Playing Heretic over and over again is becoming annoying, but thanks to certain fans the Doom Builder is available for level creating. Unfortunately, all levels created for Heretic are very short, poorly made, have no secret places. I am not a designer or anything, but I want to create something proper, with secret places, in many levels, more hard than the original Heretic is (the mouse makes it a lot easier), and readied for jumping (with jumping, you can pass a Heretic level without even finding the green key sometimes). I wonder if there is any support for anything like that, I didn't see any fans here, and this made me feel very bad. Also, I don't completely understand how Doom Builder works, or any of Doomsday's utilities.
 So, if anyone interested, please tell me. I also wouldn't mind if someone explains to me how some things work in Doom Builder - for instance, there are problems with building two sectors close. And I don't know how TexC or md2tool works at all. I simply cannot open them...
 And, if someone wants to test, that would be good, too. Testing is required to evaluate the monster numbers, ammo problems, design, sharpness of walls, defecs in brightness...

You have a ton of ambition I will give you that. I never ever used Doom builder, when I used to map for Heretic, I did so with DCK, the only problem with that is that it requires DOS. Also using the jump ability offered with newer source ports will make the original Heretic too easy, those levels were never designed with jumping in mind, it was only added via Doomsday and other engines for future mappers to make levels designed with jumping in mind...

The best tools to make a map are DCK or Doom Builder for Windows. Wintex for importing your own graphics and sprites if you want, and Zennode, to help build nodes for your map. If you are designing for an OpenGL port, use GL BSP as well for GL nodes.

The basics for map design are sectors, lines, and vertices. A sector is a closed room, and a line is a line. A vertex is point just like the 4 points of a square. When you combine 2 sectors you get a bigger sector, but each sector can be modified differently, eg. you can make each floor different, this is how you would get a pool inside a room. Because you have a sector inside a sector, and by doing this you can adjust the height of the sector, by adjusting many heights you can make stairs.

Lines are part of sectors and make up the walls in Heretic. These lines are 1 sided, because you can see the texture. When you connect 2 sectors together, then the joining line becomes a 2 sided line, it has no textures but you can pass through it.

Vertices are corners of sectors or end points of lines. You can drag and modify them to create odd looking sectors if you need to.

Line tags and sector tags are used to create special effects, eg. walking into a room causes a door to open, or making a room where the lights turn up. Each tagged line must have a matching sector tag. Eg. a switch that raises a platform, must tag to the sector that gets raised.

You can learn lots by just practicing. Inserting things, practicing with options like making opponents deaf for ambushes, blocking monsters via linedefs, etc. Doom and Heretic editing is the same, so I am sure if you google you can find a good Doom engine editing FAQ, try www.doomworld.com as a starting point. Heretic is easy to modify since its 2D, once you learn that maybe you can try true 3D with Heretic and use an engine like Zdoom to make some good WADs.

Heretic ediitng was popular way back in the late 90s. The game is over ten years old but still one of my faves, but alot of the people who mades maps and such, simply moved on.

I know about sectors and lines and verticles (very useful thing), deafness, impassable. I was talking about when you build a lot of small sectors in a room, they start to mix up, especially with the main outer one. I already found a way out if, instead of making a new sector, the program mixes it with another, you can make a new sector outside and tell the verticles that they are facing that outside sector, then destroy the outside sector (for some reason, if I write a sector number that doesn't exist, it lowers it to the next available sector). My only problem is time, I want to fasten it, but now anyway I will have to do all over again because I want new textures and sprites. And, a question, is there a possibility to replace the sprite for brown pillar into one of your own (a Paint picture, for instance) and turn it into an enemy?

Speaking of ambushes, its quite easy - just put them beynd a corner. They are all deaf, except the starting ones - otherwise they will rush at the player at the moment he shoots. But I wanted to make tricks with block sound walls, but they don't seem to be working. If deaf, the monster only attackes if he sees the player. But i want a player to enter a room, find some monsters attacking him and the door closes behind him, and when he starts to shoot but croses the middle block sound line, all the monsters hidden from viev rush at him. But block sound does not work, even thoug I put it on every wall...

What is a node? I heard about it, but I don't get what it is.

3D with ZDooM? You mean walls that are not straight? Multiple floors! That would have been cool! I could have made caves, valleys... You know, I expirimented making boxes from textures, but if I can make texture offset to make it look like a box, I cant move the floor, and the box looks like two strange thin boxes, is there any way to make floor ofset?

Your last passage, popular back in 90... Well, I was just born in 90, and five years later I played Heretic, not DooM, and ten years later I got back Heretic from the internet, playing it in DOS, having no idea about other fans, about DooMsday, you can't imagine how happy I am to get hand on my favorite game! But make levels to it? Can there be anything more fortunate for someone like me, for who Heretic is not a game, but a reason to play games, to search, to seek, perhaps a new fantasy action, or, if nothing changes, grow up, collect money, make a new company, buy a license from sleeping Raven and make Heretic over again. Yeah, I know, childish dreams, but what can I do, when it made something to me that I CANNOT forget it, I CANNOT just sit and play DooM 3 and FarCry and Half-Life 2, I want a fantasy action! And if Raven doesn't make them, what can I do but make levels? Do you know another fantasy action, another game with evil story, with magical universe, magical monsters, magical weapons, riddles? I do not. Call me crazy, but I won't forget thet game.