What happened to Heretic?

[zapiy]

Now Jeff is back on RVG was hoping to get some info on the Heretic port he was making?

[TrekMD]

Yes, that'd be cool.  

[rush6432]

Things have slowed. I still have a few jaguar projects around including heretic but most of that is on the back burner until i get some time and other things cleared off my plate here. Most of these projects are fairly complete but i lack time working 10 hours shifts and having kids. Most of my free time lately has been spent working on a few hardware projects and work related things outside the office.

Eventually i will get back to it. It has music but i may remove that as it makes the rom very large and there isn't enough of it really to support more than about 4-5 unique tracks at best. Its not really a port but a conversion of jag doom to heretic. The inventory system is not present and would require much work to get going. Not impossible to do but time consuming is all. All of the enemies, ai for enemies, sprites, sounds, levels are there from the shareware version. Levels have had to be cut down to run on the jaguar. Alot of people think the engine is limitless but.. ive found its limits quickly and large levels with lots of detail just dont work On the jaguar. It slows and can crash/lock up.

Ive seen a bit of chatter about the project and there and some talk of it being a direct swap of the heretic shareware wad into jag-dom and its far from it. Its pretty time consuming and the wad file from PC heretic doesn't just swap in place of jag doom wad like most believe.

An entirely whole new wad file was created in pc format (more tools available to manipulate the file with in this format) as were tools to convert between pc and jag format and vice versa. The palette also is somewhat of another issue. The game looks a bit darker actually on screen than the original heretic due to conversion of original heretic into cry format palette. The palette might have to be lightened up a bit possibly.

Ive only ever released footage of it in an emulator because ive utilized that to speed up testing of things during development. Also saves me from flashing to a skunkboard a 1000 times and beating it up and eventually killing my skunkboard. It runs perfeclty fine on the jaguar. If i get back around to working on it ill post a video of it running on real hardware. The Project tempest emulator does run a bit faster, but its the jag doom engine, it runs no slower than doom aside from levels that have more detail. Take your pick of doom levels on the jaguar that you notice slowing down. Its no different when higher detail and more sectors are in a tight compact area.

Ive added pro controller strafing into it and networking is modified a little bit, but i've not even tested any of that yet.

Don't really know when or if it will be released to be honest, just depends on if i have time eventually to get to it again. Life often gets in the way and other things come up that are more important.

But yes, it still exists, its still around.  

[TrekMD]

Thanks for the update and I certainly understand how "real life" can get you tied up so much that hobbies need to take a back burner position.  So, hopefully, at some point you can get back to it.  

[zapiy]

Cheers fella, thanks for letting us know.. Someone recently asked my on youtube what happed with this so i'll direct them to this thread. As Trek said I certainly know how real life can become affect hobbies.

[rush6432]

On a nice note, networking for jag doom is fixed thanks to some coding/testing by carl forhan.

So heretic might have functioning network code whenever i get around to working on it again.

[TrekMD]

That's cool.

[zapiy]

That's great news indeed. Thanks for sharing pal. Sure plenty of people will be stoked with that news.


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[Cryptic33]

My interest in peaking again...

[Saturn]

Heck of an update. Glad to know it's not completely dead or lost. Hope you can get back to it someday
Outstanding info about the networking too. Carl has done so much for the Jag and that is the icing on the cake imho.

[rush6432]

Doesnt look like he fixed it after all.

[Saturn]

That's too bad. Was hoping in the long run for a re-release of Doom's rom with the working code to flash to a couple of Skunkboards for some uninterrupted play. Oh well, can't miss it if it never existed.

[rush6432]

Jag doom is composed of 3 pieces. Game code binary, Wad file, and the "wrapper" or Loader program.

Wrapper/Loader program is compiled to include the wad file and game binary. When the jag boots it copies the game binary to local ram @ $4000 and executes the program. That program then looks at the cartridge ($84000 address specifically) to find the wad file contents (graphics,sfx,music,levels,ect).

So with that in mind.... You could just burn the game code to a jaguar cd and load that straight to ram and make sure to boot with your doom cart plugged in.


Edit:  The only issue i see here is that if you have a cd and cartridge in the jag, it'll boot the cart first if im not mistaken. that makes this entirely null and void.  

[zapiy]

Your way above my head with what your saying there pal.

[rush6432]

I might have to pull this game out from storage and dust it off and give it a look over.

Ive been wanting to give this some attention and maybe release a video. It needs work still for sure, its also no direct perfect port of heretic. Have to keep in mind this is Jaguar doom with heretic sprites, sounds, graphics, levels and AI snippets to make the monsters behave like the real heretic ones. Some things have been added or changed or removed to get the game to feel like heretic. It is still technically jaguar doom in every way. It is missing the inventory function like real heretic has also...

What i really need to do is start looking at cartridge hardware for this game because it is a large rom with music...