Hubs

Does Eternity support hubs? I swear I remember reading that it does somewhere, but there's no info on the wiki. I'm contemplating reviving an old ZDoom project of mine, and porting it to Eternity should be possible as long as I can make use of hubs.

SMMU added hubs, but that code had issues. Eternity removed it for stability reasons.

Judging from code comments, it hasn't been reimplemented yet:

p_hubs.cpp said:

// By Popular demand :)
// Hubs.
//
// Hubs are where there is more than one level, and links between them:
// you can freely travel between all the levels in a hub and when you
// return, the level should be exactly as it previously was.
// As in Quake2/Half life/Hexen etc.
//
// By Simon Howard
//
// haleyjd:
// This code is not currently accessible and needs a complete ground-up
// rewrite so that it works properly, taking a cue from Hexen on the
// storage and indexing of hub save files, level transfers, and the
// proper handling of scripts.

Well, that sucks. Was hoping to give Eternity some much-needed attention, but I'll settle on remaining ZDoom exclusive for now.

Dragonsbrethren said:

Well, that sucks. Was hoping to give Eternity some much-needed attention, but I'll settle on remaining ZDoom exclusive for now.

Do you need to make huge maps that require division?

For this project, yes. Exploration and backtracking to previous areas with new abilities are core concepts of the mod. I suppose I could do it without hubs, but it'd be a much cheaper experience, since your previous actions wouldn't have any affect when you return to previous areas and you couldn't return to them at will.

Hubs are on the short-term TODO list. Probably won't be in fast enough for this project though, sorry :/

Maybe you can try linked portals? Same as with hub level changers, they can be placed in enemy-free rooms, so any problems about portals not being complete regarding monster behaviour can be avoided.

Or is the resulting compound map too large for the binary map format to handle?

I was giving this some thought last night, and I'm not sure I actually need hubs. printz's idea is one thing I considered (one huge map), but even with separate maps I can probably just track vital things (boss deaths, powerups collected passageways that have been opened, etc.) via global ACS, disable intermissions, and the player would really be none the wiser. I want most things (including health and ammo) to respawn when traveling between maps to keep things interesting anyway.

Another feature question: Is it currently possible to boost the player's maximum health via a powerup or script? Soulspheres in the ZDoom version of this mod inherit from Strife's stamina upgrade and permanently boost your max health by 100%. The player reference article hasn't been written on the wiki yet, so I'm not sure if I have any sort of control over health in Eternity.

Edit: Not seeing anything related to health or changing TIDs in the vanilla ACS documentation, so I guess I'm screwed. One roadblock after another. Looks like it's back to ZDoom for now; I'll try my hardest to avoid too many ZDoomisms so it can hopefully be ported eventually.