Hexen 2 aftermath

My Hexen 2 map — as gnounc put it — “exploded”. This morning, after collecting my teeth from the concrete wall of Hexen 2’s BSP format limit, I gave it a look in FBSP. I think it’s not too shabby. The FBSP conversion messed with the lighting, but that can be fixed.

Actually, I think this is Scout’s Journey material. It might just have been fate’s trick to get me to make another SJ level, after all. Spike pointed out that Hexen 2’s additional clipping hulls eat into the same clipnodes limit that is familiar from Quake, meaning the clipnodes limit in Hexen 2 is effectively much lower than in Quake. Sadly, that makes a lot of sense, and sadly, that is a hardcoded limit. This is too much for poor Hexen 2.

So, while I would have liked to release this as a Hexen 2 map, technically it’s just too complex for that game. But in every disaster, there’s a gleam of hope, or something like that…

Say hello to another Scout’s Journey level — number six in the lineup.

Hexen 2 map

I decided to collect the Hexen 2 screenshots in a new post; I’ve had a bit of innocent fun making this level, and in the course of doing so I hacked all the compile tools. Hexen 2 mapping is a bloodbath. It’s not pretty. The tools are stone age, I have to hack the map format itself by search and replace in a text editor, and I’m breaking all sorts of compiler limits. I’m also seeing cool new error messages.

I hacked AguirRe’s light tool for the coloured lighting.

The lava crack of doom; the rocks here broke the compiler and the Vis tool. I had to jack up MAX_HULL_POINTS and MAX_MAP_PLANES. I used AguirRe’s TxQBSP as a guideline for some good values.

And it’s not over yet. Let’s see if I can finish this.

And it’s over. The short mapping session today (April 19), including this lovely little ruin, broke the BSP format limit… specifically clipnodes. Same problem as in RMQ, which led to the creation of the BSP2 format.

Unfortunately hacking the BSP2 toolchain to support Hexen 2 isn’t an option right now. All the tools hacking I had to do before I even got to this point has worn me out.

I’m considering to take it to q3bsp. The upside would be even prettier lighting and the ability to use static meshes, the downside would be having to convert all the lowres hexen 2 textures to Q3 images and no more scrolling sky.

Not sure what I’ll do about this. For now, I’m quite frustrated.

Hexen 2 Radiant

I discovered a way to use Radiant (or any other map editor that outputs standard Quake format .map files) for Hexen 2 mapping.

Despite no gamepack existing for it, you can simply convert Quake format .map files to Hexen 2 format. All you need is an advanced text editor, such as Vim.

What you need to do is to append ” -1″ to every line that starts with a “(“.

Here’s how to do it in Vim: Make a backup copy, then load your map file (vim mymap.map) and enter this command

:%s/(.*$/& -1

That’s it. Check if the stuff got appended correctly, then save the file by entering “:x”. Hexen 2 qbsp will then accept the map file; compile as normal.

I’ll turn this to a tutorial once I can get some other related stuff together.

This page has a tool to convert Valve 220 format maps (Shit Worldcraft) to Hexen 2 (and Quake), by the way.

Here’s a doodle made in Radiant, compiled with MH / AguirRe’s light tool and rendered in FTE.