Research into The Structure of a Hexen Map/Hub

[DoomerCheems II]

Research into The Structure of a Hexen Map/Hub

Hemlo everyone, I am Cheems and I have been making a Hexen map but for some reason I am never satisfied with the map. I ended up restarting it so much to the point that I decided to take it slowly and really understand how a Hexen wad is supposed to be. The problem I encounter is that it doesn't feel like Hexen -- the original or DeathKings-- and I want to be able to understand the map's iconic features to better known how to make a map/hub system that has the same feel of the original. It's important to note that I do not want help with the editing process, as I am well aware of how to do basic things like: draw sectors, make one map in a hub interact with another or import assets. I am talking about the philosophy behind a Hexen map you could say. The issue I run into when making a map is that it feels like it has no direction. I know a Hexen map is supposed to make you feel a little lost but my map feels vacuous, like there's not alot going on. It also feels repetitive since I end up reusing the same puzzles. I want to be able to make a map that is: cryptic, atmospheric, puzzling and still fun.

Here's what I tried:
1. I believed that a map was like an organism. I made a map thinking that the map is a body and the player is a foreign body. The body reacts violently and tried to block/ kill the foreign body before it gets to the important part of it (the exit) and so I made a map that tried to respond to the player's every move, almost as though it was alive. However, the map ended up feeling to much like an obstacle course than a Hexen map. This approach was to unspecific for me.
2. I also tried to view a Hexen was as an arrangements of puzzles that the player keeps solving until he reaches the exit. I ended up creating a map that was boring since you just solved puzzles. After playing Hexen and recording the puzzles I encountered, there was still a lot of other eye catching features of the game that I excluded from my approach. There were still the traps and mind boggling lay outs and this feel of crypticness that eluded me. This approach was too insular for me.

Here's what I am trying now:
I have decided to break Hexen down into its simplest meaningful bits and study how those parts interact with each other and by extension what is permissible in a map. Think of it like studying a sentence by breaking it down into clauses and then into words to understand what's happening in it. I have decided that in the same way that a sentence can have an underlying structure that is not only applicable to it but other sentences, there is also an underlying structure to how a Hexen map can be structured. In a map or series of maps, it could be possible to find recurring structures that give a sense of familiarity and direction and those structures can allow for many variables to work within them.

For example in the sentence "The boy played Doom on his computer." there is a structure that comprises of a fixed set of parts in a particular order. This is the Subject Verb Object order that we know in Standard English where the Subject is a noun, the verb is a word that denotes action of a kind for the subject to perform and the object is denoting what is being acted on. From this same structure, an infinite amount of sentences can emerge such as: "The girl played Heretic on her computer." or "The Cacodaemon played Hexen on Doomguy's Gamecube."

In the same way, I want to see if there is a recurring structure within Hexen that can be used as a template to create many Hexen wads. Let me give you a bit of what I am doing by showing you the following 3 events that you can encounter in a Hexen wad.

1. The player activates a door which causes it to open up the way to a new room.
2. The player pulls a switch which causes a door to open up the way to a new room.
3. The player pushes a grey circular button to cause stairs to rise so that he can enter a new area.

The structure of these events in a Hexen are the same even though you might not notice them when you play. In all 3 events above, the player is performing the action of activating something that causes a type of behaviour from the map which results in the ability to progress further in the level. The structure can be represented as: Player + Activates+ Asset + Access to New Area. I have broken the action down into the performer of the action, the action itself, the object being acted on and the subsequent result. I plan on finding more underlying structures like this -- or functions of a map you could say-- and finding out if these structures occur in a particular order. This will give players more direction when making a Hexen map since they will just have to focus on the unique details such as what door to use or how the are will open up as opposed to what what to do to allow the player to progress in a map.

I am currently working on a document with my findings. I want to show you all my results and insights that I have gleamed. It is with that being said that I would like to hear your thoughts on this endeavour of mine. I would also like to hear any questions you have about what I am doing as it could help me understand my research more.

Thamks for checking out my lengthy explanation!

[Average Raven Fan]

Hexen's level design isn't that complicated once you get past Raven's burning hatred of telling the player what's going on. The vanilla maps themselves (and also most user maps) are fundamentally a series of lock-and-key progression blocks not unlike finding the red key in Doom and going out to open the red door. The only things that change is that sometimes the items aren't keys, and often the door isn't in the same level.

A Hexen map isn't supposed to make you feel lost, the vanilla set just had some extraordinarily poor design choices on a select few maps that have become a meme associated with the game. You can see they tried - and were for the most part successful! - to fix it with Deathkings. This doesn't excuse any of DD's other war crimes, mind you, but it's hard to get lost in them.

I feel like actual puzzles, and not just fancy keys, should be used sparingly in Hexen levels. I'd say use them as you would a combat puzzle in regular Doom gameplay : you want like one every now and then to spice things up, because too many will make your map a completely different thing. Just instead of a slaughtermap, your Hexen map would end up looking like you accidentally downloaded a Myst fangame. Hard to gauge in the context of vanilla since I believe the only thing that's even close to a puzzle is the crusher room in Zedek's Tomb.

What I'm saying is, just follow the standard rules of good Doom level design and you're not that far off from what a good individual Hexen level actually is. For the love of Korax don't actually do the Guardian of Steel thing of giving the player a switch that tells them precisely nothing - unless it's some kind of optional secret passage, whatever's changed has to be in sight, communicated via a message or signposted so obviously even the most inept player will figure it out, and you actually see Raven get progressively better at this as you play on.

The catch, and what makes Hexen stand out, is the hub system. It's also not that complicated, it's just a means to let the player pick which challenge they'd like to tackle first. Hubs can almost always be split into three types :

The Shadow Wood style, where parts of each map are locked off and need to be opened from other maps. This is the one most commonly associated with Hexen style gameplay, and it's easy enough to just think of it as picking up the Blue Key on the Blue Map so you can open the Blue Door on the Yellow and Red maps, and then repeating until you've picked up all keys and explored all paths and you can leave the hub. Maps often interact with each other, but not with the hub.

The Necropolis style, where you have a central puzzle and you head from the hub into each map to solve a part of it, which would be like having a door that requires all three keys and having to finish the Blue, Red and Yellow maps to pick up all keys and end the episode. Levels are usually self-contained other than their interactions with the hub.

The Castle of Grief style, which isn't actually a hub and is just a series of linear events with minor choices allowed, though any attempts to fully deviate from the intended path will lead to a dead end. You can enter the Yellow and Red maps from the start, but until you tackle the Blue map you can't progress in any of them, and you can't progress much further in the Red map anyway before you finish Yellow.

Any attempts to make something different will likely end up with a hub that's just an overcomplicated version of any of these. Heresiarch's Seminary is Necropolis into Shadow Wood. Scourge of Viscerus is Shadow Wood. Vestige of Grandeur is split in two halves, one of which is just Necropolis again and the second is a massive take on Shadow Wood. Four Weeks of Pain is 20-something levels of Necropolis. Korax Must Die Again is a procedurally generated Necropolis. Serpent Resurrection's three main hubs are just Shadow Wood, Necropolis and then Castle of Grief in order.

You'd think this is limiting, but it gives Hexen a kinda "language" you can use to communicate to the player what's up. If you show them two locked doors before giving them a key that doesn't fit any of them, they're likely to go "oh, okay, so I need to head over to another map and find another key and also a locked door for this one I just picked up". If you show them four gem pedestals and four portals, they're likely to assume you want them to finish each map to pick up the Heart of D'Sparil at the end of them. As long as the player knows the goal they're working towards. This is a major issue with Seven Portals and Castle of Grief, where you're likely to aimlessly wander the wastes forever because you have no clue what you're even supposed to be doing.

That's enough nerding out from the likes of me. It's more words than Hexen level design deserves. What kinds of custom WADs have you played? Or have you just played the classic eight hubs? This is the kinda thing I feel playing a lot of content gives you valuable perspective on how people design stuff, what works and what doesn't. Would also give you a wealth of interesting puzzles to steal draw inspiration from!

[DoomerCheems II]

I do agree that Hexen is a series of lock and key progressions, but in my study I want to see if there's more to it than that and, even more so, I want to know what improvements there can be to the same set of variables (locks and keys) while still creating something that is recognizably Hexen.
Fancy keys and puzzles are what I am interested in. I want to be able to see if there are any nuances in how they can operate and I also want to see how the different puzzle items, as they are categorized in UDB, can be used to their full potential. I want to know if a planet "puzzle" can give the map maker a different set of opportunities in map design than a pedestal of D'Sparil "puzzle", At this point these seem like lofty goals but I am interested in seeing if I can give even a little insight into the game for people to benefit from, such as myself.

I have played non official Hexen WADs such as Shadows of Chronos, Scourge of Viscerus and Caldera and they are quite ambitious, well structured from an enjoyment perspective and fun. I want to take Hexen map making and make it more of a consistent process rather than an artistic approach where people borrow from WADs that they like. I would like to create a method behind the mapping that is based on principles so that creativity can be directed towards the variety of the ideas in a map rather than the layout.

Now your classification of hubs into three types is something like what I want to do! I also want to come up with a means of classifying structures of hubs, and even a single map, so that I can be able to see how one is to go about making a different type of map. I also agree with your observation of the Heresiarch's Seminary that it transitions into another structure. It feels like a small hub and a medium sized hub joined together. Your classification is worth thinking about later on. Right now, I want to start small and build up my ideas into a cohesive form so that I can be able to analyze small bit of the map. In the same way that a sentence can be broken down into clauses and those clauses can be broken down into words and those words can be broken down into their roots and affixes, I want to be able to break down a map into basic components that hold meaning to players and study their relations to each other and to the whole of the map/hub.

Thamks for the feemdback. I hope this post gets more attention since people can give me stuff to look into like you did.

[Kappes Buur]

There aren't many maps done with hubs, however
I can recommend to check out Rex's phobos-g for DOOM/U as a prime example.

It was done in 2011, so the clusters are set up in the old format.
Nevertheless, it works well even today.

[DoomerCheems II]

There aren't many maps done with hubs, however
I can recommend to check out Rex's phobos-g for DOOM/U as a prime example.

It was done in 2011, so the clusters are set up in the old format.
Nevertheless, it works well even today.

I was looking at Hexen wads as they usually have hub systems, but Phobos-g is something to check out. I haven’t seen a doom hub before so this would be interesting.

[Kappes Buur]

Sorry for updating, but I think it is worthwhile to checking it out:
I should have also mentioned Rex's later map set Paranoid (MAP01 to MAP08) and the extension Paranoic (MAP10 to MAP23), which are for GZDoom: Doom2 (Hexen format).

Note:
If you want to download these files then use the Virginia server.

[DoomerCheems II]

Completion of Work Thus Far (07/06/2025)

After working at this for quite some time I have managed to complete a chunk to the work and it is here:
https://we.tl/t-rpnsu3PFnBgkHXcJ

I will summarise my new findings here:
1. Hexen WADS consist of a series of events with fixed orders and constants. Hexen WADS look like they follow a pattern in terms of how the player is supposed to play the game.
2. These events have a fixed number of components to them but most of those components are variables. This means these variables can be swapped out for other things, most of the time. E.g: An event is: "The player opens a door which grants access to a new area". This consists of 4 variables: The actor (The player), the action (opening), the object being acted on/ activated (door), the result (access to a new area). The variables can change, except for the player, so we can change the act of opening with a switch that opens a door and now we have roughly the same event happening.
3. Even though these events consist of variables there are a special events that consist of a specific sequence of variables. These are called functions and every event can be grouped into a function
4. There are a good few functions that I have noticed thus far and I am seeing a pattern emerging. When a player plays a map, he does the same things in a particular order, with some variation depending on the situation.
5. There are events that provide progress to the player and some that impede his/her progress. There are moments in a map when the player transitions back and forth between the progressive and regressive events. These are called "Moves". Moves can be complicated because alot of things can happen in-between a player getting into danger and then trying to get away from the danger.
6.In addition to just copying a map for its events with different textures and enemies, the mapper can also add in their own bits of functions in between what is already there from a pre-existing map. You can look at two events and put a set of events in between them. E.g: You wrote down event 1(moving towards a door) and event 2 (opening the door) in a map. You decide to fit some more events in between such as: looking for a switch to open the barrier blocking the door(1.1) or fighting monsters that guard the door(1.2) or finding the switch to raise the door barrier(1.3). They are middle events that separate those pre-existing events. We can then create a new chain of events which is 1>1.1>1.2>1.3>2. This means that the player now has to fight and find a way to lower the door's barrier before he can open it, instead of the player originally just walking up to a door and opening it. This act of fitting intermidiary events in between to notable events is called "Syncopation".
7. An event in a map can also be remade into 3 events. This means that instead of doing 1 action to accomplish one thing you can instead to 3 to accomplish the same thing. E.g: instead of pressing a switch to open a door, let the player find and press 3 switches to open that same door. This act of splitting what can be accomplished in one act into 3 is called "Multiplication".

Okay, that's it for now. I hope you read my document and give me feedback and questions about my work.
Also feel free to check out my WAD where I put my research into practice here: viewtopic.php?t=81527