27th August 2025, 1:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 29th August 2025, 9:26 PM by Dark Jaguar.)
Heretic 2, and Hexen 2's expansion, as I said, are caught up in copyright issues. Id would have to resolve those first. I think at this point, all companies concerned are owned by Microsoft (ugh), but the one positive is that such matters are now resolvable, I suspect.
Not even going to try to defend Hexen 2, as there are a number of criticisms of that game as it is, but I can at least explain why Quake and Quake II didn't have an in-game map. In Doom, the game is actually 2D in the first place, so it merely needed to render the 2D levels in a standard overhead way like many 2D games already did. With Quake, they had entered new ground, true 3D with room over room and everything, so they hadn't figured out how to render a map in 3D yet. Some other games did at the time, but it wasn't until the likes of Metroid Prime that people finally figured out how to render an in-game 3D map WELL with good tools for rotating and floating through said map. Heck even Ocarina of Time had a very awkward time mapping that 3D dungeon design to an awkward 2D "floor plan". Fortunately, Id uses a similar Metroid Prime style mapping system in their newest Doom games, so all's well.
Still, I'd have loved to see Nightdive retrofit a proper map display into Quake and Quake II for their remasters. Quake II in particular would really benefit from one, with it's large interconnected backtracking level design with hubs and all.
It's funny that Build engine games even were capable of maps, but then again thinking back on it, you could never "zoom out" in those in-game maps, and that makes sense with how Build games are rendered, COMPLETELY relationally. There isn't an overarching 2D map, every single sector is built and defined by how it connects to other sectors. This means you can make non-Euclidean maps and fake "room over room" illusions, but it also means you can't really render an in-game FULL map, just an overhead that shows the relationally connected areas to your specific area.
Not even going to try to defend Hexen 2, as there are a number of criticisms of that game as it is, but I can at least explain why Quake and Quake II didn't have an in-game map. In Doom, the game is actually 2D in the first place, so it merely needed to render the 2D levels in a standard overhead way like many 2D games already did. With Quake, they had entered new ground, true 3D with room over room and everything, so they hadn't figured out how to render a map in 3D yet. Some other games did at the time, but it wasn't until the likes of Metroid Prime that people finally figured out how to render an in-game 3D map WELL with good tools for rotating and floating through said map. Heck even Ocarina of Time had a very awkward time mapping that 3D dungeon design to an awkward 2D "floor plan". Fortunately, Id uses a similar Metroid Prime style mapping system in their newest Doom games, so all's well.
Still, I'd have loved to see Nightdive retrofit a proper map display into Quake and Quake II for their remasters. Quake II in particular would really benefit from one, with it's large interconnected backtracking level design with hubs and all.
It's funny that Build engine games even were capable of maps, but then again thinking back on it, you could never "zoom out" in those in-game maps, and that makes sense with how Build games are rendered, COMPLETELY relationally. There isn't an overarching 2D map, every single sector is built and defined by how it connects to other sectors. This means you can make non-Euclidean maps and fake "room over room" illusions, but it also means you can't really render an in-game FULL map, just an overhead that shows the relationally connected areas to your specific area.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)