[WIP] Her/Hex Remix *added experimental spellbook,dualwield!

[Chilvence]

I am working on a weapon pack for Heretic and Hexen. To my recent surprise, I found there are so many of them I was unaware of that you might think does anyone really need _another_ one. Well that's a matter of taste of course, but my itch is slightly different; to me, each Raven game has something that the others lack, and lacks something that the others have. So I set about to marry the core concepts of Heretic1/2 and Hexen1/2 into a unified package that takes just enough from all of them without being slavishly bound to any of them. I'm not shy to rip up what I think could be different. However all the ideas and objects I am using have been part of Raven's fantasy game history one way or another, I am just imagining what the result would be if they were all featured in the same game.

longpunch.jpg

Although there are some new graphics, that is not the main focus of the Mod. The aim is paradoxically to be unobtrusive as possible, and the idea is to use it to liven up plain vanilla maps without changing the spirit of the game too drastically

shadowcaster.jpg

A critical feature is that the Tome of Power must feature prominently, since it is a Raven signature.

palpatine.jpg

Finally, some weapon concepts from the series are classics, but haven't aged well, and seem to lack the ooomph they are supposed to have. In the original Heretic's powered up Firemace fires an instakill grey blob. Here it is again, reimagined as the fighter final 'artifact' level weapon, 'Iron Doom'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ICv9s7NZ04

As it stands it is about 70% complete - pretty much everything I want is in there, but is in need of refinement and playtesting (and I would be delighted if anyone would offer to help with that, as my working to playtesting ratio on my own is about 10:1 and others are bound to see problems I have missed). I will probably put up an open demo, after I have heard back from people who's sprites I have cheekily pinched to save myself time.

Prototype 1: Original offering. Featuring the most bugs, but not the best bugs.
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=down ... 3ZFTElUanM

Super Crazy Prototype 2: Mage Spellbooks, Fighter Dual wielding madness (see readme inside pk3 for more details)
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=down ... VlpTmRmWlk

[Combine_Kegan]

That Iron Doom thing looks hilarious. I'm really interested to see where this goes

[Nash]

Holy fuck it's Chilvence

[Chilvence]

Hello. Miss me?

[zrrion the insect]

The Dragonclaw Bracers look incredibly cool.

[Chilvence]

Thanks, believe it or not they were supposed to be an mspaint placeholder.

One of the things I want to tackle with this project is try to get Hexen to be the game I think it was supposed to be. I think it is pretty clear that the 'Heresiarch' was supposed to be the second serpent rider all along, both from the ending of Heretic and the characteristics of the boss itself, which is clearly meant to echo the clash of two sorcerers at Heretic's finale. Korax was a challenging fight but a terribly disappointing nemesis, looking too much like a dumb beast, which is what it was obviously intended to be originally. The reflection of D'Sparil and his Serpent steed in the Heresiarch and Korax's nearly identical design is far too obvious to dismiss. So this mod introduces "True Korax" (and yes I know the idea has been had before, but I don't think anyone thought to use rotsprite to bring the two creatures into better proportion with each other )

sarcastic.jpg

So in my mind, Korax is and was always meant to be the RED one. The Skeletal beast simply ferries him up and down the high street in style.

[Biosyn]

^ Completely agree with you on the Heres riding Korax thing. Should've been done from the start all along by the devs. Any plans to work on it?

In any case, the mod looks pretty good by itself as well. Will definitely try it out and post feedback once you complete it.

Do please keep up the good work

[Chilvence]

Work on it? He's already ingame and working (although I havent bothered with rotations on the attack sprites yet). When you do enough damage to the beast, the rider jumps off and teleports away. Then you find him and confront him. I was thinking of using a similar tactic for his other two appearances early in game - you could imagine that each time you confront him and get the better hand, he teleports away to regroup.

I am having a bit of a headache making it work with Hexen's final map though; I can't make the second stage boss use the existing teleport logic because it is using some dirty hardcoded restricted codepointers . But hopefully I can crack it.

[Chilvence]

Well, I have decided to share what I have got so far. Anyone who is interested in trying it out should be able to grab it here:

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=down ... 3ZFTElUanM

Credits and a summary of changes are inside the file. A short short summary is: you get the tome of power and a bunch of new weapons in Hexen, and you get the three classes and a bunch of new monsters in Heretic. The same pk3 file works for both games. The status of it is nominally usable, but may contain bugs/missing features. I will jump all over any bugs you find and post here. I'm even very interested in how well it plays with different wads, etc. The non selfmade resources I have used I am under the impression that they are there for the using; if that is not the case, please send me a pm !

You start with 3 tomes of power - this is just a cheap hack to help me with editing, not a design choice. You should encounter them in most Hexen wads, but they are rarer, so I bumped them up until I decide a more elegant solution.

[Hornetzero]

I seem to be getting an error here.

[Biosyn]

Getting an error as well.

Not the same as the one above though:

Script error, "ravenremix_wip_01.pk3:bosses/korax.txt" line 81:
Invalid state parameter a_damageself

Hope this won't be an issue to fix. The mod has some great potential.

[Chilvence]

Sorry about that, but the issue with subtractive rendering is probably related to the fact that I am using a development build of zdoom that has that mode, it should go away if you use one of these: http://devbuilds.drdteam.org/zdoom/ or http://devbuilds.drdteam.org/gzdoom/ . Same with the second problem. My fault, I should have mentioned I was using the dev builds, I just forgot!

[Silentdarkness12]

This looks quite awesome. Looking forward to seeing how the rest of this goes.

Also, you may want to consider moving that link to the OP, Chilvence. So that it's easier to find.

EDIT: I hope you change it so that all the classes don't have a crossbow for slot 2. It just seems a tad nonsensical as far as the Cleric and Mage are concerned.

[Chilvence]

I change the slots quite a lot, I haven't really decided yet where to settle them, or what starting equipment to give. I actually returned all the most of the weapons to their default slots, because I kept confusing even myself. I want each character to have a basic range weapon attack though. I do like the melee aspect of Hexen, I almost always play as a fighter and that class is probably getting the most love from me at the moment (I am current in the process of finishing basic 'Dual Wielding' for one handed weapons... which makes the fighter so much more flexible ) . But at the end of the day, no self respecting adventurer would leave home without something for picking off monsters from a comfortable distance...

Realistically, I don't actually see what's so odd about a Parias or Daedolon using a crossbow myself though. Anyone would be able to use a crossbow with 10 minutes training, and the ethereal crossbow is effectively a wand anyway. So while I get that it doesn't fit the style of the character, it also seems daft to disallow it for one character and not another just on that basis. In fact in Heretic 2, Corvus is painted pretty clearly as a fighter/mage, and uses a longbow which requires much more skill. I think the "Mages and Clerics cant ever use crossbows" idea is a bad hangover from D&D, and even they eventually relented.

But for stylistic reasons, I do understand that it is a bit blunt, and will probably make a compromise; we could say that the fighter Baratus never leaves home without his trusty crossbow, Parias relies on his talent with a shortbow, and Daedolon is indifferent to simple physical weapons on account of his powerful wand. Or something like that. However, that scheme will mean that I need a bow sprite, so just consider it a placeholder for now.

[Silentdarkness12]

When was the last time you saw a mage keeping a crossbow around his tower? xD

Perhaps the Cleric might make use of an arrow-shooting weapon of some sort, but Daedelon?

Perhaps.....hmmm.....okay no, that'd be too crazy. Almost was thinking of having Daedelon literally weaponize the Tome of Power.