My first Hexen hub

edited 2017 Jan 17 in Hexen
Hi all,

I have been editing doom and hexen for many years, and I would like to submit my first hexen HUB for the comunity to play.
It is by no means perfect, but I think players will enjoy playing through with each of the three classes, as there will be a slightly different strategy for each, and order to do things.

The Hub is 4 complete levels. I am designing a fifth level, but I would like some feedback on what I have done so far.

The story is set concurrently to the original Hexen. The cetral level is built around a sidhe shrine. Players must complete a series of puzzles to access the other three levels and once all are completed they open the teleport to the desert area. I tried to end my Mod here but the end game on linedef cross or pick up item does not seem to work! :P

The name of the mod is Fate. It works best with the doomsday 2 engine.

How can I submit files?

Comments

  • Sounds interesting. Do you use any file sharing services like Dropbox where you could upload the current version of your maps?
  • I'd also love to try it :)

    There isn't enough HeXen maps :(

    Unfortunately, the end game linedef is map hardcoded in DDay: http://tracker.dengine.net/issues/1064
  • Ah, thanks for the link to the linedef 'bug' Vermil
    I would have to mod the last level, to use the endgame linedef.
  • Yep, the links are working. I downloaded all the files and will give it a try in the evening.
  • Any luck?
  • I was about to try the maps, but as I was loading them I encountered a couple of bugs and ended up using all my time debugging. :) I still very much intend to give your maps a try, will let you know when I get things up and running again.
  • I was playing your hub today. I managed to get through most of map01 and some way into the Ice map.

    Overall, I must say I'm quite impressed so far! The maps are expansive, detailed, and keep true to the style and spirit of Hexen. I was a bit surprised that map01 is so huge, though. Doomsday is definitely struggling a bit with it — on the plus side, this will be an excellent map for testing performance optimizations.

    The narration is super helpful. It nicely fills in the story, too. However, there were a couple of typos here and there ("thier" instead of "their", for instance).

    I did have a bit of trouble finding the secret buttons to access the Ice world. After running around the whole map a couple of times I did manage to find them by taking a closer look at the automap; was this the intention?

    I'm looking forward to completing the rest of the maps. :)
  • Hi Skyjake,
    I am glad that you are enjoying the hub.
    You are right the map is rather big. I should really split it into several levels, but it is hard enough just to get one level working. If I start with a blank map and just try to run it, the game just crashes out - so I have to download the script for each level and edit an existing map. Do you know where I can download the hexen scripts - I used to use a program for XP, but now will not work on windows 10.
    Performance can be insue because of this. But the other maps a slightly better.
    I did not intend it to be so hard to find those switches, but i am glad you found them with the automap.
    I will look into the typos next time i do some editing.
    Thanks for the feedback!
  • fate wrote:
    You are right the map is rather big. I should really split it into several levels, but it is hard enough just to get one level working.
    I would argue that splitting the map at this point is counterproductive... Better to optimize Doomsday for the benefit of all complex maps. :)
    fate wrote:
    If I start with a blank map and just try to run it, the game just crashes out - so I have to download the script for each level and edit an existing map. Do you know where I can download the hexen scripts - I used to use a program for XP, but now will not work on windows 10.
    Do you mean the BEHAVIOR lumps, or the original ACS sources? Not sure about the sources, but the compiler is here: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/utils ... acc-source

    Perhaps Vermil knows more?
  • I'm not at all familiar with ACS scripting, but I could imagine a HeXen format map requiring a behaviour lump and it not being created by an editor if the map features no scripts (even a dummy one not used by the map)?
  • DoomBuilder2 has an integrated script editor which comes with the nessecary compilers. There you can edit your script and compile it as well.
  • Let me describe the problems I have in more detail.

    If I open the doom builder, and create a new level from scratch, and try to 'visitXX' the game will crash. :-/ (It has start points)
    If I open the doom builder, open hexen.wad, choose a level, open it and go to the script editor it is blank! :-/
    If I then try to make changes to the level and add/or add a script of my own and run the map... then crash. :-/ There must be links to other scripts in other maps that cause the crash.

    Before I had a program in XP that could open the hexen.wad and extract the script entries.
    So thats what I did - and copied the script into the doom builder script editor and that worked. I was then able to write more scripts and edit the maps.

    Some of the lag must come from what remains of the original level - I can't delete all of it without Hexen crashing... I would so love to create a level from scratch and get it to work that way all the scripts would be mine. (I have almost run out of script no.s for level 1!)

    here is the descript program
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/x6cfz6mfdlyn1 ... T.EXE?dl=0
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/yayrwrkye5n1r ... T.TXT?dl=0
    :) -if a nice person with winXP could extract all the scripts for levels 6 - 35 for hexen that would be great - and I would then be able to start a new hub.- :)
  • fate wrote:
    :) -if a nice person with winXP could extract all the scripts for levels 6 - 35 for hexen that would be great - and I would then be able to start a new hub.- :)
    I don't have XP, or any 32-bit Windows ready to go, but DOSBox did the trick. I PM'd you a link to the descripted ACS files. :)
  • skyjake wrote:
    I did have a bit of trouble finding the secret buttons to access the Ice world.
    I've now completed almost all of the maps. It has been great fun! However, I do suspect that I managed to trigger the second secret button too early, which allowed me to enter the Ice map earlier than intended. After killing the three traitors in the Ice map, I returned to map01 into the Mage quarters library, however I was stuck there since I hadn't yet used the red gem to open the gray metal door. I had to noclip my way out of there.

    At one point I also accidentally hit the Panic button in map01 and got teleported to the initial start spot. However, the way back had been blocked by a closed gate...
  • Many thanks Jake. Why didn't I think about dos box...I am glad you enjoyed playing through
    There is another way out from the start after you go out initially but it isn't very obvious. I will have to make it easier to find. It is on the left after you pass the gate the barrier lowers.
    How did you activate the button without going through to the upper quarters. I guess the engine allowed you to activate the button in the upper 'floor' from below. I will have to extend the upper floor to prevent this.
  • fate wrote:
    How did you activate the button without going through to the upper quarters. I guess the engine allowed you to activate the button in the upper 'floor' from below. I will have to extend the upper floor to prevent this.
    Yeah, I think I managed to press it from the lower floor even though the button is up there. I believe the vanilla game logic doesn't do many Z height checks of this kind, but of course intuitively one shouldn't be able to press buttons that are out of reach on the Z axis. I could apply this change as a bug fix in the Hexen plugin.
  • skyjake wrote:
    fate wrote:
    How did you activate the button without going through to the upper quarters. I guess the engine allowed you to activate the button in the upper 'floor' from below. I will have to extend the upper floor to prevent this.
    I could apply this change as a bug fix in the Hexen plugin.

    I strongly disagree with changing this behaviour.
  • Vermil wrote:
    I strongly disagree with changing this behaviour.
    I understand it would have implications in custom maps. Please elaborate on your reasoning, though? On the whole Hexen does intend to be aware of Z heights in gameplay.

    It would naturally have a behavior-controlling cvar like the other vanilla compatibility options.
  • skyjake wrote:
    It would naturally have a behavior-controlling cvar like the other vanilla compatibility options.

    I do not know exactly what Doomsday is capable of, but I think the best option would be to be able to add an Entry in the MAPINFO definition. This way the author can decide whether Z-Height-Checks for switches should be enabled or not. This way it can be set per level as they see fit, and won't break anything, because the user set the CVAR wrongly (because that might happen if it is user-controlled)
  • Milten wrote:
    I do not know exactly what Doomsday is capable of, but I think the best option would be to be able to add an Entry in the MAPINFO definition. This way the author can decide whether Z-Height-Checks for switches should be enabled or not. This way it can be set per level as they see fit, and won't break anything, because the user set the CVAR wrongly (because that might happen if it is user-controlled)
    Unfortunately Doomsday doesn't support this yet. I agree this would be very useful, though, and have a plan for the implementation: http://tracker.dengine.net/issues/1617
  • I took the liberty of packaging the maps as one PK3. It is available here (5.5 MB): http://files.dengine.net/packs/fate_v0.1.pk3

    @fate: Feel free to use this PK3 as a basis/example for packaging any future updates to the hub. :) I used the old-fashioned Snowberry-style metadata and PK3 because currently there are still some limitations when it comes to loading WADs from inside Doomsday 2 .pack files.
  • skyjake wrote:
    I took the liberty of packaging the maps as one PK3. It is available here (5.5 MB): http://files.dengine.net/packs/fate_v0.1.pk3

    @fate: Feel free to use this PK3 as a basis/example for packaging any future updates to the hub. :) I used the old-fashioned Snowberry-style metadata and PK3 because currently there are still some limitations when it comes to loading WADs from inside Doomsday 2 .pack files.

    Should it work with Doomsday 1.15.8? Cause my snowberry displayed next error: http://storage3.static.itmages.ru/i/16/ ... 48e905.png

    Then I changed "Info" file to just "component: game-jhexen" string and it works
  • Yeah there's probably a typo or something like that in the Info file, I didn't actually try loading the PK3 via Snowberry... The author recommends using Doomsday 2, though.

    EDIT: I fixed the error. (The Info file was using the wrong kind of braces for the "language english" block.) I updated the PK3 linked above and in the blog post.
  • Looks interesting, can't wait to try thus!
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