Megawads and bosses

[samboy]

We sometimes have an issue placing D’Sparil in E3M8 when making a Heretic megawad. This seems to be caused by the “smaller” room option:

SEED = 1660

Settings =
{
  ammo = normal
  enclosure = false
  game = heretic
  hallways = normal
  health = normal
  iweapon = basic
  keytype = skulls
  length = full
  lighting = none
  maxsize = regular
  mode = sp
  mons = normal
  outdoors = more
  port = nolimit
  questlength = normal
  roomsize = smaller
  secrets = common
  seed = 1660
  size = small
  stairs = stairs
  steep = some
  switches = keys
  traps = normal
}

(Guys, this comes from the beginning of LOGS.txt and is needed if anyone has an issue building a level)

[samboy]

The workaround is to try again with a different seed; this only happens with some seeds.

[samboy]

Here’s the deal: There is a bug with placing boss monsters in Heretic maps in Obhack 008.2. This duct tap patch fixes the the issue with building levels by making sure E3M8 and E4M8 are have big rooms when playing Heretic — but we have an issue where the boss_kind is “disciple” and the boss quest just puts a bunch of disciples in a room. Possibly caused by Blasphemer. (FIX: The duct tape now just makes the cells bigger in E#M8 levels)

[samboy]

OK, the boss is no longer a disciple, but there is still an issue with boss levels not having bosses in them. Probably because the builder needs a lot more monster strength before it decides it can place an Ironlich or Maulotaur in a level.

[samboy]

OK, the code right now places bosses when the difficulty is high enough, but megawads with fewer monsters still do not have bosses in them. Also: We should make levels have a few really large rooms for all games in the boss levels.

[samboy]

OK, DONE. We now have boss arenas (just three large cells linked together) and give the player everything but the BFG when they enter the boss arena.

[samboy]

Minor update: I have made the arenas easier. In Doom/Doom2, we now have an invulnerability sphere, blue armor, and more rockets given to the player; in Heretic, you get more Phoenix Rod Orbs (Rockets by another name), and three Tombs of Power and three Rings of Invulnerability.

People who want a challenge in Doom/Doom2 can wait for the invulnerability to wear off before taking on the Cyberdemon; Heretic players can kill the Maulotaur without using the artifacts (albeit with some difficulty), and try and kill D’Sparil without using more than one or two rings.

Unfortunately, with the tight spaces ObHack’s code base foists upon us, the only way we can give the player a good chance to win these is by giving them invulnerability and a lot of rockets to hit the boss with while invulnerable.