Was there ever an attempt to create a hubless Hexen?

[doomlayman]

Was there ever an attempt to create a hubless Hexen?

 

I personally don't like the hub leveling style of Hexen and I am more of a fan of "Heretic".

 

Although, I do like the concept art of Hexen more than that of Heretic and would want to play a Hexen "hubless substitute" if there is one.

 

Shall we say, a "Simplified Hexen" which is easy to mod.

 

Please recommend any project you find fit.

Edited March 13, 2023 by doomlayman

[HeatedChocolate]

^{Finally, a thread where I can use my expertise!}
A hubless Hexen feels... wrong admittedly. Much of the game is built around the hubs and, yes they're annoying and can be an absolute bastard to navigate (See: Seven Portals specifically), but the keys, the items, it's all made for the hub system. Frankly this makes the game stand out more and helps it not be just "Heretic but with classes and darker atmosphere"
Really, I think most of the ire directed towards the hub system is because of Seven Portals, but the others are monumentally easier to navigate*
In any case, I think the only help for this is single map mods for Hexen, there was one I have had for a while now, though I've forgotten the name admittedly. If I can find it, I'll put it here.

*Ehh, not really, they're just not as obtuse

Edited March 13, 2023 by HeatedChocolate

[Fiber Wire]

I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to make full replacement of the maps that makes the game at least feel like it isn’t relying on the hub system really but I don’t think it’s been done beyond replacement maps for Map 1 since that map is stand alone. 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Fiber Wire

[boris]

Hubless Hexen would just be Hexen with 5 huge maps instead of 5 hubs.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

I really like the hexen hub system. Seven portals is a nightmare to navigate/decipher but conceptually it's really neat. Having several smaller maps stitched together in a way you can move through them, and your progress on each is remains is great. On paper. One day I'll look up a guide and get through it, I wonder what the rest of the game is like.

 

But to answer your question, two points: Editing and sharing copyrighted maps isn't exactly kosher. And the player experience would be pretty much identical.

The hub system is mainly done due to technical limitations on map size in the olden times. Today's source ports (except for chocolate-hexen) don't have that limitation, as far as I know. So you can make a giant, sprawling map with no issue without making it a hub but it'd function identically.

If you mean skipping the hubs completely, you can do that with cheats. Or, did you mean a custom hexen campaign that doesn't use hubs?

[Shepardus]

Hexen without hubs is like Symphony of the Night without the Metroidvania stuff, you'd be gutting the game of what makes it special. Unless you mean just combining the maps of each hub into one, which I guess you could do, though you'd potentially have issues like enemies continuing to path towards you while you're in another area and clumping up, and you'd have to do something about those timed monster spawning scripts. I don't see how that'd be easier to mod, anyway.

 

On a side note, I recently played Hexen (and Deathkings) for the first time and did not find it obtuse or hard to navigate at all. There's maybe one BS progression moment in the game, and it's not in Seven Portals. Seven Portals pretty clearly telegraphs where you're supposed to go, or just outright tells you. If there's a glaring flaw in the game, it's the lack of enemy variety.

[doomlayman]

I think that what I meant to is a Hexen map mod inspired by the hub campaign, but which is indeed hubless.

A recreation of the Hexen campaign, just without hubs, is a nice way to put it.

[Blzut3]

19 hours ago, HeatedChocolate said:

Really, I think most of the ire directed towards the hub system is because of Seven Portals, but the others are monumentally easier to navigate

I've always found this opinion confusing since even as a kid my brother and I regularly completed the seven portals.  Besides the switches to move the wall in the Guardian of Steel being non-obvious (playing in co-op helped here) it's more or less go to the door that opened and make your way through the map.  I don't think we ever successfully completed the Shadow Wood hub switch hunt though back in the day.  Now, having completed the game before, they're all pretty easy to get through though.

 

Given that I have seen how easy people can get lost, I kind of feel like this opinion mostly rises from people having only ever played the first hub so gets hated by default.

[Walter confetti]

There's this: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/110263-version-3-releasedalper002s-nanohexen-2019-a-project-from-nanowadmo-2019/

[Death Egg]

On 3/13/2023 at 7:51 AM, boris said:

Hubless Hexen would just be Hexen with 5 huge maps instead of 5 hubs.

Reminds me of an idea I had once of merging all strife maps into one large map. Would be easier now that GZ has portals.

[aRottenKomquat]

I don't think it's that bad on modern PC's and modern source ports. It sucked in the 90's on DOS Pentiums when it took 20 seconds to switch between levels in a hub, and I assume PCs of the day wouldn't have handled it if all the hub's maps were combined into a single map. With modern source ports, I don't think a hub system is probably necessary. You could just combine all the areas into one big map. (Perhaps barring things like sky/fog color/other stuff that might have been map-specific? idk, I haven't done Hexen mapping yet.)

 

That said, once I finish I.M.P. Act I have half a mind to do a Hexen WAD. Probably a hubless WAD that's less dependent on switch-searching and a little closer to Doom in pacing/action. But no promises.

Edited March 15, 2023 by aRottenKomquat