Heretic + HeXen tough deds

[Vermil]

Seeing as I've made a Heretic tough ded in the past, I figured why not make one for HeXen also.

As with the Heretic ded the changes that perhaps have the biggest affect have been mainly applied to the bad guys that don't appear until later in the game.

Generally speaking the changes are more focused on the survival and defensive capabilities of the bad guys rather than their attack capability like the changes in the Heretic version mainly were.

Anyways hopefully someone will find it worth looking at...

HeXen tough ded (http://www.geocities.com/the_shinjo2002/JHeXenToughMonsters.txt)

The extension needs renaming to ded before use.

The "Heretic" in the thread title refers to a minor change I've made to the Heretic tough deds I made a while ago, to fix a bug I found. Seeing as I'm announcing my HeXen tough ded, I figured I may as well mention it :p

Heretic tough ded (http://www.geocities.com/the_shinjo2002/JhereticToughMonsters.txt)

Heretic tough ded B (http://www.geocities.com/the_shinjo2002/JhereticToughMonstersB.txt)

There are a couple of differences between the two versions. As with the HeXen ded the extension needs renaming to ded before use.

CHANGES IN THE HEXEN DED:

Of course I'm open to suggestions to improve it or the Heretic deds.

ETTIN:
1. No pain chance.

AFRIT:
1. Moves like the Fighter/Mage/Cleric bosses.

CHAOS SERPENT GREEN:
1. Original attack replaced with Maulotaur fireball spread attack.
2. Shorter pain animation.

CHAOS SERPENT BROWN:
1. Original attack replaced with Maulotaur fireball spread attack.
2. Quicker ranged attack animation.

CENTAUR:
1. Added running range attack.

WENDIGO:
1. No pain chance
2. Missile releases a ring of ice bolts as it travels 15 tics after being fired and then at 18 tic intervals after.

STALKER + STALKER LEADER:
1. No pain chance. To compensate it also takes slightly longer surfacing.

SLAUGHTERER:
1. Reflects shots during ranged attack animation.
2. Missiles release a ring of Ice bolts when they hit something.

DARK BISHOP:
1. Added melee attack.
2. Standard movement removed (i.e it blurs everywhere).

REIVER + REIVER LEADER:
1. Invisible while moving.

DEATH WYVERN: No changes.

HEIRSARCH:
1. Purple projectiles travel through things.
2. Spawns 2 Bishops instead of 1.

FIGHTER BOSS:
1. Attacks after being hit instead of going into pain animation.

CLERIC BOSS:
1. Will reflect shots ala a Centaur during half his walking frames.
2. Pain animation much shorter.
3. Much smaller pain chance.

MAGE BOSS:
1. Invisible and immune to attack while moving.
2. Pain animation much shorter.
3. Much smaller pain chance.

KORAX:
1. It moves.
2. Radius reduced slightly.
3. Reflects all standard projectile attacks ala an Icon Of The Defender for the Mage (i.e Serpent Staff shots and Bloodsourge missiles etc but not attacks like lighting etc). Though all attacks reflected still damage Korax, but much less.
4. Corpse releases sprits every 60 tics rather than just once during death animation.

EDIT: Removed the Heirsarch's ability to walk through walls from the ded and edited the list of changes accordinly. See below posts for reason(s).

[doomer]

I must be a bit slow - Hexen in parts is hard enough without making it any harder.

[Slyrr]

ah happy day - thanks! Looking forward to yet MORE harder deds........

[edorien]

HEIRSARCH:
1. Can walk through walls.

er.. wouldn't that break the church/monastary hub, as it will activate when you approach the chamber with it in without opening it?

[Vermil]

HEIRSARCH:
1. Can walk through walls.

er.. wouldn't that break the church/monastary hub, as it will activate when you approach the chamber with it in without opening it?

I assume you mean on the 3rd Hub of HeXen? He's initially dormant (stationary and unhurt-able) and won't activate until all nine wall panels are lit up and hence the chamber opens.

Also to note, with the ded, once activated and alerted he essentially acts as the player in no-clip mode so he can climb/drop off anything.

[Jimi]

If it acts like player in noclip mode, then how can you damage it? And what if it just goes wandering outside the play area and never to be seen again?

[Vermil]

If it acts like player in noclip mode, then how can you damage it? And what if it just goes wandering outside the play area and never to be seen again?

The player is still hurt by things in noclip mode as is the Heirsarch.

And what if it just goes wandering outside the play area and never to be seen again?

Thinking about it...

If the Heirsarch hasn't seen the player yet and was instead targeting a monster that had hit it.... If that monster was killed by something else while the Heirsarch was outside the level, then it would stop outside the level because it hasn't seen the player yet (if it had been alerted by the player at some point it wouldn't stop, instead it would re-target and go after the player regardless of where it was when the monster it was targeting died). Doh!

Despite being a very rare case scnerio, it looks like the noclip will have to go then.

It'll be done in a moment...

EDIT: Done.

[Slyrr]

Well, I for one am keeping it. From my experience, when a monster is hit by another monster and 'goes after' it, and if the monster which struck the blow goes killed, and the aforementioned monster goes 'inactive' as a result, they are almost always 'awakened' again by the player shooting/firing his weapon, no matter whether he can 'see' the player or not. It hears the players attack, wakes up again, and goes after him.

Besides, if the Heirsarch can walk thru walls, AND has his reflective shield, the odds of him being 'outside' when a monster that strikes him dies are almost non-existent, unless you specifcially try to engineer the situation.

[gravitar]

Nice work there Vermil, haven´t tried the deds yet but the
descriptions alone sound impressive.
One thing i´d like to see is to make the Nitrogolem´s skulls
harder to dodge, anyway, thanks !

Edit:
After playing some Heretic maps, here are my thoughts:
The weaker monsters got only a bit stronger
while the stronger ones have become very hard,
the weredragons and disciples now have a very powerful
attack that´s hard to dodge because they shoot in
all directions, which leads to hiding behind corners
or doors as the only solution to avoid too much damage.
Which is sometimes a bit tedious.
Maybe it would be more balanced if the gargoyles,golems
and sabreclaws became even faster without increasing the
power of the stronger monsters too much.
Another point is the disciple´s missiles are completely
gone, imo they have the coolest ones in the game,maybe
keep them and make them fly more erratic (?)

That said, i enjoyed those deds very much :)

[Vermil]

After playing some Heretic maps, here are my thoughts:
The weaker monsters got only a bit stronger
while the stronger ones have become very hard,
the weredragons and disciples now have a very powerful
attack that´s hard to dodge because they shoot in
all directions, which leads to hiding behind corners
or doors as the only solution to avoid too much damage.
Which is sometimes a bit tedious.

When making the deds, I thought giving the weaker bad guys new "abilities" would make them to strong for weak bad guys. Or at the least the ones I came up with made them too strong and gave that illusion.

One thing i´d like to see is to make the Nitrogolem´s skulls
harder to dodge, anyway, thanks !

That could be done. The Nitrogolem skulls only home 50% of the time. That could be increased.

Another point is the disciple´s missiles are completely
gone, imo they have the coolest ones in the game,maybe
keep them and make them fly more erratic (?).

Perhaps they could track limitedly?

[edorien]

Walking animation for korax doesn't display

Reason;
State {
ID = "KORAX_CHASE1";
Sprite = "KORX";
Frame = 0;
Tics = 0; ## That means model doesn't display
Action = "A_KoraxStep2";
Next state = "KORAX_CHASE1A"; ##should be KORAX_CHASE2, goes for rest of walk states
}

edit;
Just tried fixing this, unfortunately it appears that Tics= 3 or greater is necessary to prevent a crash,
ie, Korax's speed cannot be increased without leading to a crash :(

[Vermil]

I assume you mean the Korax model's walking doesn't work with the tough ded?

In the tough ded I didn't use Korax's original walking states for his actual movement. I added a new set of states for it;s movement.

The problem with the model and the tough ded is that basically the model ded understandably doesn't include definitions for the afore mentioned new movement states in the tough ded, only his original walking states , which though used in the tough ded, have a length of 0 tics.

EDIT: I've made some model walking definitons for the new walking states (it turned out to just be a matter of copying the existing walking definitions and changing the ID, so even I could do it, since I don't have much of a clue about model defintions) in the tough ded. I'll upload a ded that is fully compatabile (or as much as I can) with the Korax model once the Korax model's ded is finalized incase I need to make more changes.

[gravitar]

If i´m allowed to make some more suggestions:
gargoyles:would be nice to make them more dangerous,maybe make
them dodge faster
sabreclaws:definitely make them always faster,they are like
the gargoyles mostly cannonfodder :), because in Heretic unlike
Doom there is mostly enough ammo
disciples:i´d like to see them more dangerous,IMO they are wizards,
not "monsters",if you know what i mean,but they appear mostly in
groups,so it can be frustrating to give them too much power. Some
ideas i got:keep their missiles,they fit them quite well, as you said
they could be more homing,or the central missile could be faster,
while the other two home in or even cross paths at some point(less
predictable then ).
It is cool that they are like ghosts until they attack i think.
About the nitrogolems: it´s great the homing of the skulls can be
increased, please do that !

Once again thanks Vermil,your deds make this game even more enjoyable !

[Vermil]

If i´m allowed to make some more suggestions:
gargoyles:would be nice to make them more dangerous,maybe make
them dodge faster.

What about replacing their slow dash attack with the fireball attack the fire gargoyle originally fired? *i.e. the small yellow one, not what the fire garg currently fires in the ded.

sabreclaws:definitely make them always faster,they are like
the gargoyles mostly cannonfodder :), because in Heretic unlike
Doom there is mostly enough ammo.

IMO, Making Sabre Claws any faster looks a little silly in game.

disciples:i´d like to see them more dangerous,IMO they are wizards,
not "monsters",if you know what i mean,but they appear mostly in
groups,so it can be frustrating to give them too much power. Some
ideas i got:keep their missiles,they fit them quite well, as you said
they could be more homing,or the central missile could be faster,
while the other two home in or even cross paths at some point(less
predictable then ).

In the ded the Disciple and Maulotaur share the flame spread attack. Hence any changes to it would be shared by both bad guys.

IMO I think Disciples are tough enough.

I believe the Undead Warrior needs something though. I would say perhaps removing their pain chance, as they are dead. But having both the common enemies (Warriors and Golems) not having a pain chance wouldn't be fun.

With a ded it is only possible to use existing attacks and actions. Hence there isn't any "new" attacks in the ded so to speak (i.e the directions the bad guy fireballs go off at)

Also each projectile type shares the same stats. For instance you can't make each of the Disciple shots do different things.

About the nitrogolems: it´s great the homing of the skulls can be
increased, please do that !

Will be done.

[Catsy]

I'd love to try this out. Are the links at the top of the thread to whatever the most current version is, or is there another link I should use?

[Vermil]

The links at the top of the thread are the most current versions. All new versions (if any) will overwrite the old ones.

[gravitar]

Might be i was getting too euphoric, the deds are sure very tough as they are (IMO :P

[Harry]

In the Hexen ded, I can't seem to hit Korax, he just deflects my shots :(

[Vermil]

In the Hexen ded, I can't seem to hit Korax, he just deflects my shots :(

All attacks still damage Korax. Though he takes much less damage from projectile types he reflects.

Also even though he reflects projectile X, he will still be hurt by it's splash damage if it explodes next/near to him (assuming projectile X has splash damage).

[Slyrr]

The mage can still beat up Korax with his gem wand - how's that for ignominuous?

[Vermil]

The mage can still beat up Korax with his gem wand - how's that for ignominuous?

Perhaps a bit dramatic :p

Unfortunately that can't be changed on a bad guy by bad guy basis (to do that you'd have to make a new dll). All that could be done is to remove the "travel through ability" from the weapon.

As I said I would in an earlier post, I've uploaded a new version of the HeXen ded that is fully compatible with Slyrr's excellent Korax model.

HeXen ded (http://www.geocities.com/the_shinjo2002/JHeXenToughMonsters.txt)

Remember to rename the extension before use. As before I've overwritten the old version, so the link at the top of the page is still valid.

I've also fixed a mistake in Korax's walking states (a couple of the ones which had duration that wasn't 0 had the "Koraxstep" action attached instead of the right one, DOH!) so he now walks smoothly.

Also I've added one very minor thing to Korax, for a more impressive death (hopefully) more than anything else really.

5. Corpse activates one of Korax's script attacks (when he sends lightning into the ceiling) every 60 tics. Sort of like everything breaking down without Korax to control it.

I'm thinking about an update to the Heretic deds, since I've got a couple of minor changes. Though I believe a little more is needed to justify an update. IMO in particular the Undead Warrior needs to be made tougher than he is currently first?

[gravitar]

I think the undead warrior doesn´t need to be any tougher,he´s already
quite dangerous with the continuous shooting from corners and the red
axes in between, maybe just a very small homing effect.

[Slyrr]

The undead warriors (I think) need not homing axes, but FASTER axes.
If you leave 'fastmonsters' set to it's default "0", then the UW's axes are so slow you can almost WALK faster than they travel through the air.
If you turn on fastmonsters to "1" then they move faster, but a player who can use his strafe keys and mouse properly will still dodge them every time unless he's caught totally flatfooted.

If any change to the UW is in order, I'd say double the speed their axes travel through the air, on both 1 and 0 settings for fastmonster.

Changes I'd like to see:

1) Speed up gargoyle fireballs after the order of the UW speed up listed above.
2) Weredragon/gargoyle fireballs do light splash damage (hey, it's FIRE, ya know)
3) Give ALL monsters 'jumping'. (make it so they can hop down from heights - The MAULOTAUR can do it - D'sparil can do it - why can't the golems and weredragons?)
4) Have D'sparil summon a RANDOM monster in the final battle. That way there's the odd chance you might find yourself staring down a liche or a Maulotaur in his arena instead of just a cloud of Dark Disciples.
5) Double the speed at which D'sparil's lame energy ball moves. It's another attack that would be fearsome if it weren't so SLOW.
6) Increase the movement speed of the Iron Liche. (it's easy to outrun and baffle by putting one corner between him and you)

Those are my two bits, for what it's worth. I'm a hardcore gamer and I love a good challenge. And Vanilla heretic, like Vanilla hexen, is a game you can almost dance through without a tough DED.

PS - I like the flying liche - keep it! It can follow you anywhere....

[gravitar]

The undead warriors (I think) need not homing axes, but FASTER axes.
If you leave 'fastmonsters' set to it's default "0", then the UW's axes are so slow you can almost WALK faster than they travel through the air.
If you turn on fastmonsters to "1" then they move faster, but a player who can use his strafe keys and mouse properly will still dodge them every time unless he's caught totally flatfooted.
If any change to the UW is in order, I'd say double the speed their axes travel through the air, on both 1 and 0 settings for fastmonster.

That might go well with regular Heretic,but in custom levels, i.e. wizard4.wad it might be too hard.


4) Have D'sparil summon a RANDOM monster in the final battle. That way there's the odd chance you might find yourself staring down a liche or a Maulotaur in his arena instead of just a cloud of Dark Disciples.
5) Double the speed at which D'sparil's lame energy ball moves. It's another attack that would be fearsome if it weren't so SLOW.

Guess i have to play on skill 1 then :) otherwise some great ideas, Slyrr
!

[Vermil]

I think the undead warrior doesn´t need to be any tougher,he´s already quite dangerous with the continuous shooting from corners and the red
axes in between, maybe just a very small homing effect.

I had a go at this, and unfortunetly I couldn't get the Nitro Golem skull's "homing" to work on any other projectiles. I think it may be the speed of the other projectiles :(

1) Speed up gargoyle fireballs after the order of the UW speed up listed above.

Unfortunetly I can't work how to do this one. I'm told it's just a matter of increasing the speed field for the projectile, but it doesn't seem to work on missiles for me. Sorry. :(

2) Weredragon/gargoyle fireballs do light splash damage (hey, it's FIRE, ya know).

This can be done. Unfortunetly though no badguy other than the D'sparil and Maulotaur bad guys types are immune to splash damage added to thier projectiles, including the one that shot the projectile!, and even then I believe it can only be attached to certain projectiles of thiers and those already do splash damage.

3) Give ALL monsters 'jumping'. (make it so they can hop down from heights - The MAULOTAUR can do it - D'sparil can do it - why can't the golems and weredragons?)

There is the issue of them walking off high ledges where they were suppose to snipe at you from and having them fall into holes where they can't get to you.

4) Have D'sparil summon a RANDOM monster in the final battle. That way there's the odd chance you might find yourself staring down a liche or a Maulotaur in his arena instead of just a cloud of Dark Disciples.

With a ded you can only use actions that are already in the game, not add new ones. There is no spawn badguy action in Heretic other than one to spawn a Disciple. Though the imp chunks (tis an action that spawns them)... could be made to spawn from a projectile and said imp chunks changed into new bad guys though the size of said new badguy would be an issue (so they don't all spawn on top if eachother).

5) Double the speed at which D'sparil's lame energy ball moves. It's another attack that would be fearsome if it weren't so SLOW.

Same as 1. Sorry again.

6) Increase the movement speed of the Iron Liche. (it's easy to outrun and baffle by putting one corner between him and you)

I'd say it's the low mass of the Lich (for something that size) that makes it easy to "baffle it by putting one corner between you and him" as much as it's speed. Both will be done.

[Slyrr]

Ah well - the ideas were good anyway :)

I thought the DED's were much more flexible than that - Skyjake says you can 'do anything' with them. But I keep hearing "can't" this and "impossible" that. Do you really mean it CAN'T be done, or just that it can't be done EASILY?

If it really can't be done, then how did the original Heretic/Hexen programmers enter in their attack FX and other such things? There must be allowances in the coding for new material, otherwise expansion packs would be impossible, and I know they can be done.......

[Vermil]

With deds you can make new things, splash screens (except the level intermission screens), scripts etc and alter the existing of those.

But one thing you can't via ded do is make new attacks and abilities or alter existing ones. All you can do is move/copy existing attacks and abilities to different things. New attacks and abilities have to be added to the Jgame's dll or the game's source code.

Which is what makes coming up with new changes for the tough ded that are possible, so difficult. That and I'm still learning. heh.

[Vermil]

I've uploaded a new version of the Heretic deds. I've tried to implement things that are as close/similar as possible to what was asked. Though as mentioned in my previous post either it is impossible or "I" can't implement, most of what was asked exactly.

Heretic Tough Ded (http://www.geocities.com/the_shinjo2002/JhereticToughMonsters.txt)

Heretic Tough Ded Version B (http://www.geocities.com/the_shinjo2002/JhereticToughMonstersB.txt)

As usual the extension needs changing before use. The links are also the same as usual, so all links through out the thread are to the latest version.

Both versions should be fully compatible with all current Heretic models.

IMO I'm quite happy with the Heretic tough deds now. So unless anyone has something they would like to see added, that is possible to add, I guess they are the final version.

Changes in the new version of the Heretic deds:

The Normal version

1. The Nitro Golem's projectile tracks better.

2. Undead Warriors now attack quicker after their pain animation
than in the previous version of the ded. It's green axe
projectile is now the same as it's red axe projectile.

3. Ghosts are immune to the Morph Ovum (it goes through them) and
can be walked through by the player and other bad guys. Disciples
are included in the former when they are ethereal.

4. The Lich is heavier and its movement speed has been increased
so it is around 50% faster than before.

5. The Maulotaur's Melee attack has been sped up.

6. D'sparil's Missile now does much more damage on a direct hit.
His pain chance has also been reduced since the previous version.

Version B *includes all the changes from the normal version.

1. Maulotaur Ground Flame spawns volcano ball fragments as it travels.

2. Instead of the normal Disciple, D'sparil now spawns a new type of
Disciple which wields the same attacks as the Lich does in version B
of the ded (blue star projectile, whirwind and the ability to summon
normal Disciples).

3. The Hellstaff rain had to be removed from D’sparil’s missile because
strangely, with models enabled it was crashing Dday occasionally.

EDIT: Lich speed increase decreased to 50% and list of changes updated accordingly. IMO I had made it to fast before.

[gravitar]

Thanks for the improvements, very nice :)

[Zhanavahn]

Nice work *bang*