Thief - The trail of the Arch-Heretic

Phobus · Post by **Phobus** » Fri May 05, 2006 22:13

@Torm: He's finished it, but hecan't release it due to some serious and crippling copyright issues. Sadly we'll never see it.

Post by **Enjay** » Fri May 05, 2006 22:21

Tormentor667 wrote:Aw c'mon ... what percentage is done on Aspects right now?

Stuff about Aspects: [spoiler]100% It's basically been that way, aside from the conversion to use some GZDoom features, for a year or two or maybe even more now. However, as I've said a number of times, it's not something for release. I'm sorry, I thought you knew that. It's a personal project made for a friend. My mistake was to get all excited about it and speak about it as publicly as I did. It was a mod that took up a great deal of my time and it was where I spent most of my Zdoom learning curve. It was hard for me to post questions and tips without referring to the work I did on it and sure, I wanted to show off a little of what I had done. Because of those things, I created certain expectations - despite the fact I have always said it was not something for release - and I know a lot of people still expect a release. What's more, I've lost count of the e-mails I've received from people asking for a "personal copy" that they promise they won't distribute. No-one has received one. I've released a few of the juicy bits in various forms, but the project as a whole remains on 2 hard drives and that's where it will stay. It has to for a number of reasons. Who'd want a bunch of ripped resources and levels anyway?

There seems to be an assumption these days that anything I do is Aspects related. It's not.

The original level that this Thief one is based on was a stand alone Doom2 map - not Aspects related at all. Sure, I've done myself a version that plays in Aspects: I do that with many of my own levels and the levels I get from idgames. Aspects is just a game I mod for as much as any of the real games are these days. If it's quick and easy to convert a map to play using the Aspects enemies, weapons and items, I'll often do it for my own amusement. I sometimes do the same thing for Heretic, Hexen or Strife but Aspects is usually easier because it's based on Doom to start with. I'm currently working on a modification of "station3.wad" by Giac Veltri which I may release (which is OK by the original text file) but I haven't even decided which game to do it for. I'm torn between Doom, possibly with Incas or marines rather than zombies or maybe Strife. I'm so busy though, I may just not get as far as getting it done. Anyway, I play add-on levels in Aspects so often that I quite often take a screen shot with me holding the Aspects weapon and forget that's what I've done. So, many of the screen shots you will have seen with something you can identify as coming from Aspects in it may well just be a level I'm playing in Aspects, but not really anything much to do with Aspects at all.[/spoiler]

Tormentor667 wrote:Oh and yes, the wad can live up the high praise as I have played it right now the 3rd time on this day Don't know why, but I love it... the settings, the design...

All that Aspects stuff aside, thanks for your comments about the map. It's always nice to hear someone enjoys your stuff, especially when such comments come from a talented individual like yourself. The main thrust here was to try and create an atmosphere. I think I pretty much achieved what I set out to do and it seems you've picked up on that atmosphere.

I found getting ammo and health balance really hard because it's not a game I am so familiar with mapping for. I played it over and over. Initially I had too little ammo and health so I topped it up. The problem was, as I played and played, I got better and better at the map and I found myself finishing with loads of ammo and health so I trimmed it back a bit. Hopefully I got it about right, but I really have no idea. It's stange how difficult the slight shift in requirements, weapons and so on away from a game I know intuitively (Doom) made getting the balance right.

The final battle was originally harder: much harder: too hard. I had twice as many enemies appear and a lot of them were tougher than the ones that now do. However, after one really frustrating session of me swearing at the level as I loaded and reloaded my save over and over it finally sunk in that I'd made the final battle way too tough. Certainly tougher than was realistic for me to expect people to enjoy so I toned it down and I think it's about right now. Although the nature of the battle is very similar to how the battle was in the original Doom version of the map, I quite like it here because that stuff doesn't normally happen in Heretic (trying to avoiding giving away what happens). The final battle is, of course, why I had to make decorate copies of all the Heretic bad guys.

This morning, I remembered that I forgot to set all the control sectors as invisible (which does kind of matter because you can see them once you have the map scroll) and there was a secret area that I planned to put a few spider webs and decorations in but neither problem is worth a re-upload.

As an aside, I've thought more about the suggestion of Thief-like weapons and I'm glad I didn't try and include any. I hope the feeling is very much that of the Thief games in some ways, but it is also a Heretic level and I'm very happy for it to be recognised as such. To me, that feels right. I wasn't in the business of making a TC this time. If I had been, making it for Heretic would have been increasingly irrelevant. I've already used so many custom textures that you can load the level into Doom and only get a handful of places where the noflat texture appears. That being said, I'm still very happy for anyone to make a weapons add-on that would be suited to the map, if anyone felt so inclined. I'd be really intrigued to see how it plays.

alterworldruler wrote:9/10 that's my rating about this map!
The iron lich trick this scared me as hell!
only con is difficulty i'm having hard time with this!

Again, glad you're enjoying it. 9 out of 10 is a high score.

I don't know what setting you're playing on, but I did implement difficulty settings so perhaps that could help.

Post by **Tormentor667** » Sat May 06, 2006 1:38

Enjay wrote:
Tormentor667 wrote:Aw c'mon ... what percentage is done on Aspects right now?
Stuff about Aspects:

So does that mean that Aspects will never be released? That would be quite sad... some of your Aspects stuff looks awesome, the ideas, the conception, Red Giant... all that stuff, the screenshots on your homepage, the shots you deliver here and there... it would be a really sad thing, if this awesome and promising project wouldn't be released public... please think about that Nigel, as I am sure, everyone will enjoy it!

BlazingPhoenix · Post by **BlazingPhoenix** » Sat May 06, 2006 1:41

This....rocks....so much! finally a good ZHeretic level! you rock Enjay.

Alter · Post by **Alter** » Sat May 06, 2006 8:09

at Third difficulty of course! i hasn't completed yet this map
Iron lich trick rocks!!

EDIT:I completed this level and i must say this was great zheretic challenge for me!

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Sat May 06, 2006 10:19

Tormentor667 wrote:
Enjay wrote:
Tormentor667 wrote:Aw c'mon ... what percentage is done on Aspects right now?
Stuff about Aspects:
So does that mean that Aspects will never be released?

Isn't that what Enjay has said for years?
But it is a shame...

TheDarkArchon · Post by **TheDarkArchon** » Sat May 06, 2006 10:43

Are the health and armour bonus messages not supposed to be changed? The "picked up a blah" message looks out of place.

Post by **Enjay** » Sat May 06, 2006 12:24

TheDarkArchon wrote:Are the health and armour bonus messages not supposed to be changed?

No, I was quite happy with them as they were. They are health and armour bonuses so having a message that said "picked up a health/armor bonus." seemed fine to me.

Or was it the "picked up" part?... hmm I see what you mean. I don't think the Heretic pickups say "picked up" they just say "silver shield", "shadow sphere" or whatever don't they? Ah well

Alter · Post by **Alter** » Sat May 06, 2006 13:44

Enjay can you make next part of this level?

Post by **David Ferstat** » Sat May 06, 2006 17:09

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Another Enjay level!!

I really do have to get around to installing Heretic & Hexen now, don't I?

Post by **wildweasel** » Mon May 08, 2006 4:32

Now that was fun.

Ixnatifual · Post by **Ixnatifual** » Thu May 11, 2006 15:09

lol? You actually made Heretic look good on those screenshots... Nice one!

Eriance · Post by **Eriance** » Thu May 11, 2006 20:43

Only two works can describe what I think about this level - "Chuck Norris". That's all.

Post by **Paul** » Fri May 12, 2006 11:30

l33t. Liked it. Thank you

Post by **Enjay** » Fri May 12, 2006 15:24

Thanks again for all the kind comments. I'm going to put together a tweaked version that fixes a few minor things. Not much: removing the "picked up" messages, changing the flags on a few lines, that kind of thing. Solarsnowfall is also helping by prettifying a few of the effects too (thanks).

I certainly won't be doing a major facelift and I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, but if anyone has any other glaring problems they think I should sort out, let me know please.

I really don't have much time to spend on it, maybe only a couple of hours of work, and even then I'll be lucky to get it done within, say, a fortnight. RL just seems to keep getting more and more hectic.

Oh, I'm moving the loot total down slightly, Graf, to avoid it clashing with left aligned pickup messages. A Y offset of 0.1 seems ok at 1024x768. I suppose it depends how people have their screens set up. I guess I could right align it seeing as how the level has no "real" keys so nothing will ever appear top-right. However, I quite like the left alignment.