Faithless: Trilogy - BETA 1a released!

[Gez]

Each of the brass doors has a puzzle room behind it. Each puzzle, once solved, lets you access a bull switch that lights one of the minotaur braziers. Once all three are solved, you get a real live minotaur as your prize!

 

I forgot the exact details but I guess that ceiling crusher is thing is what you need to solve. I think you need to pay attention to the order in which in the wall gargoyles spit their fireballs?

[DoubleCakes]

The gargoyles aren't even firing yet. I haven't hit the switch across the lava pit because there's no bridge.

[Jimmy]

Spoiler

 

You need to observe the order in which the flames in the central grid light up, then recreate the sequence by stepping on the tiles.

 

If you've saved your game after the sequence played out, then you will unfortunately have to save-and-load repeatedly to solve the puzzle through trial and error, although this won't take you that long.

 

I admit this puzzle may require some tweaking for the next version.

 

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Jimmy

[Woolie Wool]

After at least 12 hours, I have finally finished this entire mountain of a mapset, and it is a mountain of content to the point where I wonder if Jimmy has made a pact with D'Sparil himself for productivity. Almost every bit of this is absolutely A+ adventure mapping, really more like Hexen than Heretic with a new-school Doom sensibility to it and maybe even some influences from Chris Couleur and Sverre Kvernmo's vast castlescapes from Eternal Doom. There's a huge sense of wonder, discovery, and even awe in probing the depths of these hubs, levels within levels, secrets within secrets. The puzzles might be well-signposted compared to Hexen's dark, anonymous 32x32 panels of "one ninth of the puzzle has been solved", but they are if anything, more complex in terms of moving parts and places to go.

 

Hexen, Heretic, and Shadowcaster textures work seamlessly together to explore almost every possible Raven mood--nocturnal foreboding, waterlogged cellars, quaint harbor towns, sweeping gothic castles, frozen wastes blanketed in icy mist, and others await your gun-like magical implements. The first hub "Faithless", which seems to be based on an earlier release, is a much more modest affair than the others, serving as a nice exercise in more or less standard Heretic gameplay with some simple map interconnections as a warmup for the monumental undertakings to come. However, I really liked "Kingdom of Roots", an inventive and darkly comic use of stock Raven textures and a creepy-childish music to create the the feeling of being inside the rotting, defiled carcass of the Deku Tree, never more than a few steps away from being blown into plant food by the perilous--and endlessly repopulating--swarms of explosive pods.

 

"Merciless" lives up to its name at the start, as "The Iron Fortress" sees you hounded at every step by way too many Heretic trash for you to fend off with your wand, and a famine of ammo. This is a mod that will make you use your inventory items (and occasionally do what I'm doing above), even the less-powerful ones like Timb Bombs of the Ancients, until ammo starts rolling in for the power weapons, and even then nearly every map has big burly encounters to soak up your Tomes of Power and Morph Ova. The once humble layouts are now vast necropolises that loom overhead like Manilla Road lyrics, high fantasy in decay, every wall cracked and crumbling, eaten away by rain and mold, cracking in ice. "Willowwood", "Vulture's Peak", and "Deathwind City" especially are a joy just to take in, weather and wind effects mixing with the gloriously realized architecture to make perhaps the most immersive maps ever made for the Raven games.

 

With the final hub "Soulless", the reality of Parthoris seems to be dissolving into that of the Serpent Riders. The hub map "Dark Chapter" is a fascinating and atmospheric arcane mausoleum that you won't have much time to admire because you'll be busy getting your ass blasted and frozen off by swarms of wizards and the new Demon Eclipse cultists, and resources here are even scarcer than in the second hub. Compared to the succession of scenic vistas in "Merciless", I found the red/green/blue theme, with one cave map and one arcane fortress map per color, a bit trite, especially since large parts of "Bilious Depths" and "Scarlet Outlands" are, aside from their respective colors, almost indistinguishable, and you spend a lot of your time here looking at brilliant Razer gaming mouse colors mixed with gray or brown rock. The secret "Phoenix Chapel" is more of the sort of reality-fucking and scripting wizardry I'd have liked to see more of in this hub, every step seemingly holding a new surprise in store as you unlock the secret at the heart of a seemingly deserted, lifeless ruin. At the end of the hub your perseverance on this quest is rewarded with a brutal three-stage (or, if you solve all the puzzles in the hub, four-stage) boss rush with an army of minions, but using the Tome of Power and Bag of Plenty together to spam the soulverge power attack, I shut D'Sparil down pretty effectively and used my rings of invulnerability to ride the last stage out to the end.

 

Surprisingly for a modern GZDoom project, software rendering worked almost perfectly except for a few brief moments when monsters would be visible through floors or ceilings, and it played well with mouselook turned off. The whole soundtrack is done in the Hexen style, I presume most of by Jimmy himself, and much of the time the resemblance is so uncanny that I found myself at first somewhat disconcerted how much like Kevin Schilder's work it sounds like. The perfect soundtrack, then, for this love letter to the Raven FPS games and their style of level design. My only disappointment was in the new weapons, which aside from the Soulverge (which, being the Hexen wraithverge, was already perfect). The Jade Wand is finickier to use, less good-looking, and not appreciably more powerful than Hexen's Sapphire Wand, and if I replay the set I might replace it with the Hexen weapon for the second playthrough. D'Sparil's Staff, likewise, is basically a Phoenix Rod whose splash damage doesn't affect the player, and thus boring in its normal state. The tomed version, however, is a lot of fun, letting you fill an entire room with dozens of friendly Disciples of D'Sparil who serve as a very powerful offense and an irresistible distraction for the legions of ghouls baying for your blood. But the "lightning rocket" leaves a lot to be desired.

 

This mapset is an instant classic. It's Hexen done right. I love it.

[Zaratul]

In Faithless Trilogy new weapons are added to the first episode?

[DoubleCakes]

Don't know if this has been reported but in the Willowwood in episode 2, you can stuck in one of the planters. I tried moving around but I couldn't break free of that prison of bushes.

 

On another note, I'm having a superb time with this wad. I don't remember enjoying much of my time with Heretic or Hexen proper, but Faithless has been splendid so far. I think the interconnected levels brings so much dimension to Heretic's gameplay, what little I remember of it. 

 

 

[Master O]

I'm probably missing something simple, but in Sunless Temple, one of the puzzles keeps saying "Press the buttons once the orbs are balanced" I keep doing it and it keeps telling me to try again.

[baja blast rd.]

22 minutes ago, Master O said:

I'm probably missing something simple, but in Sunless Temple, one of the puzzles keeps saying "Press the buttons once the orbs are balanced" I keep doing it and it keeps telling me to try again.

Spoiler

The larger orb is a medium one (5), not a big one (10).  

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by rd.

[DoubleCakes]

Found another hedge patch that you can get stuck in. This time at the Treasury.

 

Also, as late-game in Episode 2 approached, Willowwood got some major slowdown like a memory leak happened. I couldn't figure out why it was happening– it could be anything, as far as I can tell– but I still have those save files if you need me to check anything.

[Tormentor667]

Started playing it today and it's impressive, really! I love what I see so far but I noticed that the graphics ingame (TITLEPIC, CREDITS and most propably other fullscreen graphics) are not widescreen friendly. GZDoom is able to do that lately quite well which can be seen in the latest release of engine. You might want to expand the existing graphics and add apropriate gameinfo to make them work on widescreen resolutsions as well (did that for my re-releases as well).

gameinfo
{
	fullscreenautoaspect = 3 //makes widescreen images being cropped
}

Also noticed that the original actors do not have GLDEF dynamic lights attached to them (wall torch for example) but new actors all have them. Am I doing something wrong?

Edited December 25, 2020 by Tormentor667

[wrkq]

13 hours ago, DoubleCakes said:

Also, as late-game in Episode 2 approached, Willowwood got some major slowdown like a memory leak happened. I couldn't figure out why it was happening– it could be anything, as far as I can tell– but I still have those save files if you need me to check anything. 

 

Check out page 2 of this thread.

@Gez posted some console commands to kill the weather objects and temporarily fix the performance.

If you feel up for it you can also unpack the mod and edit the zscript file as suggested by @plums to prevent the problem from coming back but I don't remember if GZD will let you use existing savefiles after the scripts are edited and can't check right now. :(

[Tormentor667]

@Jimmy did something, because I can. ZIP with widescreen-compatible graphics up to 21:9, check my previous post for the code needed in the MAPINFO lump, hope it is of use!  

 

 

widescreen_graphics.zip

[DoubleCakes]

9 hours ago, wrkq said:

 

Check out page 2 of this thread.

@Gez posted some console commands to kill the weather objects and temporarily fix the performance.

If you feel up for it you can also unpack the mod and edit the zscript file as suggested by @plums to prevent the problem from coming back but I don't remember if GZD will let you use existing savefiles after the scripts are edited and can't check right now. :(

i'm done episode 2 and haven't hit that problem since but thanks for explaining!

 

Actually, I finished Episode Three and had a blast with it. The whole experience was excellent and it's likely my favourite wad of this year. These environments were intriguing to explore and each time I got a new weapon, it was a moment of triumph. I will say though, the second episode felt way harder than 3, but that's maybe because I was very good, I think, at finding secrets in three.

 

Another though on Episode 3: 

Spoiler

I got to the Audience Chamber and placed the purple korax jewels in the holders instead of the red heart jewels. The fight that ensued was with D'sparil, D'sparil again in another chamber, then a big spidery dragon creature. Is that the "True" final boss?

 

I also heard that there's a super secret level and I don't think I found that one.

 

[Gez]

Regarding your spoiler, I take it you've never played, or at least finished, Hexen?

[Emmanuelexe]

no news about a v1? is there some stuff to fix?

[Master O]

@Jimmy When are we gonna have Faithless Trilogy 2: The Search for More Serpent Riders?

 

(joking)

Edited January 3, 2021 by Master O

[komodoc]

Dude, having a BLAST playing this.

I'm on beta1 and still have to find any bugs on episode 1.

Awesome stuff!

[Turin Turambar]

I finished the Trilogy yesterday, but there was something I had to noclip to get. The D'Sparil robel. How I was supposed to open the crypt?

 

Also, my feedback is that some of the puzzles of the Episode 2 need a bit more of clues. Like a message in the blinking torches puzzle. And the message of the statue of the minotaur lacking flame should trigger by proximity.

[Nate42]

There's a switch in each of the initially available worlds that unlocks D'Sparil's crypt once you find them all. 

 

This is a great map set, just played through it for the second time. Its like the best aspects of heretic and hexen rolled into one. 

[deathzero021]

In Episode 3, are the doors in the red world supposed to be opened with the red key? Because I couldn't get them opened and after having done everything else in all the other maps, I noclipped through them. Also, got D'sparil's robes but have no idea how to access the Audience Chambers...

[Deathmatcher]

I finished the Trilogy yesterday. I must say this is one of the best mapsets I've played in years. I didn't know that Heretic and Hexen could be blended this well together to create something so atmospheric. In some maps, like Willowwood, Vulture's Point or Cloister of Venom, I almost felt as if I played Hexen for the first time again.

 

I found as good as no bugs, except for one spot in episode 3's secret level, where I got stuck between the chapel wall and a bush and had to noclip myself out.

 

Some puzzles I couldn't for the life of me solve without looking them up on the net, such as the one with the wolf/griffin/dragon combination, or the one about weighing the phoenix rod ammo against each other. But other than that, a brilliantly designed mapset for Heretic and Hexen, that probably won't be surpassed in quality anytime soon. Thank you for this one, @Jimmy!

 

ps: I loved it when late in the game I happened to find a heartgem of Korax! I usually suck at finding secrets but this one got me on a hunt to collect them all and figure out their purpose. Sadly I had already placed the regular gems in their sockets by the time I found the Korax ones, so he didn't spawn for me. Was fun nevertheless!

 

ps2: The D'Sparil robe confused me as well. I actually mistook it for a dead enemy and let it lying on the floor to begin with... :-P

[Vile]

Finished this earlier today and it was absolutely amazing.  Great job @Jimmy!  All of the new weapons, enemies (even old ones from Hexen were fun to fight with the Heretic arsenal, but the new enemies were cool as well), items and the detail put into these levels continued to impress me as they got introduced.

 

I think the only major issue I had was some levels would suffer progressively worse framerates the more I visited them and I don't know why.  This was E2M4 (Willowwood) and E3M1 (Dark Chapter).  I am not sure if that's something with Faithless or with GZDoom.  There's some more stuff in the spoiler below:

 

Spoiler

 

There were a few places I got stuck, but the chaos device fixed that:

 

- I fell behind one of the chicken coops in Willowwood and couldn't get out; amusingly the chickens started attacking me and I couldn't get away from them until I warped out.

- In the secret level of Hub 3, there's a part in the past where the ceiling crushes you after choosing a strongbox, but I had enough health/armor to survive it, so I was just kinda awkwardly stuck there until I teleported out.  This took me back to the present time, so the chaos device let me time travel in a way.

 

Hub 3 was the only one where I found the secret level but I found that as well as the three Korax gems and I'm glad I did, even though the Korax fight happened a bit spontaneously and I hadn't realized I had used the Korax gems until afterwards when I checked my inventory, but it was still an awesome finale.

 

 

Also thank you for helping me on Twitch when I got stuck in Hub 2, it was a minor thing where I just missed one part that lead to two more portals but it was appreciated regardless. :)

[ReaperAA]

Finished Episode 2 and had a lot of fun. The ammo balance was pretty much perfect, as in it wasn't too stingy, but definitely required me to make good use of my time bombs, morph ovums and tomes to get through.

 

I will say that the first Avatar (the recolored Heresiarch boss) encounter in fractured monasteries could definitely use a bit of toning down, as the red disciples coupled lava to restrict movement is a very nasty combo to deal with on Skill 5 unless you saved a dark servant or a ring of invincibility beforehand. Maybe either tone it down or add a dark servant alongside the tome of power before the boss fight.

 

Also I was looking at the map scripts through slade to find out the rewards we get in E2M0:The Unholy Font for the number of kills. I discovered that the rewards for kills are as follows.

Spoiler

5+ kills = 1 crystal vial
10+ kills = 2 crystal vials
15+ kills = 3 crystal vials
20+ kills = 4 crystal vials
25+ kills = 1 quartz flasks
50+ kills = 2 quartz flasks
75+ kills = 1 elixir vitae
100+ kills = 1 mystic urn
125+ kills = 1 mystic urn, 4 vials
150+ kills = 2 elixir vitae
200+ kills = 2 mystic urns
250+ kills = 2 mystic urns, 1 flask (in the code's comment, you accidentally wrote 200+ kills instead of 250+ kill but okay :))
300+ kills = 1 miracle potion
350+ kills = 1 miracle potion, 2 flasks
400+ kills = 1 invincibility ring
450+ kills = 1 invincibility ring, 4 flasks
500+ kills = 1 invincibility ring, 2 mystic urns
600+ kills = 1 invincibility ring, 2 miracle potions

 

I think the reward at 300 kills (1 miracle potion) is not really better than the reward at 150 kills (2 elixir vitae).

Also the crystal vials are pretty useless there as the sector is already a healing sector.

 

So I thought about proposing the rewards as follows:

Spoiler

25+ kills = 1 quartz flask
50+ kills = 2 quartz flasks
75+ kills = 1 elixir vitae
100+ kills = 1 mystic urn
125+ kills = 1 elixir vitae, 2 quartz flasks
150+ kills = 1 miracle potion
200+ kills = 2 mystic urns
250+ kills = 1 mystic urn, 2 elixir vitae
300+ kills = 2 miracle potions
350+ kills = 2 miracle potions, 2 quartz flasks
400+ kills = 1 invincibility ring
450+ kills = 1 invincibility ring, 4 quartz flasks
500+ kills = 1 invincibility ring, 2 mystic urns
600+ kills = 1 invincibility ring, 2 miracle potions

 

Edited March 24, 2021 by ReaperAA

[Not Jabba]

7 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

I think the reward at 300 kills (1 miracle potion) is not really better than the reward at 150 kills (2 elixir vitae).

Also the crystal vials are pretty useless there as the sector is already a healing sector.

Iirc, a Miracle Potion is 100 health up to a maximum of 200, whereas 2 Elixir Vitae is 60 health up to a maximum of 100. So definitely better.

I would see the Crystal Vials as essentially a punishment for spamming the reward system when you haven't really done anything. The ideal way to use the system is to wait and save up kills until you can get really big rewards. Although maybe on that note, it would make sense for the "1 urn/4 vials" to be "1 urn/2 quartz flasks" instead.

[ReaperAA]

1 hour ago, Not Jabba said:

Iirc, a Miracle Potion is 100 health up to a maximum of 200, whereas 2 Elixir Vitae is 60 health up to a maximum of 100. So definitely better.

Each Elixir Vitae heals 50 health up to a maximum of 200.

 

 

Also I came here to ask

On 1/11/2021 at 5:07 PM, Turin Turambar said:

I finished the Trilogy yesterday, but there was something I had to noclip to get. The D'Sparil robel. How I was supposed to open the crypt?

I am stuck at this as well. In Episode 3, I managed to find all the 3 D'Sparil hearts and also 3 Korax hearts. But I can't find the robe or find a way to open the crypt at the starting map.

 

On 1/22/2021 at 6:56 AM, Nate42 said:

There's a switch in each of the initially available worlds that unlocks D'Sparil's crypt once you find them all. 

Which switches?

Edited March 24, 2021 by ReaperAA

[Rince-wind]

7 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

Which switches?

 

They all look like this:

 

[ReaperAA]

12 minutes ago, Rince-wind said:

They all look like this:

 

Oh okay, the typical Hexen switches. I think I did find atleast 1 or 2 of these, but I didn't realize what they did. Thanks.

 

EDIT: I actually had already pressed all 3 switches (one on each map). I am stuck on how to get the D'Sparil's robe :(

Edited March 24, 2021 by ReaperAA

[ReaperAA]

49 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

EDIT: I actually had already pressed all 3 switches (one on each map). I am stuck on how to get the D'Sparil's robe :(

 

Okay I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. I was thinking that the door on the south-west side of the starting map is what I had to unlock (that one is actually the door to the secret map).

 

The D'Sparil's Crypt is near the centre of the starting map. I had it unlocked quite a long while ago, but I didn't realise that the D'Sparil's robe was there. It looked like a dead body of some enemy so I completely skipped past it. I feel kind of dumb now.

[Tormentor667]

Is @Jimmy still working on this?

[ReaperAA]

I hope he is. The wad is already done and it just needs some tweaks and bug fixing.