HEXEN II community work and discussion

[Rino]

hexen001-1.jpghexen0012-1.jpg
Hello everyone
recently I have update of my dedicated pages
to my old passion to mapping for Hexen 2, which in spite of the years, remains in my heart.
My works, Rino's Mission Pack, I hope you enjoyed them and enjoyed yourself.
The RinoEVO Mission Pack, I hope to release it as soon as possible.

But in the meantime there is something new, I created a short adventure called
"The baron Gastone House di Rino"
It consists of two small maps and boss map. (a map extracted from the old MP1 "rossi.bsp" and heavy modified using QuArK)
The gameplay is only for single player, is a story conducted on the "Baron Gastone" with clues and messages to read, custom texture made by me.
We are in the ancient house of Baron Gastone, he was a good gentleman, a lover of poetry, an expert in ancient magic. Skilled with the sword and excellent pianist! It was a splendid house. But it is invaded and destroyed by the forces of the male of
Eidolon. The noble baron was very brave and fought hard, but unfortunately after the hard battle dies. However before dying, he gained power to block the terrible strength of the Knight of the apocalypse in a great sepulcher! He created a mysterious
power, secretly hidden between the notes of his old piano.
Now it's up to you stranger!
Your mission is to be able to access and eventually defeat the Horseman of the Apocalypse!

More information, images and clips of The Baron Gastone House, in my pages, is available for download

https://sites.google.com/site/missionpackbyrino

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrWhnUvbB-8&t=55s

Comments about my last work are welcome!

Have fun!


notice: it could happen, depends on the engine that you use, which does not appear the boss in the map final, so I added the file maplist.txt in my pak0 of "Baron gastone House by Rino" And I updated.

[Rino]

@whirledtsar
Hello I appreciated the construction in the Septimus style and a certain attention to detail, (an example, see a tree with a garden from the window is curious). Wide colonnade, really a good work. All this, however, on the gameplay side makes it less with all these Golems together and Archers I do not like, and then look everywhere for this hidden key, The room with the bed could do better, the bed seems disproportionate with the room.
Overall it is nice map, but many monsters all together, but maybe I'm a little rusty and aged for the action! As the dear Seven says, the puzzle is nice to discovered, it is a bit of the base and story of the charm of Hexen 2!

sorry for my english

Best wishes to all and Happy Holidays
Rino

see you soon..

[whirledtsar]

Hello whirledtsar,

Thank you very much for making a new Hexen 2 map.
I downloaded and tried it, using jeanks version of the jshexen2 engine.

At once I noticed how bad my playing skills are. Or your difficulty is a bit too hard.
I played on skill 0 and had to use a player type with ranged weapons because those golems right at the beginning and the medusa with its homing attacks were too much for my skills
Especially with melee combat player types.
Health resupply was also much needed. But again, maybe its just me. I must definitely make use of the Hexen 2 items much more.
You placed them everywhere. That is good.

I liked your ideas for the map. And the unique Hexen 2 puzzle style.
It took me a while to find the key, then the magic book and the entrance to the final area.
But it was fun. That is how Hexen 2 is. It is not just a "press button a" to "open gate b" game.
You have to think and use your given hints. Nice.
The underwater secret was the only one I could find. Dont know if there are more.

I liked the monster types you chose for your map, but they are really tough enemies. Maybe some more lower level archers at the beginning would have helped me to win, hehe.

Regarding your question about the Hexen 2 entities.
I myself like to read source codes to learn more about how gameplay features work in detail but that is for sure not everyones taste/way.
I am also no mapper so I do not know if you already have Hexen 2 FGD´s, which contains all functions/entities.
The Trenchbroom mapping tool should have all that you need as it is capable of creating Hexen 2 maps.
I am sorry to not be able to help you further on this regard.

Thank you again for your map.

Best wishes,
Seven

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. I hope you downloaded it after yesterday afternoon, because the version I had initially uploaded had bugged difficulty levels. Yes the map does encourage the use of items - for example, the 2-4 glyphs at the beginning are useful against the golems, and there are discs of repulsion that are very helpful when fighting the medusa. I like how unlike Hexen 1, Hexen 2 practically required the use of items. There are some more secrets and easter eggs - no spoilers though . And yes, after posting that I eventually found the game's HexenC source which was very helpful. Trenchbroom is very good, but it isn't fully set up for Hexen 2 - there is a lot of incorrect or missing fields for entities. For example the reason difficulties were bugged at first is because Trenchbroom uses the Quake spawnflag names, but Hexen uses different flags for spawning things on different difficulties.

[Seven]

Hello whirledtsar,

Thank you very much for making a new Hexen 2 map.
I downloaded and tried it, using jeanks version of the jshexen2 engine.

At once I noticed how bad my playing skills are. Or your difficulty is a bit too hard.
I played on skill 0 and had to use a player type with ranged weapons because those golems right at the beginning and the medusa with its homing attacks were too much for my skills
Especially with melee combat player types.
Health resupply was also much needed. But again, maybe its just me. I must definitely make use of the Hexen 2 items much more.
You placed them everywhere. That is good.

I liked your ideas for the map. And the unique Hexen 2 puzzle style.
It took me a while to find the key, then the magic book and the entrance to the final area.
But it was fun. That is how Hexen 2 is. It is not just a "press button a" to "open gate b" game.
You have to think and use your given hints. Nice.
The underwater secret was the only one I could find. Dont know if there are more.

I liked the monster types you chose for your map, but they are really tough enemies. Maybe some more lower level archers at the beginning would have helped me to win, hehe.


Regarding your question about the Hexen 2 entities.
I myself like to read source codes to learn more about how gameplay features work in detail but that is for sure not everyones taste/way.
I am also no mapper so I do not know if you already have Hexen 2 FGD´s, which contains all functions/entities.
The Trenchbroom mapping tool should have all that you need as it is capable of creating Hexen 2 maps.
I am sorry to not be able to help you further on this regard.

Thank you again for your map.

Best wishes,
Seven

[whirledtsar]

hexen07_2.png
Howdy everyone. Here's a beta of my map for Hexen II, "The Tyrant's Tome". It's a short/medium level in the Septimus theme. I call it a beta because it's my first map for Hexen II (and the Quake engine in general) so there are sure to be some oversights & bugs. But I have playtested it plenty and it is balanced and completable, with skill settings implemented.

https://mega.nz/#!Rt8H3SwD!GB_oZeDh8...zvr_783I0nHE0o

Also if anyone has any good resources on learning about the game's various entities and functions, I would like to see them. I had trouble finding references / information on many of the game's entities.

edit: At this point it's pretty much totally complete and bug-free AFAIK, so don't worry about anything in this post but the download link

[Razumen]

Mod looks great! I noticed you're using a version of uhexen2 that supports bsp2, I desperately need it for my own maps. Is there a place I can download it, or should I just use the engine files from your release? I can't tell if they've incorporated it into the main uHexen2 release yet.

[HexenMappper]

Wow! great to see people still working on Hexen II. Props to you all

[Rino]

Ciao Ragazzi!
Felice e Divertente Estate a Tutti!

Rino
il creatore delle mappe e dei mission packs per HeXen II

prossimamente! .. Mission Pack by RinoEVO!


sagratoevo (2).jpg

https://sites.google.com/site/missionpackbyrino/

https://sites.google.com/site/jonnyredsmaps/

[Mathuzzz]

There are workarounds for some of the issues I had.
For the lack of the ambient sounds you can try to use some compilations. For example for the cave map you could create/use some compilation consisting of some cave wind humming with occasional ice creaking, though it woud have to be longer for one not to notice the looping. And just this one sound can be played thoughout the entire cave system.

About the leaned floor/stairs I noted before. You can try to fake it without changing the map layout using the clip brushes. So for example stair/platform can be leaned on the borders, however, if you put narrow clip brush there the player is able to walk through it fluidly. I also find it neccessary to use clip brushes when making some detailed rock cliffs as the player is able to climb very steep surfaces and thus often accessing places he is not supposed to get into.

[Bloodshot]

The active entity limits are unfortunate, but they are a bit higher than vanilla at least. It's just annoying having to choose between "hmm, do i want a lot of stuff for the mood, or do i want a lot of enemies"

At least brushwork is unlimited now, that's a massive plus since you can create near unlimited static details.

SoC - Crusader Demo Patch file - Hexen II - Shadows of Chaos mod for Hexen II - Mod DB

^ There's that crusader patch, hopefully should make him a little more fun on the harder difficulties.

Also btw, coop is recommended for hard difficulty, each difficulty has its own enemy spawns and I'd say normal is closer to traditional hard

[Mathuzzz]

-Archers were actually ok, that´s what older FPSs missed, enemies that could hit you while running/sliding. I think the berserkers speed could be tweaked at least a bit, at least on lower difficulty settings. The challenge was OK, for the highest difficulty it could have been even a bit harder, though it depends on if you want to make changes to difficulty settings + I did not tested other classes.

-Few times I got stuck around houses in the town areas, in the sewer hole in the first level, but mainly the caves. I know what you mean, in this case it is hard to make good looking caves/environment areas and maintain the fluid movement. I usually just make the top part of the stair narrow.

-The entities limit is the reason I never finished my maps before Breakables/doors disappearing... And I will have the same problem again.

Sure, I will contact you once I go for another mapping season
Though I have a break for this week as I have some other matters, so probably on the next week.

[Bloodshot]

I was actually gonna say I'm releasing a crusader patch in a bit to improve him. His ice weapon automatically gets nerfed if you make any enemy the THINGTYPE_ICE but i removed the mana drain for his hammer throw and gave him ice glyphs. The paladin and the assassin I tested the most.

Thanks for reminding me about the ice staff spread, I forgot to revert that change from GoT.

I don't know why flying monsters phase through walls, it seems to happen even with some regular hexen 2 enemies too like the angels, i might have to redesign them to stop that from happening.

Were the archer's arrows that bad? I kept adding more of them because i felt like they were never hitting me or the other players i played with in testing. I could see about changing the berserker speeds again, I've switched between slow and fast a lot but I could do some testing with slightly slower, i just didn't want them to slow since Hexen 2 is even easier to do movement speed glitches than quake 1.

Also what areas were you having movement troubles in? I tried to keep them mostly flat for large battles or in the case of the final arena, I littered the entire thing with clip brushes so the player wouldn't get stuck. I suppose if you mean the caves in level 2 i could see why, though maybe i could play around with player friction to prevent so much sliding because steps would kind of ruin the visuals of those areas.

As for atmosphere, well, it's something I have to wait on. HoT even with upgraded limits is still very....limiting. If you noticed the horde combat areas look very barren. That's because I was skirting the lines of the amounts of entities i could stuff in each room.

There's no hard limit, but there seems to be max limits in small areas, so either i have a lot of breakables, a lot of sounds and effects, or a lot of enemies. You can see this in the final arena, sometimes projectiles get stuck frozen in the air because there's too much.

The second level in particular was painful. The waterfall puzzle would flat out stop playing the waterfall sound right after it activated because there was too much in the level - it really stops you from being able to add everything you want.

Same with the thunder sound in the first level, it would cause sounds to cut out midway because it was playing so much, but i wrote new code for it so i could probably play with that at least.

But yeah basically until bsp2 gets merged into HoT and the developers expand the engine for it I am still stuck working around a lot of limits and i already had to delete a lot of extra entities and interactables from the levels because of it.

This project has kind of shown me what I have to worry about, so hopefully future maps will have a better balance of things and not as many problems

I'm hoping either HoT gets updated or FTE gets full Hexen 2 support one day, because I'd love to see it just as unhinged as quake and let me go all out and put everything in large maps without having to worry about it breaking things

Also I'd recommend giving it a try with the paladin, or the assassin. I feel like the paladin is a lot more fleshed out and interesting to play with the mod, and his sword pretty much can take down groups of berserkers surrounding him if it has mana. He is atm the most effective class at crowd control and the most playtested.

EDIT:

Also if you want to use my mod for your level I could probably make a tweaked build for you, I also added some convenience features for mappers to make certain things possible/easier (like hiding enemies until they are triggered to drop in).

Just shoot me a PM and i could also walk you through setting up TB with the FGD with all the models or other things too, or you could add me on steam too

[Mathuzzz]

Ok Bloodshot, I just finished it. I felt a desire for some challenge so I played on highest difficulty with crusader, who was especially useless as many of the enemies were immune to his second weapon, plus I think you modified it so it randomly shoots to sides, which I think was not the best idea as the weapon became really useless at times. However, the third weapon compensated it all.

Pros:
-Provided adrenaline action fun I missed in Hexen 2. Especially the ending was brilliant.
-Alternative fire mode added for missing firearms, however, I was confused. Together with Tome of Power, are there 4 weapon effects now?
-Plus for all the old enemies you brought back. My favourite was wendigo

Cons:
-There were bugs. Flying monsters could walk through the walls which became really frustrating, especially in the caves. Some invisible obstacles here and there (for example in the cave in front of the bridge, in the first level)
-I still think the axemen were just too quick. The archers shooting in trajectory of your movement were enough to counter your quick movement, though I still managed to circle through large battles.

Suggestions:
-When you base your mod on Hexen 1 fast-action gameplay, try to eliminate things that can unintentionally block the player movement. Quake/Hexen 2 engine can be really annoying when it comes to movement physics. The main problem are leaned surfaces. So no leaned stairs as the player cannot climb those, no thight, leanned spaces where player can get stuck. I also prefer when the players doesn´t slide on leaned surface, but that is the engine thing like in FTE.
-I would not make ice enemies completely immune to Ice staff, just more resistant.
-Maybe work a bit on atmosphere. There were nearly no ambience sound effects. The caves could use some wind, maybe vapours, etc...
-The mist in the sewers could have a bit slower animation.
-As you use a lot of pitfalls, which I like, maybe you could work on a proportional falling damage, with adding the falling scream effect once you fall some distance, like in Hexen 1.
-About the afrits. What really made them challenging in Hexen 1 was their movement. They did not shoot from one place, but made kind of a side blitz, which made it harder to avoid the missiles and also harder to hit them. Raven really outdid themselves as no other games at those times imitated flying like this.

Pity the crusaders glyphs didn´t make it to the release

So the verdict is: I want more of that With some polishing it could be really great experience.

I hoped I could show some of my work, but lighting my current map correctly is painfully slow process

[ijazz]

Well bloodshot you could use the code from expansion pack

[WhiteMagicRaven]

-> http://heretics-hexens.ucoz.com/hexen2/RavenSoftware.7z