I've been thinking about something... what if I would rebuild the city in a different way so that you couldn't enter any of the houses directly as now, but you would only push the doors and you'd be teleported into the inside of the house (there's a way in Hexen to teleport you w/o the sound and the sparks). This way, rendering performance should go up and there'd be more freedom in building both the insides and the outsides of buildings. OTOH you'd lose things like the magnificient view from the inn's windows, for example, or you couldn't walk along a street and see people sitting at tables eating and more people in the inside of the same building at still more tables eating... ...as I've been typing this, I like the idea less and less... indeed, I was tempted to delete it, but I just wanted to give it off my chest, and also to be reinforced in either direction by other people. What I am pondering about now, something I not yet told you, I'm thinking about a 4th game with the Korax engine, a coop oriented RPG, where such simpler houses should be better suited for a faster flow of online gameplay. Also, such a system would allow to build dozens of villages and towns with a lot less affort than building a single mid-sized town with the current system. I think a coop RPG with a world in the style of "Betrayal in Antara" would be something entirely different and interesting. In such a game, when pushing the door of a house, you sometimes get inside into a new level but most of the time just get a dialogue box, which makes it a lot easier to create a large and extensive world. This 4th game would be also a good opportunity to satisfy some demands I don't want to satisfy in Korax' Heritage. Some of them: - not just one town but dozens or even more - multiplayer RPG - intervowen with Heretic (and maybe other Serpent Riders games as well), like importing all Heretic monsters and using them together with the Hexen monsters to create an extensive bestiary. Something I simply don't want to do in Korax' Heritage (which should feature a 100% authentic Hexen world).

Weeeeeeeell... that silent teleporter tactic isn't that bad an idea. I've seen it been used different places and it seems to work efficiently. But personally I think we should only do that if we really *need* to, because it's very hard to make it seamless and feel like you didn't teleport at all. And of course what you just said, you can't look inside of buildings and stuff which is a big letdown. About the multiplayer RPG idea... well, it sound insanely amibitious. I've seen you've mentioned Betrayal at Antara quite a few times, I don't know much about the game, I played the demo for about ten minutes 4 years or so ago, and I threw it away forever afterwards because I expected a true sequel to Betrayal at Krondor (which is definately one of my favourite rpgs of all times, a pure masterpiece). Now then if Antara is actually anything like Krondor then it's kind of hard to compare. The game is a very storyline driven game, where interaction is the major part, and combat is just a tiny part. So making Hexen more like that would be... well, kind of impossible. At least through my eyes. The idea would definately mean rewriting a lot of the current engine. Hexen just isn't suited for a big world, especially not outdoors (sadly). -Remi

I really like the idea about the co-op RPG. I think with some of the ideas you have for the engine like seamless horizens and such, a large world is a defiant reality (hopefully [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] )

The silent teleport is already used in the town map at several places, like when you go through a corridor below which there is another corridor (in the inn and in the library). I've the weird feeling none of you could get the town map to run yet, am I right? [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] Betrayal in Antara is NOT a strongly story-driven RPG... maybe that's why its replayability is this high (I played it maybe half a dozen times fully through and a couple of times a part of it). Actually, you can play for 90% of the time by just forgetting there is a story and simply enjoying the wandering around in a whole world with dozens of towns, hundreds of combats, thousands of items to collect and sell/buy and hundreds of people to interact with... I've been thinking about creating such an RPG for years, where you don't have to follow a story you maybe don't like from the beginning but just can immerse into a fantasy world. Combat is a very important part of Betrayal in Antara, and the combat mode is well crafted as after thousands of battles I still don't find it unbearable, unlike the "real time first person" fighting mode of some dungeon RPGs like the Eye of the Beholder series (or to mention something from Raven, Black Crypt). By simply clicking a weapon icon under the character portrait and waiting until it's not greyed out so you can click it again is just plain stupid and boring... Antara is one of the few RPGs I played (others are the Black Eye series from Germany) where you walk around in 1st person 3D (I simply need that to be able to enjoy an RPG), but for combats you switch into an isometric view where you move your characters on hexagons or squares in a round-based, strategic kind of combat system. Indeed, I'd like to create an RPG engine where you wander around in splendid 3D environment (it should be a voxel engine rather than polygons) which includes only important landmarks but makes it easy to create a whole world and still has a good feeling, with a separate hexagon round-based 2D combat system. If it would ever be done it'd be a free RPG engine so that it'd need only 2 people to create a very enjoyable classic-style RPG: a DM with good ideas for a whole world and creatures and stuff, and a talented 2D artist to draw all the special new graphics. It just came to my mind yesterday that why not create such a kind of game with the Korax engine as well, this time for multiplayer? I said cooperative in the previous posting but I meant a mode that's neither cooperative nor deathmatch or anything, it's just that people on the same server can team up and go together to loot Skullcap Mountain or whatever - but nobody hinders them to cut each other's throat while the other is sleeping at the campfire... [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] (You should ask Camper what my favorite multiplayer mode is, he has been pissed off many times that when we play cooperative I always seek to cheat him and stab him in the back, be it 3D shooter or real-time strategy [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]) <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

The idea would definately mean rewriting a lot of the current engine. Hexen just isn't suited for a big world, especially not outdoors (sadly).

I'm not so sure about it. Exactly this old stupid DOOM engine can handle some stuff none of the new shiny superb 3D engines can do... by increasing the visplanes and some other values (ask Camper what exactly), we could already create great open rooms where you had to run with SHIFT in real time for a minute or 2 to reach the other side. You can forget all 3 Quake engines at once and even the Unreal/UT engine would have some probs with it... and it's even more true for heights and depths which the DOOM engine doesn't really render at all.