The Wayfarer's Tome: a standalone gameplay mod for Heretic (Update to beta 7a with wand start bugfix, November 2021)

[Not Jabba]

Happy Heretic Weekend, everyone!

 

 

The Wayfarer's Tome is a standalone gameplay mod that lets you use the gameplay rebalance from The Wayfarer with any standard Heretic map. Although the rebalance was designed primarily as a base for creating new maps, I've found it to be enjoyable with any well-designed Heretic map. Hopefully you will too!

 

How does it play with Heretic.wad?

Heretic has mixed quality when it comes to level design, and a gameplay mod isn't able to address all those issues. However, playing with the mod does improve the pace of the game and keeps the combat from dragging. I think it's worth playing Heretic with the mod, especially if you didn't like the game much in the past but want to give it another shot. E1 is super quick and breezy with all the fodder enemies, and the tougher maps in E3-E5 are generally more fun as well. E4M1 is still nonsense. If you play continuous, you'll often end up with enormous amounts of ammo and armor, so consider using Wand starts if you're looking for more of a challenge.

 

What do you recommend playing with the mod?

I've tested the following maps and mapsets with The Wayfarer's Tome, and I would highly recommend all of them (with or without the mod, but especially with).

 

-Elf Gets Pissed*
-Realm of Parthoris

-Curse of D'Sparil*

-Endquest
-Icebound
-Templum Dormiens Dei

-Dark Deity's Bastion
-Where Serpents Ever Dwell

-UnBeliever*

-Serpent's Wake

-Quest for the Crystal Skulls*

-Sold Soul*

 

*Requires a patch, which is included with the release. Load files in the following order: the mapset you're playing, then wtome_sa.pk3, then the patch. The patches are as follows:
-wtome_egp.wad: Elf Gets Pissed

-wtome_cod.wad: Curse of D'Sparil

-wtome_ub.wad: UnBeliever

-wtome_qcs.wad: Quest for the Crystal Skulls

-wtome_ss.wad: Sold Soul

 

Gameplay changes from Heretic:

The Wayfarer's Tome adds a variety of mostly minor tweaks to Heretic, which are intended to make the gameplay smoother, improve the overall balance, fix a few weird design choices that could be considered features but are probably bugs, and so on. The main goal of these design changes is to make the game a bit more fast-paced and fun to play. The following is a complete list of changes.

Spoiler

Player Weapons:
-The Staff uses custom animations by OSJC that make it feel more like a weapon and less like a cattle prod.
-The Staff has a longer melee range.
-The Tomed Staff is significantly more powerful, and it now hits ghost enemies.
-The Gauntlets are slightly more powerful and are more likely to stunlock enemies.
-The Elven Wand's shot is now a bit more powerful. Both the un-Tomed and Tomed versions of the Wand fire slightly faster.
-The Ethereal Crossbow has been beefed up to feel more like a true shotgun weapon. It now has four side bolts instead of two, and the side bolts do more damage. To compensate, the weapon is slower to refire. The Tomed version does slightly more damage as well.
-The Hellstaff does slightly more damage with each shot, and its projectiles are now heat-seeking.
-The Hellstaff's animation is less jerky and more in line with the firing speed of the weapon.
-The Tomed Hellstaff's projectile rain lasts longer, and the rain projectiles no longer knock enemies back. This allows enemies to enter the storm, dramatically increasing the weapon's effectiveness. To compensate, the weapon now uses 10 ammo per shot instead of 5.
-The Tomed Phoenix Rod is more powerful to provide better compensation for its short range. It also has less knockback when it hits enemies.
-The range of the Tomed Phoenix Rod has been increased somewhat, though it is still a short-range weapon.
-The Tomed Phoenix Rod has had its attack behavior rewritten to eliminate the unpleasant hardcoding. It no longer transfers the player's momentum to the projectile (meaning that you can now aim and dodge at the same time), and it depletes ammo steadily over time instead of the wonky vanilla behavior where it depleted one ammo for each time you hold down fire and then forced the weapon to shut down periodically.
-Following RottKing's lead from Elf Gets Pissed, the Lightbringer has been added to the game as a slot 7 weapon. The Firemace hasn't been overwritten, so you will likely only see the Lightbringer if you're playing the mod with Elf Gets Pissed, but you can also cheat it in if you want.
-The Firemace spawns 100 percent of the time instead of 75 percent. It can also be placed at multiple locations in the same level, rather than randomly spawning in only one location. (Note: in the standalone mod, it still only appears in one location per map, as in vanilla, to avoid conflicting with the map design too much; however, it still appears 100 percent of the time).
-The Firemace does about 50 percent more damage. The damage of the main sphere projectiles has been increased, while the occasional larger splitting spheres are the same as before.
-The large Dragon Claw ammo orb now gives 30 ammo instead of 25.
-The brightness levels of various weapons have been customized/fixed. Most weapons use the set of custom brightmaps from Elf Gets Pissed. The Tomed Staff and Tomed Gauntlets are bright even when idle to reflect the electrical energy around them. All ammo pickups are now bright.

 

Artifacts:
-The Chaos Device no longer transfers between levels.
-You can now carry up to 25 Time Bombs of the Ancients, instead of the default maximum of 16.

-The Torch lasts for 45 seconds instead of 120.
-Time Bombs of the Ancients no longer count toward item percentage.
-The Ring of Invulnerability and Chaos Device are now bright.
-The Morph Ovum uses custom brightmaps so that the electrical energy around the artifact is always bright.

-The Shadowsphere now makes players immune to melee attacks from the Golem/Nitrogolem, Sabreclaw, and Undead Warrior.

 

Enemies:
-The Gargoyle fireball, Undead Warrior green axe, Weredragon fireball, both Ophidian projectiles, and the Maulotaur's small spreading fireballs all do slightly more damage. The Weredragon fireball and both Ophidian projectiles are slightly faster.
-The Maulotaur's melee attack deals splash damage within a tight radius, significantly increasing the overall power of the attack.

-The Maulotaur's ground crawler attack delivers damage a bit differently. In vanilla Heretic, a direct frontal hit does low damage, and the residual fire trail does massive damage. With the mod, a direct frontal hit does full damage, and the residual fire trail's damage is reduced a bit; it's still very powerful, but easier to tank a hit if you have armor.
-The Weredragon's melee attack does significantly more damage, and its melee range is a bit longer.
-The Weredragon has higher health (300 instead of 220) to help it function as more of a tank enemy.
-The weaker melee Gargoyle variant uses its charge attack slightly more often.
-The Nitrogolem and Undead Warrior have slightly less health (Note: the Nitrogolem Ghost and Undead Warrior Ghost still have the same health as in vanilla Heretic).
-The Ophidian and Maulotaur have less health.
-The Weredragon's fireball and contrail are now bright, and the Weredragon lights up when firing.
-The Disciple lights up during its attack windup and death.
-The Sabreclaw and Iron Lich light up during death.
-D'Sparil has received a number of brightness fixes to light up during frames when energy is crackling around him, including teleportation and death.
-D'Sparil's first form now has a pain chance of 25, like a Maulotaur. His second form has a pain chance of zero. This is primarily to keep him from being stunlocked by the Tomed Phoenix Rod.
-The Sabreclaw, Weredragon, and Ophidian have slightly higher mass.
-The Iron Lich has significantly higher mass.
-All Golem/Nitrogolem variants have slightly reduced speed.
-Gargoyles and Fire Gargoyles will no longer infight with each other.
-Golems, Golem Ghosts, Nitrogolems, and Nitrogolem Ghosts will no longer infight with each other.
-Enemies no longer infight with the Iron Lich.

-The Undead Warrior and Undead Warrior Ghost drop three Crossbow bolts instead of five.
-The Weredragon drops five Crossbow bolts instead of ten.
-The Ophidian drops one Phoenix Rod ammo instead of five.
-The Maulotaur drops a large Phoenix Rod ammo instead of a small one that somehow gives 10 ammo.
-The Sabreclaw is less likely to drop Hellstaff runes, and the dropped runes provide 10 ammo instead of 20.
-The Disciple now potentially drops the Sigil of Power instead of the Tome of Power.
-The Maulotaur's Mystic Urn drop is rarer (about 25 percent as likely as before).

-The Fire Gargoyle and Weredragon's projectiles, and the Iron Lich's flame tower attack, now have the fire damage type. The Iron Lich's attack causes burn death; the Fire Gargoyle and Weredragon projectiles do not.
-Ghost enemies and players using the Shadowsphere are now immune to the ice shards from the Iron Lich ice ball. Previously, they were immune to the ice ball but not the shards.

-Players using the Shadowsphere are immune to melee attacks from the Golem, Nitrogolem, and Sabreclaw.

 

Sounds:
-The sound "rolloff" range (the distance at which sounds begin to diminish in volume) has been increased to 200, as in Doom. Previously it was 0, which is why Heretic sounds so weirdly quiet. Sounds for the Iron Lich, Lesser Chaos Serpent, Phoenix Rod explosion, and Time Bomb of the Ancients explosion have a longer rolloff/max distance beyond the new default ranges.
-The Staff previously had a swinging sound built into its hit sound, and played nothing when it missed. Now, it plays a swinging sound whenever it is used, with a separate sound for impact.
-The Tomed Wand fire, Hellstaff fire, Phoenix Rod fire, and Phoenix Rod impact sounds have been edited to sound more powerful.
-The Gargoyle/Fire Gargoyle now has separate sounds for its regular and gib deaths.
-The Nitrogolem now plays sounds when it charges up and when it fires.
-The Fire Gargoyle, Nitrogolem, Disciple, Weredragon, Ophidian, Iron Lich, and Maulotaur projectiles now have impact sounds.

 

Graphics/Miscellaneous:
-Water flats now tile properly, without a sharp seam around the edges.
-Nearly all sprite fixes from the Heretic Minor Sprite Fixing Project are included.
-The widescreen status bar from the Heretic Minor Sprite Fixing Project is included.

 

Credits:

Spoiler

-Balancing changes (weapons, items, monsters) by Not Jabba
-Sigil of Power by Not Jabba
-Lightbringer by Ghastly_dragon, Xaser, Zero Prophet, Neoworm, Eriance, and NeuralStunner; additional sound from Captain Toenail's Apotheosis
-Additional gameplay fixes and tweaks by RottKing
-Weapon sprite brightmaps and smoother Hellstaff animation by Spadger
-Staff animations by OSJC

-Fixes for various stock sprites from the Heretic Minor Sprite Fixing Project by Revenant100
-Widescreen-friendly status bar by Neoworm
-Sound edits by Xaser

-Phoenix Rod replacement sounds from Hexen 2
-Base KEYCONF by Kristus

 

Feel free to use anything from the mod -- just give proper credit.

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Not Jabba

[Zaratul]

Really good stuff, its gonna be my autoload file for Heretic. Finally a great subtle Heretic gameplay mod. I have also a few suggestions:

 

-reduce gargoyle knockback, we dont need another cacodemon mechanic
-increase speed of nitrogolems because they should be a threat, maybe add a charge mechanic
-reduce sabreclaw healts slightly maybe?
-increase accuracy\maybe increase dmg of elven staff, i know its a starting weapon but it should be a more viable sniping weapon

-elven wand start option

-optional 50\100% monster movement\attack speed increase for UV difficulty equivalent

[Not Jabba]

19 minutes ago, Zaratul said:

-reduce gargoyle knockback, we dont need another cacodemon mechanic
-increase speed of nitrogolems because they should be a threat, maybe add a charge mechanic
-reduce sabreclaw healts slightly maybe?
-increase accuracy\maybe increase dmg of elven staff, i know its a starting weapon but it should be a more viable sniping weapon

-elven wand start option

-optional 50\100% monster movement\attack speed increase for UV difficulty equivalent

 

Thanks for the feedback! The mod is relatively unlikely to change balance-wise at this point, since it's the end result of about two years of tinkering, but you never know. I've considered/tried out a few of the changes you suggested, so here's some general thoughts on the balance and why I decided to limit the changes:

-Both Gargoyles and Disciples are more dynamic enemies when you have to worry about how they get knocked around; it makes the Gargoyle more effective as a harasser enemy and gives the more dangerous Disciple an element of unpredictability -- and since it takes fewer hits to kill them with most weapons, the frustration of chasing enemies around becomes less of a problem. More importantly, I've found that the heat-seeking Hellstaff is a fantastic weapon for cleaning up flying enemies, as it makes the knockback irrelevant.

-I've tried reducing the Sabreclaw health a tiny bit from 150 to 135/140, and while it was fairly satisfying for casual play, it meant that they got one-shotted by the Crossbow pretty frequently, which significantly reduced their threat level.

-Higher movement speed (unless taken to the extreme) doesn't add a lot to enemy threat level, and one problem with Heretic enemies is that most of them have similar speeds (with the Nitro being at the lower end of the limited spectrum), and that makes them all easy to herd (whereas very fast and very slow enemies are more difficult to manipulate that way). I've actually slightly reduced the speed of the Golem/Nitrogolem to separate them from the pack a bit more.
-I want to discourage use of the Elven Wand as much as possible, because it always slows down the speed of gameplay relative to other weapons, and I feel like it's better to push players to be out in the middle of the combat rather than plinking from a distance. The current changes to the Wand are just to make it less frustrating to start out at the beginning of a map. The Dragon Claw is about as accurate as the Wand at mid-range, and in many situations the heat-seeking Hellstaff is even better than a sniping weapon -- but if you're dealing with a nest of turrets, isn't it more fun to rush in and wipe them out with the Phoenix Rod anyway? :P

 

I'm not sure what you mean about the options, but I'd be happy to add them if possible. Do you mean adding them to the GZDoom menus, or something that helps with autoloading? I don't have experience with stuff like that, but if you point me in the right direction, I can give it a try.

[Zaratul]

Quote

I've actually slightly reduced the speed of the Golem

Golems are meele enemies so they should have some speed, now they are just a pushovers.

Quote

-I've tried reducing the Sabreclaw health a tiny bit from 150 to 135/140, and while it was fairly satisfying for casual play, it meant that they got one-shotted by the Crossbow pretty frequently, which significantly reduced their threat level.

You are right, after playing a bit more i agree that Sabreclaw health is just right.

Quote

-I want to discourage use of the Elven Wand as much as possible

I like it when all game features are usefull. :) Elven Wand after buffs is a great alternative for crossbow and claw. And its good for killing ghosted enemies.

Quote

isn't it more fun to rush in and wipe them out with the Phoenix Rod anyway? :P

Well you do not have Phoenix Rod all the time right? :)

Quote

Do you mean adding them to the GZDoom menus

Yep, thats what i`m talking about. More options=variety and variety is a spice of life. :)

[whirledtsar]

Neat! I have a suggestion. Golem punches and sabreclaw scratches hit the player even when he has the shadowsphere active. I think making them pass through is logical and incentivizes using the powerup. This code seems to work fine:

Spoiler

Melee:

 TNT1 A 0 A_CheckFlag (GHOST, "Melee2", AAPTR_TARGET)

 MUMM F 6 A_CustomMeleeAttack(random[MummyAttack](1,8)*2, "mummy/attack2", "mummy/attack")
 MUMM G

 Goto See

Melee2:

 MUMM F 6 A_PlaySound ("mummy/attack")
 MUMM G 6
 Goto See

 

[ReaperAA]

I just played EP1 of Heretic (skill 4) with the mod. Here are my thoughts: 

- The crossbow rocks. Being able to kill golems in 1 shot at close range is great.

- The gaunlets are really good too. I can now safely kill lone golems without taking any damage. Useful for conserving ammo.

- The brightmaps add to the asthetics, which is nice.

- The elven wand is stronger now but I still think it is quite useless. I suggest improving its accuracy. I know its a starting weapon but still.

- Golems were already quite slow. So no need to further nerf them. Infact I would actually suggest to slightly buff their speed, as they can be 1 shotted from crossbow now.

- The flyers need to have less knockback. While Hellstaff might be able to kill them easily, its not available on all levels (EP1 for example).

- An option in GZdoom menu to replace the firemace with the Lightbringer on the level spawns(along with their ammo) would be great.

 

Note that I haven't played E2 onwards. So this comment doesn't include all monsters and weapons.

Edited April 21, 2019 by ReaperAA

[SOSU]

5 hours ago, Zaratul said:

Golems are meele enemies so they should have some speed, now they are just a pushovers.

As seen in my Heretic monster usage guide Golems are supposed to be used in tight enviorments with lots of them in it so that they become dangerous :)
I don't think that Golems need to be any faster, then they'd be reskinned Sabreclaws :'') and Nitro Golems are more about being snipers than close range combatans (Protip: If you have a platform focused battle arena the Nitrogolems turn to nightmarish projectile throwers with their homing skulls flying around you in a circle formation)

[Not Jabba]

9 hours ago, whirledtsar said:

Neat! I have a suggestion. Golem punches and sabreclaw scratches hit the player even when he has the shadowsphere active. I think making them pass through is logical and incentivizes using the powerup. This code seems to work fine:

  Hide contents

Melee:

 TNT1 A 0 A_CheckFlag (GHOST, "Melee2", AAPTR_TARGET)

 MUMM F 6 A_CustomMeleeAttack(random[MummyAttack](1,8)*2, "mummy/attack2", "mummy/attack")
 MUMM G

 Goto See

Melee2:

 MUMM F 6 A_PlaySound ("mummy/attack")
 MUMM G 6
 Goto See

 

 

Haha, I've been trying to figure out how to do that for years, and nobody I talked to had heard of a way to make it work on enemy melee. Thanks, I'll try it!

 

5 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

- Golems were already quite slow. So no need to further nerf them. Infact I would actually suggest to slightly buff their speed, as they can be 1 shotted from crossbow now.

 

4 hours ago, SOSU said:

As seen in my Heretic monster usage guide Golems are supposed to be used in tight enviorments with lots of them in it so that they become dangerous :)
I don't think that Golems need to be any faster, then they'd be reskinned Sabreclaws :'')

 

Exactly -- anything I could have done with standard Golems would have made them feel like they were moving into a niche already occupied by Sabreclaws. Both Sabreclaws and Nitrogolems are better enemies to use in nearly any situation from a mapping perspective, so I only used melee Golems in a few very niche situations in Wayfarer after e1m1, and I mostly ignored them in the modding process. In vanilla Heretic they're treated as either a very casual enemy or a screen for Nitrogolems to hide in, and the way they're treated in the mod allows them to keep that usage. Heretic E1 is the only case I can think of where the standard Golems are used in large numbers -- in the later episodes and in most pwads, most Golems are Nitrogolems.

 

At some point I'd definitely like to mess with the menudefs and give people some options -- an option to replace the Firemace with the Lightbringer sounds like a good idea.

[ReaperAA]

1 hour ago, Not Jabba said:

Exactly -- anything I could have done with standard Golems would have made them feel like they were moving into a niche already occupied by Sabreclaws. Both Sabreclaws and Nitrogolems are better enemies to use in nearly any situation from a mapping perspective, so I only used melee Golems in a few very niche situations in Wayfarer after e1m1, and I mostly ignored them in the modding process. In vanilla Heretic they're treated as either a very casual enemy or a screen for Nitrogolems to hide in, and the way they're treated in the mod allows them to keep that usage. Heretic E1 is the only case I can think of where the standard Golems are used in large numbers -- in the later episodes and in most pwads, most Golems are Nitrogolems.

 

On second thought, maybe u r right. It makes sense to separate them from Sabreclaws. Also after reading ur comment, a thought came to my mind that slower golems would actually be better for screening nitrogolems. Faster golems would just run faster towards player, easily revealing nitrogolem behind them. So keep them as they are.

 

Though my opinion regarding knockback of flyers still stands. It just makes them annoying but without really making them more threatening per se.

 

7 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

The elven wand is stronger now but I still think it is quite useless. I suggest improving its accuracy. I know its a starting weapon but still.

 

Also I would like to add more opinion about Elven wand. I understand that u want to discourage its use. But I think wand could be turned into something useful. What if its accuracy was perfect 100% (like the pistol in Eviternity). This would make it better than dragon claw at sniping. It would also provide players another option of play-style (for those that want to play safer due to personal style and/or the situation at hand). Those who wanna play aggressive could ignore wand if they want to.

 

And one last thing. R u using this (just mentioning in case).

 

 

[FrancisT218]

@Not JabbaWill Faithless or Curse of D'Sparil run with this? Especially the later (I know Faithless is still new...)

[Not Jabba]

21 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

And one last thing. R u using this (just mentioning in case).

 

I've thought about it, but I haven't added anything from it yet. Do you know if the author has granted permission to reuse the assets?

 

12 hours ago, FrancisT18 said:

@Not JabbaWill Faithless or Curse of D'Sparil run with this? Especially the later (I know Faithless is still new...)

 

I haven't tested it with either yet, but it should work fine with Curse of D'Sparil, since it doesn't make any modifications to the player class or monsters/weapons. I'd predict that Curse is probably one of the most fun things to play with the mod, since the combat is so heavy.

 

SOSU played Faithless with the mod and didn't mention any problems, but I can't guarantee that everything will be perfect. At some point, I'd like to create a patch for it (as well as Masters of Chaos and the Dr. Chaos series) like I did with Elf Gets Pissed to better accommodate the mapset's unique features. That will probably be on the backburner for a while though.

Edited April 22, 2019 by Not Jabba

[SOSU]

Did somebody mention the Iron Sauce? :D
The Firemace in Faithless overrid (overided?)  the Lightbringer so that was a bit of a problem since i couldn't switch to it untill i didn\'t have any ammo and couldn't switch back untill it's ammo depleted :'')
You can just delete the part of code for the Firemace in Faithless to stop that from happening though :)

Also Jabba does The Wayfarer Tome have your custom monsters in it too?

[Not Jabba]

3 minutes ago, SOSU said:

Did somebody mention the Iron Sauce? :D
The Firemace in Faithless overrid (overided?)  the Lightbringer so that was a bit of a problem since i couldn't switch to it untill i didn\'t have any ammo and couldn't switch back untill it's ammo depleted :'')
You can just delete the part of code for the Firemace in Faithless to stop that from happening though :)

Also Jabba does The Wayfarer Tome have your custom monsters in it too?

 

Ah, ok, so Faithless modifies the Firemace. That sounds like a problem, since the Firemace is treated as a normal weapon and the Phoenix Rod is secret-only. I'll definitely make a patch for Faithless, and it may involve balance changes to the custom monsters as well to bring them more in line with the balance of the mod. I'm planning to do that with Masters of Chaos as well.

 

The Wayfarer's Tome doesn't have the custom monsters and items yet (because there are so few of them), but it will eventually come in a version that includes the complete resource set, as well as the standalone mod. For now, it should be easy enough to rip them from Wayfarer if you want to use them.

[FrancisT218]

@Not JabbaThanks for letting me know. elfgp and curse are probably top of my list, as well as Stormwalker's and Lutz' single map(s). But I was just surprised you hadn't mentioned curse prior.

 

On that count - do you know if Dark Deity's Bastion - Stormwalker's other single map - works flawlessly?

[SOSU]

@FrancisT18 Elf gets wet modifies the Wand so that too might needs to be patched :O
The only the DDB changes is the final boss so don't worry it works flawlessly :)

(I know all this stuff because i mostly played Heretic with a quake weapon mod,not that TWT is a thing i don't need to anymore yay :D )

[FrancisT218]

Probably @Not Jabba should throw out a quick hotfix to the elfgp patch to include that then...:)

[Not Jabba]

7 minutes ago, FrancisT18 said:

Thanks for letting me know. elfgp and curse are probably top of my list, as well as Stormwalker's and Lutz' single map(s). But I was just surprised you hadn't mentioned curse prior.

 

On that count - do you know if Dark Deity's Bastion - Stormwalker's other single map - works flawlessly?

 

3 minutes ago, SOSU said:

Elf gets wet modifies the Wand so that too might needs to be patched :O
The only the DDB changes is the final boss so don't worry it works flawlessly :)

(I know all this stuff because i mostly played Heretic with a quake weapon mod,not that TWT is a thing i don't need to anymore yay :D )

 

Waytome already has a patch for ElfGP. I wanted to include that right out of the gate, since I owe so much to the mapset.

 

DDB should definitely work. That and Curse are the next things I'll test with the mod, but I didn't want to officially recommend anything until I'm sure it works perfectly.

Edited April 22, 2019 by Not Jabba

[FrancisT218]

@Not JabbaThe Wand in elfgp is what the patch still needs to accomodate - not the fights or class.

[Not Jabba]

I didn't have any issue with the Wand when I played ElfGP with the mod -- the regular mod seems to overwrite it properly. If it appeared as a weapon pickup, I might need to patch it, but the mod's customized player class automatically starts you with the right weapon.

[FrancisT218]

Ah I see @SOSUonly said 'might' after all.

 

Hordes of Chaos also comes to my mind also a huge (often forgotten!) mod, perhaps actually better IMO than MoC - but would likely take a LOT of work - it has DooM assets and such.

Edited April 22, 2019 by FrancisT18

[ReaperAA]

1 hour ago, Not Jabba said:

Do you know if the author has granted permission to reuse the assets?

 

No I don't know. It was just my assumption that he would be okay with it (provided that he is credited) since these are simply slightly modified vanilla assets.

 

Of course asking @Revenant100 is ultimately the best way.

[Revenant100]

You are more than welcome to use whatever assets you'd like from the Minor Sprite Fixing Project for whatever purpose you wish. The only other additional credit to keep in mind is Neoworm for his widescreen Heretic status bar (I did not use his Staff).

Edited April 22, 2019 by Revenant100

[ReaperAA]

After playing some of E2 and E3 (and also E5M8) levels with wand starts and playing with new weapons, here are my further thoughts:

- The Lightbringer is very very powerful (almost borderline OP). The primary fire can take down clumped enemies very effectively. When tombed, it truly becomes a BFG. One can even 2-shot a Maulotaur with tombed lightbringer (kinda similar to 2-shotting a cyberdemon with BFG). I still like it though.

- The tombed phoenix rod is very powerful against bosses. With it one can almost stunlock maulotaurs and easily dispatch them. However I was disappointed because D'Sparil on skill 4 and below became a joke because of this. I used tombed phoenix rod against him(after killing the serpent) and managed to stunlock him throughout the fight to a point where he only managed to summon disciples only once when near his death. Maybe on skill 5 this is good (but not on skill 4). Perhaps his pain chance should be reduced.

- The ophidians are less durable but pack more punch now. This is a very good change as they become much more interesting to fight.

- The weredragons are more durable and have more firepower. Fitting change especially considering how large and menacing they look.

- The firemace is now a somewhat acceptable weapon due to the firepower improvement.

- The Sabreclaws with higher mass is a good change. Previously one could easily push them back but not anymore :)

[Not Jabba]

 

18 hours ago, Revenant100 said:

You are more than welcome to use whatever assets you'd like from the Minor Sprite Fixing Project for whatever purpose you wish. The only other additional credit to keep in mind is Neoworm for his widescreen Heretic status bar (I did not use his Staff).

 

Awesome, thanks!

 

3 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

- The tombed phoenix rod is very powerful against bosses. With it one can almost stunlock maulotaurs and easily dispatch them. However I was disappointed because D'Sparil on skill 4 and below became a joke because of this. I used tombed phoenix rod against him(after killing the serpent) and managed to stunlock him throughout the fight to a point where he only managed to summon disciples only once when near his death. Maybe on skill 5 this is good (but not on skill 4). Perhaps his pain chance should be reduced.

 

True, I had that same experience with D'Sparil. The thing about the Tomed Phoenix Rod is that it's difficult to use in a well-designed combat situation, because if you go in close and try to focus on single enemies, other things will be attacking you from other angles. That's why it needed to get so powerful as a trade-off for Wayfarer, and for more casual combat, it's just fun to use it to mow things down. Unfortunately, the original Heretic has really bad boss fight setups, especially facing D'Sparil alone in a huge empty arena where he's the least threatening. Aside from using Spadger's brightness fixes, the mod hasn't touched D'Sparil at all, because he's not used in Wayfarer and I don't intend to ever use him for anything else.

 

That said, he could probably stand to get a buff. A zero percent pain chance seems pretty logical for the final boss of a game.

 

I'm glad everything else feels like it's working as intended! The Lightbringer does seem like it could throw off the balance of a map that isn't designed with it in mind, which is why I kept the Firemace as default.

[FrancisT218]

@Not JabbaWill Hordes of Chaos X and/or HUMP work? These are the last map(set) I can think of ATM to have modifications that hasn't been mentioned.

[SOSU]

Hocx doesn't have any weapon modfications (atleast i remember it being like that) and both humps will work 100% (i was in both :D)

[FrancisT218]

HOCX has monster changes and additions however. Definitely additions, atleast (from DooM/Hexen).

[SOSU]

1 minute ago, FrancisT18 said:

HOCX has monster changes and additions however. Definitely additions, atleast (from DooM/Hexen).

Hocx doesn't change weapons,and wtome doesn't change monsters, so they work together :)

[FrancisT218]

wtome does change a lot of enemies - it is in the changes list under 'Enemies'

[SOSU]

I meant as in adding monsters :'')
Does Hocx modify the vanilla monsters? nope
So it works :V