Heretic episode: Sold Soul // Now on idgames!

[Fryuko]

Sold Soul is a full-on Heretic episode with 9 levels and challenging gameplay.
The story is that you play as a merchant with some unnatural powers and skills who have been betrayed and seeking revenge. "Best plot"
All of the levels were designed with wand start in mind on smite-meister difficulty. But for first playthroughs, I recommend playing on bringest them oneth since the gameplay can be challenging for some.
Still, all levels are beatable without saves and secrets but knowledge about layout and encounters is likely required.
Medium lowers the enemy count and on easy, you won't meet the most dangerous enemies.

 

 

Features:
- Difficulty settings
- A few new enemies
- Replacement weapon for the fire mace
- Some non-linear levels
- Most levels are 20-30 minutes in playtime
- Variety between levels
- 3D floors but mostly for decoration
- Challenging gameplay with a few slaughter sections and limited resources

 

Download:

It requires gzdoom.
May run with other source ports as well, but I built and tested it with this one.

Download from Idgames

 

Now fully compatible with The Wayfarer's Tome.

I can't be grateful enough for Not Jabba's work with this one. 

I highly recommend trying it out that way, especially if you are more into gameplay mods. 

It May not work with other mods though.

 

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

Teaser:

 

 

Changelog:

2.0

- Remade enemy teleporters on E1M9 (it was a buggy mess sometimes)

- New teleporter for the final 3 wyverns on E1M4, one of them could get stuck out of bounds

- The final boss can no longer create earthquakes

- Replaced all of the music tracks with their midi counterparts to decrease the filesize (finally)

- Fixed almost all of the midtexture bleeding glitches ( It is possible that I missed a few, but the majority of them should be fixed) now you can play in software mode.

(Thanks for Not Jabba for pointing it out)

Older:

Spoiler

 

1.4

-Replaced a certain secret reward with a shadow sphere on E1M4

-Removed some of the empty space on E1M7, overall making the map smaller. As a result, probably making performance better.

-On E1M8 you no longer have to pick up weapons to progress through the level. Added linedefs instead. (Fixed this on other levels too, not all of them though since most of the time fixing wasn't necessary)

 

1.3
-Mostly wyvern nerfs. Its attack is now slower and has reduced blast damage and radius.

 

 It should be much easier to deal with now but still remains strong.

1.2 - I'm pretty satisfied with this version and no other bug came up so far
-Saberclaws shouldn't get stuck on the castle wall anymore on E1M6
-Monsters knocked out of the map (where players would normally die) on E1M5, E1M6, E1M9 will die too.
1.1

-fixed some skippable enemies on E1M3
-fixed the "boss" teleport and many others on E1M9
-nerfed the Death Knight for real this time.  Almost halved the damage of his homing attack and also made it slower.

 

 

 

 

Credits:
-Lagi for helping me out in many ways, fixing many errors, and testing things
-Raven Software
-Simon Judd for Slade 3
-Pascal vd Heiden for Doom Builder
-Realm667 for most of the stock assets in the wad
-Not Jabba's Wayfarer for the chaos serpent and the Lightbringer tweaks and for some new textures on E1M7, also without his wad I wouldn't get into Heretic
-Jagex for the music and a certain easter egg
-Couldn't find the author of the other easter egg, but I'd like to give credit for it

-Textures:
-BAKER'S LEGACY TEXTURE PACK
-ETTiNGRiNDER
-Ozymandias81 and Arkane Studios for ARX FATALIS TEXTURES
-Not Jabba

-Monsters:
-Cultist - Tormentor667, Lagi, Realms Of Cronos
-Chaos Wyvern - ETTiNGRiNDER
-Chaos Serpent - Not Jabba
-Death Knight - Tormentor667
-Inferno Demon - Maelstrom

 

Edited October 12, 2021 by Fryuko
New update

[RonnieJamesDiner]

I've never actually played Heretic, but damn! Those screenshots look wonderful!

[Not Jabba]

Awesome! Can't wait to play this.

[Zaratul]

Played few maps and yes, its freakin` great! Another very good Heretic wad, congrats mate!

[Fryuko]

12 minutes ago, Zaratul said:

Played few maps and yes, its freakin` great! Another very good Heretic wad, congrats mate!

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it! This is the first time I worked with Heretic so it really means a lot.

Saw that you had some compatibility issues with The Wayfarer's Tome. I tried to look into it but the bag of holding worked fine for me so I'm a bit clueless now.
 

[Zaratul]

Wierd stuff, im using GZDoom 4.5.0 WF Tome is with wand start on. Btw im using WF Tome load after Your wad, this is a good thing right?

Edit: 

 

Lots of errors in the console.

Edited February 21, 2021 by Zaratul

[Fryuko]

1 hour ago, Zaratul said:

Wierd stuff, im using GZDoom 4.5.0 WF Tome is with wand start on. Btw im using WF Tome load after Your wad, this is a good thing right?

Edit: 

 

Lots of errors in the console.

That's weird. I'm using the same load order.

Anyway, most of those errors shouldn't exist anymore because all of them got fixed today. I must have messed up the versions while uploading (nothing major changed other than the fixes). I will correct this as soon as I have the time.

Everything related to "sun" probably exists because both sold soul and WF Tome have the same lightbringer weapon.

Edit:
Just checked the uploaded file and it is the correct version, I only get errors when the two wads are launched together.

Edited February 21, 2021 by Fryuko

[Zaratul]

I redownloaded Your wad and i have no bag of holding bug. I must had older version of Your wad.

Edited February 21, 2021 by Zaratul

[Lagi_]

i download SS from here, now. And the console is clear.

[Caleb13]

Very nice work indeed, although I wish it was without the custom monsters. The super-knight in particular is overpowered, or rather, those two homing fireballs. They are fast, but have have very tight turning radius and can kill the player in one hit. And I noticed some other issues while playing on UV in Gzdoom 4.5.0:

 

E1M3: wizards 233 and 234 didn't teleport to playable areas because I didn't need the shield (tag 12), maybe this could be changed to standard linedef tag.

 

E1M9: I have no idea why, but the final maulotaur or super-knight sometimes spawn outside the room. This happened while I was fooling around and reloaded the game several times before pressing the switch, but I don't know if that's the cause. Also, it's hard to get 100% kills in this map when the monsters fall to the sea below. Probably the easiest fix would be to make the sea insta-kills monsters, too. This also includes small "sea" areas like in the center arena. And this problem affects some later maps, too.

[Fryuko]

Thank you for you feedback. 😁

 

Changing the shield pickups to standard linedefs is good idea. The same way you missed those disciples you can skip an iron lich too on that level so I'll fix that. 

 

I haven't got any feedback about E1M9 before. I didn't know that you can insta-kill monsters too, have to check that out. I know how frustrating is knocking them down.

I'll look into everything you just mentioned and maybe it's really time to nerf the death knight's attack. 

 

Let me ask you. Did you manage to find the secret exit or just warped to E1M9? 

 

[Lagi_]

If you lower DeathKnight mass from 700 to 100. In the snow village you could push him of the cliff into the sea - which would be cool, out of the box approach.

[Caleb13]

6 hours ago, Fryuko said:

Let me ask you. Did you manage to find the secret exit or just warped to E1M9? 

 

 Well, that one was tricky, maybe too tricky. I did find

Spoiler

all the tombstone-marked secret switches in E1M4, but I killed the super-knight before I realized I needed to use his shield to turn myself into chicken in order to squeeze though the small rocky passage. In the end, I had to use "morphme" console cheat to do that.

 

Edited February 23, 2021 by Caleb13

[Fryuko]

I'm glad to hear that. The cryptic nature of it is intentional, but I tried to suggest what to do

Spoiler

with many morph ovums in that arena.

I released an update with many things you suggested. Sadly I couldn't figure out how to kill monsters in instant death pits. That one still needs to be fixed in the future.
But the death knight nerfs really made this update important. Almost halved the damage of his homing attack and made it slower.

[Caleb13]

Yeah, to kill the monsters in the pits would be possible only via scripting, I'm afraid. Here is one possible way:

 

https://zdoom.org/wiki/SectorDamage

 

Then again, your mod already requires GZdoom, so the only obstacle is that you need to painstakingly specify which sectors will trigger it.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Caleb13

[Fryuko]

Thank you for the suggestion. 
 

This is the same solution I managed to find, just couldn't make it work. Somehow I never used scripts before.

I tried to use the example from this wiki page and changing the tags to the sectors I wanted to use, but I either get an "invalid identifier line 0" error or an "aprop_health : Identifier has not been declared line 7 error"

 

[Endless]

Always a pleasure to see a Heretic WAD. Lovely stuff in there. Pretty sure I'm going to enjoy this and probably make a review at some point :D

[Fryuko]

2 hours ago, Endless said:

Always a pleasure to see a Heretic WAD. Lovely stuff in there. Pretty sure I'm going to enjoy this and probably make a review at some point :D

Thanks, I'm glad to hear that. I'll be looking forward to it :)

[Caleb13]

3 hours ago, Fryuko said:

I tried to use the example from this wiki page and changing the tags to the sectors I wanted to use, but I either get an "invalid identifier line 0" error or an "aprop_health : Identifier has not been declared line 7 error"

 

I'm no expert, but I think you need to tag the sectors (as you would for normal teleporters etc.) and then provide the tag number, not the sector serial number. (Hmm, that's actually easier and more flexible than I originally thought.) And every such sector must have one special thing (map spot) Actor Enters Sector (type 9998). It seems you need to set the matching tag for the map spots, too.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Caleb13

[Fryuko]

16 hours ago, Caleb13 said:

I'm no expert, but I think you need to tag the sectors (as you would for normal teleporters etc.) and then provide the tag number, not the sector serial number. (Hmm, that's actually easier and more flexible than I originally thought.) And every such sector must have one special thing (map spot) Actor Enters Sector (type 9998). It seems you need to set the matching tag for the map spots, too.

I can't believe how simple it was and yet I managed to spend so much time figuring it out.

I forgot to include "#include "zcommon.acs" at the beginning of the script. This was the sole reason for my invalid identifier problems. Although my solution is more simple than the example it works.
Thank you again :)

Now monsters knocked out of the map on E1M5, E1M6, E1M9 will die. Getting 100% kills is easier now.

I'll upload the new version pretty soon.

[revlis]

This is some genuinely good Heretic content - great stuff from start to finish!

 

Played it on medium difficulty. Final boss was interesting, but to me the slaughter at the end of M7 was actually more difficult and had me checking if I'm actually on M7 or already on M8 :)

 

Another thing: I somehow got from M7 to M8 with full runes and flame orbs. I got stuck for a while at the point where one is supposed to pickup the rune staff and phoenix rod to trigger progression. I even tried to just walk through the weapons (not picking them up because I had full ammo) thinking there is some player-walks-over linedef action. Anyway at the end I somehow figured out that I should probably spent a bit of ammo to pickup the weapons.

[Fryuko]

11 hours ago, revlis said:

This is some genuinely good Heretic content - great stuff from start to finish!

 

Played it on medium difficulty. Final boss was interesting, but to me the slaughter at the end of M7 was actually more difficult and had me checking if I'm actually on M7 or already on M8 :)

 

Another thing: I somehow got from M7 to M8 with full runes and flame orbs. I got stuck for a while at the point where one is supposed to pickup the rune staff and phoenix rod to trigger progression. I even tried to just walk through the weapons (not picking them up because I had full ammo) thinking there is some player-walks-over linedef action. Anyway at the end I somehow figured out that I should probably spent a bit of ammo to pickup the weapons.

Thank you!

E1M8 serves as some kind of Epilogue that's why it shorter and easier than many of the other levels. Besides after the hardships of the previous two levels, it may feel refreshing :)

Good point on the "player-walks-over linedef action" stuff. I already fixed similar triggers on E1M3 yet somehow I managed to forget these.

It was faster to make items trigger things but I'll definitely update them with linedefs.

[LadyMistDragon]

Anyone else find their weapons are failing to switch to anything that's not the wand, stick, crossbow, or dragon's claw? I'm using Wayfarer's Tome.

[Not Jabba]

3 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Anyone else find their weapons are failing to switch to anything that's not the wand, stick, crossbow, or dragon's claw? I'm using Wayfarer's Tome.

 

Probably an incompatibility between the mod and the episode, which is somewhat expected since the episode has a custom weapon. I set up a patch that seems to work, but I haven't released it because I'm not happy with how Wayfarer's Tome plays with this episode in general. Sold Soul has extremely good ammo balance and challenges that are tailored to the mostly-vanilla weapon loadout. The mod just throws off that meticulous balancing.

[LadyMistDragon]

On 4/19/2021 at 5:42 PM, Not Jabba said:

 

Probably an incompatibility between the mod and the episode, which is somewhat expected since the episode has a custom weapon. I set up a patch that seems to work, but I haven't released it because I'm not happy with how Wayfarer's Tome plays with this episode in general. Sold Soul has extremely good ammo balance and challenges that are tailored to the mostly-vanilla weapon loadout. The mod just throws off that meticulous balancing.

It was probably because I loaded it up after I saved a game, because I started a new one where the bug did not repeat itself.

[Fryuko]

On 4/20/2021 at 2:42 AM, Not Jabba said:

 

Probably an incompatibility between the mod and the episode, which is somewhat expected since the episode has a custom weapon. I set up a patch that seems to work, but I haven't released it because I'm not happy with how Wayfarer's Tome plays with this episode in general. Sold Soul has extremely good ammo balance and challenges that are tailored to the mostly-vanilla weapon loadout. The mod just throws off that meticulous balancing.

 

Maybe a month ago, I tried to play through the episode with Wayfarer's Tome to find more incompatibility and bugs. Finished the first 4 levels but haven't really found anything so far. I'll definitely finish the rest, especially the part where players get the new weapon. 

The only thing I noticed so far, that it makes Sold Soul easier due to overall having more resources to work with. (or enemies requiring less)

I agree that the mod somewhat changes the balancing, but makes the episode more accessible.

 
I'm glad that you liked the balancing and more than grateful for your work with the patch.

[Not Jabba]

I think I'm still going to release the patch, but I want to adjust some of the ammo pickups to help accommodate the resource balance. I'll need to do some testing and see what works.

[Fryuko]

It took me long enough, but I released a much-needed update. The main thing is that I replaced all music with their midi equivalents and fixed up E1M9 since it was still buggy, sometimes getting 100% completion on that one was impossible.

 

I also went through the whole episode and fixed up "all?" midtexture bleeding glitches. Thank you @Not Jabba for pointing that out in your Wayfarer's Tome update.

I'm also super grateful for your Wayfarer's Tome Patch, and I loved playing the episode with it.

 

 

[Egregor]

This looks wonderful!

[SyntherAugustus]

It's possible to get stuck behind these barrels in E1M6. Spoiler for image.

 

Great mapset so far though!

Edited July 18, 2021 by SyntherAugustus