Eternal X 1.2

Discuss and unveil current Marathon projects.
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

I’ve gotten a reasonable number of levels vidded from 1.2 final.

#02 Deja Vu All Over Again (fists only)
#07 Roots and Radicals (fists only)
#08 The Tangent Universe
#10 Heart of Fusion (fists only)
#16 Killing the Giants as They Sleep (staff only)
#18 The Living Receiver
#26 Eat S’pht and Die
#27 Second to Last of the Mohicans (staff only)
#28 The Manipulated Dead
#29 Third Rock from Lh’owon (staff only)
#30 Flight of Icarus (fists only)
#33 The Incredible Hulk
#34 Babylon X
#38 The Ensurance Trap
#45 Deep Into the Grotto (“success branch” exit, secret route)
#48 The Philosophy of Time Travel

Let me know if any of these freeze up – I think there were some encoding issues.

Wall of text incoming regarding the official release:
  • I very much like the snow in the chapter 4 levels and the ashes in “Eat S’pht and Die”.
  • I really like the ability to wander around the outside of the Marathon, should the player choose, at the start of “Déjà Vu All Over Again”. I’d almost like it expanded even more for 1.3, where the player can explore every exterior region before teleporting in. There are several areas that are unconnected to the starting point that could be connected by similar bridges to the one the player can wander underneath already. Granted, the player would only have so much oxygen, but still.
  • The new path through “Deep Into the Grotto” is actually a lot less time-consuming than I’d have made it, but it still suffices in making it much less of a gimme. Too bad for players who’ll have run out of AR ammo, but at least they can still explore the area after the Pfhor come in, so it’s not really a case of Guide Dang It. (And really, why would you be using AR ammo in chapter five before that point?) I also like that the area has much higher ceilings than I’d used, I think, although it does raise a bit of fridge logic with why the area wouldn’t be visible from the start point – but it’s a secret, so it’s easy to write that off. (And “S’pht’ia” has the same problem in some parts, which can be written off due to limitations of the engine.) Now that I’m thinking about it, I might overhaul the area a bit more for 1.3 by adding some water, in the style of the other secret I added to the level.
  • The new failure dreams are also good. Subtle changes that completely overhaul the routes. It’ll take me awhile to get them memorised. I now wonder if it’s possible to do something for the success dreams to make them more distinct from one another without making them annoying.
  • I didn’t know enemies would explode from Jjaro weapons. I understand, am completely OK with, and could even learn to like the wave motion cannon blowing up enemies, since it’s basically the game’s equivalent of the rocket launcher and in essence a weapon of last resort.

    However, my honest reaction to having the gravitronic blades blow up enemies is similar to the Doctor’s on redecoration, and I’m leaning towards hoping it will be changed for 1.3. I might learn to live with having those behave like fusion and causing Hunters to explode (it short-circuits their armour, say), but even this kind of bothers me for difficulty reasons. I have additional logistical objections to having them blow up Fighters and Enforcers, though: it just looks weird. I see no logical reason why what essentially looks like a lightsaber should explode those enemies and destroy their weapons. Even if a story explanation has been concocted for it, it simply feels counterintuitive.

    The exploding Hunters also add some extra difficulty to a chapter I’d spent a lot of time balancing. To be fair, I’d worried that I’d erred slightly on the easy side for that chapter, but if I’d known this change was coming and would affect gameplay that severely, I’d probably have had something to say even during my least mentally lucid periods. I’m a bit less bothered by the added difficulty than I am by the nature of the challenge: I simply don’t find it enjoyable. Essentially, it necessitates a great deal more weapon switching, and given that enemies can sneak up on you very easily in chapter five, and Banshees strip roughly one-fifth a bar of health per shot and Nightmares roughly one-third, there’s a bit more luck than I care for involved here, unless you simply hug the rechargers, which is annoying for its own reasons.

    I will admit, however, that some of this is also because I’m borderline obsessive about item collection. Except when speedrunning, I go to great lengths to avoid blowing up or frying enemies that drop items. This will now mean that I have to go to much greater lengths for every chapter five level that has Pfhor. Obviously, most players aren’t as obsessive about item collection as I am, and that’s fine – the chapter undoubtedly has enough fusion ammo to blow up all the Hunters you’ll encounter from a distance. I did this deliberately, in fact.

    Regardless, I find the change frustrating. If people had felt chapter five needed greater difficulty, I’d have preferred to raise the respawn rates for some of the enemies by, say, five or ten percent. I get that the blades are really powerful and it might’ve seemed appropriate to give them some sort of drawback, but the enemies you’re facing in chapter five are no slouches themselves (again, the Nightmares’ projectiles do one-third a bar of health in damage), so it felt fair already.

    If you really still want the gravitronic blades to eliminate Fighters and Enforcers’ items, I think it would be better to implement something like Rubicon’s disintegration effect rather than outright blowing them up. Obviously, Rubicon’s disintegration effect was a replacement for the flaming death sequence, but it’s almost certainly now possible to do something like that with Lua/MML without scrapping the flaming death. If it’s a change people want, I will look for a way to implement it in 1.3.

    Still, I liked getting items from enemies killed with the blades. I rarely used them, but I liked knowing they were there.
  • I’ve noticed a few weird glitches. For the precipitation branch, I didn’t think to provide code that causes precipitation to disappear when it hits media, since when I was working on the game, none of the levels had precipitation where it would fall into media. This is no longer the case, given “Eat S’pht and Die” and “Babylon X”. It looks quite silly to have snow falling underneath the surface of sludge or ashes falling underneath the surface of lava. It’s a bit late for the 1.2 release, but for 1.3, here are the relevant lines from my precipitation scripts in Chronicles:

    Code: Select all

    			if e.polygon.media then
    				if e.z < e.polygon.media.height then
    					local x, y, p = uniform.xy_in_triangle_list(Level._triangles)
    					e:position(x, y, p.ceiling.height, p)
    				end
    			end
    
    And, for context, the entire Triggers.idle() function:

    Code: Select all

    function Triggers.idle()
    	if scenery_cleared == true then
    		build_pool()
    		scenery_cleared = false
    	end
    	local pool = Level._pool
    	local position = pool[1].position
    	local phase = precipitation_phase
    	local gravity = phase * precipitation_gravity
    	local wind = phase * precipitation_wind
    	local phase_match = Game.ticks % phase
    	for i = 1,precipitation_count do
    		if i % phase == phase_match then
    			local e = pool[i]
    			position(e, e.x - wind, e.y - wind, e.z - gravity, e.polygon)
    			if e.z < e.polygon.floor.height then
    				local x, y, p = uniform.xy_in_triangle_list(Level._triangles)
    				e:position(x, y, p.ceiling.height, p)
    			elseif e.z > e.polygon.ceiling.height then
    				local x, y, p = uniform.xy_in_triangle_list(Level._triangles)
    				e:position(x, y, p.floor.height, p)
    			end
    			if e.polygon.media then
    				if e.z < e.polygon.media.height then
    					local x, y, p = uniform.xy_in_triangle_list(Level._triangles)
    					e:position(x, y, p.ceiling.height, p)
    				end
    			end
    		end
    	end
    
    (I am not going to try to figure out how to integrate this into Eternal’s precipitation scripts at the moment, as I’m fairly sure I had read that Lia had also made some changes to them.)
  • Also on the subject of precipitation, it would be nice to figure out a way to make it dependent upon either frame rate or graphics settings instead of having an entirely separate map file for it – that way there wouldn’t be a necessity for a whole different branch. I have some ideas to this effect but have no idea whether they will work.
  • There are some motion glitches in the AI cores in “Roots and Radicals” and “Heart of Fusion”. Nothing game-breaking, but strange. I will look to solve these for 1.3.
  • A few walls in “Third Rock from the Sun” were not textured/retextured properly. I don’t care for the removal of the landscape sludge textures on the floor at the bottom of the level. It wasn’t that realistic, sure, but it looked really cool and stood out from the rest of the level (and for that matter, the rest of the game), and it seemed pretty Jjaro-ish. $lave doesn’t seem to like the change either. Also, one of the polygons somehow escaped notice and still has the landscape sludge texture.
  • Also in “Third Rock”, some of the gaps between platforms and walls need to be lessened a bit, as you’ll see in my video for it. That one’s on me, since I was the one who made that change.
More later; I should get back to schoolwork. (However, this is a software engineering course, and many of the project planning principles can be applied to game projects, which I’ve managed to do in a few of my assignments for the course. In other words, I’ve been procrastinating, but also attempting to make the lessons stick better than they otherwise would by tying them into something I care about.)
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
ravenshining
Vidmaster
Posts: 892
Joined: Jun 17th '17, 22:50
Location: Hawai'i

The Man wrote:•I really like the ability to wander around the outside of the Marathon, should the player choose, at the start of “Déjà Vu All Over Again”.
Thank you :-) Once I had the code to drain your oxygen on TPOTT working, it was only natural to bring it to other areas, and once I brought it to Déja Vu, I saw there was no reason keep the player confined anymore, except to prevent them falling off the edge. Did you try jumping off the edge? If you do, it either teleports you or kills you fairly quickly with Suffocation damage if you try to prevent it from teleporting you.
The Man wrote:•The new path through “Deep Into the Grotto” is actually a lot less time-consuming than I’d have made it... I also like that the area has much higher ceilings than I’d used, I think, although it does raise a bit of fridge logic with why the area wouldn’t be visible from the start point
It was a fairly quick and dirty fix at literally the last minute. Pfhorrest was going thorough a final testing run while I worked on it and I needed to finish it by the time he did. The high ceiling is there to prevent the player from being able to access or even easily see the corridor that links the area to the Wrkncacnter spawn point.
The Man wrote:•The new failure dreams are also good. Subtle changes that completely overhaul the routes. It’ll take me awhile to get them memorised.
FYI, TPOTT has already received a tweak post-release in response to player feedback (changes should be up on git) that will have to wait for 1.3 or a hypothetical 1.2.1 - rather than having the terminal disabled until you insert the chip, door switches are disabled until you insert the chip.
The Man wrote:•...my honest reaction to having the gravitronic blades blow up enemies is...
According to Pfhorrest, the grav blades aren't burning through enemies like a lightsaber would, but warping the fabric of space around anything they pass through. To me, that implies that enemies are going to get seriously f***-ed up. It's going to be messy, and you can't expect their weapon to survive being warped like that any more than their corpse. Admittedly, it would be nice to explain this in a terminal somewhere, and I regret not finding the time to add some exposition.

Furthermore, even after the change to reduce their damage and restrict their firing arcs, I felt they were still far too OP. Once you have them, there's no reason to ever use anything else, except for the rare instances where you need to engage at range. Having them cause enemies explode, and destroying the items they are carrying, then, adds a missing element of strategy while actually accentuating their psychological impact as a powerful weapon.

Now, it is still possible to squelch Hunters with it without getting sprayed with dissolving chitin and power armour, but it is a bit like punching Cyborgs. I'm not entirely sure whether you can tank MOAHs with it, however, as they have a much larger blast radius, but I think it's appropriate for at least one enemy to still pose a threat to you.

Regardless, it's water under the bridge now.

The Man wrote:•...It’s a bit late for the 1.2 release, but for 1.3, here are the relevant lines from my precipitation scripts in Chronicles:

Code: Select all

			if e.polygon.media then
				if e.z < e.polygon.media.height then
					local x, y, p = uniform.xy_in_triangle_list(Level._triangles)
					e:position(x, y, p.ceiling.height, p)
				end
			end
And, for context, the entire Triggers.idle() function:
Spoiler:

Code: Select all

function Triggers.idle()
	if scenery_cleared == true then
		build_pool()
		scenery_cleared = false
	end
	local pool = Level._pool
	local position = pool[1].position
	local phase = precipitation_phase
	local gravity = phase * precipitation_gravity
	local wind = phase * precipitation_wind
	local phase_match = Game.ticks % phase
	for i = 1,precipitation_count do
		if i % phase == phase_match then
			local e = pool[i]
			position(e, e.x - wind, e.y - wind, e.z - gravity, e.polygon)
			if e.z < e.polygon.floor.height then
				local x, y, p = uniform.xy_in_triangle_list(Level._triangles)
				e:position(x, y, p.ceiling.height, p)
			elseif e.z > e.polygon.ceiling.height then
				local x, y, p = uniform.xy_in_triangle_list(Level._triangles)
				e:position(x, y, p.floor.height, p)
			end
			if e.polygon.media then
				if e.z < e.polygon.media.height then
					local x, y, p = uniform.xy_in_triangle_list(Level._triangles)
					e:position(x, y, p.ceiling.height, p)
				end
			end
		end
	end
(I am not going to try to figure out how to integrate this into Eternal’s precipitation scripts at the moment, as I’m fairly sure I had read that Lia had also made some changes to them.)
Good catch! I'm sure I can work that in to an update for the Simplici7y mod, as it's not part of the official release. And yes, I did slice out the sections of code that calculated how many objects to create, and replaced them with values tailored to each individual level they're use on.
The Man wrote:•Also on the subject of precipitation, it would be nice to figure out a way to make it dependent upon either frame rate or graphics settings instead of having an entirely separate map file for it – that way there wouldn’t be a necessity for a whole different branch. I have some ideas to this effect but have no idea whether they will work.
As discussed on Discord, this is probably just fantasy. For one, there's no lua hook for framerate or anything like that I as far as I see. For two, you'd have to make sure every player in a co-op game gets precipitation dialled back to the same degree, so you not only have to find the player's setup, but the setup of all other players as well, or else the game will go OOS pretty badly.
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

Thank you :-) Once I had the code to drain your oxygen on TPOTT working, it was only natural to bring it to other areas, and once I brought it to Déja Vu, I saw there was no reason keep the player confined anymore, except to prevent them falling off the edge. Did you try jumping off the edge? If you do, it either teleports you or kills you fairly quickly with Suffocation damage if you try to prevent it from teleporting you.
Yeah, I did. Cool effect. Can’t remember if a demonstration of that made it into the video I uploaded. I assume there’s something similar on “The Philosophy of Time Travel”, but never tried that.
It was a fairly quick and dirty fix at literally the last minute. Pfhorrest was going thorough a final testing run while I worked on it and I needed to finish it by the time he did. The high ceiling is there to prevent the player from being able to access or even easily see the corridor that links the area to the Wrkncacnter spawn point.
Oh, interesting. I didn’t notice that. Regardless, it looks cool.
FYI, TPOTT has already received a tweak post-release in response to player feedback (changes should be up on git) that will have to wait for 1.3 or a hypothetical 1.2.1 - rather than having the terminal disabled until you insert the chip, door switches are disabled until you insert the chip.
That makes sense. Also I noticed some of the Bobs in the central control area were moving around without actually walking, which I assume was a physics issue.
According to Pfhorrest, the grav blades aren't burning through enemies like a lightsaber would, but warping the fabric of space around anything they pass through. To me, that implies that enemies are going to get seriously f***-ed up. It's going to be messy, and you can't expect their weapon to survive being warped like that any more than their corpse. Admittedly, it would be nice to explain this in a terminal somewhere, and I regret not finding the time to add some exposition.

Furthermore, even after the change to reduce their damage and restrict their firing arcs, I felt they were still far too OP. Once you have them, there's no reason to ever use anything else, except for the rare instances where you need to engage at range. Having them cause enemies explode, and destroying the items they are carrying, then, adds a missing element of strategy while actually accentuating their psychological impact as a powerful weapon.

Now, it is still possible to squelch Hunters with it without getting sprayed with dissolving chitin and power armour, but it is a bit like punching Cyborgs. I'm not entirely sure whether you can tank MOAHs with it, however, as they have a much larger blast radius, but I think it's appropriate for at least one enemy to still pose a threat to you.

Regardless, it's water under the bridge now.
That makes a bit more sense when explained like that, but it still kind of annoys me. I get the appeal of requiring players to strategise a bit more by removing item drops from enemies, but as you said, there are few cases when it’s actually worthwhile to use other weapons, and in almost all of them, it’s going to be the fusion guns. As a result, the item drops are mostly a fun bonus to run around collecting – there’s no way players are ever going to actually use all those staff charges or N-cannon drops. The exploding enemies remove that.

It might be possible to make alternate death sequences that look more like enemies being warped rather than outright blowing up. I’d at least find that less distracting. Even having the explanation there, having enemies just explode the way they would if I’d thrown grenades at them seems wrong. Photoshop’s distortion filters could be a good start, and then perhaps someone with more artistic talent than me can fill in the biological effects of that kind of distortion.

If there’s some way to concoct an in-universe explanation for having the blades blow up Hunters but not Fighters or Enforcers, I might be able to live with that as a compromise for 1.3. They already don’t blow up Troopers, IIRC, so either way, there isn’t much consistency - this proposal would just make them behave like fusion rather than explosion damage. And I think it would make a certain amount of sense for the two Jjaro weapons to result in different enemy death sequences.
Good catch! I'm sure I can work that in to an update for the Simplici7y mod, as it's not part of the official release. And yes, I did slice out the sections of code that calculated how many objects to create, and replaced them with values tailored to each individual level they're use on.
Thanks.
As discussed on Discord, this is probably just fantasy. For one, there's no lua hook for framerate or anything like that I as far as I see. For two, you'd have to make sure every player in a co-op game gets precipitation dialled back to the same degree, so you not only have to find the player's setup, but the setup of all other players as well, or else the game will go OOS pretty badly.
Might be a good last-minute feature request for A1 1.3 then – I would think it to be fairly simple to implement since the game itself has a frame rate display. As for network games, I can think of a few possible fixes. The one I’d try first would be having the host computer gather everyone else’s frame rate after a set time has elapsed and then sync it to the slowest one on the connection.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
Pfhorrest
Vidmaster
Posts: 1847
Joined: Oct 12th '07, 22:08
Location: California
Contact:

Wrt the grav blades, their space-warping effect should essentially be identical to an infinitly sharp (and infinitly thin) real blade, so it just cuts a clean line straight through everything (with collateral burn damage -- and glow on the blade -- because of Hawking radiation). So soft death would be consistent with that still, and I lean slightly to prefering that, but hard death is still acceptable and Lia makes good arguments for it strategically so I have no hard position on that.
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

Is there a case for splitting the difference and just making Hunters explode? That might be the best approach. I’m still kinda iffy on the exploding Hunters but might be able to learn to live with them.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

I suspect I should note here that in case people weren’t reading the Aleph One 1.3 thread, it should be possible to make precipitation optional without requiring a separate branch by creating a net script that would enable/disable it (at the gatherer’s discretion), while it should be possible to make a plugin to enable/disable it for solo games. I will look into how to do this when time permits. Obviously it’s too late to do this for 1.2, but it can be implemented for 1.3.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

I don’t know why, but the wrong versions of “Unwired” and “Core Done Blew” got included in the final release. It’s possible that I simply forgot to upload my more recent revisions.

There were some minor revisions to “Unwired” towards the end of development that I had no hand in, but I don’t know what all of them were. AFAICT it’s mostly the addition of a bit of lava. There’s one point, however, beyond which you’re supposed to be able to move backwards, but it appears you’re no longer able to do so, which is liable to make the level almost impossible to complete on TC. (Still theoretically possible, but it’s going to be a slog.)

I think I also fixed several motion glitches in “Core Done Blew” that didn’t make it into 1.2 final. One of these may have crashed the game, though I can’t recall for certain. My revisions also fixed a number of annoying aspects such as needing to punch switches twice, and I think I made the opening less annoying.

These are, as far as I’m able to ascertain, the versions I intended to include. Probably not worth making a 1.2.1 release just over these, but worth updating the maps merge folder, at least. I don’t know what would need to be done to merge the changes to “Unwired”.

ETA: also found a trap in “S’pht’ia”, which I’ll post a video of later
Attachments
Unwired & Core Done Blew.zip
(293.34 KiB) Downloaded 162 times
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
ravenshining
Vidmaster
Posts: 892
Joined: Jun 17th '17, 22:50
Location: Hawai'i

The main changes to Unwired I recall involved lava, lighting, making lines no longer solid, some changes to which polygons are/are not impassible, and removal of teleporter polygons in the trap; to solve bugged monsters stuck to the floor. I did not make any platform changes.

Do you remember the changes *you* made to unwired, and if so, could you implement them to the official version?
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

Sorry, that would be completely impossible even if I had any faith whatsoever in my recollection of the last six months. I’m not exaggerating by saying that I spent at least seven hours in late December just on that one level, and it was probably closer to ten or twelve. I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent more time fixing that one level than I did modifying all the other chapter one levels combined. I made far too many changes to have any reliable recollection of all of them, much less be able to recall when I made them. There were a ton of changes to ambient sounds, a ton of time going through platforms making sure it wasn’t possible to deactivate anything that was set to “activates only once”, several new rechargers, a ton of polygons changed to monster & item impassable (though it looks like you did that part separately), and who knows what else.

The one thing I can recall for certain is that I wound up having to fix the offending platform twice, and the second fix must’ve been after the version I submitted. A lot of the rechargers I added also aren’t in the final version of the level, so it’s definitely an old version.

In any case, the version I intended to submit has 1030 polygons, 0 media, 7 ambient sounds, 1 random sound, and 406 objects. This got replaced somewhere down the line (or else the correct version just never got submitted) with a version with 1021 polygons, 3 media (I cleaned these up with Chisel), 28 ambient sounds (same), 0 random sounds, and 317 objects, which genuinely makes me suspect that only about half of my revisions went through. (The 1.2 final version may have more of some or all of these; I’m looking at the next most recent iteration I have on my machine.) There’s way too much work there for me to have any reliable recollection of what it all was.

If there’s any possible way for you to redo your changes to my version, that would be far preferable, because I’m not in any frame of mind to (1) figure out everything I did and (2) redo it all.

ETA: After looking a bit more I’m confident that almost none of my revisions went through. Certainly none of the ambient sound changes are there; those alone took two or three hours. (The ambient sounds in that level were messier than the ones in any other Eternal level.) The monster & item impassable polygons don’t seem to be present in the next download I have from Github either. My wager would be that the 1.2 final version has fewer than half of my revisions – probably my first batch of platform revisions and that’s it.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
ravenshining
Vidmaster
Posts: 892
Joined: Jun 17th '17, 22:50
Location: Hawai'i

TBH I have no interest in doing more work for Eternal for a while. We spent too long and I'm completely burnt out, the past couple weeks I haven't even been working on M1R as I needed a break from A1 altogether. If some game-breaking bug that requires a 1.2.1 release is discovered, I'll look this over, but right now I'm happy just calling Eternal done and want to move on.
User avatar
raptor200221
Born on Board
Posts: 28
Joined: Dec 18th '18, 05:51

Eternal 1.2 was already released. I think it is about time to close the thread for 1.2 for now. Not like this thread was really meant for anything but development anyways.
"The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history"-Georg Hegel
||Legends of Marathon Net Maps|| ||Eternal Legends of Marathon Net Maps||
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

TBH I have no interest in doing more work for Eternal for a while. We spent too long and I'm completely burnt out, the past couple weeks I haven't even been working on M1R as I needed a break from A1 altogether. If some game-breaking bug that requires a 1.2.1 release is discovered, I'll look this over, but right now I'm happy just calling Eternal done and want to move on.
Well, if you remember & can describe the changes you made, I can probably implement some approximation of them next time I have time to do so. It sounds like they were much less time-consuming than mine, and it’d be easier to go that route.
Eternal 1.2 was already released. I think it is about time to close the thread for 1.2 for now. Not like this thread was really meant for anything but development anyways.
I disagree. People are likely to continue reporting issues with/providing feedback on the game here (in fact I’ve reported one trap a few posts above), and in any case we plan to release version 1.3 sometime next year, so having this thread will assist with planning once that gets started in earnest.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

I hate to be a bother about this, but it needs to be patched. “Unwired” is awful on Total Carnage in its current state. It is theoretically possible to complete it, but the intended route is not actually possible any longer; there’s a segment that happens some fifteen minutes into the level that requires a substantial amount of luck to clear out. I have done it, but it’s one of those things that happens once in every ten attempts or so, and it’ll be awhile until I have a successful film of it.

Also, it’s broken from a story perspective, since there’s a terminal from Durandal that chides you from falling down into an out-of-the-way hole that is actually the only way to proceed through the level in its current state.

I’m fine just making a 1.2.1 release that just changes those two levels, and I’d gladly re-implement the big changes that aren’t in my version of the level myself tonight or tomorrow night if someone describes them. The current version of the level is insufferable on higher difficulty settings; it is a “chapter five from pre-1.2 releases” degree of awful.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
ravenshining
Vidmaster
Posts: 892
Joined: Jun 17th '17, 22:50
Location: Hawai'i

difficult =/= broken. You've made the same complaint about perfectly easy levels before, perhaps it's just your style of play that's broken? Are you doing something unnecessary like punching everything or trying to eliminate everything before you proceed?

Can you be more specific as to which area you're having trouble?

Also, I always figured falling in the hole with Durandal was the normal way to go.
User avatar
Pfhorrest
Vidmaster
Posts: 1847
Joined: Oct 12th '07, 22:08
Location: California
Contact:

Falling in the hole with Durandal is the normal way to go.
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

Sorry, no, it’s not, as shown in this video from August 2018. There are supposed to be two routes, with platform 801 providing a much less annoying way back up; the pit route is supposed to be an infuriating slog that punishes the player for making a misstep. Which is (I always assumed) why Durandal sarcastically chides the player for making that misstep. The August 2018 video was from before I had worked on the level much (if at all), so it can be reasonably inferred that it was like that in 1.1. (If anyone changed it between 1.1 and the version I was playing in this film, it wasn’t me.) The route shown in that film is not possible in 1.2.0.

I never, ever went into that pit until I had 3x shields; I always used platform 801 to get back up, but I think I must’ve mistakenly set it to “activates only once” when I was working on the level (my guess is that I was using a preset to copy changes to different platforms, and just copied the wrong preset, but I don’t remember for sure). I set it back in a later revision that didn’t gotten rolled in. (Or actually, I think I set it to “deactivates never”, but functionally the same effect: the player can get back up to the main part of the level without bothering with those enemies until later.)

The other route is doable (I did successfully complete it from a save file this afternoon), but it’s annoying as hell – you have to survive an onslaught of like 40 enemies, many quite difficult, without access to a recharger. Even if you spam the AR incessantly, there’s a fair bit of chance as to whether you’ll survive.

John hates it too, FWIW. (Was going to quote an email he sent this morning but realised I should ask for his permission before printing it; I’ll add it back if he says it’s OK.) Sorry, I’m simply inclined to give his opinion a lot more weight here than any of ours, given how many vid films he’s completed. I might find something like that more tolerable later in the game, and it also might not be so awful if it were at the start of the level, but it’s the sort of thing that’s 15-20 minutes into the level and there’s a fair deal of luck whether you survive it, even if you aren’t trying to clear it out fists/staff only. It’s annoying and poorly balanced, and it’s not the intended design. I’m almost certain other people will complain about it if it isn’t patched.

Also, I brought this up on Dec. 28 and no one ever fixed it, so AFAICT it’s not even my fault, unless I uploaded the wrong version sometime after that point. I can’t find it if I did so, though. Perhaps it was on Discord. I have been unable to figure out what happened to that 6+ hours of work I put into the level. In any case, I pointed this out during development, so it’s not a new objection.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
$lave

I agree that it is a pretty hard/frustrating level to vid, but it isn't 'broken' or anything. Playing with proper ammo it's very doable, and during normal gameplay anyone would have the option of dropping the difficulty to normal or major damage. A level being hard on TC isn't really an issue at all.

That said wow I really hate the tiny wasps.
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

I just meant it was broken from a story perspective, for reasons explained in my previous message. It’s theoretically possible to vid (as I said, I have cleared it once in its current state from a save file, so I’m sure it can be done); it’s just not fun. In its current state, it’s the longest level in the game, and it’s an incredibly annoying slog. I wouldn’t mind that segment as much if it were the first part of the level, but a segment fifteen minutes into a fifty-minute level where it’s essentially a matter of random chance as to whether you’ll survive is just flat-out obnoxious.

Here are the relevant bits of John’s email yesterday morning (I’ve excised a technical digression that didn’t relate to gameplay balance):
Well that’s a major disappointment that your changes were not included. I assume that platform 801 was not meant to descend only once? After descending it, you have to fight a Hunter. He’s no problem. Then you reach the first of four narrow platforms. [... H]ow do you get back to the rest of the level? Do you have to jump down into the large room from which platform 56 rises? If so, that is an almost impossible slog to get back. And certainly not what you were planning for the player to do. Correct?

I agree with you. As much time and effort as everyone has put into the development of 1.2, it seems to me that at least a patch (no need to view it as a new numbered release) to correct these problems would be welcomed. Otherwise, I am afraid very few TC players are going to want to play this version. I will probably be one of those. I imagine I’ll have to wait until 1.3 comes out.
And this morning:
I cannot understand lia’s attitude about Unwired. Has she played the level on TC as it currently is? If so, I’d love to know how she is getting through that part of the level.
The only time I was able to get through the level, it involved spamming the hell out of the AR, but you really have to get lucky with enemy movements to some extent. I also agree with $lave that the wasps’ small size is annoying. It didn’t bother me so much on some of the other levels, nor did it even bother me when the level was functioning as intended, but it’s infuriating to fight such small enemies when you don’t have access to a recharger.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
Pfhorrest
Vidmaster
Posts: 1847
Joined: Oct 12th '07, 22:08
Location: California
Contact:

I am away like usual this weekend so I can’t actually look at the map to be sure what we’re talking about. Are we talking about the part where you ens up down in that room that you can see into from the hallways above and around it earlier in the level, and then you make your way back up out of it through some switchbacks halls with little rooms of fighters at each turn, and lookers coming down them, and a terminal from Durandal at the end of those halls right when you get back to the hallways above and around that room again? Story-wise I think of that as the normal way to play the level.
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

That sounds right. There’s a platform (highlighted in the attached image) that would provide the player passage back to the main part of the level in previous versions of the level, but I suspect I mistakenly marked it to activate only once. I stated in late December that it should be switched to “deactivate never”, but apparently no one ever got around to this, and/or the wrong revision somehow got slotted in. As stated above, I also did about six hours of additional work on this one level that somehow never made it into the final version, which I’ve been quite annoyed about since I noticed it. (I also did about two hours of work on “Core Done Blew” that also didn’t make it into 1.2.0.)
Screen Shot 2019-05-05 at 17.05.55.png
I always assumed the terminal from Durandal was taunting the player for falling into the pit when it wasn’t a necessary step to complete the level, and was in fact a particularly dangerous, out-of-the-way route. It was never necessary in past versions of the level, and I always held off on clearing out that segment until I had 3x shields. This is no longer possible. It’s annoying as hell on TC with 2x shields. It’s likely to be a consistent source of complaint until it’s fixed. If John finds it too annoying to bother with, hardly anyone else will enjoy it either. (He flat-out said he would consider writing a guide for a beta version of the game from before the route got damaged rather than for 1.2.0, due to his frustration with the 1.2.0 version of the level – that’s how much it annoys him.)

I just checked the 1.1.0 and 1.0.3 maps, and platform 801 was set in those versions to deactivate at each level and not to activate only once, so it’s definitely an intended solution to the level for the player to be able to use it to get back up. I intended to set it to “deactivates never” so as to accommodate the chaos of network games, but I suspect I used the wrong template for that platform, resulting in the problem currently being discussed.

The message from Durandal (southern part of this map) definitely makes it sound as though he’s chiding the player for making a misstep, too:

You should watch your step. The last thing we need is for you to fall and injure yourself and spoil all of our plans.

Carry on now, there's nothing more for you to see here.
Screen Shot 2019-05-05 at 17.37.34.png
There’s another, much longer terminal that I assume is somewhere along the actual intended path of the level. (I can’t remember where it actually is.)
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
ravenshining
Vidmaster
Posts: 892
Joined: Jun 17th '17, 22:50
Location: Hawai'i

Okay, I just cleared that room on TC. With my carpal tunnel slowing me down and the key I normally use as second trigger broken, it took me two tries. I'll agree with $lave that the tiny wasps are a terrible idea, especially given my cramping hands's addled ability to aim, but other than that, it wasn't really that bad.

My strategy for getting through did involve camping at the bottom of the elevator to pick off the wasps one by one, which some people may object to as not being sporting. Once the wasps are down, a liberal application of grenades takes care of the Hunters and Lookers nicely - remember the trooper gun fires them 2x as fast as the AR.

If you've got enough health leftover, you can take down the Troopers perched up high, but they won't activate until fired upon. Otherwise, with the room clear, it's a simple matter of sniping fighters at the end of those long hallways, for which the staff-bolt is ideal.

And now that I've tested it, I remember why we changed that elevator to activates only once; it was causing problems in co-op how it was before. I'm pretty sure you were there, Aaron, for the play-testing that revealed that issue.

As for the story, Pfhorrest has said twice now that that's the intended route, so I don't know why you're still arguing that point.
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

As for the story, Pfhorrest has said twice now that that's the intended route, so I don't know why you're still arguing that point.
Oh, piss off with this holier-than-thou horseshit. I put in at least seven hours of work into this level that have amounted to absolutely nothing in 1.2.0, and you are being insufferably dismissive over my completely justifiable frustrations regarding this fact. I’m furious that I wasted an entire fucking day doing tedious, repetitive tasks that almost no one is going to see for the next year unless the game gets patched. I’ve explicitly asked you on three separate occasions now to describe your changes so I can merge them with my version for 1.3 (or a hypothetical 1.2.1 release). You have completely failed to provide a response on this count, and have instead been argumentative and condescending about my tone. You have no grounds to criticise me for arguing; by refusing to provide any response on the count of level changes, you’re contributing at least as much to the problem as I am. I can’t actually make a version that reconciles the changes, which I explicitly said above that I wanted to do today, if I don’t know what the fucking changes are.

Part of the reason I’m going on about this (and I would outright dispute even your characterisation of my previous post as “arguing” - I was trying to verify that Pfhorrest and I were talking about the same segment of the level, because I wasn’t sure I understood what segment of the level his description meant) is that I’m not even completely certain that Pfhorrest and I are referring to the same part of the map. There are two Durandal terminals in the level, one of which is extremely lengthy and the player is almost guaranteed to find, and the other of which is very short and tucked in that out-of-the-way niche in my map above. I don’t know for a fact which terminal Pfhorrest is referring to, and it’s possible he’s confused the two terminals in his recollection. Pfhorrest didn’t even design this level - Bill and Don-Martin did - so he may not have known their intended solution. Moreover, most of these levels were designed at least ten years ago, and I sure as fuck don’t remember a lot of the specific details about what terminals go where in some of the levels I made ten-plus years ago. I was attempting to verify that (1) I was understanding what part of the level Pfhorrest was referring to, and (2) he remembered that part of the level correctly. If we were referring to the same part of the level, then it appeared to me that he was at least factually wrong about there being only one path through that part of the level. I was attempting to clarify this before you butted in with a passive-aggressive tone argument.

In any case, this change makes the level immeasurably worse. I hate it, John hates it, and it sounds like $lave isn’t thrilled with it either. It’s possible to clear out that segment of the level. It’s just not fun. If the most prolific Vidmaster in the history of Marathon thinks a level is horribly balanced and tedious to play, it’s worth giving his opinion significant weight. As I said, it is possible to clear this segment out. I have done so, using a similar strategy to yours. It is tedious as fuck to clear out wave after wave of Wasps at the bottom of that platform, however, and it shouldn’t be necessary. It was not necessary in previous versions of the level, since a player could simply go back to a recharger whenever desired. This change is completely gratuitous and infuriating, and it wasn’t supposed to be there.

And yes, I did agree that the platform should be changed for network games. To a platform that never deactivates. Which was what I explicitly said should have been done on December 28, as linked above. That solves the problem with network sync issues without making the level a tedious, insufferable slog in solo games. It’s a completely logical solution that doesn’t frustrate solo TC players with unfair, terribly balanced bullshit twenty minutes into the longest level of the game.

I will openly admit that I’m outright flaming you here. Because I’m fucking furious. If you wonder why, take a look in the goddamn mirror. Your attitude has been nothing but dismissive and rude ever since I brought up my complaints about the level, and you have no grounds to criticise me for reacting in kind above. And yes, I’ve flown off the handle here, but frankly, I only have so much fucking patience, and your passive-aggressive sniping over the past few days has exhausted my supply of it.

(notice for posterity: I accidentally edited this rather than posting a new reply. I've edited this back to what was originally here [also correcting a couple of typos], but the edit message still displays, so...)
Last edited by The Man on May 6th '19, 01:00, edited 5 times in total.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
ravenshining
Vidmaster
Posts: 892
Joined: Jun 17th '17, 22:50
Location: Hawai'i

Look, I'm really busy here. I'm right in the middle of finals, and I have to limit my computer use because of my carpal tunnel. That I took the time to play the level to verify your issue already is much more than I should be doing. I don't see this as an urgent issue and cannot deal with it further at this time. I've already given you a basic overview of what's changed, if that's not enough, then maybe later when I have more time and you've calmed down I can go through and give you a more detailed account of the changes.
User avatar
The Man
Vidmaster
Posts: 1203
Joined: Aug 6th '08, 05:23
Location: Sarasota, FL
Contact:

I get that finals are stressful and that you don't exactly have a wealth of free time right now, but for fuck's fucking sake, for three days straight you've been dismissing seven hours of wasted work on my part like it was a five-minute walk. Do you really not understand why I found that infuriating? If you're too stressed out to have a small bit of empathy, maybe you need to wait until you post, too. I would've found "I'm sorry, but I can't respond until my exams are over" much more understandable and appropriate. I'm sure my last response came across as over the top, and when I calm down I'll no doubt regret some of my words, but frankly, writing a response that didn't convey how furious I am would've been an outright lie, and I would've regretted that, too. I was trying to be as diplomatic as possible until I finally snapped; if you'll notice, I apologised at least half a dozen times in the several preceding posts. But I have my limits, and you're not the only one stressing out over uni work, you know.

I don't need a detailed, line-by-line recounting of every change you made to the level; I just need to know what segments to look in to make approximations of your changes. You mentioned that you'd changed some lighting and some polygon assignments. I can go in with Weland and Vasara and re-apply those to my version, but there's no way in hell I'm gonna go through all 1020+ polygons and figure those out one-by-one. Just knowing where to look would be helpful. The main changes I noticed were the lava pools, which are fine as far as those go, but I frequently fail to notice subtle lighting changes, and I don't know how much of that there was, nor how much you care about having those reproduced in 1.2.1/1.3/whatever the next version of the level is.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
User avatar
Pfhorrest
Vidmaster
Posts: 1847
Joined: Oct 12th '07, 22:08
Location: California
Contact:

Those map screenshots look like that platform 801 does go to or come from the area I was thinking of, and though I can’t tell from the map if that terminal is where I’m thinking it is, that is the terminal message I was thinking of, so I do think that is what I’ve been considering the normal route. That said I don’t object to making whatever changes are necessary if it’s too hard for people and if a lot of other improvements were lost then lets do what we can to recover them. I’m not opposed to putting out a patch release when that’s done, but everyone has lives to live and this isn’t as urgent as any of that so lets just do that when everyone has time to make it happen.

BTW I never intended the wasps to be different from M1 wasps so any differences are unintentional and if someone wants to fix them please go ahead.
Post Reply