HEXEN II community work and discussion

[golden_boy]

Talisa, the BSP2 toolchain doesn't support Hexen 2 (the additional hulls etc).

A real programmer would have to either add BSP2 support (and .lit support) to a Hexen 2 engine and toolchain, or Hexen 2 support to the BSP2 toolchain. I'm not a real programmer, I'm more of an artist who doubles as a hacker in a pinch.

As Spike pointed out, the added clipping hulls mean that a Hexen 2 map can hit the limits much faster than a Quake map. My experience would seem to confirm that - I hit the BSP limit in just three days and with only 1700 brushes. It took more than 10,000 brushes to hit the same limit in Quake (in RMQ).

[szo]

[...] the BSP2 toolchain doesn't support Hexen 2 (the additional hulls etc). [...] either add BSP2 support (and .lit support) to a Hexen 2 engine and toolchain, or Hexen 2 support to the BSP2 toolchain [...]

I might think about adding the so-called BSP2 support to Hammer of Thyrion, both engine side and tools side, however the spec is ill-formed to begin with and because of that there are at least two variants of it. (Adding such support t to the engine would possibly require lifting some old limits along with it, IIRC.) The lit support is already there at engine side for years (needs adding to the light tool someday, though.)

[WhiteMagicRaven]

golden_boy, right now with this state of hexen2tools is bad =( but in future i hope something will be changed.
Also a short tip: you can target your map to only FTEQW and pickup your favorite format
like Half-Life BSP or Quake2 or 3 BSP.
Its interesting fact that you can play any game that FTEQW support in any map format from other games.
I like result when you can play hexen2 on counter-strike maps XD.
If you use quake1 map format for hexen2 be sure to change somehow palette to hexen2 palette.
And any way keep source code for maps, until day when hexen2tools will have ability to build these huge maps and exceed limits.

hgdagon,

"1.What good engines are there for DOOM-based games" -> as for me its gzdoom, (zandronum, zdaemon if you want play multiplayer)
"Heretic II uses Q2 engine)?." Right also map is direct quake2 format (patch if you need http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-tal...tml#post126774 )

as for 3d models i can't say anything i love sprites

[Spike]

szo, the differences between 2PSB and BSP2 formats are minor. you should really support only the BSP2 version. in BSP2 *all* shorts are changed to either ints or floats (mins+maxs = floats, others = int/uint). for reference, 2PSB is the same except the shorts that would become floats remain as shorts, limiting total map space but not detail.
You'd still have the whole 8-hulls-not-4 thing, so hexen2 tools+engines etc should have no reason to support the 2PSB variant.

talisa, as gb said, hexen2 maps generally require those extra hulls (the gamecode is quite explicit about which hull to use in a way that quake never supported). using the wrong sized hulls (ie: existing q1 bsp2 tools) would be too buggy.
equally he could just use a q3bsp, but that's just not hexen2 (palette+warts and all!)

[golden_boy]

szo, if you make it work, I will finish the Hexen 2 version of the map and possibly write that Hexen 2 mapping tutorial.

Better tools would really help Hexen 2 a great deal.

The other stuff used in the map is: inverse square falloff formula for lights (delay 2 in Jardrup's tool), double falloff distance (wait 0.5) and local minlights to imitate skylight (delay4, I believe). Those latter ones would not be needed if there was a working sunlight feature.

Let's put one in for Hexen 2 together?

[KrossX]

Something like what ioQuake3 OpenGL2 has? That sunlight with dynamic shadows.

[golden_boy]

No, by "sunlight" I meant a map compiler feature - it's lightmap related.

Some Light tools, such as hmap2 or Bengt Jardrup's tool, allow the mapper to define level-wide sunlight (strength, sun angle etc). This light is cast by all sky brushes and allows one to create natural looking sunlight without having to fake it by placing zillions of point lights.

In AguirRe's tool, the mapper simply adds a worldspawn key called _sunlight. There is also _sun_mangle to set the direction.

In hmap2, IIRC you place a point light, target it like a spotlight, and give that some special key so it is treated as a levelwide sun.

Both methods work.

It's all in the light tool, nothing to do with the engine.

This was my original reason to port AguirRe's tool to Hexen 2. Unfortunately the sunlight feature didn't work, I suspect because of something in the QBSP compiler.

[Mathuzzz]

I was wondering, can I change UI stuff with external textures in UQE Hexen 2? I was trying with no luck so far.

[Korax]

UQE doesn't support that yet.

[WhiteMagicRaven]

Adolif4 who previosly created ADO-HEXEN2 source port, now works on hexen2 to port it on other engine.
Irrlicht Engine • View topic - Hexen II + Irrlicht
[For a Forum] Irrlicht + Hexen II - YouTube

[Korax]

I dunno. Asset conversion and rendering Hexen II is a very, very, VERY long way off from Hexen II gameplay. I've made a precise Quake 2 XNA renderer that can render Quake 2 BSP data directly from the PAK files with no conversions needed that used the full BSP/VIS logic and combined the legacy lightmapping with hardware lighting (lightmap eater) and also implemented sub-model rendering utilizing all is major flags for movement, rotations and translucency. It also rendered the MD2 models with its animation system, lightgrid and properly lit the models. It also rendered Quake 2's skybox logic minus the weird clipping junk it had and implemented it using no depth buffer complete with its rotation logic etc. It rendered everything via Shader Model 2 & 3. The rendering engine only missed two things: lightstyle rendering & particles.

...but that's still a long way from being a Quake 2 game.

Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I've seen way too much of these "I'm gonna re-write Quake / Hexen2 using some generic engine" projects.

In this case, unless he's got some way to use gamer-side conversion tool I'm afraid even if he succeed it'll be kinda illegal to distribute, apart from the sources and built binary.

I've actually done a project some years ago that converted START and E1M1 of Quake to the Quake 2 format, including all assets relating to those two levels... the textures, the models everything. I built a tool that took Romero's GPL source MAP files that converted the text data to be compatible with Q2 build tools. I did my own Quake texture stripper & wal converter as well as MDL to MD2 converter.

I've built a modified version of the Quake 2 engine that accommodated all the tiny things needed to make Quake 1 run in it. All was working minus game logic and other oddities like the EP vs HUB systems and probably a lot of other unknowns etc. Apart from the file formats the Quake1 and Quake 2 engine is quite similar, mostly idTech2 is a cleaned-up Quake engine.

The conversion & compilation process is just too involved to continue with the project.
Now imagine converting Quake / Hexen II (which is quite hacky) to some arbitrary/generic engine and still retain the original gaming experience.

1 word: Unlikely.

[Spike]

And that's without having to work around all the bugs in the hexen2 gamecode.
good luck to him, it can be quite fun sometimes though.

[Korax]

true that

[Mathuzzz]

golden_boy, it looks like I have the same problem as you with MAX_MAP_CLIPNODES. I had to block large amount of my map with clip brush just to make my map able to start. Does changing stuff into func_wall or breakables help?

[Spike]

remove small gaps, cover detailed areas with a single CLIP brush (like circular pillars with a clipbrush cube), keep your walls axial.
Adding additional bsp trees (in the form of additional func_walls, etc) is not likely to help.