[New project] - Some Kind of Hexen Mod

[Ganryu]

Yes. This is more serious than the TEMPORARY TITLE implies. I started working on this about two years ago or so, then some stuff happened and I sortof had other stuff to do that took priority. Now that I've finally finished a burst of exams, though, I feel like getting back into the modding business...

What has been done so far:
1: Storyline (not the most important thing, but hey...)
2: 20-30% mapping

Quick summary:
The mod takes place in a fantasy world much like the one in Hexen. You're a fighter/mage/cleric who gets involved against your will (sortof) in a battle between rebel forces and a man (actually more like a demon) who's basically taking over the world. Escaping from an embarassing defeat at the hands of the evil demon/man thingy's army, you hear a voice guiding you to a nearby church. Turns out there's a god who's mighty pissed that the world is being conquered by some n00b demon. Something has to be done... The problem is, the god has lost power. He has no worshippers and his shrines have been looted and fallen into ruin. Your objective, unless you want to die a slow death at the hands of the demon/man thingy, is to help this god by restoring his ancient places of worship, some of which can still be found intact. Each hub (there are three + an introductory level) has atleast one shrine, which must be restored by finding the missing artifacts of worship (sacred artifacts). Once the shrine is restored to a satisfactory level (you don't need all artifacts to complete a shrine), the god will be able to open the portal to the next location.

The game will feature a few original enemies, but most of them will be monsters from the original Hexen and Heretic (some which will have slightly edited graphics). Some of the music will also be original. Some textures will be edited (mainly the door/lock ones) but i'll try to stick to the original ones as much as possible. All bosses will be original creations.

The game has an entirely new game mechanic that involves a new inventory item. Your character is able to find traps with a sixth-sense so to speak. Once a trap has been found, it can be disarmed by using a Trap Tool item that either completely disarms the trap, or disables some of its functionality rendering it weaker.

The game also makes use of scrolls of readable text that can be found at various places in the game (these are read on the spot, they are NOT brought with you). These can provide hints and background information. Anyone who's played System Shock / Bio Shock will know the idea behind these. It allows me to insert sub storylines into the game that run paralell to player progress.

At the moment i only have old screenshots for display and these were taken when the mod was still being made for Doomsday (and when i had no ambition to really create original monsters and items). I also have one pic of a WIP monster.

Original Monster Sprite (Work-in-progress)

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Screenshots:

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My current mapping progress:
The main outline for each hub is pretty much done, and i have gotten quite far on the central level of each. I haven't even started working on many of the sub maps, however. Right now the hubs are as follows:

Pre Hub Level: The church, this is where the game starts
Hub 1 - The Outlands: This hub is centered around a wasteland(ish) area with a guard house in the center.
Hub 2 - The Great Capital: This hub is a city hub with the main hub level representing a segment of the city street area, while the sub levels are various buildings or districts (the docks, the library etc. etc)
Hub 3 - The Spellforge: This is where the big bad resides. The sub levels aren't actually part of the level. They're alternative planes of reality which you can reach through portals. These are atm: Carceri, Pandemonium and Beastlands (recognize THOSE from anywhere? >_>)

If anyone is interested in working with me on this mod, I wouldn't mind the help of a mapper or two. You'll get quite free reigns

[Shadelight]

Looks awesome, we could use more Hexen or Heretic stuff. =D

[Maelstrom]

Looks really good except from misaligned textures but apart from that, nice job

[Nash]

I love how Doomsday adds shadows to your map automatically.

Too bad your map will not look as good as your screenshots when you port them into GZDoom. sigh...

[Vegeta(dw)]

Looks good. I like the clothes of the new monsters, still the head looks odd for me.

[Ganryu]

Looks awesome, we could use more Hexen or Heretic stuff. =D

I'm a great fan of both Heretic and Hexen so yeah i agree :3

I love how Doomsday adds shadows to your map automatically.

Too bad your map will not look as good as your screenshots when you port them into GZDoom. sigh...

The only shadows added in Doomsday are those around the edges of objects, all the other shadows have been added by me, like these:

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Looks really good except from misaligned textures but apart from that, nice job

Thanks. Yeah the misaligned textures look horrible. I'm going to fix them, though.

Looks good. I like the clothes of the new monsters, still the head looks odd for me.

Thanks. The head design was inspired from a comic called Bleach.
Look at the second guy from the right in the top row:

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[Nash]

Yes, I do realize that. My point, however, was that those ambient shadows add a subtle photorealism to the map which sector shadowing can never give you. Good luck trying to use sectors to create smooth subtle gradients. Yes I know it is very much possible, but the shadow resolution would be limited to 1 map pixel unit, and managing your map would be hell with a bazillion sectors.

Also, what I was saying in my previous post was that, once you start porting over your map into GZDoom, you'll notice your map's lighting would look more boring.

I have sort of faked it in one of my mods, however the price is high (in terms of WAD size) - every edge is a different texture with the shadows drawn into them in Photoshop. I wish GZDoom supported such a feature.

[Ganryu]

Oh yes. I admit it does look really nice. Hopefully something similar is added to GZDoom

[Skippy]

Radiosity effects in GZDoom have been requested before but quietly swept under the carpet (as demonstrated here). I agree it would be an awesome addition. Now that the code for glowing textures has been improved and added, maybe this will get looked at again - another Feature Suggestion over at DRD wouldn't hurt.

On-topic: with or without the Doomsday eye candy, this looks fantastic. We certainly are in dire need of HeXen mods, and the 'trap mechanics' sound very interesting indeed. Good luck!

[Kate]

If you have a good idea of how radiosity works (in the essense of "light staining", think of a large number of balls bouncing around in an enclosed room with no gravity and leaving light on whatever walls they hit, which is in reality how light actually works) it would be rather simple to recreate with large, wide-area dynamic lights to cover "well-exposed" areas that are in direct paths of lights, where the most beams would strike - the lack of lighting in ends of the room where light would have a hard time reaching would create a naturally realistic shadowing. It wouldn't be anywhere near perfect but should be good enough to get a good look out of an otherwise flat-lit room.

TL;DR version: Try placing dynamic lights around walls or at the center of rooms with very large radii.

[ShadesMaster]

Looks pretty neat! I also like the premise too. It would be REALLY neat if we could combine my mod with this one, that would mean alot of levels. The storylines could even go together, too - my sorcerer demon guy put the world into a frozen wasteland and is raising dead as his METHOD of taking over. PM me if interested.

[CaptainToenail]

I'm beginning to think that combining lots of ongoing Hexen mods into one could be a really interesting idea if done properly.

I also want that JDoom shadow thing, it looks great

[Ganryu]

I'm beginning to think that combining lots of ongoing Hexen mods into one could be a really interesting idea if done properly.

I also want that JDoom shadow thing, it looks great

Interesting idea :O

Looks pretty neat! I also like the premise too. It would be REALLY neat if we could combine my mod with this one, that would mean alot of levels. The storylines could even go together, too - my sorcerer demon guy put the world into a frozen wasteland and is raising dead as his METHOD of taking over. PM me if interested.

Hmmm... Actually that's an interesting proposal. I'll drop you a pm.

Radiosity effects in GZDoom have been requested before but quietly swept under the carpet (as demonstrated here). I agree it would be an awesome addition. Now that the code for glowing textures has been improved and added, maybe this will get looked at again - another Feature Suggestion over at DRD wouldn't hurt.

On-topic: with or without the Doomsday eye candy, this looks fantastic. We certainly are in dire need of HeXen mods, and the 'trap mechanics' sound very interesting indeed. Good luck!

Thanks

I'm going to attempt to get a small test map up in a week or so. I just need to fix some of the voice acting first. The Voice of God :

[ShadesMaster]

What's your E-Mail? I PM-ed u earlier; I need it to send u my WAD file so we can combine it all into one resource, if you're still interested! It's too big to send VIA PM. At least I know we're both aiming for a GZdoom add-on.