Your Journey Begins - A 5 level episode for Heretic - RC1

[Egregor]

Your Journey Begins - A 5 level episode for Heretic - RC1

Download: YJB_RC1.rar

Target Port: Crispy-Heretic, DSDA Doom, GZDoom

 

Your Journey Begins! Well, I can say this is for me, as a mapper, where My Journey Ends, or at least for this chapter. And what a journey it has been! These levels were originally meant to be part of a collaboration that started in 2015, but the project didn't pan out. After several years of just sitting cold on my computer I decided to finish these levels of mine and release them here in 2024. That's 9 years! There is a flying themed level, and the last few get quite large. Thank you for anyone and everyone who has supported me through out the years, and hopefully you have as much fun playing these levels as I had making them!

 

Levels

E1M1: No Turning Back
E1M2: Woeful Specters
E1M3: Hermes' Cauldron
E1M4: Harbor of Dead Dreams
E1M5: Fire and Ice

 

Music

Title Music : Excerpt from "Legend", from Runescape, arranged by Egregor
Intermission music : "Quoth the Raven - Intermission" by Egregor

E1M1: "Saboteur" by @Alfonzo
E1M2: "Woeful Spectres" by Egregor
E1M3: "Haunted Mine" from Runescape
E1M4: "Fangs for the Memory" from Runescape
E1M5: "The Occultist" by Eris Falling

 

Resources

Title Screen: From Freepik.com, AI generated image, free to use for non-commercial purposes.
The SKY1 texture based on original by @ETTiNGRiNDER, edited by Egregor

 

Playtesters

@TheHambourgeois

@DeathBearOfDeath

 

Note: E1M5 has a regular exit AND a secret exit. The secret exit is just a bonus secret ending, it doesn't go to any custom content, sorry! They both lead to the IWAD material. I currently have no plans to add a secret level to this set.

 

Testing Info: Let me know if you find anything from bugs, errors, broken tags, soft-locks, inability to get 100%, as well as thoughts on balance, game-play, and aesthetic suggestions. Demos and videos welcomed! Have fun, and let me know what you think!

Edited June 16 by Egregor

[plums]

Great maps, lots of fun, congrats on finishing them! Played in International Heretic (essentially a souped-up Crispy Heretic) and recorded some demos, should play back in dsda or Crispy just fine.

 

https://user.fm/files/v2-9228e7d8f7898b4d0d4cc26ab434994e/yjb-plums.zip

 

Some comments:

 

General:

The titlepic looks kinda icky because of how it got paletted, some of the purple colours look out of place.

My playing was often interrupted so if I look like I'm lost a bunch it's not necessarily a reflection on your map flow.

 

E1M1: I played the first minute or so of this without recording properly, then restarted it for the demo. Good intro, kind of cool to start with such an open-ended map.

-Sector 7 probably shouldn't have a tag, it's harmless but you can hear the switch trying to activate the sector.

-Is there no way back from the final area?

-A lot of teleport closets with Disciples didn't work properly, seems there's no path for sound to wake them up. Maybe some joined sectors got split by accident.

 

E1M2: No demo, I didn't record it properly. Love the music here, nice work!

-The ending seemed a little overly convoluted, since you get teleported to the green key door but then have to work your way to the actual exit. I also find that sky textures on walls always looks a little lame, maybe that's just me though.

 

E1M3: Excellent map, my favourite of the set. Slightly reminiscent of the flying map you co-authored in QTR.

 

E1M4: Partial demo, I quit because I had to go do other things for a bit, also the level is huge. It's not right to call it a slog since I was engaged for most of it, and liked it overall, but it was exhausting. The layout is superb but plowing through 450 Heretic enemies with normal weapons is right at the limit of what I'd call tolerable. As someone who's never played Runescape I thought the music was mostly cool but then it goes into this sort of jaunty sea shanty kind of thing at the end that I didn't love.

- There are two claw orbs near the (things 1533 & 1534) end that look like they're meant to be on a box but get raised up thanks to some other sector actions. It's not serious since you can still grab them from above, but it looks a bit weird.

- It would be nice if the bars with tag 46 could lower again once you open up the exit, even if it's a switch near them or something.

- It's feels a bit weird/inconsistent that you can't jump off the boat into the water on (I think) only this level. NBD.

 

E1M5: Partial demo because I get softlocked. (saved and noclipped to continue after the demo ended.) Great map otherwise. I did eventually find the secret exit, if there's going to be any story to go with the wad you might want to have small endmaps where you can't progress further, with the secret one being special. But maybe you're done mapping for this.

- Linedef 1089 to lower the bars to the blue key don't go down all the way, because of the weird vanilla -500 floor limit when searching for highest surrounding floors, which is where I got softlocked. (Affects Doom as well.) Using action 23 will fix it, or you can raise the height of everything in the map by 100 units or whatever.
- Linedef 2496 is untagged, for people that go back after reaching the end, and will break stuff not in ZDoom.

- Some gargoyles got stuck on top of Disciples in monster closets, would be better to have one monster per closet but you could also just lower the sector height to like 72 and it should be fine.

- The inconsistency of door textures for what you can and can't open bothered me slightly here, but it's fine if you leave it.

 

All in all I liked it quite a lot, and it's always great to see new Heretic content. This also feels like about the right number of maps for an episode of maps of this size and density. Great wad!

[Egregor]

Thanks @plums, this is great feedback. I appreciate it! I will be sure to implement these changes before the final release.

[Firedust]

Nearly missed this! Hopefully, the mods will move this to wads & releases soon. Screens look fantastic!

[plums]

One more thing, in E1M4 these grates pass through the water in software renderers, you need to change one sector so that the two on either side of the texture aren't exactly the same -- raising the light of one by 1 is imperceptible and will do it.

 

[Egregor]

@Firedust my mistake. If it's not moved maybe I'll make a new post for the final release. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

 

@plums Good catch, I'll add it to the list. thanks again Plums!