Tag: mod

The Heretic Mod

I’ve been tinkering with ZDoom for years. After taking part in HUMP, I wanted to make more Heretic levels but wasn’t happy with the limited texture variety and enemy roster. I started making little edits to Heretic and trying to create a ‘toolset’ that would allow me to build maps without any of the issues that people have with Heretic. It started off with adding textures from Hexen, then tweaks to the monsters… very slowly it turned into an actual mod. I’ve started and stopped mapping for Heretic a few times, never happy with the designs I’ve come up with. It looked like the most recent map was going to go the same way, but I’ve turned it around and managed to tweak the layout into something I’m happy with. I’ve also locked down the features I want in the mod, making it officially a mod and not a universal toolset for Heretic mapping.

There is a new player character and I’ve gone through a few designs. First was a grouchy but good-hearted witch, then a powerful half-demon sorceress, but the current design is an older and more sinister witch.

What’s Changed?

Player

  • The player is now a new character (the grand witch) with new graphics and sounds

Health & Armour

  • Armour system changed to match Doom (less generous than Heretic; 33%/50% damage resistance)
  • Added Life Sphere (+100HP up to 200HP, instant use powerup)
  • Replaced Enchanted Shield with Amulet of Warding (200% armour, same effects as Mega Armour)
  • Added herbs (+1HP pickups, heals up to 200HP)
  • Replaced Quartz Flask with large health potions (+25hp, instant use)

Weapons & Ammo

  • Staff has been replaced with a short ranged “Zap!” attack
  • Tome of Power turns zap red and does more damage
  • Amber wand replaced with the lavender staff (100% accuracy, but fires a fast projectile instead of a hit scan attack)
  • Large dragon claw pickups give more ammo
  • Ammo maximums have been increased for some weapons (dragon claw, firemace)
  • The hellstaff projectile is now 33% smaller
  • The firemace always spawns
  • The empowered firemace has been replaced. It now fires a triple shot at no extra ammo cost.
  • Dragon claw graphic and sounds have been replaced
  • Incorporated the fixed firemace graphics from the Heretic minor sprite fixing project

Power-Ups & Inventory

  • Added lore items which shed more light on the story when they are picked up
  • Quartz Flasks have been replaced with instant use large health potions
  • Morph Ovum has been replaced with Dog Mode
  • Chaos Device replaced with Boots of Protection (Rad Suit)
  • Time Bomb of the Ancients replaced with a much more effective Poison Flechette
  • Life Sphere replaces the Mystic Urn (same effects as Soul Sphere)
  • Flight, invulnerability, dog mode, invisibility, large health potions and Life Sphere are instant use power ups (Map, backpack, torch, tome of power are unaffected)
  • New graphics for Flight and Invulnerability power-ups (all instant use power-ups are now held in orbs/spheres)
  • Only one torch, tome of power, or boots power-up can be held at any time. Up to 20 flechettes can be held.

Monsters

  • All non-boss enemies from Heretic can now be resurrected
  • All non-boss enemies from Heretic except the Weredragon have had their HP reduced by 10%-25%
  • The Weredragon’s attack now takes an two extra tics (reducing attack speed by 20%)
  • Replaced ImpLeader and MummyLeader with Black Imp and Hobgoblin (same concept, new graphics and sounds)
  • The Iron Lich no longer summons tornedos but gains a spirit summoning attack.
  • New Monster: Cultist (weak human, fires projectiles and drops wand ammo)
  • New Monster: Knight Archer (slightly less weak human, fires projectiles and drops crossbow ammo)
  • New Monster: Bloodclaw (stronger and faster version of the Saberclaw)
  • New Monster: Demon Prince (acts similar to a Cyberdemon)
  • New Monster: Tall Man (fast stealth monster, fires rapid fire projectiles and occasionally resurrects monsters)
  • New Monster: Bloodied Lich (resurrects enemies and performs an Arch-Vile attack; has less HP than an Arch-Vile but releases a hostile ghost on death)
  • Added Reiver from Hexen (slightly modified, no vampiric melee attack)
  • Added Wendigo from Hexen
  • Added Ettin from Hexen
  • Added Chaos Serpent from Hexen (10% size increase and slight increase in HP)
  • Added Slaughtaur from Hexen (more aggressive AI, lower HP and significantly reduced shield time)
  • Blood Claw, Reiver, Ettin, Chaos Serpent, and Slaughtaur can be resurrected (but not Tall Man, Bloodied Lich or Demon Prince)
  • Added pigs and chickens as NPCs. They don’t do anything.
  • Monsters no longer drop items except for the Cultist and Knight enemies.

Maps

  • There is currently one map (E1M1) but the plan is to release 20 maps in four or five mini-episodes set in new locations.

Doom: High Noon Drifter


“High Noon Drifter is a GZDoom weaponset where you play as a gunslinger that’s stuck around for a little longer than the end of the wild west era. The weapons and overall tone is relatively low-tech, complimenting more natural-style mapsets for roaming around castles, ruins, and other assorted gothic setpieces. You make use of some ordinary guns that any joe could scrounge up, a handful of antiquated pieces, and a couple dark artifacts in a quest to dispense frontier justice to an ethereal threat.

If you’ve been craving a “Weird West” sort of weaponset, or even more of an adventurer-type rather than a soldier using military tech, hopefully this’ll be up your alley.”
– TerminusEst13

I finally got round to playing High Noon Drifter for Doom. Cowboys are awesome so it stands to reason that a weird west cowboy mod should kick a lot of ass.

I initially loaded it up with Strange Aeons (hoping to emulate the creator’s very cool gameplay footage) but at first the mod didn’t gel for me. Maybe it was just that some SA weapons like the crossbow and AK47 remained in the game, or maybe it was just the need to get used to the quirks of the new items, but I just didn’t get into it (I’ve since learned that a compatibility patch is needed for Strange Aeons).

I then tried it with JCPC, the Japanese Community Project, and that time it turned out quite awesomely. I had a lot of fun and will be going back to it later today. The weapons feel good to use, but the movement is where it’s at. It’s pretty satisfying to slide all over the place and let loose with dual SMGs or a quad-coach gun. I’m already a third of the way through JCPC and I think that High Noon + JCPC is going to be one of those really memorable playthroughs, like my D4D + Scythe game.

High Noon Drifter is one of, or maybe the first, Zscript enabled gameplay mods for Doom. This allows it to  do some extra cool stuff not usually possible in existing modding languages for Doom. It also makes HND a gzdoom only mod for the foreseeable future. So what has this incredible scripting potential been used for? Well, in High Noon Drifter, the power and potential of Zscript has been used to let you take off and throw your hat at enemies. Yes. It really has that TerminusEst feel to it.

Of course there’s other Zscript shennigans going on – you can also throw a boomerang to pull items to you and use a cursed skull to transform into a giant fire-breathing demon waifu. Very fitting for JCPC.

Basically, after some initial stumbling, High Noon Drifter turned out to be pretty satisfying to play.

Forum topic and download are here.