can anyone help me turn off mouse walk forward and backward and have mouse freelook or look up and down.

AFAIK you can have normal mouse freelook only by using sourceports like GZDoom. Look at the other threads for that.

In the original, you can only disable the movement, for that you need to download "novert.zip" from here:
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/utils/misc/novert

This small program disables the vertical output of your mouse for some games.

Unpack the file "novert.com" and move it into the "Heretic"-folder (where "heretic.exe" is installed)

In the same folder is a file called "dosbox_heretic_single.conf". Open that file with a text editor.

The [autoexec] paragraph must be changed, so that "novert" is run before the game. The paragraph should be changed to look like this:

[autoexec]
@echo off
cls
mount C ".."
mount C "..\cloud_saves" -t overlay
c:
novert
goto launcher

Save the file and start the game. Done.

Thanks MFTK

I used to play this with a couple of mates back in the 90's on PC multiplayer IPX over NetBEUI on Windows 95 and I always thought it had mouse freelook but now I'm thinking it was probably Quake, I remember Doom never had it maybe it was one of the Hexen games.

I've downloaded GZDoom and that works very well, just need to workout how to load the Heretic Neural Texture Pack

assuming you're talking about Hexen 2, make an autoexec.cfg in your data1 folder, then put the following inside it.

+mlook

This should allow you to permanently mouse look.

You should for sure get GZDoom. Apart from mouselook, it lets you change resolutions, modify keyboard shortcuts and a plethora of other things. Works for Doom and Strife as well. It is amazing.

You need ravmouse program to do so on the vanilla DOS(Box) Heretic and Hexen,
See the corresponding topic @ Doomworld. Works like charm. Vertical look had been introduced in Heretic for DOS and it was bound to the keyboard. Hexen for DOS had the same behavior.

I'll just add some more details on ravmouse which are not explained comprehensively. Since question of 'mlook' looks somehow popular.

Utility download link @ Webarchive:
Important! Damn forum engine cripples the links! Manually copy-paste the following as a text to the address line of your browser.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160902221258/http://koti.kapsi.fi/vv/ravmouse.exe

Source code for OpenWatcom 16 @ Pastebin:
http://pastebin.com/xCSH6VAy

Just like with novert.com you put ravmouse.exe to the same folder where heretic.exe or hexen.exe resides.

Unlike the novert you run ravmouse INSTEAD of the game's exe. Utility then installs the driver and runs the game itself.

Ravmouse will automatically recognize heretic.exe or hexen.exe and run it. So example of the changed dosbox_heretic_single.conf or dosbox_hexen_single.conf fragment would be like this: And if additional command line parameters are needed, for example -file for custom WAD loading, you just add them to the line with ravmouse invocation. Utility will pass them to the game's executable.

To use ravmouse in the mutilayer games we need to fix DeathManager's config file as well. It is a plian text file called DM.DAT. Example for Heretic and HeXen would be like this: The special case is HeXen: Death King of the Dark Citadel. It has hexen.exe in the game's directory too. But addon should be run via the dedicated launcher hexendk.exe to load properly. And ravmouse will NOT automatically detect this fact!
So, in this case we leave both dosbox_hexenDK_single.conf and DM.DAT intact. And just fix the config of the hexendk launcher. It is a plain text file named LOCATION.STR. We replace HEXEN.EXE with RAVMOUSE.EXE . The fixed file contents will look like this: That will fix both single and multiplayer games.

I installed ravmouse.exe into my Heretic folder and made the change to dosbox_heretic_single.conf.
Now I have mouse look working vertically. Thank you for that referral, Shwertz.
However, the mouse is WAY too sensitive. Adjusting the mouse sensitivity slider changes nothing. Whether at full left or full right it is the same.
I know this is a different problem than discussed here, but it didn't have this problem until I installed ravmouse.exe so I want to mention it here.
I can reduce the mouse speed in the Windows 10 "Mouse" Control Panel applet, but isn't there a way to get it back to normal in the game only without slowing my mouse to a ridiculous level for all of Windows?

Oh, you are right. In-game mouse sensitivity slider will not work with ravmouse, since this utility makes use of so called external driver interface and injects control events directly into the game-cycle logic.

But ravmouse has additional configuration parameters: Try to add -hs 20 to the ravmouse invocation line in your singleplayer conf file like this: It might require some "try and error" tinkering to find a comfortable value for your specific setup.
And you have to add the same parameter to multiplayer conf where dm is called to make setting effective in the multiplayer games as well.
For HeXen setup is the same.
For HeXen: Death King of the Dark Citadel you have to add -hs 20 after hexendk.exe for singelplayer conf and after DM for multiplayer conf.

Re-uploaded ravmouse to Zyppishare for those who have problem copy-pasting...
Download link.

Someone should really put this utility into the /idgames archive already.

Schwertz,
I can't figure out how to use the reply quotes while editing to display what text I want, but the info is below:

I said:
However, the mouse is WAY too sensitive. Adjusting the mouse sensitivity slider changes nothing. Whether at full left or full right it is the same.
You said:
Oh, you are right. In-game mouse sensitivity slider will not work with ravmouse, since this utility makes use of so called external driver interface and injects control events directly into the game-cycle logic.
...
-hs/-vs num.....: Change horizontal/vertical sensitivity (defaults 40/1).
...

My new question is:
Do I need to use both -hs and --vs? I assume that -hs is horizontal and -vs is vertical. I tried it three ways:
-HS x
and
-HS x -VS x
and
-HS x/-VS x

The result from any of the three: the horizontal sensitivity is reduced but vertical is still way too sensitive.
10 works best for me for the HS variable, but it doesn't matter what value I use for VS using the three attempts above.

EDIT:
I think that -hs 10/-vs 1 is working pretty good. The first time I tried it in that format, I used 10 for both variables, but I guess I had to lower the vs value all the way down to 1 to get a usable configuration.

Thank you.

Yes , my tinkering with sensitivity values gave me 10/1 too. Maybe 10/2.
Too high vertical sensitivity makes aiming difficult. And too low horizontal sensitivity makes movement uncomfortably jerky.

hey mate can you help me out i can't run the exe, it says i can't run it

More information needed to help you. Looks like you have Windows 10 and attempt to run inappropriate executable.
Aren't you trying to run ravmouse.exe or hexen.exe directly, outside of the DOSBox? That will not work.

yeah i was running ravmouse outside of dosbox
it's not working changing the .conf file anyway so..