REKKR - V1.16

[BigDickBzzrak]

1 minute ago, Average said:

 

 

This is a vanilla mod, vanilla heretic doesn't have a dehacked equivalent

[Gez]

More precisely, Heretic doesn't have an equivalent to DeHackEd as far as port support is concerned. HHE exists, but only Choco supports it to some extent.

 

Also, Heretic itself doesn't have as much support as Doom. You can't play Heretic in PrBoom+ for example.

[JBerg]

I found this secret, but I'm unsure about what it references. What is it about?

[Revae]

Puppies:

Spoiler

There are a few puppies in the game.  3 of them you "save" to unlock secret levels.  That one obviously doesn't need saving - he's a hardened survivalist - but there should be a backpack he'll lend you.

 

[Varis Alpha]

is there any logic to the puzzles found in E2M8? i understood that the switches had to be flipped in a specific order for most of the puzzles in order to receive a couple rewards, but i couldn't wrap my head around what i was supposed to do. i don't really want any of the answers spoiled, but some hints on what i should do to figure them out.

[KVELLER]

3 hours ago, Revae said:

Puppies:

  Hide contents

There are a few puppies in the game.  3 of them you "save" to unlock secret levels.

 

 

Ohh, so that was the part I was missing. I was extremely confused about how to access the secret levels, so I just ended up warping to them.

[Revae]

On 7/28/2018 at 2:15 PM, Viscra Maelstrom said:

is there any logic to the puzzles found in E2M8?

If there weren't logic to them they wouldn't be puzzles (take THAT Hexen).

Explanations (not outright solutions):

Spoiler

None of the puzzles in E2M8 require a certain order in the flipping of switches.  The puzzle on the floor requires a certain path.

One of them is reversing simple addition equations along rows and columns of a grid (a matrix I guess).

Another is color oriented.
The last one requires playing with the addition and subtraction switches in the northmost room to get the solution to the southmost room (think 8bit).

 

Edited September 19, 2018 by Revae

[D.Vile]

Alright, after replaying a few of the the game’s episodes, I’ve decided to write an analysis of Rekkr’s bestiary. So here are my thoughts:

 

Spoiler

-Former Humans and Grotesques are decent basic fodder enemies. Unlike Doom, none of them have ranged hitscan attacks, so the player has an incentive to use melee weapons against them. The souls they drop evaporate if you don’t catch them quickly enough, which is arguably one of the game’s most well thought-out mechanics, as it offers one extra incentive for the player to get close and personal.

 

Their HP is low enough that it’s not too unusual to gib them even with the game’s basic starting weapon, the bow. Their poor resilience means that finishing off an entire horde of them Kenshiro-style after taking the Berserker pack equivalent is also perfectly viable, especially considering that the player’s fists in Rekkr have a MUCH faster attack speed compared to Doom.

 

In other words, these guys make the quintessential popcorn enemies, which is all that really needs to be said about them.

 

-Imps (the small, flying skull things, not the brown monsters from Doom) are alright. Much like Heretic’s Gargoyles, they act as the game’s flying fodder enemies. Unlike Former Humans and Grotesques they don’t drop souls upon dying, which means they may be used alongside Husks when the designers want to incentivize the player to switch to other weapons besides the bow/soul launcher.

 

The most important thing about Imps, though, is that they explode upon dying, which means that hitting them when they are in the middle of an enemy horde is a very satisfying way to dispatch a group of monsters (and ammo-efficient to boot).

 

-Mean Imps, their red-colored counterparts, on the other hand, are a bit of a waste of a monster slot. They arguably have a little too much health for their own good (200 HP – just enough hitpoints to survive a point-blank Steelshot blast, depending on the RNG, which is ridiculous given how frail they look) and their ability to fly just a bit faster and tank a couple more souls shots than their regular versions really doesn’t make them stand out enough in the context of Rekkr’s bestiary.

 

If I were the designer, I’d tone down their HP a little but make them fly even faster and more erratically, to give the player an extra incentive to utilize the Holy Relic (the game’s sole dedicated long range hitscan gun), and quickly fire two or three projectiles in a row, in order to make them better at harassing the player.

 

In other words, just turn them into mini-Nightmare Cacodemons. Now that would make them interesting.

 

-Husks act as the alternative to Former Humans in the role of melee monsters. However, the former have much more HP, so they can’t be instantly killed by a single arrow, unlike the latter. And like Gargoyles, they don’t drop souls upon dying.

 

There are two varieties of Husks – green-eyed and red-eyed. Red-eyed Husks are supposedly the stronger of the two, having double the amount of HP than their weaker counterparts (220 vs 110 HP), but I hardly notice it when I’m using my soul bow/gun because of how stupidly random the Doom engine is when it comes to calculating projectile damage. So, in practice, they both usually end up dying after 3-5 soul shots. Red-eyed Husks have a small chance of surviving a point-blank steelshot blast, whereas green-eyes ones always die, but that’s about it.

 

Also, I find it funny that the designers didn’t resort to the old trick of making a semi-invisible version of the monster.

 

-Skeleturrets are dedicated ledge snipers that constantly fire projectiles after spotting the player. Despite their relatively simple AI behavior and limited role, I find them one of the most versatile and consistently threatening enemies in the game.

 

Really, the only downside to them is that, due to limitations in the Doom engine’s coding, these guys NEVER, EVER stop firing at you, even if you leave their line of sight. So you’d better get used to hearing that ‘whooosh’ sound over and over if you leave one of them alive.

 

-Mimics are one of the game’s cleverest ideas, but sadly, it’s easy to figure them out once you learn how the game’s AI works. Basically, all Mimics are deaf monsters who won’t attack unless you either touch them or enter their line of sight. So, in order to prevent them from seeing and attacking the player prematurely, the designers must ALWAYS place them with their ‘front’ turned against walls. So, if you see a lone potion sitting alone in a corner, chances are it’s probably a disguised Mimic.

 

-Eyeballs are simply reskinned Lost Souls, except not as annoying to kill because you can actually finish them in one shot this time around.

 

Though they have the ability to ressurect dead enemies, and in spite of their relatively common presence in the levels, I didn’t find them particularly troublesome foes, mostly because Rekkr generally lacks the equivalent of Doom’s most dangerous mid-tier monsters. In fact, sometimes I actually found it quite beneficial when they ressurected Former Humans and Grotesques, for it allowed me an opportunity to replenish my stock of souls.

 

-Sorrows are best described as a cross between a Revenant and a Cacodemon. Because of their ability to fire three seeking projectiles in a row, it can be quite tricky to dodge them in tight quarters (see E4m7). Luckily, its high damage potential is compensated by its relatively slow movespeed and high pain chance, making it a fairly well-rounded, balanced monster. Overall, Sorrows are quite possibly the most versatile mid-tier enemies in the game.

 

-Skelly Bellies are simply Pain Elementals with the ability to punch the player. Despite this, it’s fairly easy to beat them at close quarters because you can still prevent them from spawning Lost Souls Eyeballs by simply standing in front of them and their new melee attack, which was meant to counteract this, is too slow and easily baitable. The designers were probably aware of this weakness, too, which is why they place them on top of unreachable platforms in some of the later levels.

 

Ultimately, their inability to fly means they lack the versality and harassment potential of their Doom counterparts.

 

Although I admit they are somewhat underpowered for a boss monster, I still wouldn’t change a thing about them, There is something legitimately amusing about being able to bring down a 9 feet tall skeleton with a simple viking axe.

 

-Treebeasts are Barons of Hell with a twist: they look exactly like regular trees (which are, amusingly enough, called 'Fake Treebeasts' in the editor) when they are in their idle poses. Sadly, outside of one particular map, the level designers never really use this gimmick to ambush and surprise the player. Most likely because: a)Treebeasts look out of place when not in heavily forested areas b)Mimics already fill the same role and are much more versatile.

 

-Skeleton Spiders are tankier Cacodemons who mostly exist to eat up the player’s ammo. Oh, and they also release Eyeballs after dying, which means they are likely to ressurect enemies and potentially drain even more of the player’s reserves. Lovely.

 

Skeleton Spiders are used to a great effect when mixed up with monster hordes in order to create long, drawn out battles, like in the end of E1M7 and E1M8. You never encounter more than one at a time thereafter, though.

 

-And finally, Former Dukes/King, much like Doom’s Mancubi, have projectile patterns that cover wide angles and are used to guard strategic locations. But unlike Doom, there is almost no interval between each projectile volley, thus making dodging them at close range fairly tricky.

 

Because of their extremely high damage potential (each one of their fireballs can deal up to 128 damage!), though, the designers never really throw the player into a situation where he is in the middle of a crossfire from multiple Dukes/Kings, which sadly limits its potential as an enemy.

 

Oh, and props to whoever designed that death animation where the King rips off his own skin. That was absolute genius!

 

Edited July 29, 2018 by D.Vile
Added an spoiler tag to prevent my post from occupying too much space.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I did not even realise there was a second type of Imp. When do Mean Imps start showing up again?

Edited July 30, 2018 by JohnnyTheWolf

[Darsycho]

Just finished this a few days ago, pretty damned amazing, though I got completely lost in these levels numerous times (Especially e3m4). Also found a few things while playing, I dunno if anybody already reported these but here ya go.

 

Hom in e2m6

Spoiler

 

 

 

This area in e2m7 wasn't marked as a secret, pretty sure its suppose to be one.

Spoiler

 

 

I can fall through the bridge in the beginning of e3m4

Spoiler

 

 

HOM on the same level

Spoiler

 

 

 

Boat in e3m6 has HOM

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Also the rock platform next to that boat damages you.

 

Edited August 3, 2018 by Darsycho

[SilverIce]

 

[dobu gabu maru]

I finished Rekkr weeks ago but forgot to write down my thoughts.

 

It's good!

 

I enjoyed it quite a bit, especially seeing what differences there were from the original Doom. It was such a comprehensive overhaul that it felt like this weird quasi-Doom game, where there were a lot of similar things but a lot of surprising differences (which I guess is to be expected of a TC—this is actually my first experience with one [besides Chex Quest I guess?]). Maps for the most part were fairly enjoyable and well-crafted. Like I mentioned before, I think the mapset leaned too hard into 90s design for my taste, since there was a bit of wandering around, aimless switch pressing, and weird ammunition balancing (which is admittedly a hard to balance for with regards to the soul mechanic). While a lot of the maps themselves were fine & fun and the 90s eccentricities can be chalked up to personal preference, two issues continued to stand out to me throughout my experience with Rekkr: map order & difficulty skills balancing.

 

I personally feel like some really tricky and taxing hurdles come at the player too early in the three main episodes: E1M3 is one of the largest and most confusing maps in the wad, both of the opening maps to E2 & E3 are way too stressful and mean-spirited compared to levels later in the set, and E2M2 can be painful at times. I'm totally cool and fine with a mapset that wants to smack me around, but challenging the player while they're still adapting to the new weapons and enemies (while on skill 3!), especially at the beginning of an episode before they can collect some useful armaments, is a tough combination to pull off. And for as cool and expansive as E1M7 was, it definitely killed the pacing in the first episode, helping to make Homecoming the longest episode in the wad (I think my play time was like 2:40, whereas the other episodes were 1:30-2 hours). I feel like E1 would've been greatly improved if it acted more like an introductory experience.

 

Difficulty tuning is my biggest gripe with Rekkr overall—while I don't have an extensive knowledge of all the changed made, the little that I saw between difficulties didn't impress me. For instance, one of the easiest ways to differentiate the difficulties is by gearing the player better on skills 2 & 3, like giving them armor (very important!) early or a weapon to make the start a little less chaotic. On skill 3 Rekkr can feel very shrewd with doling out healing items at times, and when I went to check what the munitions were like on skill 2/4, I didn't notice a lot of differences. The map that epitomizes this problem the most E2M8—the only perceptible difference is like, 2/4 enemies between difficulties. Why not provide armor? Why not move the weapons closer to the player? Why not provide more runes? Why not provide a soulsphere? It's especially perplexing because so much thought and care has been put into so many aspects of the wad (graphics, sound design, gameplay changes, music, etc), that I thought the difficult skills would've gotten a lot of consideration. And sometimes it did!—E3M2 only needs 1 key to exit, and the multiple boss arenas for E3M8 is a really cool idea. But man, would armor really help the player out!

 

Anyway, the rest of the game is really neat, so I hope people don't mind my grousing. At first I thought the enemies perhaps could've used a bit more variety, but within the context of vanilla doom, they're really well done and interesting! The explodey dudes, homing caco fliers, E2M8 super-manc boss, resurrecting lost souls—there's a lot of variety here that changes how you interact with the game, especially with the soul mechanic added to the mix. The weapons likewise add a lot of flavor to the wad, though there is one bizarre caveat: weapons 2, 3, 4, & 6 all kinda have the same utility. One doesn't feel exceptionally stronger than another (though the Soul Launcher is hands-down the best of them), which can feel a bit weird since it forces you to switch weapons based on the amount of ammo you have, rather than the combat scenario you're being presented with. The Holy Relic was especially disappointing in this regard, because it felt like the other weapons could do more damage per second, and it's not like hitscan is super useful since there's not any fast moving enemies. In contrast, the Rune Staff is an amazing weapon! I typically loathe grenade launchers in Doom games, but the damage the runes did made them so valuable that it was the go-to weapon for high health enemies. It could also clear groups of enemies in a jiffy, but at the cost of potentially losing their souls, which was a neat trade off.

 

Overall, excellent work to Revae and co. Really fun, and definitely worth a playthrough!

[Da Werecat]

May I just say that I absolutely loved the way to access the first secret level.

 

1. It made me wonder how the fuck did the author come up with it.

2. It made me wonder how the fuck did I come up with this solution in a vanilla Doom mod.

3. It made me laugh when it actually worked.

 

All the neat things like collecting disappearing souls. Would've made sense in Heretic, except it's just a decoration there. It's not all roses though. E1M7 is unfinished? The ones before it were occasionally kinda rough (uniform bright lighting is not this mod's friend), but still comparatively clean, and on E1M7 I got tired of making screenshots of broken things. Sliding door tracks, improperly pegged elevators, elevators that produce HOMs, levitating grass patches, simply weird stuff like one of those blue curtains that closes behind you silently but can be opened immediately. And of course that void ravine separating two teleporters, where you can easily fall and get stuck if you backpedal at the right (wrong?) moment.

 

I'm not even talking about automap - making a mess of it seems to be the default mode for most mappers. I feel like I'm the only one who actually cares, so whatever.

 

Did someone use disappearing souls as regular pickups? I saw two at the beginning of E1M8, and I wasn't sure if it was a mistake or the author was being cheeky.

 

Only played E1 and I'm enjoying the game so far, so don't take this garbage mountain I just posted for an attempt to bring it down. I only write these things because I care!

Edited August 21, 2018 by Da Werecat

[Revae]

12 hours ago, Da Werecat said:

or the author was being cheeky. 

honestly didn't think anyone would notice.

I dunno what you mean by making a mess of the automap tho, because it's pretty clean. (and I care).  It's not 100% the way doom, or other mappers do it is all.  Anything that you can't touch isn't shown on the map. Anything you can't walk over or access the top of is red, brown is any relevant identifying floor detail or significant height change, yellow is just for doors or crushers or the like.

 

Glad you like it so far.

[Darch]

Sorry I didn't read the whole thread, but am I the only one who can't run it, either REKKR.wad or the standalone version? I get all kind of errors in different ports.

 

And I'm a bit curious why there is another wad with the same name which has nothing to do with this.

[NightFright]

You are running this with an older ZDoom version on purpose? Latest release is/was 2.8.1. Dunno if that fixed your problem, though.

[Da Werecat]

Are you running it with Ultimate Doom or Doom 2?

[Darch]

Oh man, it runs fine with ZDoom 2.8.1. Since it runs with chocolate Doom, stupid me assumed any ZDoom version would do it. Apparently there is a new MAPINFO format out there. Thanks for the help dudes! 

[Memfis]

Why is this getting rejected from idgames? I thought all assets are new here?

[Da Werecat]

I totally forgot to post screenshots of what I found. Well, it was more like I forgot + I wasn't sure it was even worth it.

 

The area with the trigger for the secret exit in E3 changed my perspective on this whole project. It's a pretty level, and one of the more memorable about the mapset. Would be great if it had more levels like this and less brown caves. I had to grenade jump out of E3M3, because I couldn't find the legitimate way to raise the bridge, and I couldn't bear the thought of running around that map for any longer.

 

Pretty level, but when I reached the doghouse, I couldn't believe my eyes. An official secret takes you to the edge of the map where you can walk around (and through) cardboard cutout decorations. If this is okay, then I don't know what isn't.

[Kroc]

Soooo good. Enjoying this immensely, at E1M3 but ran into a problem:

 

Spoiler

The puppy escaped the bounds! :( I'm using latest DOOM Retro with REKKR 1.15. Is there any spawn command or something I can use to get the puppy back in the right place?

 

 

[Revae]

Don't really have anywhere else to dump this:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/8wfjoawyzxzzs5q/HREKTEX.wad/file

REKKR textures paletted for Heretic. At least all the textures that are generic enough to work there. So no viking stuff, or story related bits. Just some wood, stone, marble, etc... Some work better than others, but Heretic has so few textures in the base iwad it seemed reasonable to do.

 

Edit: Link was dead for some reason. Should work now.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Revae

[SOSU]

1 minute ago, Revae said:

Don't really have anywhere else to dump this:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/55u3huuqrzfcbha/HREKTEX.wad

REKKR textures paletted for Heretic. At least all the textures that are generic enough to work there. So no viking stuff, or story related bits. Just some wood, stone, marble, etc... Some work better than others, but Heretic has so few textures in the base iwad it seemed reasonable to do.

I love you :)

[Shadow Hog]

So I kinda hate to raise a bug report when you've suggested that you've hit final status, but I thought I should mention what I came across regardless. I've been reviving an old childhood Pentium 133MHz rig from my parents' place and wanted to see how REKKR would run on it. So, in preparation for that, I downloaded v1.15, then patched its .DEH file onto a vanilla DOOM.EXE file from The Ultimate Doom (specifically, the one from GOG's distribution, if that makes a difference) with DeHackEd v3.1 from /idgames. To make sure I had everything set up correctly before I plopped it on there, I tested it in DOSBox in the interim.

 

The good news is, it works!

The bad news is, some of the music doesn't!

 

The title screen music plays (it sounds kinda weird in OPL, but it plays), but starting a new game in Episode 1 causes the music to just hang. Tested this with the music set to OPL (whatever the default for a GOG install is - probably "Sound Blaster") and MIDI (the "Roland Sound Canvas" option in the setup program, specifically). Just to be thorough, I IDMUSxx'd all the music in the game; it seems your offenders are D_E1M1, D_E1M2, D_E1M6 and D_E3M8, but everything else appears to work.

 

So yeah, figured I should mention that, since part of this mod's appeal is its vanilla compatibility. For the most part that appears true (which I find really impressive given how drastic the changes are), but I guess the music's not quite there? I'm aware vanilla Doom can play MIDI files well enough, so IDK why it's choking on yours, but it appears it is.

[Revae]

I was aware there were some issues with the music sounding off, but didn't find out until after release due to not having a 386 to play on. Dont remember anyone mentioning the music hanging though. I suppose I should look into it. I dont think I have a way to test it though. And I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to music.

 

We'll see! Thanks for letting me know. You can always turn the sound card options off and run it with PC speaker noises. (They're in there, but I don't actually recommend it).

 

Edit: Whoops. I see what your saying. I'll check my dosbox settings. Maybe I can test it.

Edited March 30, 2019 by Revae

[Shadow Hog]

Looking it and the MUS specs over, I suspect it might be the file size - and inspecting the MIDIs in question, there's a lot of redundant MIDI controller events present (e.g.: defining the track volume as 10, then doing so ten times more before defining another volume that'd actually change something), so I wonder if I can't whip up some sort of program to remove all these redundant controller changes and just keep what actually matters. That said, doing it by hand to D_E1M1 (at least to get it under 64KiB, which is apparently a hard limit for MUS) and then testing that out didn't seem to fix the issue, and D_E3M2 is 94.28 KiB yet converted fine, so IDK.

 

I know there's also a limit of eight melodic channels and one drum channel (way less than the MIDI standard of 15 melodic channels) so the music would work on the lowliest of Sound Blasters (not even SB Pro, which bumped up the FM channels from 9 total), though again, other tracks going over that seem to work with only some minor issues.

[Revae]

The INI I have for dehacked says it's 3.0a. I don't think that'd make a difference for music, though.

 

I tested it out in dosbox, and the maps you mentioned indeed don't play, which I knew some didn't but couldn't really do anything about without pretty much just bothering someone else to do it (I really know nothing about midis, music, or what-have-you). The rest of the music plays, just a little channel diminished. Still hits the right beat and tune for the most part in most maps which is the important thing. I didn't get any of the music to hang on me though...

I know that a midi won't play in Doom if it's over a certain size. I think it's 96kb.

 

I really don't know what to do about it. @HexenMapper might have an idea as he did all the (terrific) music, but he's already done so much I don't want to make a request of him so long after release. So instead I'll just namedrop him here and see if he or anyone else is curious enough to look into it of his own volition. Otherwise there's not really a lot I can do without taking up another hobby... :-/

I appreciate your looking into it. Lemme know if anything strikes you as a potential solution.

[HexenMapper]

On 3/31/2019 at 9:12 AM, Shadow Hog said:

I know there's also a limit of eight melodic channels and one drum channel (way less than the MIDI standard of 15 melodic channels)

 

Its interesting that only some tracks that go over this limit seem to have trouble playing - most of the tracks go well over 8 voices simultaneously. I generally wrote with a 16 channel limit, and 16 voices simultaneously being around the max that regular MIDI could play.

If we can work out a cause / solution I'd be happy to take a look at the offending tracks, since there's only a few of them.

[Revae]

Is there a particular way that it picks which channels to play? Just ascending order, or is it somehow picking channels it can't play or. Whut.

[Da Werecat]

Speaking of sounds and limitations. I wasn't sure it would make a whole lot of difference in the end, but there's a weird trick to fix the chainsaw replacement eating sound channels.

 

Right now there's an empty sound being played every single tic when the weapon is idle. At the very least, it leads to the player humping walls in grave silence, which is just wrong. But WeaponReady requires two conditions to play the chainsaw idle sound: the weapon being chainsaw, and a specific state from which WeaponReady is being called. Change the bobbing state to anything else, and the sound will disappear.

 

As an added bonus, you get a free sound.

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nSZ0Vfi8NAa4_hUtEJlUwZiu0BiGwmzC

 

In case my mind was playing tricks on me, I tested it by utilizing unused state 73, and it worked.

Edited April 2, 2019 by Da Werecat