QoL Features for Heretic/ Hexen (ideas)

[rzh]

I recently discovered that for both Heretic and Hexen -fast doesn't work as a launch parameter in vanilla (and vanilla centered) ports. So I made a suggestion for it to be implemented in Crispy Heretic/ Hexen.

Now I came up with another idea, this time for Chaos Devices.

Essentially, these items teleport you back to the beginning of the level in both Heretic and Hexen.

In Hexen, where fall damage and infinite death pits are a thing, I have them mapped to tilde, so if I accidentally fall in one, rather than waiting to die I just teleport back to the beginning of the level.

In both games there is a system to auto-use health items on the lowest difficulty. I thought this system could be expanded and used in ports that aren't that concerned with vanilla accuracy to auto-use items if certain conditions are met. This could also be "unchained" from difficulty settings. So for Chaos Devices, auto-use them if the player is in a state of "falling to death". Same with Wings of Wrath if the player has them, but they are not being actively used. Ideally, all special launch parameters could be unchained from their respective difficulty settings in all games (like keys showing up on the auto-map in Heretic on the easiest difficulty).

 

Essentially, this thread is supposed to be an attempt to centralize other QoL features/ enhancements such as these ones.

 

One more idea, that might be more complicated to implement is to show the status of the current map in Hexen, rather than K/I/S which don't work the same way they do in Doom/ Heretic. So it would look like "Quest Items X/Y" (keys and items required to progress) "Puzzle Progress X/Y" (switches pressed).

Edited December 17, 2021 by rzh