HEXEN II community work and discussion

[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?

[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!)

[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

[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.)

[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).

[hgdagon]

@szo as I said above, I only persume so....

[szo]

1.Hammer of Thyron is direct recompilation of hexen II that make it compatible with new os and/or new processors and bring NOTHING new to the game

Since you seem to have a deep knowledge of the meaning of direct recompilation, I am sure that you arrived at your conclusions with hours of reading through the actual source code, and not by something mundane like reading the documentation such as the features list which is both part of the downloadable packages under docs/Features and also available online on the website.

[Mathuzzz]

KrossX posted WinXP compatible UQE Hexen 2 few posts above.

Hammer of Thyrion does support some features also. I havenīt played Hexen through HoT for a long time, but there is support for colored lightning, better texture filtering, widescreen support, better quality music support etc...

[hgdagon]

I have some questions and if it's not the right place to ask, I'm sorry.
I've had some haxen/heretic 1-2 stuf on my hdd, but but I wasn't planning to touch until having made a quake compilations, but I actually did touch them yesterday and here's what I understood
1.Hammer of Thyron is direct recompilation of hexen II that make it compatible with new os and/or new processors and bring NOTHING new to the game
2.UQE H2 (as well as UQED3 & UQE Quake) DOES NOT RUN ON WinXP (I do have vc++2012 installed, but it keeps saying "UQE**.exe is not a win32 application")
3. jsHexen is the best source port for Hexen II and it supports new models/textures (Like DP for Quake...) (I've tried running H2 only with HoT & jsH2, UQEH2, as menrioned above, wouldn't run at all)
This is what I understood from my yesterday's first-time-peek to Henxen II, and if I'm wrong please correct me.
Still there's something more I need to know, about all 4 games
1.What good engines are there for DOOM-based games (as far as I know Heretic I & Hexen 1, if I'm not mistaken Heretic II uses Q2 engine)?. By "good" I mean one that gets rid of sprites, makes EVERITHING HD and 3D. Since I'm Doomsick I can't play Doom 1-2 on any engine other than Risen3D (Yes, not even DommsDay...) but as I found out yesterday. Risend3D won't run Heretic or Hexen....
2. New models textures for all games except for Hexen II (I have inkub0's 0.85) and engines they're compatible with
3. Everyone keeps saying that UQE is "targetting" WinXP, so it may be just me. Could you, please, list ALL the dependancies of UQE?
Once again sorry, if this is offtopic and thanks in advance.

HGDagon

[talisa]

cant you use bsp2 for the map, cuz i thought i read somewhere FTE supports BSP2?
and i know FTE supports hexen2, i use it for hexen2 myself

so if you could do the map as bsp2 couldnt you keep it a hexen2 map specially for FTE?

[Mathuzzz]

Thank you again golden_boy for those tools. It is too bad you cannot finish the map, it looks great.

Now that I can continue my map, I hope I can post some alpha screenshots in some time.

Also, thank you KrossX, UQE 1.16 now works fine under XP

[golden_boy]

It seems I can't finish my Hexen 2 map as intended because of the BSP format limits.

It has found a new home in Scout's Journey.

Hexen 2 aftermath | spawnhost

[KrossX]

Is there some documentation for the newest UQE Hexen? Because there are no options in game so I donīt really know how to activate any new engine features.

[...]

Under UQE Help from the official download, from HERE.

[golden_boy]

The vis and light tools are Hexen 2 capable versions of these ones.

The light tool supports coloured light via .lit files, and things such as different falloff formulas. I recommend reading the documentation on that site (readmevis.txt).

The qbsp.exe is the uhexen2 one, because it is easier for me to cross compile. It has a couple raised limits compared to the official version.

Just today, I had to bump MAX_MAP_CLIPNODES in qbsp as well. I think I might have to raise more limits before my map is done...

Edit: My map broke the BSP format limits, specifically the clipnodes one. Argh. So I can either start turning stuff into func_walls, or switch to q3bsp.

[Mathuzzz]

Well, itīs a big map, so it uses lots of different textures, but I solved it by moving Quark.wad from tmpQuark\gfx\ to tmpQuark\maps\gfx\, I donīt know why it saves in different path, but Iīm still OK with it if I can continue with mapping.

What are the tools you provided me? I was expecting only bsp compiler, but there is also vis and light. Are they different from standard Hexen 2 ones?