Talk:Heretic

skill level grammar
history page says: "Ye imperative mood useth not any -eth suffix". I asked a friend who has read/written this sort of language professionally, and he says our footnote is correct. So if there is further disagreement, I can probably cause a suitably mildewed citation to be produced. :>   Ryan W 00:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Heretic Bugs
Should we create a buglist for Heretic like we did for Doom? There are quite a number of bugs that are either specific to Heretic (Flying enemies getting stuck on grounded ones, projectiles not splashing, viewheight decreasing when standing over a ledge that has water below, gargoyles sometimes not entering crash state sometimes, lava randomly "stunning" you) or made more obvious because of Heretic's features (unable to shoot floors and ceilings). It would be nice to write some articles on these bugs with technical explanations. -Wagi 71.205.92.127 22:06, February 26, 2010 (UTC)

Who wrote the note on skill levels?
Yes, the Skill Levels parody Early Modern English. You don't have to explain the hell out of it. "Canst thou sayeth 'fun-sucker'?" predcon 67.142.165.28 01:20, November 14, 2010 (UTC)

Story contradiction between Heretic 1 and 2?
Although Parthoris is listed as the setting for the game, the manual supplied with Heretic seems to imply it takes place on Earth? - DooMAD 17:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * There's an interesting interview where Michael Raymond-Judy claims that the story in the manual is at odds with what the dev team imagined during the making of the game. I find that a little surprising; the "hint book" (I assume he means Ed Dille's strategy guide) does have some lore in it that doesn't seem to jive with the game or manual, but I would have thought the manual at least would have the dev team's input.  It's possible that the retcons in the Heretic II lore are meant to bring it in line with the original vision for Heretic, but I wouldn't assume that without further dev input, especially since AFAIK the original team had split up around the time of Hexen II, before Heretic II was made. -- ETTiNGRiNDER (talk) 13:31, 14 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I think the mention of "Earth" here is a "generic Earth", like how people use "Moon" and "Sun" for alien worlds too. The Heretic world being our Earth wouldn't make much sense. --Gez (talk) 13:52, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Trivia: OOS Demos
Out of curiosity, specifically what alterations were made to v1.3 that cause the IWAD demos to go out of sync? I wouldn't imagine the simple addition of more levels would cause this (correct me if I'm wrong) so I presume something in the game mechanics must have been patched. -- ETTiNGRiNDER (talk) 17:34, 13 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It's not known for sure; nobody has ever fully reversed the v1.2 executable to find all the differences. Heretic underwent a number of bug fixes and a few unexplained tweaks to the game play during its couple of revisions. --Quasar (talk) 05:02, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Heretic: SoSR
The Ultimate Doom has its own dedicated page in category but Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders redirects here, and the mod is treated somewhat haphazardly within this article in combination with the original release. Personally, I feel that like The Ultimate Doom, the expansion is worthy of treatment in its own article. Soliciting for opinions before I nominate for a split. --Quasar (talk) 15:34, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd tend to agree, I think the reason it's just a redirect instead of its own article is that Heretic is kind of a second-class citizen (like Hexen and Strife) on the Doom Wiki. --Gez (talk) 16:23, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Monster speed in Black Plague skill
It's handled here. --Quasar (talk) 13:23, 19 February 2021 (CST)

Projectile and monster speed on "Black plague possesses thee"
I wonder where does the "300% faster" come from in the context of projectile and monster speeds, because it is not correct. First, starting from 1576th line of G_GAME.C from Heretic's source code:

// Set monster missile speeds speed = skill == sk_nightmare}; for(i = 0; MonsterMissileInfo[i].type != -1; i++) {       mobjinfo[MonsterMissileInfo[i].type].speed = MonsterMissileInfo[i].speed[speed]<<FRACBITS; }

we can see how the value of an integer variable, named, is set to whatever the value of skill == sk_nightmare comparison yields. In other words, 's value is if we are playing on "Black plague possesses thee", and  otherwise. Since this is the C programming language, the value of promoted to integer type is, and the value of  promoted to integer type is. Next, we are setting the speeds of each projectile, using variable as array index, and to understand what this does we need to look at the hard-coded table which stores missile speeds, which resides in G_GAME.C, starting from 39th line:

struct {       mobjtype_t type; int speed[2]; } MonsterMissileInfo[] = {       { MT_IMPBALL, 10, 20 }, { MT_MUMMYFX1, 9, 18 }, { MT_KNIGHTAXE, 9, 18 }, { MT_REDAXE, 9, 18 }, { MT_BEASTBALL, 12, 20 }, { MT_WIZFX1, 18, 24 }, { MT_SNAKEPRO_A, 14, 20 }, { MT_SNAKEPRO_B, 14, 20 }, { MT_HEADFX1, 13, 20 }, { MT_HEADFX3, 10, 18 }, { MT_MNTRFX1, 20, 26 }, { MT_MNTRFX2, 14, 20 }, { MT_SRCRFX1, 20, 28 }, { MT_SOR2FX1, 20, 28 }, { -1, -1, -1 } // Terminator };

after which it becomes clear that the first number is a projectile's base speed, and the second number is the projectile's increased speed while playing on the hardest skill level. None of those are anywhere near 300% faster, but at most 100% faster and often much less.

Regarding how the speed of the monsters themselves is changed on the hardest skill level, we need to look at this fragment of function, starting from 656th line of ENEMY.C file:

if(gameskill == sk_nightmare) { // Monsters move faster in nightmare mode actor->tics -= actor->tics/2; if(actor->tics < 3) {              actor->tics = 3; } }

and we notice how the duration of monster's states is, at most, halved on "Black plague possesses thee". In cases where halving the tic duration would yield values less than 3 tics, the values are capped to 3 tics. It makes monsters at most 100% faster than normal.