Heretic To Hexen Mod (Ep 3 - Final Release!)

[deathzero021]

Description:

Heretic-to-Hexen is a mod for Hexen that brings Heretic's maps to Hexen. Maps were heavily modified to work with Hexen assets, as well as containing new features from Hexen and new map progression. All weapons and enemies have been modified in an attempt to balance the experience due to the differing map designs between games. The final version 3.0 contains 3 episodes. I have no plans to do the expansion episodes.

 

version 3 includes many more changes to gameplay. Most notably all monsters now have an elemental affinity, which makes them weaker to some attacks but more resistant to others. Poison also works differently, standing in poison swamps will slowly drain health, the longer you stand in it, the longer the poison will persist. Any healing item can be used to cure poison. The boots artifact has also been changed, it no longer boosts speed but instead provide protection from dangerous terrain.

 

The maps are much darker than vanilla and rely heavily on dynamic lights and hardware rendering.

 

Element Mechanics:

Physical/Melee - Ettins and Centaurs are purely physical monsters. They deal melee damage and are resistant to melee attacks but take more damage from magic attacks.

Magic - Magic attacks are generally colored purple or dark blue. They are powerful against physical monsters. Magic Wraiths and Magic Bishops are resistant to magic attacks but take more damage from melee attacks.

Fire - Generally colored red and orange, fire attacks deal extra damage to ice monsters. Fire monsters such as Fire Afrits, Fire Wraiths and Fire Wendigos take extra damage from poison attacks and are resistant to Fire and Ice attacks.

Ice - Generally colored cyan or light blue, ice attacks deal extra damage to lightning monsters. Ice monsters such as Ice Afrits, Ice Stalkers and Ice Wendigos take extra damage from fire attacks and are resistant to Ice and Lightning attacks.

Lightning - Generally colored yellow, lightning attacks deal extra damage to poison monsters. Lightning monsters such as Lightning Serpents and Lightning Bishops take extra damage from ice attacks and are resistant to Lightning and Poison attacks.

Poison - Generally colored green, poison attacks deal extra damage to fire monsters and have a lingering effect. Poison monsters such as Poison Stalkers and Poison Serpents take extra damage from lightning attacks and are resistant to Poison and Fire attacks.

 

Details:

Sourceport: GZDoom (must be version 4.10 or above!)

Iwad required: Hexen.wad

Crouching: Disabled

Jumping: Enabled

Renderer: Hardware recommended.

Sector Light Mode: Software

HUD: Fullscreen Hud or Alt Hud

 

Download:

Heretic-To-Hexen-v3.zip

 

Screenshots:

Spoiler

note: some screenshots have Ambient Occlusion, some don't.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changelog:

Spoiler

- v3: episode 3 release, added elemental affinities, changed poison, changed boots artifact, adjusted enemy behaviors.

- v2: episode 2 release, lighting changes in episode 1, weapon changes, enemy health changes.

- v1.1: re-textured every map of episode 1.

- v1: episode 1 release.

 

Credits:

Id Software for the Doom engine.

Raven Software for Heretic and Hexen.

RockstarRaccoon for modified weapon sprite.

Made using Slade 3 and GZDoomBuilder.

Edited November 13, 2023 by deathzero021
updated version

[Kepehn]

What a surprise! This pleases me, I love Heretic and Hexen and I never thought someone could mix them like this! That's a awesome idea!

 

I'll get my hands on it tommorow!

[Gez]

My first reaction to that first screenshot is that the retexture really doesn't work. The wood texture really doesn't make sense for pillars, and its hue clashes with the rest of the scene. The floor and ceiling texture being the same mossy rocks as the walls is also bad, especially since there are gravity-induced artifacts on them which don't make sense when horizontal.

[Kepehn]

I gotta be honest: At first I thought the levels were in hub system or with use of Hexen scripts and items for puzzles (wich I would have preferred). It seems like you took the heretic Maps and putted in hexen without any modification. At least they should have been highly modified or from scratch & Heretic inspired/remake. I think it's uninteresting for those who are familiar with the Heretic and Hexen.

 

I liked the weapons modifications you did with the classes, the mage is much Better for my taste, although the new cleric blue mana weapon should've done more damage since it now uses ammo.

 

It would be better if you create new maps from scratch, but if you want to keep with the Heretic feel, then you should at least do something more appealing like add and modify places, and use scripts and puzzle items.

[deathzero021]

Honestly the point of the project was to do away with hexen-like puzzles, but use hexen assets for something more action oriented. True, I kept the heretic maps mostly faithful but that was the intention. 

 

More than anything, this was a learning experience for me. The game play changes will be a base for future hexen mods I'll work on. Thus, I didn't build maps from scratch. 

 

Thanks for trying it out. 

 

Edit:

@Gez

I really don't see what you mean. Perhaps it looks unusual to you because I have my saturation turned up to 1.5 (i just prefer more colorful textures and sprites)

Here's a similar screenshot with saturation at 1.0

Spoiler

 

Edited May 15, 2019 by deathzero021
responding to another comment

[Gez]

The hues are less aggressive with saturation turned down, but let me explain the other points with the original room in Heretic:

Pillar texture: regular vertical planks, instead of irregular horizontal planks. This gives the pillars a greater feeling of structural strength. The Hexen texture is appropriate for the walls of a shed in a swamp, not for load-bearing columns. The texture used on floor and ceiling is different from the texture used on the walls. Notice the lack of moss on the floor.

[deathzero021]

On 5/17/2019 at 1:25 AM, Gez said:

Pillar texture: regular vertical planks, instead of irregular horizontal planks. This gives the pillars a greater feeling of structural strength. The Hexen texture is appropriate for the walls of a shed in a swamp, not for load-bearing columns. The texture used on floor and ceiling is different from the texture used on the walls. Notice the lack of moss on the floor.

I see what you mean. You're very observant haha. I shall correct that in an update. Thanks for pointing it out. To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to texturing and it is a bit lackluster in some areas, I do plan on going over the maps again and improve on that regard. (maybe include some additional textures which I feel may be needed in some areas, or minor texture edits to break up monotony in some areas..) 

 

Edit: Spent some time re-texturing the first map, I think it made a big difference. I will have to go through the other maps and improve on the texturing there as well. I'll update the wad once completed. Thanks again Gez for pointing that out.

 

New Screenshot:

Spoiler

 

Edit2: re-textured all the maps of episode 1. Download link has been updated.

Edited May 24, 2019 by deathzero021
Updating post

[DMDH98]

Me puede alguien ayudar? 

No puedo abrir el juego, lo he descargado pero al momento de abrirlo ya no puedo!! 

Ayudaaa, gracias! 

 

 

El 15/5/2019 a las 7:00, Kepehn dijo:

Debo ser honesto: al principio pensé que los niveles estaban en el sistema de hub con el uso de scripts de Hexen y elementos para rompecabezas (que hubiera preferido). Parece que tomaste los mapas heréticos y los pusiste en hexen sin ninguna modificación. Al menos habremos sido altamente modificados desde cero y de inspiración / remisión aquí. Creo que no es interesante para aquellos que están familiarizados con el Heretic y Hexen.

 

Me gustaron las modificaciones de las armas que tuvieron lugar con las clases, pero también la nueva arma de maná azul.

 

Sería mejor y creará nuevos mapas desde cero, pero si quiere mantener la sensación de estar aquí, al menos deberíamos hacer más esfuerzos como agregar y modificar lugares, y usar scripts y elementos de rompecabezas. 

 

[Mordeth]

@DMDH98 English, please.

[ShadesMaster]

 

This was really awesome and I hope you continue to fill out the other episodes! It would be neat to face Maulotaurs in HeXen at episode 2, as well as a re-tooled Heresiarch for Episode 3. Some minor suggestions, if you're game - HeXen has its' own version of stucco tudor house textures, but it looks like wood with brown corrigated stucco versus the smoother white stucco from Heretic. THAT should be used in areas of E1M4 and E1M5 with tudor trimmings, versus brick. I do like the new additions to the levels and wish there was more of that!

 

Spoiler

The graveyard was a nice surprise!

 

Honestly, this is something I'm willing to lend a hand on, with permission. But seeing that it's your pet project, I wanna be surprised, too. But if you don't plan on continuing it due to inactivity....

Edited October 12, 2019 by ShadesMaster

[Gokuma]

This is awesome.   Just played the 1st two maps.   

 

One suggestion I would give is make the cleric's mace push back a little like ReaperAA's Hexen Rebalanced mod does.

 

I love Hexen but it's nice to have more straight forward action episodes to play in it.   The first hub tends to tire people out as seven portals is about three or four portals too many.

 

Something cool I recently found, Hexen II's music track no. 6 is a newer variation of Heretic's E1M1 and 3 minutes long opposed to 2:05.

 

EDIT: Just finished the episode.  Great improvements and expansions!   Unholy crap, this is good!   The screenshots don't show just how well done this really is.

 

EDIT EDIT: Hexen II's music track no. 6 is E1M1 (Being the 5th music track, media player ripped it as track 5 for me).

And Track 16 is E1M6.   See https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Heretic_music

And four Hexen tracks were redone for Hexen II: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Hexen_music

Kevin Schilder's lastfm page has all his soundtracks as albums with tracks named: https://www.last.fm/music/Kevin+Schilder/+albums

 

 

Edited October 18, 2019 by Gokuma

[deathzero021]

Thanks for playing guys. I do plan on continuing this. Currently I am working on a different Hexen/Heretic inspired standalone mod for GZdoom. It has heavy RPG elements and a slowed-down survival horror approach to gameplay. As you can imagine, that's a project that's taking a lot of time. However, I can still spend some time here and there on this project.

 

My next goal for this project is to re-balance the weapons some more (the ice spell is simply too powerful) and finish Episode 2 which I started not long after releasing Episode 1. I'll post some screenshots and additional information soon.

[deathzero021]

Released Episode 2. A lot more effort went into it this time around. A handful of new areas and a big addition to the secret map (E2M9 is definitely worth checking out!)

 

I also took more creative liberties when it came to episode 2's texturing and overall style. Went with a "Fire & Ice" approach.

 

Other noteworthy changes include redoing all of the lighting in episode 1 using dynamic lights to provide most of the visibility. I think the darker lighting feels much more Hexen than Heretic's vanilla lighting does, while also being more modern too. A few areas are a bit heavy in the usage of dynamic lights so performance might dip down a little but the lowest I got was down to 80 fps in one map, the rest of them are well over 100 fps on a mid-range modern gaming PC.

 

Also made some significant changes to weapon balance. All the weapons' functionality was reprogrammed in decorate but isn't obvious to the player other than some animation timing changes. Enemy health has also been adjusted again. Overall I think it's more balanced, a bit faster paced with a good progression with each classes 4 weapons. Random damage values have been removed from player weapons too, however enemy attacks are left unchanged.

 

Well that about covers everything I think. I'm really not sure if I'll get around to releasing Episode 3. Maybe some day far in the future, but for now I have a bigger main project that I want to devote most my time to for now. But I'm not ruling out the possibility that I'll work on Episode 3 occasionally. I do want to finish this mod but it's a big time investment and I'd rather spend that time on something original. If I do finish this mod, I'll finish it off with 3 episodes and cut the 2 expansion episodes out.

[SilverMiner]

Looks just as Black Mesa to Half-life

Great work

Edited February 21, 2020 by SilverMiner

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Nice fusion of the two games! A few issues I have however:

 

The cleric's serpent staff feels weak now that it fires slower. The original one, whilst useful, wasn't OP (unless you use the HP drain but even that that can easily backfire).

 

The mage's first and second weapons are far too weak. The ice shards seem to do less damage overall and the fire spell (guessing it's the cleric's old firespell (forgot the name @-@)) can't even kill an ETTIN after 7-8 shots.

[deathzero021]

20 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Nice fusion of the two games! A few issues I have however:

 

The cleric's serpent staff feels weak now that it fires slower. The original one, whilst useful, wasn't OP (unless you use the HP drain but even that that can easily backfire).

 

The mage's first and second weapons are far too weak. The ice shards seem to do less damage overall and the fire spell (guessing it's the cleric's old firespell (forgot the name @-@)) can't even kill an ETTIN after 7-8 shots.

7-8 shots? What version of gzdoom are you running? And are you using any other mods? The fire spell usually kills Ettins in 1 hit. It even kills Green Chaos Serpents in 1 hit. So something isn't working right on your end. Likewise with the serpent staff, it's pretty powerful despite the slower fire rate.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

GZDooM 4.4 pre 39.

 

I tested with version 4.2.4, 8 shots.

 

GZDooM 3.6 - also 8 shots.

 

GZDooM 3.2 - again: 8 shots.

 

Even the oldest build I have on my PC, 3.0.1, 8 shots.

[deathzero021]

4 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

GZDooM 4.4 pre 39.

 

I tested with version 4.2.4, 8 shots.

 

GZDooM 3.6 - also 8 shots.

 

GZDooM 3.2 - again: 8 shots.

 

Even the oldest build I have on my PC, 3.0.1, 8 shots.

o_o  That's bizarre. I can't imagine why or how that's happening. I'll have to do some testing on clean gzdoom installs with different versions to see if I can reproduce that bug and track it down. Sorry about that.

 

Edit: Tested a few clean installs of gzdoom from 3.0 to the latest official release. All work as intended. So the issue must be on your end. Probably a conflict with another mod you are loading up. Make sure there are no other decorate files being auto-loaded. If there really are NO other files being loaded, than I don't have a clue what could be causing it. I'm not aware of any console vars being able to have that kind of effect.

 

Edited February 23, 2020 by deathzero021

[Gokuma]

Sweet, another episode to play!

[duvel]

I was playing casually on the first level and decided to do a demo of it. GZDoom 4.3.3. I'm gonna play through the rest of the mod but I thought this was fun.

h2hf11-011.zip

[duvel]

I'm still playing through it but I wanted to mention that I dislike using the switch with the arrowburst design for regular switches, and think that should be the exit switch texture instead of the regular side lever.

[deathzero021]

Just released the FINAL version containing Episode 3. This brought many new additions to gameplay as well, such as elemental affinities, changes to poison mechanics, and a whole bunch more. Here's some new screenshots of episode 3:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

[theleo_ua]

On 5/15/2019 at 4:22 AM, Kepehn said:

What a surprise! This pleases me, I love Heretic and Hexen and I never thought someone could mix them like this! That's a awesome idea!

 

I also tried to mix Heretic and Hexen, but in another way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oul9gPRGyew&list=PL5QwAqOy7WACIixjImZwupZFq8JNBjCsp&index=2&t=4m17s#t=4m17s  (watch at 4:17 and please enable English subs)

 

But again, deathzero021's idea is also cool

Edited December 12, 2023 by theleo_ua