HeXeReTiC Fantasy v3.2 (Update 3 Jun 2024)

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Hexereticdoom
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HeXeReTiC Fantasy v3.2 (Update 3 Jun 2024)

Post by Hexereticdoom »

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IMPORTANT: THIS MOD REQUIRES AT LEAST GZDOOM 4.X.X (OR LATEST RELEASES OF LZDOOM) TO WORK PROPERLY. OLDER VERSIONS OF GZDOOM/LZDOOM AND/OR OTHER SOURCEPORTS LIKE ZANDRONUM ARE NOT SUPPORTED.


INTRODUCTION

Welcome to HeXeReTiC Fantasy! :D

Here you will take the role of Corvus III, the descendant of the brave Corvus, the unclaimed hero of the Sidhe Elves tribe.

Just like your grandfather, you'll have to confront again versus the evil Serpent Rider known as D'Sparil and all of his followers, and make your way into it with help of your habilities.

Thanks to your powerful physical and magical training during last decades, now you feel prepared enough for your task. You got some new powers over time, also with your increased strength and agility, it's a big chance to make D'Sparil and his minions bite the dust one more time, and this way honouring the memory of your defunct and beloved grandfather.

It's now time to pick up your new recharged Emerald Rod and get ready to start your new odyssey. Just remember the last words of your grandfather: 'You must not only be strong, but also smarter than your opponents.' There's no time to lose, so good luck and good hunting!


DESCRIPTION

HeXeReTiC Fantasy is a GZDoom/LZDoom randomizer mod destined for being loaded and used exclusively with Heretic IWAD. Yeah, although at first it may seem by the mod title, it is not compatible with Hexen, but instead it brings and adapts some ported elements from that classic Raven Software game. It can also be used for some external PWADs that modify original Heretic map levels, as long as they don't make some critical changes which alter the gameplay, monsters, weapons and other base elements, because it may conflict badly with this mod. Some PWADs like Heretic Treasure Chest, Call of the Apostate, Curse of D'sparil, Elf Gets Pissed (Clean Edition only), HYMN, History of Fruit, etc. should be perfectly played with HeXeReTiC Fantasy, and also it can be used with most auto-generated PWADs made with Oblige or Obhack tools!

This randomizer mod has been built mainly from some already existent ZDoom Heretic addons/mods, taking them as a base and adding some improvements and exclusive new features. Most of the used resources comes from the following addons/mods: COTIS Visual Enhancement mod, Heretweak weapons mod, Merciless Enhancement mod, [Hexen & Heretic] Remixed & Remastered Sounds addon and some Realm667 website resources, without forgetting the material coming from original Raven Software games. (See more details in Credits section).

Like all my previous workings, this mod is provided for you at no cost, and has been created just and only for fun. And of course, I DO NOT earn any money from it in any way, not even in the hosting and downloading file action, and it never will be! (That's not my style, you will know...)


LIST OF MOD CONTENTS

- Improved graphic special effects and remastered sounds overall, plus randomizing spawners for monsters and collectible items (weapons, ammo, artifacts...)

- A stronger and more agile heroic main character: Corvus III can pick up more health and ammo, run faster and jump higher than his memorable grandfather, and even can stand for very long time without breathing underwater! (Suck that, Guybrush Threepwood! :lol: )

- New eight skill difficulty levels: you can choose from the piece-of-cake Sorcerer's Apprentice to the really challenging Supreme Master of Spells!

- A new starting weapon: the Emerald Rod [*]. A magical reliable device with medium-low power that will help you to fight against the first enemy hordes. It has a quite precise long-range attack, and can be also very useful when other weapons and their ammunition types get scarce, because your Emerald Rod's energy will never run out!

- Every and each one of the game weapons have their own alternative fire mode, and also their power can be remarkably increased thanks to the influence of the new magic Tome of Might [**] which can be very helpful against severe hordes of enemies, or even the toughest bosses to fight!

- Available medium-sized ammunition pickups: they will give you more ammo units than small pickups, but less than big ones. (Obviously, what did you think? :P )

- New enemies coming mostly from Hexen universe, so the game bestiary is now more varied and difficulty is also increased! (Also including some exclusive variations, like the Ice Gargoyle and previously unfeatured ghost-mode enemies).

- New collectible items and artifacts: enhanced crystal vials, more shield types, plus some improved Hexen artifacts: Poison Flechette and Disc of Repulsion. (Oh yes, and a totally new one: the Regeneration Elixir!)

- Special direct action keys: Taunting action (Default key: T - It allows you to make fun of your enemies, but it could alert some hidden ones!) and One-Key-Savegame action (Default key: O - Directly brought feature from my previous H-Project mod, this allows to save instantly your game without having to navigate through GZDoom/LZDoom menu and having to choose and name manually a slot; let the friendly Holy Savior make the work for you!)

[*]: This weapon has taken the place of the older and smaller Jade Rod in HeXeReTiC Fantasy Special Edition, although it's not too different in terms of functionality and playability. ;)

[**]: This artifact has completely replaced the classic Tome of Power since the release of version 2.7, in order to fix for good the lately unwanted behaviour of the powered weapons in the mod, due to the recent internal code changes upon the release of GZDoom v4.6.0 and its LZDoom equivalent version.


VERSION HISTORY (FROM OLDER TO NEWER)

(Removed due to exceeding characters limit in the post. From now you can check the complete version history in README text archive included in the download ZIP file).


CREDITS LIST (MAY BE INCOMPLETE)
Spoiler:
GO TO DOWNLOAD SITE (MODDB)


Hope you enjoy your Heretic adventures with HeXeReTiC Fantasy!

Have fun and a nice Doomsday... 8-)
Last edited by Hexereticdoom on Mon Jun 03, 2024 4:27 pm, edited 60 times in total.
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Mister Neauxbauxdeay
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by Mister Neauxbauxdeay »

Where did you get that enemy health bar I see in the screenshot?
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SiFi270
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by SiFi270 »

I appreciate you recoloring the projectile throwing Gargoyles and Golems to distinguish them from their melee counterparts, and I was wondering if you could do something similar for the Chaos Serpents by changing the basic non-boss non-brown ones from green to grey. If you don't want to, that's fine. It's just a little thing that wouldn't make that much difference but I think would still be nice.
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SeriousWeasle
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by SeriousWeasle »

Awesome! Will this be something like the HXRTC Project for Heretic? If so, that would be really cool to see. Keep up the good work!
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BradmanX
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by BradmanX »

Looks like it could be alot of fun, glad Heretic's getting more love these days. Do you think that at some point you could perhaps make a monsters only version? It'd be nice to have a monster mod for Heretic to mix things up for playthroughs.
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Ryuhi
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by Ryuhi »

always love when heretic gets some love, let me know if you want to borrow anything from my mod :D
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Moe_
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by Moe_ »

So I tried to play this with gzdoom ver 3.1.0 but it gives me this error
Execution could not continue.

R_InstallSprite: Sprite MNTR frame E is missing rotations
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Hexereticdoom
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by Hexereticdoom »

Hi everyone mates! I'm gonna answer all of you, so let's go... 8-)
Mister Neauxbauxdeay wrote:Where did you get that enemy health bar I see in the screenshot?
It is the JP Healthbar addon, the mod friendly one to be precise:

viewtopic.php?f=46&t=46204
SiFi270 wrote:I appreciate you recoloring the projectile throwing Gargoyles and Golems to distinguish them from their melee counterparts, and I was wondering if you could do something similar for the Chaos Serpents by changing the basic non-boss non-brown ones from green to grey. If you don't want to, that's fine. It's just a little thing that wouldn't make that much difference but I think would still be nice.
Yeah, to be honest, one of the few annoying things it had Vanilla Heretic for me was they gave the same colour pattern for the melee-only and long-ranged enemies, and you had to guess who was who, and the same case in Hexen where Centaurs and Slaughtaurs shared also the same colours. But that has been fixed on the addon!

By the way, that's a nice suggestion, in fact I have been testing and it might be a good idea to give a greyish colour to the lower class Serpents, to distinguish them from the D'Sparils stronger elite riding pet. If everyone is OK with that, next release will implement this change! =:)
SeriousWeasle wrote:Awesome! Will this be something like the HXRTC Project for Heretic? If so, that would be really cool to see. Keep up the good work
More or less, that's the idea... With some more time, I'll try to make it almost as complete as the H-Project if possible. :winker:

[quote=""BradmanX"]Looks like it could be alot of fun, glad Heretic's getting more love these days. Do you think that at some point you could perhaps make a monsters only version? It'd be nice to have a monster mod for Heretic to mix things up for playthroughs."[/quote]
Perhaps, once the bestiary become even more varied in the addon. I'll take it into consideration! :wink:
Ryuhi wrote:always love when heretic gets some love, let me know if you want to borrow anything from my mod :D
Thanks for the offer, your Heretical Doom mod it also rocks! :thumb:
Moe_ wrote:So I tried to play this with gzdoom ver 3.1.0 but it gives me this error
Execution could not continue.

R_InstallSprite: Sprite MNTR frame E is missing rotations
Try to invert the loading order of the files. Don't forget you must load Heretic IWAD before the addon.
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cambertian
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by cambertian »

I'm loving it so far! My only minor complaints:
  • Some of the weapon archetypes I've seen so far are too same-y? The starter wand, golden wand, and dragon claw all have hitscan fires and projectile alt-fires, for instance. (The dragon claw can be forgiven; its spread is much greater and its projectiles much faster/more specialized, but my point still stands.)
  • I don't like the ice shards dealing damage - waiting for them to melt in cramped hallways is a bit of a pain. Do they usually do that in Hexen?
Great work - can't wait for the finished product!
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Valherran
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by Valherran »

Just finished Heretic on the hardest setting and here's my feedback:

The weapons were alright, but some were just lacking in substance, and a few need some serious tweaks. The new enemies are a nice touch, however the enemies made of ice were extremely irritating due to leaving ice shards on the floor as caltrops.

There were some instances where the damn things would be moving for eternity and never go away. This is also a balance issue in the higher settings, killing one of those ice gargoyles point blank resulted in it shredding most of my armor off and a large chunk of health. With Heretic's map set, this is problematic as you will sometimes have to be stuck fighting them at that range. Simply removing this imbalanced feature would be most recommended.

The extended ammo was also a nice feature, but also seemed a bit unnecessary with how the balance is currently set, however the new items that were added were nice.

SUGGESTIONS:

Weapons:

1. Elven Wand - Players should start with this in conjunction with the Jade Wand. Starting with the Jade Wand made fresh starts far more difficult than it needed to be due to the lack of punch it provides. Nothing needs to be changed about the Jade Wand, I think it's fine the way it is, so the simple solution would be to just let us start with the Elven Wand. The alt fire however could use a change. If you make it a slow firing but super fast projectile with good damage, then it won't be completely outclassed by the Dragon Claw.

2. Necro Gauntlets - The boost you gave them is great, but the alt-fire is totally useless. It would be ideal if the punches provided knock back.

3. Crossbow - Goddamn is this good, almost too good. Once you get this it nearly outclasses weapons 1-2 entirely in the game's current state.

4. Dragon Claw - This hasn't changed much in performance compared to it's original design. The alt-fire seems out of place considering the Dragon Claw is a lightning/energy type weapon. If the Ice effect is here to stay, I would at least change it to a kind of freezethrower weapon that pierces.

5. Hell Staff - Similar to the Dragon Claw, the alt-fire is kind of out place with its performance. Instead of firing a big energy ball, it should fire a piercing energy beam. Firing that beam would have the same cooldown as the Crossbow's alt-fire.

6. Phoenix Rod - This weapon is OK at best, but I think a rework is in order to make it better. For the primary fire, you could speed up the projectile by around 50% more to help hit targets easier. The alt-fire could be the current primary fire, but the projectile is now guided, it will travel wherever you aim it. The primary fire in ToP mode needs to be completely replaced with a better functioning flame thrower, the current one is completely useless plus it has issue with the flame always traveling left.

7. Firemace - It sucks, other weapons completely outperform this thing. This would function a lot better if the steel balls traveled at high velocity and also had good splash damage on impact. The alt-fire would be a lot better if the weapon fired one big steel ball like a grenade launcher that explodes into like 50 other balls on enemy impact.

MISC:

1. Enemies - As said before the new enemies were a nice touch, but I think they need to be made more challenging plus adding some more would be ideal. Even though I had the game cranked up, I still found it to be rather easy due to the enemies being so simplistic (save for the stupid ice frags.)

2. Sounds - Some weapons and swap sounds could be better, the current ones don't fit at all or make the weapon underwhelming. Dragon Claw for example, the sound it has currently makes it sound weak. Hell Staff sounds too much like you are pulling a gun instead of a magical weapon. I think you can do better than what you have now. And for the love of God, please get rid of that damn wing flapping sound from the idle gargoyles, It was super loud to where I can hear it from a mile away like it was Hexen 2's Imps all over again.
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Hexereticdoom
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.666

Post by Hexereticdoom »

@cambertian & @Valherran: Thanks both a lot for your nice feedback! A new release of the addon is coming soon along next week, and it is going to have some significant changes based on some of your given recommendations. :thumb:

For example, as for giving you some fresh news about it, the player's arsenal has been increased with new weapons and some of the existent classic ones have been slightly improved, including a little bit of new ammunition types. However, it might not going to have important changes to bestiary and items list, that will be more probably on a next update (remember this is still a WIP, there is plenty of things to implement in the addon and several of them are pending at the moment, but development won't stop: it's slowly, but surely!) :wink:

As been said, expect a new update release in a very few days! Cheerio, everyone! 8-)
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Hexereticdoom
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.777

Post by Hexereticdoom »

Bump for announcing the availability of a new release: v0.777! :)

Please check the changelog and download links on first post.

Hope you enjoy it, keep having fun! 8-)
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-Ghost-
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.777

Post by -Ghost- »

Does the gold do anything currently, or are you laying the groundwork for a future update with shops or something?
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Mister Neauxbauxdeay
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.777

Post by Mister Neauxbauxdeay »

Remembering the pattern you developed for the HXRTC Project for Doom, I'd bet that where there's gold, there will eventually be a way to spend it, yes?
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Hexereticdoom
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Re: [WIP] HeXeReTiC Fantasy v0.777

Post by Hexereticdoom »

Yeah, as you say, at the moment the gold coins are just a 'score' resource, so actually it is not useful, but in a future update it will be! :wink:

Some additional fresh news: the new HUD is almost finished, still has to be polished and debugged in some ways, but I can confirm the next release of the addon will include it. It will be pretty similar to current HXRTC HUD, but more in line with Heretic theme! =:)
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