EDuke32 hub maps

[TerminX]

Major new mod feature coming soon... how do you all feel about hub maps?

[XTHX2]

WOW! You mean like , HeXen right? Just what I was in need of1!1!! Perfect addition for my TC! If you succeed, I'll make a damn poster of your profile picture and put it at my wall!!!! (The question is, ?)

[TerminX]

Yes, like Hexen (or ZDoom). I finished the first version of the system a couple of weeks ago. I am looking for experienced CON coders to test the system out and give feedback on what needs to be improved before a public release.

[XTHX2]

That's something that I may not help, however, I may still check it if you want

Oh, and, will it save anything in the map? Like actor situations(health), walls, sectors, bloods etc. (It would need a ton of variables probably...)

[TerminX]

It saves all sprites/walls/sectors/gamevars/et cetera. That's the whole point!

[XTHX2]

I'm kinda shocked, sorry lol...

Is it using a sector tag or a SE tag? (Curious already )

[TerminX]

CON commands.

[The Commander]

Thank you TX this will be very helpfull in my upcoming Mod.
Although I havent really offical anounced anything about this one. But its not hard to guess what it is. lol

[Radar1013]

Grand Theft Auto?

[Geoffrey]

Originally Posted by TerminX

Major new mod feature coming soon... how do you all feel about hub maps?

it feels good

[Usurper]

Thought there'd be a little more noise over this feature. It's been on the request list since the late 90s. If you linked three maps, well, that's like tripling the sector limit. Also gets around the one-per-map limitations on subway cars and the like.

[TerminX]

Originally Posted by Usurper

Thought there'd be a little more noise over this feature. It's been on the request list since the late 90s. If you linked three maps, well, that's like tripling the sector limit. Also gets around the one-per-map limitations on subway cars and the like.

Indeed. Where's all the hubbub? I demand hubbub!

[Mr. Pink]

Totally Awesome.

This also may be useful for drop-in network code as TX has said privately.

The feature is great. But mappers will need to be smarter if they want it to work. It needs *PLANNING* (oh, did I just say a difficult word? )

[johndough]

Originally Posted by The Commander

Thank you TX this will be very helpfull in my upcoming Mod.
Although I havent really offical anounced anything about this one. But its not hard to guess what it is. lol

Those screenshots look like GTA.
Since somebody apparently DELETED my post, I'll say it again, I want to see Duke walk down the street punching people while burping and farting, which HAPPENS IN GTA2.
So if your mod can do this, it will be sweet.

[Superczar]

Wow TX, thats pretty f***in cool to have that, nice job man!

[Lord Misfit]

Yeah, I knew this was coming for a while[TerminX contacted me out of the blue one morning a couple weeks ago about it], and I'm glad it will finally be doable. When I can get back to working on NR, it will help a lot for a couple of the levels. XD

Also, I'm pretty sure I was the one[or one of the ones] to make that feature request all the way back in the 90s when Matt was still in charge of the original EDuke. I know I didn't use my current username for it back then and forget what username I did use. :P

[DeeperThought]

It seems that TerminX doesn't want to release the next version of EDuke32 until this new feature has been tested, and I want that next version released, so... I've been talking with a mapper, and if we both get time to work on it this weekend, maybe we can have something useful pretty soon.

Of course, it's easy enough to do simple tests using the new commands (and I'm sure TerminX has done that already), but what is needed is a system that mappers can use. The idea will be to have several maps that are connected via tagged sectors, so that when a player enters one of the tagged sectors it moves him to the correct position in the connected map. So we won't be doing a hub, but more like a HL thing.

I haven't used the commands at all yet, but I can anticipate some complications. For example, if you load a saved map state, you wouldn't want it to load the state the player was in at the time he left it last, since his weapons and inventory have changed since then. But it might be a good idea to have it remember which keys he had in that map. Another issue: Presumably, the saved state does include the player's coordinates, but if you are coming back to the map in a different place, then the player must be moved, and the new coordinates have to exist somewhere (perhaps in a sprite in a sector of the map you just left).

The goal is to release a mini-mod that has a map caching feature and nothing else. People can then use the code in their mods if they want.

[The Commander]

Originally Posted by Radar1013

Duke Theft Auto?

Fixed,

Originally Posted by johndough

Those screenshots look like GTA.
Since somebody apparently DELETED my post, I'll say it again, I want to see Duke walk down the street punching people while burping and farting, which HAPPENS IN GTA2.
So if your mod can do this, it will be sweet.

I might release a video of just that very soon.

[XTHX2]

Hmmm, I got a question. Would it save user-made actors or would we need to add them in? (Also, user made variables for checking player items.) I think we would need to add, if so, can you point where we would need to add them in your code, TerminX?

[Quakis]

Dream come true. I'll be making use of this in Symphony of Orekia! Cheers for working on this feature TerminX.

[Dimebog]

This is definitely something eDuke32 had to have. Congrats and thanks.

[XTHX2]

Hmm, sorry for bombarding you with my questions, but will there be any limit for number of hub maps?

The whole point is to be able to join as many maps as you wish, right?

[Mr. Pink]

always will have limits of some type

[DeeperThought]

Originally Posted by XTHX2

Hmm, sorry for bombarding you with my questions, but will there be any limit for number of hub maps?

There is a limit of 32 maps per episode, hubs or no hubs.

[Steve]

This sounds awesome

So the maps would only go for the episode? that sucks. I would wish it checked the maps on the Duke folder instead, with no limit.

[Sang]

Pretty cool.




PRETTY AWESOME

[DeeperThought]

Originally Posted by timothy2

So the maps would only go for the episode? that sucks.

No it doesn't.

I have a working prototype, by the way.

[The Commander]

Originally Posted by DeeperThought

No it doesn't.

I have a working prototype, by the way.

I must have,

[engineer]

Will there be an "Assault on Tei Tenga"-esque demo map?

[DeeperThought]

Originally Posted by engineer

Will there be an "Assault on Tei Tenga"-esque demo map?

I'm not familiar with how map caching has been used in ZDoom. I have CON code that can be used both for the old-fashioned style hub maps, like in Hexen, or for HL style where you can walk from one map to another at various entry points. So far the demo maps just show the effect and have no gameplay.

[XTHX2]

Well, doing it the HeXen style shouldn't be as hard as to do HL style, right?

Zdoom does it the HL way, however it takes a few seconds to load the new data and store the old data, I don't really know how that works.

[Daedolon]

Whenever I get back to my mods, I'll be definately using this feature, alot.

[XTHX2]

^ Yeah, same here, but for me, it is when the new Eduke32 is released

[DeeperThought]

About six months ago (shortly after this thread was started) I made a mod which implements the EDuke32 map caching feature. I didn't release it until now because it didn't seem very urgent. Well, it still doesn't, but last night I felt like putting some finishing touches on it and now I'm releasing it.

Using this little mod, you can make maps that connect to each other like in the Half Life series, or you can make an old-school style hub system like in Hexen. Just extract the attached stuff and drop it into your EDuke32 directory. The only thing it really needs to make it work is the EDUKE.CON, but it also includes some simple test maps and the documentation. The effect is simple to make in mapster and only requires using some SE's with special tags. This mod is intended for mappers and modders; casual players will find nothing of interest here, since the included maps (by Gambini) have no gameplay.

This is not part of Duke Plus, it is a standalone mod. It can pretty easily be integrated into other mods, though. Modders are welcome to do so providing that they give credit.

hubmaps.zip

[Sang]

If the bug is that it froze the game upon entering hub map 4 then great

[DeeperThought]

Originally Posted by Sang

If the bug is that it froze the game upon entering hub map 4 then great

Yeah I just fixed that, download again. It was a very strange bug (it claimed there was another SE in the map with a different sprite number, but this other SE allegedly had a sectnum of 4096 -- but I checked the map and it wasn't there. So I changed the code around and now it works).

EDIT: Now that I think about it, it must have been finding a deleted SE from the previous map, so my fix will need one more little update.

[Sang]

Well that worked. Pretty cool. I guess it would be pretty silly to post criticism because it's a prototype (I guess) but I suppose it can't hurt: Map changes are a bit abrupt.. and when you destroy a sprite in one map, it'll still show up in the next. Obvious issues but hey

Still it'll prove handy in the future.