's behavior, but I honestly really like the one from 04-07-18 again. I'm not saying that the new one is bad, but the old one had more usage and variety of situations where it was actually very useful. The most useful thing about it is that it had AoE splash radius range but didn't used that much of ammo, so it could be actually used to quickly destroy all of the breakable blocks without wasting too much ammo. But I don't want to get rid of the new one either. What if we give the current Power Wand alt-fire that could shoot same projectile like from 04-07-18 version? You'd still get powerful blast from the primary fire. The megabomb usage would stick to the lightning bolt hands only, or even better - switch to R (reload) button, since we already need this button binded for secret level. Or the Hocus Pocus doom we would have multiple different Power Wands, at least two; like bring the old Power Wand back, and give it the old hud skin, but these wands would be spread on different levels and some of either wand would appear only as episode 4th exclusive. I'd still love if either Power Wands would have the alt fire, some of these that has been scratched off the game. :P


The final boss feels rather underpowered and underwhelming, which turns him pretty easy to defeat. I know that in original game he wasn't much of threat either, and you could beat him by just holding fire button and remaining afk, but in this mod he seem to be designed to be an actual threat. I basically just beat him with basic circle straffing while shooting at him, which is really a shame. I had more threat from
Spoiler:
than from the FINAL boss. Another trick is to hide behind any of the column, peak, spam my attacks, and when he's about to shoot, just hide again. Columns are easy to abuse even when they are almost destroyed, since the boss is fixated on single spot all the time. What if with each new stage, he gains new attack and also with each stage, the map becomes more aggressive with more features that would actually hit Hocus? I know that in like third stage, the lightning start to hit the floor, but there could be used some more. :P What I believe the Trolodon should get the most is that on the last stage, after killing the dragon, the Trolodon should get ability to fly around, since the whole room is destroyed and you see a magic floor under his foot. It would only make sense for the FINAL boss in it's FINAL stage to do that; and it as well could make sense for such powerful boss that actually manages to create a magic floor, should also be powerful enough to move it around.

Oh, and there is one bug\exploit I forgot to mention. Since you're using portals that are connecting the 4 stages of boss room, and NPC can't see you through portals, you can easily abuse these and just step a single meter away from the boss room and just endlessly spam your attack at the poor Trolodon while he would just standing still idle, doing nothing. Of course I didn't do that because that would be waaaay too cheap and I would feel myself way too dirty if I'd abuse it. To fix it, I suggest that you can't see the boss while not entering boss battle room so you unable to shoot at him untill you enter the actual boss battle room; and once you enter it, the door actually closes behind or even better - the laser fence instantly activates once you're in the boss battle room so you won't be able to get in there and hide there anymore.


The spooky themed maps (map25-26) really lack of something very important. The main element of which the whole theme just doesn't feel complete. What is it? The answer in the background of the maps itself. The spooky tree! Basically, a Demon Tree enemy but smaller and behave like the original Hocus Pocus Demon Tree, i.e. lacking of any attacks except rushing in to Hocus Pocus direction and do insane damage. They could use a bit of reskin too, so their face would looks exactly like one of the trees from the background, or a mix of all 3 :P We might as well call it a spooky tree instead of Demon Tree. I guess it shouldn't instakill like original Demon Tree either when getting close to Hocus, but would take like 4 hearts of damage on hard difficulty. They could be rare like any other juggernaut enemy like giant mushroom, pharaoh, wraith, etc, and have about as much of hp as them. Afterall, in the mountain themed maps (map23-24) of same episode, we first encounter the juggernaut enemies that are not included in the original Hocus Pocus game anyway. Also a great feature to test out the Power Wand on them, since map25 is the map where you first found out the powerwand anyway. Besides, spooky themed maps are the only map theme that lacks of walking rusher type of enemy (altho have two of flying rusher enemies). There could be more these spooky tree enemies on map26 since map26 is mostly set in outside.


The map33... My least favoruite map of all of Hocus Pocus. No, the map is great, it's done well, it has nice labyrinths, pharaoh is an interesting NPC and it has one of my most favourite jumping section, but GOSH it's so laggy it's unbearable and have unreasonable small par time. The unbearable spam of cosmetic particles turns my PC in to a toaster. I have to turn off particles almost entirely just to stop this heresy, to a point I no longer can see where enemies spawn, since once enemy spawn there is sparcle effect full of particles around in the spot of it's spawning. And these god damn spamming lightning bolt traps... They just NEVER stops spamming, adding more to lag... Can we please have it so the traps are actually activates when the hocus pocus AT LEAST at distance of 10 meters away from these, rather working ALL THE FREAKING TIME even if you're on the other end of the map? Same regarding the never-ending loop of creating single pixels in the air for sandstorm weather effect, full of pixeled lagness. It should create these sand pixels at least when you're near the outside area or if you're looking in that area, but not all the time, even if you're like mile away from it. It literally turn my FPS to 3 in that one outside area with iron key, especially with crapton of enemies spaming even more projectiles in addition to that. I asked a few more people, and they all had incredible lag on that map too. Well, this is not that much important since you at least can disable weather particles and other particles in the hocus pocus menu, which helps a lot, even though that kinda ruin the immersion a bit and makes harder to guess where enemies may spawn.

However, as I mentioned, it also has incredible unfairly small par time limit - just 700 seconds on hard difficulty, this is just pure madness. The optimal time, with given lag and the amount of tough enemies, should be like 300 seconds more. I just attempted to beat that map on hard difficulty with the set up law of no taking ANY damage (since in hard the monsters have more HP compared to ULTRA, and less par time too), killing and collect everything possible. I tried to kill everything as fast as possible while dodging and keeping save distance, collect everything I could ever find, and dodge\avoid all of the damage I can; to a point it felt like TAS-assisted speedrun. It took me hundreds of loads and saves, and all I could get is just 618 seconds... This is just insane.


Speaking about the par time. A lot of maps have set it up too low for a player to actually beat these maps in time, while other maps set it too high so you actually could beat them in par time even if you don't rush. Keep in mind that you'd want to collect everything and kill everything too, and in order to do that you'd have to explore the whole map too. And to be honest, I like exploring, yet your maps have too much to explore and look up every column and corner for the extra "special item" like megabomb which I would have missed if not my casual curiocity and desire to explore. Also, please keep in mind that most players are new to your maps and often take the first path they could find instead of taking the path you seem to intended for people to take in order to beat the map in part time. I bet some would even get confused and lost, too. For me, even as hardcore player myself, I try to beat maps as fast as possible, while killing everything, collect everything and find all of the secrets\explore everything, often using save and load too, and even then I somehow manage to be late for like 100-200 seconds. Yet original Hocus Pocus par time was set in balanced manner, so even if this is the first time you play on this map, not knowing where to go and you even if you get lost, you could still make it in par time easily. The only way to be late for the par time in original Hocus Pocus is when you're going in the wrong directions all the time.
The most notable mentions I would say are:
map06 - should get at least 50 seconds more
map08 - should get at least 50 seconds more, especially considering it was expanded.
map15 - should get at least 100 seconds more
map16 - should get at least 100 seconds more
map33 - should get at least 300 seconds more, like for real, especially considering that it's filled with powerful enemies that are complicated to dodge.
map34 - should get at least 100 seconds more
As for the rest, I couldn't exactly rememeber from top of my head, but I'm pretty sure there are more.


Some enemies, especially at last stages in the final episode, feel a bit lacking and become repeative at best if not annoying with their simplicity, which getting bore especially at last levels. I know that the whole philosophy of game was just of 3 basic enemies, a walking shooter (with one exception of stationary shooter in wooden world), a walking rusher and flying enemy (which divided by 3 sub-cattegory, flying shooter in vertical direction, flying shooter in horizontal direction and flying rusher), but considering the majority of different type of enemies already modified, I see no reason to not modify the rest. Besides, you've already expanded such philosophy by adding one juggernaut (big guy) enemy in most of later map themes in last episodes anyway. :P Not only that, but actually altered the attack of some enemies, even the ones from the first episode! Same gargoyle has an pretty interesting shooting concept, I'd love if more enemies would be like that. I just want to suggest the other possible attacks for the rest of unaltered enemies for the later episodes, starting from something that I totally wish them to have, to something more like a nice niche suggestion.

The cobra from first map theme of last episode (map31-map32) feels really lacking, and overshadowed by the abyssal hydra that can shoot from 3 widespread particles to even 5 in all directions, turning it like more advanced mancubus. The cobra seems to appear less occasionally than hydra, and often strategically placed on top of pillars, crags and cliffs. They don't have much of hp either, and often spawn alone without other enemy types support. They almost scream to be turned in to a sniper. So what if as an alternative fire mode we give them ability to have a lasershot, similar to Hocus Pocus when he pickup the lasershot weapon potion? To make it fair, it would take like 2-3 seconds to charge the shots up and then fire, and they would do like normal projectile damage. I.e. they become like a very weak, slow arch-vile with low hp that can't resurrect, oh and unlike arch-vile, since lasershot isn't exactly a hitscan, maybe on long distances if hocus is running full speed, it's MAYBE even possible to dodge it. But overall, they become like a primary target to be taken down first, while remain a balanced threat that isn't too hard and isn't too easy.

Shrieker-dude, which is completely new NPC, had an really interesting attack in version 04-07-18, which shoot 6 projectiles in all directions including every time you hit that npc, but eventually turned to have just a normal boring projectile shootin in one direction that doesn't even home, even though with new skin for it. Can it have the old attack too, at least when the shrieker gets hit, please? I know that in recent version he was revorked to be a flying arachnotron that spam these sonic-wave like projectiles, and I have nothing against it, but it's still not much of a threat; he still could have fire variety and fire the 6 projectiles in all of directions sometime to cover as much angle as possible, and when he get hit too. It could have the same sonic-wave like projectile skin instead of the old one, though.

The spider, which is map 35-36 exclusive, with it's boring "just push to Hocus" attack is just very easy target and doesn't even fit in the group gang of interesting enemies of this mysterious fantasy-themed map like same gargoyle and wyrm. Hell, spider doesn't even have more hp than either wyrm of gargoyle. Yet the spider is in the pre-last final level map theme, close to the final boss, of the same episode where on it's FIRST level we had to witness the abonimation such as abyssal demon, which gained it's power to fly and pierce through space with it's mad speed to catch the Hocus. But it's spider nonetheless. So what if we give it ability to climb on walls, and jump at hocus? This at least could give something unique and interesting about the spider, plus add a bit of actual threat.

Silvermander, while I know it's not exactly a fire croc reskin since he sometimes can shoot two projectiles quickly, feels the most lacking after armordillo. Even a wyrm, the common enemy that appears since first levels of second episode, has more to it; as it can spam like 5 projectiles very quickly in your directions or 3 projectiles at the samet ime in a wide spread. What if we turn silvermander in to actual arachnotron, so it could spam projectiles in direction of Hocus with same fire rate it shoots it's first two projectiles? Maybe a bit slower fire rate, similar to recent shrieker or slightly faster than him. I know that shrieker was attempted to be turned in to a flying arachnotron, but for silvermander it would actually make sense since he would be a stationary character when he would spam these projectiles and thus turn it to be a unique enemy. It would change silvermander from "another casual boring enemy pop up on my screen, I guess I'll have to shoot it or something", in to "oh shit, I better ride of these guys before too late".

Armordillo, which just looks and behaves like recolored porcupine, would greet some changes too. Personally I view this enemy as the MOST lacking of all, since it's not just a shroomcharger reskin, it's a porcupine recolor. What if we give it ability to jump and bounce around when he forms in to a ball, just so at least it would be a bit harder to hit armordillo? While jump, it could also easier hit hocus since it would avoid frontal obstacles and reach to hocus when he's standing on small ledge.

The eskimo from map 05-06 could have his throwing stick bounce off walls to ground, like actual stick would do, with possibility to hitting hocus. Not much else to it, since it's just first episode anyway.



Well, that is all both regarding balance and bugs report. There is something else I wanted to say.


There is another reason why I asked about what programm you used to create maps. As someone who beat original Hocus Pocus since childhood, I can clearly see that some of the Hocus Pocus Doom maps while looking really awesome and appealing in everything, feels really lacking the primary features from these original maps. For example, that one moment in map e2m7 where you had to shoot up breakable blocks to build a ladder to turn on the switch to release the key for a secret room. Or in map e1m2, where you had crapton of platforms and you had to jump on each of them to collect all of the treasure and find the crystal, which felt puzzlish and almost like maze\labyrinth. I know that suggesting something like that is too much, so I wish to learn basics so I could expand your maps a little bit, like for example in the same e2m7 map (or map17 in hocus pocus doom), I'd like to add an insane huge ass tree the size of supreme skyscrapper (just to give an immersion like it's some of these insane tall\huge trees from background\skybox image) with some bridge connected to it's hollow, and hollow is filled with breakable blocks, and two-level floors room in it, which you should break carefully, just so you could climb up on the second floor in that room with the switch and pull it; all just in attempt to give a tribute of respect to original Hocus Pocus game.

While you're maps are true masterpiece, they lost it's main element - platforming and climbing. The original hocus pocus game had me feeling like I'm in some incredible enourmous castle with insane huge window around, with intent to jump up high on platforms and look outside the window, but your maps unique beauty some special niche to it too. I assume making moving platform in doom is something very hard, if not impossible, but if it had more jumping from one platform to another, it would save the original hocus pocus feel. Please don't take offense on this, but especially in later episodes, the levels are just filled with boring corridors tossed with crapton of enemies after another corridor with crapton of enemies and it just gets repeative and boring, thus the whole feel and charm of Hocus Pocus starting to lose and turn up to feel like any other doom mod like hell revealed or even some of these slaughter maps with endless crapton of enemies in tight corridors. It feels like there is 90% of corridor shooting and 10% of actual platforming, even though in original hocus pocus there been balance of both. At least you managed to make these maps be really beautiful, so I never trully get bored of your mod, as I often just enjoy exploring and jumping, but I often get tired of endless shooting.

Also, since I hinted already, your maps are just parkour paradise, and in many maps you can find a way to reach where you shouldn't even be (I assume). I'd like to expand this idea even further and add tiny objects that would help me to climb on all parts of maps that originally seemed like a mere cosmetic element. And most importantly, I would fill them with these "easter egg\super secret high-point pickup thingies" that I've talked about earlier, just to encourage and reward the parkourers. This is something I should totaly try out, especially If you (I hope) take my suggestion regarding the "special item" counter seriously. This would replace the lack of platforming that I really crave on a lot in hocus pocus doom. I doubt I'll ever manage to rework a lot of things in corridors and add platforming elements there, but at least I could make the platforming\parkour optional and could start from somewhere. However, if I could create more rooms with platforming, that also fit in style with the rest of map, I'd sure would try that, but I barely have any rights to install a lot of programms. Besides, at least I could start from somewhere. :P I mean, if more maps had this one jumping section like in map33 full of jumppads, and you had to shoot at enemies while jumping, that would be awesome too.


And for the last thing. The themes in your mod get crossed a bit too much. The my most favourite map theme, the nature\mountain theme from e3m3-e3m4 (map23-24), crossed too much with the first level of the game (e1m1-e1m2 (map01-map02)) and lack almost entirely it's unique niche of it's theme. The original e3m3-e3m4 from original Hocus Pocus had a really great feel to it, real good mood boosting atmosphere, especially with it's background picture, which has Austrain-Switzerland Alps feel, or even North Idaho-Oregon nature feel to it, if you're american. :P Hell, in the original Hocus Pocus game, it was probably most climb-up platforming orientated out of all other levels too, which adds up to this climb mountain feel. But in your mod, it's almost entirely focusing on mushroom themed level, if not more than mushroom themed levels themsveles in e1m1-e1m2; with literally nothing regarding the actual nature\mountain theme of the maps, which is by the way is the most lacking and underwhelimg maps of all of the hocus pocus doom mod. The map23 feel the smallest of the all maps in game, aside from map01\map02, and in map24 you just dig deeper in to the mushroom-theme of first episode instead of it's actual nature-like feel with huge mountain and nearby lake; would be actually lovely to have a part of map where you climb on that mountain and have to jump in to lake after.
Or same map33, which is set in some arab persian-like theme in middle east with taj mahals all around, yet it has pharaohs of egypt theme... Like, what the hell? :mrgreen:




And oh crap, my post end up to be quite big. My apologies, just had to say all this that has been accumulated for 5 years. :lol: Sorry for my clumsy english, by the way. :P
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ravage
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by ravage »

Oh wow. Thanks for the feedback! Its going to take me a while to even remotely be able to reply to all of that, so please give me some time.

Edit: Ok, here we go.
MaxRideWizardLord wrote: Since it's early alpha, there is one thing I immediatelly wanted to suggest. PLEASE lower the volume of main menu selector and the firing sound, even when lowering the menu sound and in gameplay sound, it's still too loud untill I lower it a bit too much and can't hear the other enemies, it's just ringing my ears a lot. Especially to enemies that shoot up to 3 and more projectiles at the same time, that is just insane loud, especially the flying enemies that shoots rocks at you that drop 6 projectiles in all directions, like the egg dragon and ptyrodactel NPCs.
I'll see what I can do about fixing the volume of most sounds (That's one thing I haven't done properly yet)
Also, since I'm oldschool player, I pick the ULTRA difficulty most of the time, but I found a lot of issues with it. Some monsters were clearly overlooked, so in ULTRA difficulty, once you're out of sight, the flower from the wooden world and lightning rod start to move around even though they did not move in any other difficulty and I doubt they meant to do that. Another issue I found is with the Thunderbolt feature on map37, map38 and map39 (basically last map theme) is REALLY slow, moving like turtle down from the skies, which lost any threat or surprise factor, yet alone feel like actual thunderbolt; I doubt it's intended either.

The another bug I found is that in ULTRA difficulty, the full hud doesn't display the tiny damage done to your heart when, for example, stepping on toxic accid in map13-14, or getting hit by gargoyle in map35-36. Speaking about "tiny damage", the gargoyle from map35-36 sometimes does tiny damage, even with direct hit. I know it's probably meant that it's raining lightning bolts meant to do tiny damage instead of killing, but sometimes the homing cloud just hit me and gone, yet I'm survive; sometimes I able to tank like 5 clouds to face and survive somehow. But to be honest, the "tiny damage" needs to be gone completely, both from all types of enemy attack and all sort of map's traps and damaging features like floor knives and accid, since the warning clearly said that ANYTHING will kill you in one hit. :P However, to make it fair, there should be a way to grab these damn bombs from the accid in map14 without taking damage, since it's placed unreasonably above the accid and after taking like 20-30 minutes, I've dicovered there is literally no way to grab them without getting daamge. To be honest, I hate unavoiable damaging things as this is just unfair, especially for a classic setting game, this is why I also choose the ULTRA difficulty just to be sure I wouldn't get damage even once and if I do, the game punish me by killing me. It would be fair if there would be some kind of pace on floor near the megabomb in accid to step on and do not take any damage if you're fast enough, it isn't need to be very close to megabombs so only fast and skilled players won't take any damage while rushing for the bomb.
ULTRA was never meant to be taken seriously. Its supposed to be one-hit death. Unfortunately I've not had the chance to test it better while still building the maps. I've debated whether to remove it entirely given how much trouble its been giving me.

I don't know why the turreted enemies are even moving, they shouldn't move at all regardless of difficulty.

The damage issues with that difficulty are also a problem I'm aware of. I'm not sure how to fix it outside of setting up special circumstances everywhere and that sounds like its going to be more hassle than its worth. It seems like some damage sources take difficulty settings differently to others because zdoom.

I might raise the bombs in map14 up higher off the acid as I hate things like that too. I know there are a few inescapable pits I'd like to fix in other levels too.
The another thing that really saddens me about ULTRA difficulty is that the vast majority of hidden items, which are the healing potions (including the super healing potion) are now gone. There are many cases where I found some very hard to spot on secret area, corner or place\area\spot that is usually hidden behind breakable wall\blocks, and when I break the breakable wall\blocks just to find out there is literally nothing in there. This is just makes no sense and makes me confused, and often just leaves me very dissapointed. For example this one spot on map18
Spoiler:
which is what I meant by confused, since at first I thought it's a place where one gets teleported later on which I could get to later in the game and never found it, or this one tricky spot on map23
Spoiler:
which just left you very dissapointed since that you haven't found anything. What if on ULTRA difficulty we let the player have healing potions and collect them, BUT color them all in yellow color and instead of healing they would just give you points for collecting them instead? As in, they become a liquid gold. :P Like small one would give like 100 points, big one 500 points, and super potion - 5000 points? I believe that would be fair.
If the difficulty is supposed to give you only one health, why do you need health potions? There's no real sense to adding more things to collect in a difficulty that's already hard enough as it is.
Oh, regarding the special items. I have found that these are very, VERY tricky hidden in all around map, often it's very hard to notice them and easy to overlook by accident. By special items I mean - megabombs, weapon potions (i.e. potions that give you special attack power, or temporal powers like rapid fire\flamethrower), Power Wand, secret DOOM weapon (won't say what is it to not create spoilers for others), stuff like that; but mostly megabombs. The thing is, they still give points once you collect them, so someone who do perfect runs like me, missing them is unforgivable for me. So Instead of making them more obvious or give hint where they are, I'd like if there would be more of them and hidden even better (I mean, most of your maps have crapton of all possible secret spots, and overall is parkour paradise), BUT(!) we will have a new item counter which is "special item", and we could see the special item counter in both automap and final score once you collect all of magical crystals? This would give us hint if we actually miss something, and makes the curious of us and perfectionists actually looking for these special items again. We could add all of the healing potions that are now turned in to liquid gold on ULTRA difficulty to this "special item" counter list. To this "special item" we could also add these easter egg\super secret high-point pickup thingies (I have no idea what they are and what they are from, but to give a hint I was talking about these things -
Spoiler:
), since they are more rare, give far too many points, mostly used for quite tricky secret spots and hard to find than average treasure pickups. This way we could not stress out by exploring every god damn corner, hole, column, whatever, just to be absolutely sure that we found and picked up absolutely everything. Still better than explore every single centimeter of the map and wasting hours just to beat a single map anyway. :P

Speaking about the item pickups. I discovered another bug regarding it. All of these wall-mining diamonds, gems and gold, etc, are NOT count included in the actual picked up treasure maximum-counter In fact, each time you break one of these mines filled with treasures, your maximum counter of treasures expands further! Which means, you can hear the Yahoo sound effect of fake-joy when collecting all of the possible treasures on the map, just to hear it again after breaking another mine filled with treasure and collecting it, and again, and again, and again... Not that it bothers me, but what trully bothers me is the fact that I remain uncertain if I totally found ALL of the possible mines filled with precious mineral resources since neither automap nor final credits tell me about it. Oh and by the way, you still get the bonus for "collecting all of the treasures" once you finish a map, EVEN if you trully haven't found all of the treasures and there still left some mines filled with mineral treasures to break and pick up.
You managed to spoil it anyway. :P
You don't actually need the megabombs to beat each level, as they were added later in development, but they certainly do make it easier. I was thinking of removing a few in some levels. At least in map28 you can get like 20 and that's just way too many for how powerful they really are.
As it stands there's no reason to add yet another category for scoring. I might make easter egg treasure not count to the final score.
Now something completely different. I've just discovered that in so many parts of maps there are simple map errors and lack of textures; a bit of examples I can show is this -
Spoiler:
and this
Spoiler:
, plus many other places where I can just abuse muh parkour skills and get out of map borders or places where I'm not supposed to be, or even have shortcut for necessary items like keys. I don't really want to picture all of them because 1) there are way too many to show and I couldn't remember them all on spot. 2) I don't want (some of) them get fixed. :P Can you please tell me, which programms you used to create such fantastic maps? If you tell me, I can do deep throughout playthrough, discover all of the possible issues with maps and how they can be abused, then fix them all myself and give you the fixed version; of course I would list every single detail I would done and give you feedback, including adding extra tree here and there so the player won't access to necessary items.
Missing textures like those do indeed need to be fixed, and if you find more, please send me screenshots so I can fix them. I can only spot so many myself so that would be helpful.
I use GZDoombuilder Bugfix for mapping and SLADE for general editing for everything else.
And for the last thing on my buglist, please add 5:4 resolution support! I know the game supports both 4:3 and 16:10, but not 5:4, which makes a lot of things feel broken, messy and out of place. Especially when picking up the temporary power potions. Just look at this out of place red and white squares, this also affect main menu as well -
Spoiler:
. While the main menu doesn't bother me that much, the red and white square really makes me feel uncomfortable and feels like the game is kinda broken. I hope I don't ask too much with this one...
Considering GZDoom now allows custom resolutions that's going to be tricky as I've started to notice it too. I'll see what I can do.
Now regarding the balance.
Christ, I'm gonna get nailed to the wall for this one.
The new flamethrower potion is just BAAAAD. It's useless! It's range is ridiculously small, and it doesn't even feel like flamethrower at all. I would rather avoid and not picking them up, but then as a result it wouldn't summon new enemies to shoot at, so I wouldn't get the bigger score nor bonus for killing all of the monsters... In version 04-07-18 it was amazing. Why it was changed?? I know that it felt like I'm shooting some fireballs, and in your changelog description said the reason why it was changed to make it look and behave more like "flamethrower", but the new flamethrower feels MUCH LESS than the older one... I know it's probably taken from Heretic's phoenix staff's Tomed attack, but it just looks like I'm having a flaming piss... from hand. And the new one feels so, SO underwhelming and underpowered compared to the old one. Besides when picking up the flamethrower potion, a HUGE amount of incredible powerful enemies spawn all around you, so killing them now turn out to be a real agony for you due it's lowered range and low power (as it feels like it was unnecessarily nerfed, too). It feels like flamethrower potion was designed in mind to be a more powerful version than rapidfire potion, considering how rare is it and considering that a really a lot of powerful enemies all around you spawn for you to deal with. If I had the choice, I'd just use a classic lightning bolt even without rapid fire when crapton of enemies spawn around you, at least it have bigger range so I could deal with far enemies that tend to shoot homing projectiles and with flamethrower there is nothing much I could do against them. I know that the old flamethrower would be considered as "overpowered" to some, but come on!! We just get like 3 bottles of these MAXIMUM during the whole of Hocus Pocus game with all of it's 40 levels; and it's only 4th episode exclusive item; so please, let us makes feel ourselves like Flaming-God pyromancer masters at least for these short period of time and wipe out horder of powerful enemies with ease while we given the chance. Please return the old flamethrower back!
The flamethrower is not even remotely useless once you realize that it spawns flames on the ground that continue to do a lot of damage. What you lack in range and precision you make up for with AOE and lingering damage.
If you don't like that it looked less flamethrowery but more like fireballs, you can use StgMark's flamethrower (even if you're not fan of his other projects); he has created, from what I view, the most realistically looking flamethrower I've ever seen so far in doom mods; aside from the fact that flamethrower's projectile has gravity and thus it falling down. Just remove gravity, recolor flaming projectiles in to a more hocus-pocus color-set and make them look more pixelated to keep it a canon-looking for hocus pocus doom, and here you have a flamethrower that behaves like flamethrower, but at the same time doesn't suck. :lol: Although I'd appreciate a lot even if just the 04-07-18 version of flamethrower return back.
The graphics are perfectly servicable and to be honest I'd like to keep him far away from my credits page as much as possible. No further argument here.
The another thing that I really miss is the old Power Wand. I know that powerwand has witnessed tons and tons of changes, including model skin and especially it's behavior, but I honestly really like the one from 04-07-18 again. I'm not saying that the new one is bad, but the old one had more usage and variety of situations where it was actually very useful. The most useful thing about it is that it had AoE splash radius range but didn't used that much of ammo, so it could be actually used to quickly destroy all of the breakable blocks without wasting too much ammo. But I don't want to get rid of the new one either. What if we give the current Power Wand alt-fire that could shoot same projectile like from 04-07-18 version? You'd still get powerful blast from the primary fire. The megabomb usage would stick to the lightning bolt hands only, or even better - switch to R (reload) button, since we already need this button binded for secret level. Or the Hocus Pocus doom we would have multiple different Power Wands, at least two; like bring the old Power Wand back, and give it the old hud skin, but these wands would be spread on different levels and some of either wand would appear only as episode 4th exclusive. I'd still love if either Power Wands would have the alt fire, some of these that has been scratched off the game. :P
Its taken me six iterations to get something that is somewhat fun and balanced to use. Its supposed to be a very powerful weapon you can only use sparingly. The ammo slowly refills on its own, but picking up lightning upgrades will fill up a quarter of its ammo. There's no need to further complicate it, especially adding multiple types of the same weapon.
The final boss feels rather underpowered and underwhelming, which turns him pretty easy to defeat. I know that in original game he wasn't much of threat either, and you could beat him by just holding fire button and remaining afk, but in this mod he seem to be designed to be an actual threat. I basically just beat him with basic circle straffing while shooting at him, which is really a shame. I had more threat from
Spoiler:
than from the FINAL boss. Another trick is to hide behind any of the column, peak, spam my attacks, and when he's about to shoot, just hide again. Columns are easy to abuse even when they are almost destroyed, since the boss is fixated on single spot all the time. What if with each new stage, he gains new attack and also with each stage, the map becomes more aggressive with more features that would actually hit Hocus? I know that in like third stage, the lightning start to hit the floor, but there could be used some more. :P What I believe the Trolodon should get the most is that on the last stage, after killing the dragon, the Trolodon should get ability to fly around, since the whole room is destroyed and you see a magic floor under his foot. It would only make sense for the FINAL boss in it's FINAL stage to do that; and it as well could make sense for such powerful boss that actually manages to create a magic floor, should also be powerful enough to move it around.
I think he's plenty dangerous enough, especially on the 3rd and 4th battles. You can kill him quickly if you're good or lucky, your can just as easily fall in a pit trying to dodge his attacks.
Oh, and there is one bug\exploit I forgot to mention. Since you're using portals that are connecting the 4 stages of boss room, and NPC can't see you through portals, you can easily abuse these and just step a single meter away from the boss room and just endlessly spam your attack at the poor Trolodon while he would just standing still idle, doing nothing. Of course I didn't do that because that would be waaaay too cheap and I would feel myself way too dirty if I'd abuse it. To fix it, I suggest that you can't see the boss while not entering boss battle room so you unable to shoot at him untill you enter the actual boss battle room; and once you enter it, the door actually closes behind or even better - the laser fence instantly activates once you're in the boss battle room so you won't be able to get in there and hide there anymore.
Yeah, that is an issue I'm going to eventually try and resolve. Thanks Graf. :D
The spooky themed maps (map25-26) really lack of something very important. The main element of which the whole theme just doesn't feel complete. What is it? The answer in the background of the maps itself. The spooky tree! Basically, a Demon Tree enemy but smaller and behave like the original Hocus Pocus Demon Tree, i.e. lacking of any attacks except rushing in to Hocus Pocus direction and do insane damage. They could use a bit of reskin too, so their face would looks exactly like one of the trees from the background, or a mix of all 3 :P We might as well call it a spooky tree instead of Demon Tree. I guess it shouldn't instakill like original Demon Tree either when getting close to Hocus, but would take like 4 hearts of damage on hard difficulty. They could be rare like any other juggernaut enemy like giant mushroom, pharaoh, wraith, etc, and have about as much of hp as them. Afterall, in the mountain themed maps (map23-24) of same episode, we first encounter the juggernaut enemies that are not included in the original Hocus Pocus game anyway. Also a great feature to test out the Power Wand on them, since map25 is the map where you first found out the powerwand anyway. Besides, spooky themed maps are the only map theme that lacks of walking rusher type of enemy (altho have two of flying rusher enemies). There could be more these spooky tree enemies on map26 since map26 is mostly set in outside.
That's not a bad idea actually. The monster balance for that set is kinda off and the power wand is basically useless for much of it. But ehhhhh more sprites to make. :V
The map33... My least favoruite map of all of Hocus Pocus. No, the map is great, it's done well, it has nice labyrinths, pharaoh is an interesting NPC and it has one of my most favourite jumping section, but GOSH it's so laggy it's unbearable and have unreasonable small par time. The unbearable spam of cosmetic particles turns my PC in to a toaster. I have to turn off particles almost entirely just to stop this heresy, to a point I no longer can see where enemies spawn, since once enemy spawn there is sparcle effect full of particles around in the spot of it's spawning. And these god damn spamming lightning bolt traps... They just NEVER stops spamming, adding more to lag... Can we please have it so the traps are actually activates when the hocus pocus AT LEAST at distance of 10 meters away from these, rather working ALL THE FREAKING TIME even if you're on the other end of the map? Same regarding the never-ending loop of creating single pixels in the air for sandstorm weather effect, full of pixeled lagness. It should create these sand pixels at least when you're near the outside area or if you're looking in that area, but not all the time, even if you're like mile away from it. It literally turn my FPS to 3 in that one outside area with iron key, especially with crapton of enemies spaming even more projectiles in addition to that. I asked a few more people, and they all had incredible lag on that map too. Well, this is not that much important since you at least can disable weather particles and other particles in the hocus pocus menu, which helps a lot, even though that kinda ruin the immersion a bit and makes harder to guess where enemies may spawn.
I wonder if gzdoom's new particle system could be put to use here. It'd certainly be worth a try.
I'll look into this. Trying to cut down lag from particles has been a constant thorn in my arse since day one.
However, as I mentioned, it also has incredible unfairly small par time limit - just 700 seconds on hard difficulty, this is just pure madness. The optimal time, with given lag and the amount of tough enemies, should be like 300 seconds more. I just attempted to beat that map on hard difficulty with the set up law of no taking ANY damage (since in hard the monsters have more HP compared to ULTRA, and less par time too), killing and collect everything possible. I tried to kill everything as fast as possible while dodging and keeping save distance, collect everything I could ever find, and dodge\avoid all of the damage I can; to a point it felt like TAS-assisted speedrun. It took me hundreds of loads and saves, and all I could get is just 618 seconds... This is just insane.

Speaking about the par time. A lot of maps have set it up too low for a player to actually beat these maps in time, while other maps set it too high so you actually could beat them in par time even if you don't rush. Keep in mind that you'd want to collect everything and kill everything too, and in order to do that you'd have to explore the whole map too. And to be honest, I like exploring, yet your maps have too much to explore and look up every column and corner for the extra "special item" like megabomb which I would have missed if not my casual curiocity and desire to explore. Also, please keep in mind that most players are new to your maps and often take the first path they could find instead of taking the path you seem to intended for people to take in order to beat the map in part time. I bet some would even get confused and lost, too. For me, even as hardcore player myself, I try to beat maps as fast as possible, while killing everything, collect everything and find all of the secrets\explore everything, often using save and load too, and even then I somehow manage to be late for like 100-200 seconds. Yet original Hocus Pocus par time was set in balanced manner, so even if this is the first time you play on this map, not knowing where to go and you even if you get lost, you could still make it in par time easily. The only way to be late for the par time in original Hocus Pocus is when you're going in the wrong directions all the time.
The most notable mentions I would say are:
map06 - should get at least 50 seconds more
map08 - should get at least 50 seconds more, especially considering it was expanded.
map15 - should get at least 100 seconds more
map16 - should get at least 100 seconds more
map33 - should get at least 300 seconds more, like for real, especially considering that it's filled with powerful enemies that are complicated to dodge.
map34 - should get at least 100 seconds more
As for the rest, I couldn't exactly rememeber from top of my head, but I'm pretty sure there are more.
I have beaten every single level on normal within those times and added 50 seconds to the timer to be fair. Yeah, they do still need some tweaking. Not everyone is going to be at the same skill level. I'm sure there are people even faster than me, so its not that big of a stretch to try harder!
Some enemies, especially at last stages in the final episode, feel a bit lacking and become repeative at best if not annoying with their simplicity, which getting bore especially at last levels. I know that the whole philosophy of game was just of 3 basic enemies, a walking shooter (with one exception of stationary shooter in wooden world), a walking rusher and flying enemy (which divided by 3 sub-cattegory, flying shooter in vertical direction, flying shooter in horizontal direction and flying rusher), but considering the majority of different type of enemies already modified, I see no reason to not modify the rest. Besides, you've already expanded such philosophy by adding one juggernaut (big guy) enemy in most of later map themes in last episodes anyway. :P Not only that, but actually altered the attack of some enemies, even the ones from the first episode! Same gargoyle has an pretty interesting shooting concept, I'd love if more enemies would be like that. I just want to suggest the other possible attacks for the rest of unaltered enemies for the later episodes, starting from something that I totally wish them to have, to something more like a nice niche suggestion.
Not every enemy needs to be completely unique. Sometimes its ok to treat them like the same enemy as before but with a themed skin.
The cobra from first map theme of last episode (map31-map32) feels really lacking, and overshadowed by the abyssal hydra that can shoot from 3 widespread particles to even 5 in all directions, turning it like more advanced mancubus. The cobra seems to appear less occasionally than hydra, and often strategically placed on top of pillars, crags and cliffs. They don't have much of hp either, and often spawn alone without other enemy types support. They almost scream to be turned in to a sniper. So what if as an alternative fire mode we give them ability to have a lasershot, similar to Hocus Pocus when he pickup the lasershot weapon potion? To make it fair, it would take like 2-3 seconds to charge the shots up and then fire, and they would do like normal projectile damage. I.e. they become like a very weak, slow arch-vile with low hp that can't resurrect, oh and unlike arch-vile, since lasershot isn't exactly a hitscan, maybe on long distances if hocus is running full speed, it's MAYBE even possible to dodge it. But overall, they become like a primary target to be taken down first, while remain a balanced threat that isn't too hard and isn't too easy.
No. Its the first map of the episode, lets not be a complete dick to the player.
Shrieker-dude, which is completely new NPC, had an really interesting attack in version 04-07-18, which shoot 6 projectiles in all directions including every time you hit that npc, but eventually turned to have just a normal boring projectile shootin in one direction that doesn't even home, even though with new skin for it. Can it have the old attack too, at least when the shrieker gets hit, please? I know that in recent version he was revorked to be a flying arachnotron that spam these sonic-wave like projectiles, and I have nothing against it, but it's still not much of a threat; he still could have fire variety and fire the 6 projectiles in all of directions sometime to cover as much angle as possible, and when he get hit too. It could have the same sonic-wave like projectile skin instead of the old one, though.
Also no, the shriker is fine. Its basically a flying arachnotron on its own.
The spider, which is map 35-36 exclusive, with it's boring "just push to Hocus" attack is just very easy target and doesn't even fit in the group gang of interesting enemies of this mysterious fantasy-themed map like same gargoyle and wyrm. Hell, spider doesn't even have more hp than either wyrm of gargoyle. Yet the spider is in the pre-last final level map theme, close to the final boss, of the same episode where on it's FIRST level we had to witness the abonimation such as abyssal demon, which gained it's power to fly and pierce through space with it's mad speed to catch the Hocus. But it's spider nonetheless. So what if we give it ability to climb on walls, and jump at hocus? This at least could give something unique and interesting about the spider, plus add a bit of actual threat.
Maybe I could make it jump at the player occasionally, but that's about it. I'm not going to make it more complex. This isn't Strife. :P
Silvermander, while I know it's not exactly a fire croc reskin since he sometimes can shoot two projectiles quickly, feels the most lacking after armordillo. Even a wyrm, the common enemy that appears since first levels of second episode, has more to it; as it can spam like 5 projectiles very quickly in your directions or 3 projectiles at the samet ime in a wide spread. What if we turn silvermander in to actual arachnotron, so it could spam projectiles in direction of Hocus with same fire rate it shoots it's first two projectiles? Maybe a bit slower fire rate, similar to recent shrieker or slightly faster than him. I know that shrieker was attempted to be turned in to a flying arachnotron, but for silvermander it would actually make sense since he would be a stationary character when he would spam these projectiles and thus turn it to be a unique enemy. It would change silvermander from "another casual boring enemy pop up on my screen, I guess I'll have to shoot it or something", in to "oh shit, I better ride of these guys before too late".
Honestly, the shriker already fills the arachnotron role, and I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about the gorilla.
Armordillo, which just looks and behaves like recolored porcupine, would greet some changes too. Personally I view this enemy as the MOST lacking of all, since it's not just a shroomcharger reskin, it's a porcupine recolor. What if we give it ability to jump and bounce around when he forms in to a ball, just so at least it would be a bit harder to hit armordillo? While jump, it could also easier hit hocus since it would avoid frontal obstacles and reach to hocus when he's standing on small ledge.
No.
The eskimo from map 05-06 could have his throwing stick bounce off walls to ground, like actual stick would do, with possibility to hitting hocus. Not much else to it, since it's just first episode anyway.
Maybe, but since its still episode 1, I don't want to be a total dick to the player.
Well, that is all both regarding balance and bugs report. There is something else I wanted to say.

There is another reason why I asked about what programm you used to create maps. As someone who beat original Hocus Pocus since childhood, I can clearly see that some of the Hocus Pocus Doom maps while looking really awesome and appealing in everything, feels really lacking the primary features from these original maps. For example, that one moment in map e2m7 where you had to shoot up breakable blocks to build a ladder to turn on the switch to release the key for a secret room. Or in map e1m2, where you had crapton of platforms and you had to jump on each of them to collect all of the treasure and find the crystal, which felt puzzlish and almost like maze\labyrinth. I know that suggesting something like that is too much, so I wish to learn basics so I could expand your maps a little bit, like for example in the same e2m7 map (or map17 in hocus pocus doom), I'd like to add an insane huge ass tree the size of supreme skyscrapper (just to give an immersion like it's some of these insane tall\huge trees from background\skybox image) with some bridge connected to it's hollow, and hollow is filled with breakable blocks, and two-level floors room in it, which you should break carefully, just so you could climb up on the second floor in that room with the switch and pull it; all just in attempt to give a tribute of respect to original Hocus Pocus game.
I did take several ideas for each map from their original counterparts, but I didn't want to attempt a 1:1 recreation. Besides, I already had dozens of ideas for maps that I just didn't have enough maps to put into.
While you're maps are true masterpiece, they lost it's main element - platforming and climbing. The original hocus pocus game had me feeling like I'm in some incredible enourmous castle with insane huge window around, with intent to jump up high on platforms and look outside the window, but your maps unique beauty some special niche to it too. I assume making moving platform in doom is something very hard, if not impossible, but if it had more jumping from one platform to another, it would save the original hocus pocus feel. Please don't take offense on this, but especially in later episodes, the levels are just filled with boring corridors tossed with crapton of enemies after another corridor with crapton of enemies and it just gets repeative and boring, thus the whole feel and charm of Hocus Pocus starting to lose and turn up to feel like any other doom mod like hell revealed or even some of these slaughter maps with endless crapton of enemies in tight corridors. It feels like there is 90% of corridor shooting and 10% of actual platforming, even though in original hocus pocus there been balance of both. At least you managed to make these maps be really beautiful, so I never trully get bored of your mod, as I often just enjoy exploring and jumping, but I often get tired of endless shooting.
Doom itself is not the greatest atmosphere for vertical platforming and the fact that I've achieved what I did, I'm happy with.
Also, since I hinted already, your maps are just parkour paradise, and in many maps you can find a way to reach where you shouldn't even be (I assume). I'd like to expand this idea even further and add tiny objects that would help me to climb on all parts of maps that originally seemed like a mere cosmetic element. And most importantly, I would fill them with these "easter egg\super secret high-point pickup thingies" that I've talked about earlier, just to encourage and reward the parkourers. This is something I should totaly try out, especially If you (I hope) take my suggestion regarding the "special item" counter seriously. This would replace the lack of platforming that I really crave on a lot in hocus pocus doom. I doubt I'll ever manage to rework a lot of things in corridors and add platforming elements there, but at least I could make the platforming\parkour optional and could start from somewhere. However, if I could create more rooms with platforming, that also fit in style with the rest of map, I'd sure would try that, but I barely have any rights to install a lot of programms. Besides, at least I could start from somewhere. :P I mean, if more maps had this one jumping section like in map33 full of jumppads, and you had to shoot at enemies while jumping, that would be awesome too.
Most of the skips or shortcuts you can find I intentionally left in, as long as it didn't break the level to a point where the player could no longer progress, or somehow found their way outside the map (this includes skyboxes). There's an easy one in map02 that lets you circumvent both keys to get all the crystals, but its not an easy one to pull off.

Also I'm not looking for mappers, as most of the maps are already basically done, save for minor tweaking.
And for the last thing. The themes in your mod get crossed a bit too much. The my most favourite map theme, the nature\mountain theme from e3m3-e3m4 (map23-24), crossed too much with the first level of the game (e1m1-e1m2 (map01-map02)) and lack almost entirely it's unique niche of it's theme. The original e3m3-e3m4 from original Hocus Pocus had a really great feel to it, real good mood boosting atmosphere, especially with it's background picture, which has Austrain-Switzerland Alps feel, or even North Idaho-Oregon nature feel to it, if you're american. :P Hell, in the original Hocus Pocus game, it was probably most climb-up platforming orientated out of all other levels too, which adds up to this climb mountain feel. But in your mod, it's almost entirely focusing on mushroom themed level, if not more than mushroom themed levels themsveles in e1m1-e1m2; with literally nothing regarding the actual nature\mountain theme of the maps, which is by the way is the most lacking and underwhelimg maps of all of the hocus pocus doom mod. The map23 feel the smallest of the all maps in game, aside from map01\map02, and in map24 you just dig deeper in to the mushroom-theme of first episode instead of it's actual nature-like feel with huge mountain and nearby lake; would be actually lovely to have a part of map where you climb on that mountain and have to jump in to lake after.
Or same map33, which is set in some arab persian-like theme in middle east with taj mahals all around, yet it has pharaohs of egypt theme... Like, what the hell? :mrgreen:
Its ok to reuse some thematic things if they fit well. I've already made thousands of textures, what's the harm in reusing a few.
And oh crap, my post end up to be quite big. My apologies, just had to say all this that has been accumulated for 5 years. :lol: Sorry for my clumsy english, by the way. :P
I appreciate the comments, and thank you again.
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SamVision
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Re: Hocusdoom BETA (new version 09-23-18)

Post by SamVision »

Need some help, I remember older versions of this having particle effects when you kill enemies but I don't see any particles anymore. I must have disabled a setting but I don't know what. Particle count is not disabled.

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