Eternal X 1.2
Huh. Why didn’t my test of “Babylon X” desync then? It should’ve desynced immediately if that’s the case.
“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
“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
Maybe it's time to admit precipitation was a cool hack for a single simple net level, but is currently unsuitable to a major scenario. Put it on the shelf, some day maybe a better Aleph One can handle it.
-
Wrkncacnter
- Vidmaster
- Posts: 1953
- Joined: Jan 29th '06, 03:51
- Contact:
Clearly the correct answer here is to leverage the stash feature to communicate with the HUD about where precipitation should be drawn, and the HUD handles the rendering 
I’m not ready to give up on this hoary old engine yet. If Ryoko can make this massive beauty work in Aleph One, then I think we need to put a little faith in its capabilities.
However, I have only one hypothesis as to why the “Babylon X” film doesn’t go out of sync. Just in case anyone thinks I might be making this up, here’s the film with precipitation, and here it is without it. As I write in the description of the latter version:
The other hypothesis I had has already been disproven. I thought that perhaps the game RNG reset after init(), but it turns out that we’re not actually calling initprecipitation() in Triggers.init() any longer; it only gets called on the first frame of Triggers.idle() now. I forget why Wrkncacnter made this change, but there was a good reason for it.
Anyway, if you have other potential edge cases we should test for, I’ll gladly make films to test for them; I just can’t think what other objections there are if the desync issue isn’t happening on this level.
However, I have only one hypothesis as to why the “Babylon X” film doesn’t go out of sync. Just in case anyone thinks I might be making this up, here’s the film with precipitation, and here it is without it. As I write in the description of the latter version:
I suppose someone more versed in C++ than I am can look in the source code and see if this hypothesis is correct.I don’t have much idea why this wouldn’t desync the level, since it should be calling the game’s internal RNG each time it creates an effect, because the sequence used for precipitation on this level is set to “display a random frame”, which would immediately call the game’s RNG. My hypothesis is that the RNG for “display a random frame” may be a separate function; Bungie may have used a separate function for this to prevent films from desyncing if someone edited a shapes file to add another frame to a sequence of random frames. Films could still desync if people edit shapes files in certain other ways, but this would prevent some film desyncs. I don’t know. It’s weird.
The other hypothesis I had has already been disproven. I thought that perhaps the game RNG reset after init(), but it turns out that we’re not actually calling initprecipitation() in Triggers.init() any longer; it only gets called on the first frame of Triggers.idle() now. I forget why Wrkncacnter made this change, but there was a good reason for it.
Anyway, if you have other potential edge cases we should test for, I’ll gladly make films to test for them; I just can’t think what other objections there are if the desync issue isn’t happening on this level.
“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
“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
Effects with delay call global random. Your precipitation may not use delay, but if the engine runs up against the effects limits because of precipitation and drops an effect with delay it’ll de sync.
So in other words, if we don’t go too high, we should avoid the film desync problem? The solution seems to be “leave a bunch of wiggle room.”
We have already specifically limited the amount of precipitation in each level based on the number of objects that were already in the level. But I think we did that when we were still using scenery for precipitation, so it’s possible that the optimal number of precipitation objects might be different now that we’re using effects instead. I think we’d probably be aware if we were approaching the limits, though, because wouldn’t there be potential crashes in saved games if we were? I know I had to change a couple of limits in a couple of levels I added precipitation to (after we’d already changed the script to use effects), in order to prevent saved games from crashing.
Regardless, it sounds like we can probably avert this problem by just making sure we’re not using too much precipitation in each level. Currently, our limits are:
For reference, what is the engine’s hard limit of effects? I think we’re specifying a maximum number of effects of either 1,024 or 2,048 using MML, but I’m not sure how high the engine actually goes.
We have already specifically limited the amount of precipitation in each level based on the number of objects that were already in the level. But I think we did that when we were still using scenery for precipitation, so it’s possible that the optimal number of precipitation objects might be different now that we’re using effects instead. I think we’d probably be aware if we were approaching the limits, though, because wouldn’t there be potential crashes in saved games if we were? I know I had to change a couple of limits in a couple of levels I added precipitation to (after we’d already changed the script to use effects), in order to prevent saved games from crashing.
Regardless, it sounds like we can probably avert this problem by just making sure we’re not using too much precipitation in each level. Currently, our limits are:
- 896 in “The Near Side of Everywhere”
- 768 in “Eat S’pht and Die” and “Babylon X”
- 640 in “Pissing on the Corporation”, “My Kingdom Pfhor a Horse”, “Burning Down the Corporation”, “Second to Last of the Mohicans”, and “The Incredible Hulk”
- 512 in “Unpfhorseen” and “A Friend in Need”
For reference, what is the engine’s hard limit of effects? I think we’re specifying a maximum number of effects of either 1,024 or 2,048 using MML, but I’m not sure how high the engine actually goes.
“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
“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
With precipitation, I cannot load save file.
vhalt: game_wad.cpp
Number of effects 768 > limit 128 (csalerts_sdl.cpp:249)
It seems the change of dynamic limit in MML doesn't apply when loading a save file...
Oh, When I play new game AND load the save file then, it works, weird...
vhalt: game_wad.cpp
Number of effects 768 > limit 128 (csalerts_sdl.cpp:249)It seems the change of dynamic limit in MML doesn't apply when loading a save file...
Oh, When I play new game AND load the save file then, it works, weird...
That's a bug in Aleph One:
https://github.com/Aleph-One-Marathon/a ... issues/201
Next version will fix it.
https://github.com/Aleph-One-Marathon/a ... issues/201
Next version will fix it.
Yep, that bug is why I took precipitation out of the current 1.3 development releases. (We renumbered the planned versions after Tacticus sent us new weapon sprites, because this is no longer primarily a bug fix release, and in truth hasn't been for most of its development. There will probably be a 1.3.1 after that, and then 1.4.) Even after Treellama releases a fix for that bug, though, I'm probably going to wait until the release of Aleph One 1.4 to put precipitation back in, because it has a new object type, ephemera, that will make for a much less janky interpretation of precipitation. (It'll be much faster and much less prone to weird crashes like this, and people will be able to choose whether to enable it in network games on their own side, rather than leaving it up to the host.) I'm a little bit disappointed that it almost certainly won't make it into Eternal 1.3, but there were too many problems with saved games to make it worth leaving in. Sorry for the inconvenience.
“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
“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
A few of us went through the latest 1.3 beta again over the past few weeks. Overall thoughts, roughly in chronological order:
- Overall, the amount this game has improved since even 1.2 is pretty considerable. The amount it’s improved since 1.1 is borderline incalculable. We’d arguably be justified in just fixing the bugs we’re aware of and releasing it as is.
. - The fusion cannon improves the opening chapter so much that I’d strongly suggest making it mandatory. I get that it’s there to reward players for exploring, but if I got to “A Friend in Need” and then found out I could’ve had a weapon that awesome eleven levels ago, I’d be pissed. If we still want to reward players for exploring, we can add some more ammo somewhere else, maybe. And I get that this will reduce the challenge of the early game a bit, but since it’s the early game, I’m not sure how much I mind that.
. - I’d still argue pretty strongly for breaking up the first terminal. I get the argument about realism, but (1) having terminals activate actions on the level introduces players to the mechanic that terminals can do things other than teleport them around, and (2) breaking up the flow of text across multiple terminals will make it so players aren't hit with a massive text dump before they even leave the opening room, and make the massive expanse of the level feel less empty.
. - The mechanism from “Septococcal Pfhoryngitis” of having the chip teleport in one of three locations isn’t fun and sometimes doesn’t even work: players have reported that the chip sometimes won’t spawn in any of the three possible locations. I don’t understand why, but I’d suggest just going back to having it always spawn in the same place; this reduces frustrating RNG and also helps lessen the likelihood of players getting confused and frustrated on one of the earliest levels in the game. It also eliminates the problem of Hathor telling you the chip is in a location that, two times out of three, is incorrect. She’s certainly not a reliable narrator, but there’s really no story justification for making it a matter of RNG whether she’s telling the truth here. (I suppose we could just rewrite the terminal to have her make a vague reference along the lines of “It got teleported into the sewage somewhere”, but I still prefer the “get rid of the RNG” approach.)
. - Since we can now use “Terminals Stop Time” as a flag on levels, I’d suggest adding it to every level. It would particularly improve “Sahkmet Rising” so that players won’t suffocate reading the wall of text on that level (as actually happened to Rampancy – though I guess that might not affect net games, but maybe it’s possible to add a Lua script specifically to prevent oxygen usage while players are reading terminals during a net game, too).
. - Speaking of having terminals activate level events, is there any reason whatsoever to do that on “Core Done Blew”? It just introduces unnecessary, unintuitive backtracking, and Tycho’s terminal doesn’t really add anything to his characterisation. There’s at least an arguable justification for it on “The Incredible Hulk”, but none that I can see here.
. - “Roots and Radicals” and “Heart of Fusion” would benefit from something to do in the AI cores besides punch switches. I understand that the argument is that the Pfhor wouldn’t have been able to get in before we opened the core, but we’ve got Pfhor and S’pht teleporting in elsewhere in the level; I don’t see any reason they can’t teleport into the cores as well, once the player opens them up. It’d make the sections less tedious if we added some Fighters or something, so you’re not just running down a bunch of corridors punching switches.
. - We need to rebalance some of the monsters, given how difficult they are on lower difficulty settings. Ticks are the biggest offender; they’re nasty even on Kindergarten. Right now, one Tick attack does as much damage as a running fist punch, which is ridiculous, particularly given how quickly they attack. That should be nerfed. It’s also not set to do alien damage, which it certainly should be. Lastly, it’s probably worth introducing Major and Minor variants, seeing as how every Lh’owon level has custom physics anyway. The current Tick slot can be made into the Minor Tick, and the current Wasp slot can be made into the Major Tick; since Ticks and Wasps never once appear on the same level, it won’t be an issue.
. - The F’lickta being immune to fusion might be justifiable story-wise, but it’s not fun. I can see a case for them to still be immune to the N-cannon, since they’re also immune to fire, but making them immune to fusion greatly increases the amount of tedious weapon-switching players need to do; it’s not really interesting or challenging, just annoying (particularly since it turns exploration into a guessing game of “will this room have enemy Defenders, F’lickta, or both?”, and also greatly increases the RNG factor). Furthermore, it poses a much larger problem for players who vid-start one of the first three levels of chapter three, since fusion is the only weapon they’ll have any ammo for.
. - As much as I love “She Is the Dark One” overall, many of the straight, narrow corridors are indistinguishable from one another, and it’s really easy to get lost in them. We should probably add more detailing to the level to make them more distinctive, either by adding some more caverns between them or by adding some light fixture polygons to the ceilings in some of them or something. This is arguably also a problem for the underground rooms of “S’pht Happens”.
. - Locking the citadel doors on “S’pht Happens” can trap players in network games (or players in solo games who grenade-jump out the window). I’d suggest either adding a way for players to get back into the citadel (a terminal from the S’pht asking something along the lines of “What are you doing out here? Get back into the tower”) or just removing the lock and adding a note from the S’pht/Leela that they’re locking the tower. I think I might’ve already made an Issue about this, but just in case I didn’t, it came to mind just now.
. - There are far too many switches on some levels. I get that they're there because mapmakers wanted players to visit the whole level, and to some extent I understand that. But here's an example from “The Incredible Hulk”, which is otherwise a great level:
I count thirteen switches (circled in magenta) required just for the opening of the level. That’s ridiculous. We could cut that in half and there’d still be too many. Most of them are wholly unnecessary: the four at the top left can be converted to a set of wires that, when destroyed, activates all four platforms; most of the switches circled at the bottom probably aren’t even necessary, etc. Eliminating many of these switches may require rebalancing the level a bit, since there’ll be multiple troopers attacking the player when the door beneath the pattern buffer activates. But that’s fine. Some of these are really just monster closets; requiring the player to actually visit each of them is probably excessive.
The four levels I can justify having ridiculous numbers of switches are “Roots and Radicals”, “Heart of Fusion”, “Dread Not”, and “This Message Will Self-Destruct”; you’d expect AI cores and ship self-destruct mechanisms to have a lot of failsafes. (And actually, “This Message Will Self-Destruct” has a perfectly reasonable number of switches even despite that.) “Deep Into the Grotto” sort of fits into this category as well, but it still has too many switches – or at least too many that are easy to miss. “S’pht Happens” probably also has too many. “My Kingdom Pfhor a Horse” also has too many, some of which are completely unnecessary since the natural progression of the level always forces the player to visit those rooms. “Unwired” also has far too many switches, but that’s among the least of that level’s problems, and I might just want to completely overhaul how it works for 1.4. “Babylon X” is less of an offender, since you can at least do most of them in one counterclockwise trip, but I might still remove a few. “Unpfhorseen” also has a lot of switches, but they don’t feel as excessive; I think it helps that the rooms that contain them are at least more distinctive. We already nerfed the switch puzzle from “Killing the Giants as They Sleep”, so the main problem with that one is the illegible automap (sorry).
. - We might want to add a few more zero-point modules throughout chapter four, either as secrets or just scattered along the player’s path in Jjaro levels. We obviously don’t want to allow players to one-shot everything with the wave motion cannon, but it’s such a cool weapon that allowing them a few more shots with it probably won’t hurt anything.
. - I think the gravitronic blades are still blowing up enemies. I need to figure out why.
. - I haven’t figured out why animated idle weapon sequences are janky. This goes here because it’d be a particularly big help for the gravitronic blades.
. - I’m not 100% sure we fixed “I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This”; it might still be impossible to complete. I might’ve already noted this in the bug report, but I’ll note it again here. This is the most crucial thing to fix.
“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
“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
Thanks for keeping up work on this while I've been buried in pandemic-induced life problems.
1.2.1 was only supposed to be a bug fix in the first place, and we only decided to call it 1.3 because while we were fixing bugs you and others made a bunch of other feature improvements that you didn't want to push back to the then-planned 1.3 (that's now planned as 1.4). Last I looked before the pandemic hit, we had nearly finished off my list of bugs to fix, and you had come up with a huge list of other bugs, and I was just waiting on you to finish those before we called it final. So whenever you think all the bugs are gone, I'm happy to look it over and ship it.Overall, the amount this game has improved since even 1.2 is pretty considerable. The amount it’s improved since 1.1 is borderline incalculable. We’d arguably be justified in just fixing the bugs we’re aware of and releasing it as is.
The fusion cannon isn't just a reward for exploring. It's supposed to be a big huge gift when you get it in the midst of the big battle in chapter 2. Since it's possible to get it in the prologue if you want to, I really don't think it should be made mandatory and ruin the whole slow reveal of a new weapon (mostly) each chapter.The fusion cannon improves the opening chapter so much that I’d strongly suggest making it mandatory. I get that it’s there to reward players for exploring, but if I got to “A Friend in Need” and then found out I could’ve had a weapon that awesome eleven levels ago, I’d be pissed. If we still want to reward players for exploring, we can add some more ammo somewhere else, maybe. And I get that this will reduce the challenge of the early game a bit, but since it’s the early game, I’m not sure how much I mind that.
I agree with the principle here and this is a part of the planned revision of the dream levels and prologue/epilogue, wherein realism wouldn't be a problem (because the new prologue would be a dream).I’d still argue pretty strongly for breaking up the first terminal. I get the argument about realism, but (1) having terminals activate actions on the level introduces players to the mechanic that terminals can do things other than teleport them around, and (2) breaking up the flow of text across multiple terminals will make it so players aren't hit with a massive text dump before they even leave the opening room, and make the massive expanse of the level feel less empty.
If you don't remember and for those who haven't heard, that plan was:
- The prologue becomes a version of Inti Station (like the failure dreams, to drive home that the prologue is a failed timeline), not K'lia, and is a dream that the player is having on his way back in time to the Marathon, which patches up the hole of having just that one time-jump without a dream sequence in it.
- The failure dreams remain the same.
- The success dreams get a more complex area based on Aye Mak Sicur but retextured and turned inside-out, hat you can see increasing parts of from the end room that's currently just floating in empty space.
- The epilogue becomes a walk through that inside-out variant of AMS, leading back to the room floating in space from which you can see the whole thing.
- The geometry of Far Side / Near Side would be integrated in with Third Rock, so it doesn't go to waste, and since they're different parts of the same location anyway.
If you want to go ahead and implement that, then I'm all for having the prologue terminal broken up, but until that happens I don't really like the idea.
A possible interim compromise would be to keep the same geometry of the prologue and epilogue for now, and just make the prologue a dream as well (turn on fisheye), which would make breaking up the terminal okay.
I don't have any strong objections to thess if nobody else does.The mechanism from “Septococcal Pfhoryngitis” of having the chip teleport in one of three locations isn’t fun and sometimes doesn’t even work: players have reported that the chip sometimes won’t spawn in any of the three possible locations. I don’t understand why, but I’d suggest just going back to having it always spawn in the same place; this reduces frustrating RNG and also helps lessen the likelihood of players getting confused and frustrated on one of the earliest levels in the game. It also eliminates the problem of Hathor telling you the chip is in a location that, two times out of three, is incorrect. She’s certainly not a reliable narrator, but there’s really no story justification for making it a matter of RNG whether she’s telling the truth here. (I suppose we could just rewrite the terminal to have her make a vague reference along the lines of “It got teleported into the sewage somewhere”, but I still prefer the “get rid of the RNG” approach.)
Since we can now use “Terminals Stop Time” as a flag on levels, I’d suggest adding it to every level. It would particularly improve “Sahkmet Rising” so that players won’t suffocate reading the wall of text on that level (as actually happened to Rampancy – though I guess that might not affect net games, but maybe it’s possible to add a Lua script specifically to prevent oxygen usage while players are reading terminals during a net game, too).
Speaking of having terminals activate level events, is there any reason whatsoever to do that on “Core Done Blew”? It just introduces unnecessary, unintuitive backtracking, and Tycho’s terminal doesn’t really add anything to his characterisation. There’s at least an arguable justification for it on “The Incredible Hulk”, but none that I can see here.
If we can think of even a nominal excuse for why the Pfhor are able to teleport in afterward but not before, I'm fine with that. Maybe some of the something you smash or switch inside breaks the teleport-jammers or whatever and then they can start beaming in after that?“Roots and Radicals” and “Heart of Fusion” would benefit from something to do in the AI cores besides punch switches. I understand that the argument is that the Pfhor wouldn’t have been able to get in before we opened the core, but we’ve got Pfhor and S’pht teleporting in elsewhere in the level; I don’t see any reason they can’t teleport into the cores as well, once the player opens them up. It’d make the sections less tedious if we added some Fighters or something, so you’re not just running down a bunch of corridors punching switches.
That's all fine with me. (Fusion seems to do something electrical as well as heat-based, so maybe these ancient F'lickta are still vulnerable to nerve damage from it or something.We need to rebalance some of the monsters, given how difficult they are on lower difficulty settings. Ticks are the biggest offender; they’re nasty even on Kindergarten. Right now, one Tick attack does as much damage as a running fist punch, which is ridiculous, particularly given how quickly they attack. That should be nerfed. It’s also not set to do alien damage, which it certainly should be. Lastly, it’s probably worth introducing Major and Minor variants, seeing as how every Lh’owon level has custom physics anyway. The current Tick slot can be made into the Minor Tick, and the current Wasp slot can be made into the Major Tick; since Ticks and Wasps never once appear on the same level, it won’t be an issue.
The F’lickta being immune to fusion might be justifiable story-wise, but it’s not fun. I can see a case for them to still be immune to the N-cannon, since they’re also immune to fire, but making them immune to fusion greatly increases the amount of tedious weapon-switching players need to do; it’s not really interesting or challenging, just annoying (particularly since it turns exploration into a guessing game of “will this room have enemy Defenders, F’lickta, or both?”, and also greatly increases the RNG factor). Furthermore, it poses a much larger problem for players who vid-start one of the first three levels of chapter three, since fusion is the only weapon they’ll have any ammo for.
That sounds great.As much as I love “She Is the Dark One” overall, many of the straight, narrow corridors are indistinguishable from one another, and it’s really easy to get lost in them. We should probably add more detailing to the level to make them more distinctive, either by adding some more caverns between them or by adding some light fixture polygons to the ceilings in some of them or something. This is arguably also a problem for the underground rooms of “S’pht Happens”.
That's all fine with me too.Locking the citadel doors on “S’pht Happens” can trap players in network games (or players in solo games who grenade-jump out the window). I’d suggest either adding a way for players to get back into the citadel (a terminal from the S’pht asking something along the lines of “What are you doing out here? Get back into the tower”) or just removing the lock and adding a note from the S’pht/Leela that they’re locking the tower. I think I might’ve already made an Issue about this, but just in case I didn’t, it came to mind just now.
There are far too many switches on some levels. I get that they're there because mapmakers wanted players to visit the whole level, and to some extent I understand that. But here's an example from “The Incredible Hulk”, which is otherwise a great level:
The Incredible Switch Hunt.png
I count thirteen switches (circled in magenta) required just for the opening of the level. That’s ridiculous. We could cut that in half and there’d still be too many. Most of them are wholly unnecessary: the four at the top left can be converted to a set of wires that, when destroyed, activates all four platforms; most of the switches circled at the bottom probably aren’t even necessary, etc. Eliminating many of these switches may require rebalancing the level a bit, since there’ll be multiple troopers attacking the player when the door beneath the pattern buffer activates. But that’s fine. Some of these are really just monster closets; requiring the player to actually visit each of them is probably excessive.
The four levels I can justify having ridiculous numbers of switches are “Roots and Radicals”, “Heart of Fusion”, “Dread Not”, and “This Message Will Self-Destruct”; you’d expect AI cores and ship self-destruct mechanisms to have a lot of failsafes. (And actually, “This Message Will Self-Destruct” has a perfectly reasonable number of switches even despite that.) “Deep Into the Grotto” sort of fits into this category as well, but it still has too many switches – or at least too many that are easy to miss. “S’pht Happens” probably also has too many. “My Kingdom Pfhor a Horse” also has too many, some of which are completely unnecessary since the natural progression of the level always forces the player to visit those rooms. “Unwired” also has far too many switches, but that’s among the least of that level’s problems, and I might just want to completely overhaul how it works for 1.4. “Babylon X” is less of an offender, since you can at least do most of them in one counterclockwise trip, but I might still remove a few. “Unpfhorseen” also has a lot of switches, but they don’t feel as excessive; I think it helps that the rooms that contain them are at least more distinctive. We already nerfed the switch puzzle from “Killing the Giants as They Sleep”, so the main problem with that one is the illegible automap (sorry).
We might want to add a few more zero-point modules throughout chapter four, either as secrets or just scattered along the player’s path in Jjaro levels. We obviously don’t want to allow players to one-shot everything with the wave motion cannon, but it’s such a cool weapon that allowing them a few more shots with it probably won’t hurt anything.
I'm worried that it could be because of physics getting out of sync, since you've not been using github properly, so changes that I made earlier and pushed to git may not have come through to you correctly, and when I manually merged your later changes in I might not have seen some details I wasn't expecting to change, which would have then overwritten my earlier fixes, etc.I think the gravitronic blades are still blowing up enemies. I need to figure out why.
I'd like to complain about that, but since I don't have any time to do any development at all anymore (I had to take a fucking 3hr break in the middle of writing this response because more shit that I can't fucking just say "wait few minutes" to came up), and you're the only one still actively working on this project right now, I'll just have to trust you to do the best you can, and then figure out how to merge everything safely back into my official build at the end.
Yes please! I haven't even had time to look at the new weapon animations yet. Big thanks to Tacticus for them, and to you for integrating them.I haven’t figured out why animated idle weapon sequences are janky. This goes here because it’d be a particularly big help for the gravitronic blades.
I wonder if this could also be because of changes getting lost in manual syncing. Possibly also because of VML/Vasara saving switch state, and the need to flip a bunch of switches in this level to get around, unless you write down the right poly #s to manually teleport to instead.I’m not 100% sure we fixed “I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This”; it might still be impossible to complete. I might’ve already noted this in the bug report, but I’ll note it again here. This is the most crucial thing to fix.
I think I’ll just make the first level into a dream and split up the terminal for now, then. I probably won’t have time to make the split-up “Aye Mak Sicur” for now. Would we want to modify how Hathor’s message is presented while making it a dream?
I get the idea of wanting the fusion cannon to be a big reward, but… hm. The early game just feels a lot more sluggish without it. Chapter two already gives you a new-ish weapon with the redesigned M2 alien weapon. I suppose an argument can be made that it’s not really a new weapon, but… it sort of is, since being able to reload it, carry 49 clips for it, and tell how many shots you have left before reloading makes it way more powerful than the original. Granted, that might not be new to anyone who somehow played Chronicles before Eternal, but I heavily doubt any such people exist.
Yeah, the switches on “Roots and Radicals” and “Heart of Fusion” can just be said to disable teleport-jammers if anyone asks.
Regarding the physics changes, I’ve been trying to keep everything up-to-date, but I don’t think Tacticus had my latest revisions when he made the new shapes and their physics, and some changes I made must’ve gotten rolled back without my noticing.
I’ve given up on ever being able to reintegrate my changes to Github; I spent over an hour trying to do it two years ago and finding myself wanting to throw my computer out my second-storey window before deciding it wasn’t worth the effort and giving up. It’s possible they’ve improved their interface since then, but the whole experience gave me profoundly negative feelings towards Github; if I have to spend that much time just getting the damn thing to make commits, that’s time I’m not actually spending on improving the game itself. Dropbox automatically integrates people’s changes into the project (unless they’re disconnected from the Internet), which makes branch conflicts like the Github conflicts we’ve seen much less likely, and maintains a history of file changes for a month (if it’s really necessary, I believe that can be upgraded to a year). I maintain my own backups of old maps, shapes, and sounds files on a RAID, which further reduces the likelihood of data loss. (I suppose the main dangers are if there’s a house fire or multiple drive failures at once or something like that – if it’s truly necessary, I can start adding my old shapes/sounds/map backups to another Dropbox folder which I just wouldn’t keep on my local hard drives.)
I think the “Bad Feeling” issues are probably due to Vasara saving tags in the wrong state, yeah. That’s such an annoying bug.
I get the idea of wanting the fusion cannon to be a big reward, but… hm. The early game just feels a lot more sluggish without it. Chapter two already gives you a new-ish weapon with the redesigned M2 alien weapon. I suppose an argument can be made that it’s not really a new weapon, but… it sort of is, since being able to reload it, carry 49 clips for it, and tell how many shots you have left before reloading makes it way more powerful than the original. Granted, that might not be new to anyone who somehow played Chronicles before Eternal, but I heavily doubt any such people exist.
Yeah, the switches on “Roots and Radicals” and “Heart of Fusion” can just be said to disable teleport-jammers if anyone asks.
Regarding the physics changes, I’ve been trying to keep everything up-to-date, but I don’t think Tacticus had my latest revisions when he made the new shapes and their physics, and some changes I made must’ve gotten rolled back without my noticing.
I’ve given up on ever being able to reintegrate my changes to Github; I spent over an hour trying to do it two years ago and finding myself wanting to throw my computer out my second-storey window before deciding it wasn’t worth the effort and giving up. It’s possible they’ve improved their interface since then, but the whole experience gave me profoundly negative feelings towards Github; if I have to spend that much time just getting the damn thing to make commits, that’s time I’m not actually spending on improving the game itself. Dropbox automatically integrates people’s changes into the project (unless they’re disconnected from the Internet), which makes branch conflicts like the Github conflicts we’ve seen much less likely, and maintains a history of file changes for a month (if it’s really necessary, I believe that can be upgraded to a year). I maintain my own backups of old maps, shapes, and sounds files on a RAID, which further reduces the likelihood of data loss. (I suppose the main dangers are if there’s a house fire or multiple drive failures at once or something like that – if it’s truly necessary, I can start adding my old shapes/sounds/map backups to another Dropbox folder which I just wouldn’t keep on my local hard drives.)
I think the “Bad Feeling” issues are probably due to Vasara saving tags in the wrong state, yeah. That’s such an annoying bug.
“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
“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
I don't think that's really necessary. It can just be a dream of Hathor's last message before they left.
I still think that since it's already possible for those who want to to get the cannon in the prologue, there's no need to make it mandatory. Those who didn't get it early get the big surprise when they get it in ch2 (like Rampancy.net did), and those who really want to (who know what they're missing) can just pick it up in the prologue.I get the idea of wanting the fusion cannon to be a big reward, but… hm. The early game just feels a lot more sluggish without it. Chapter two already gives you a new-ish weapon with the redesigned M2 alien weapon. I suppose an argument can be made that it’s not really a new weapon, but… it sort of is, since being able to reload it, carry 49 clips for it, and tell how many shots you have left before reloading makes it way more powerful than the original. Granted, that might not be new to anyone who somehow played Chronicles before Eternal, but I heavily doubt any such people exist.
Without disclosing any specific spoilers, I’m just going to note that Pfhorrest and I have discussed the ending of Eternal and are planning to expand it somewhat. Broadly speaking, the revised ending will delve further into It will also tie together plot threads from earlier in the game in what we hope to be a satisfying manner, though our planned approach will also be something like Douglas Adams’ in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – if you want to pick up everything, you’ll have to pay attention. I hope to begin writing the new terminal text later today, assuming my writing on Trojan (for an AU in a secret level) goes smoothly.
We haven’t abandoned work on Eternal 1.3 entirely, but at best it’s probably months away from release, as there are still major problems with it – then again, there are probably bigger problems with 1.2. If you want to play a current beta, let me know – everything on the site is months old and lacking a large number of fixes I’ve since made (not to mention Tacticus’ spectacular new weapon sprites). If you plan to play Eternal in the next few months, I’d honestly recommend the latest 1.3 beta despite whatever issues may exist in it – it’s probably still a more pleasant experience overall.
Spoiler:
We haven’t abandoned work on Eternal 1.3 entirely, but at best it’s probably months away from release, as there are still major problems with it – then again, there are probably bigger problems with 1.2. If you want to play a current beta, let me know – everything on the site is months old and lacking a large number of fixes I’ve since made (not to mention Tacticus’ spectacular new weapon sprites). If you plan to play Eternal in the next few months, I’d honestly recommend the latest 1.3 beta despite whatever issues may exist in it – it’s probably still a more pleasant experience overall.
“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
“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
Work on Eternal 1.3 continues apace. The final chapter’s story has been considerably expanded, and the player will finally encounter in person. I have begun implementing aspects of the script for this fight, but I’m waiting on a build featuring new engine features before I can script the exact behaviour I’d like to implement.
(Eternal 1.3 will require at least Aleph One 1.4 to function correctly; we have no intention of supporting older versions, since we’re relying heavily on new engine features such as ephemera and more advanced monster scripting. Not supporting old releases is standard practice for Doom WADs, and in any case, it’s generally a bad idea to run very old versions of software unless there’s a good reason to do so; for starters, who knows what kind of unpatched security holes there are. Not that Aleph One is likely to have security holes, but ¯\(°_o)/¯.)
In any case, I’m going through the long list of issues on GitHub and clearing out as many as possible. Most are pretty minor and can be fixed relatively easily, and I should have that done within a week or two. I got nine done last night alone in a couple hours of work. There are 81 left, some of which are not planned until 1.4.
One other big feature that remains to be implemented is a precipitation script implementing ephemera. I’m not certain I possess adequate knowledge of the game’s Lua scripting to implement that myself, but hopefully I can get help with that reasonably soon.
Beyond that, there are a couple new terminals left to write, and I’m planning to go through and edit the whole game to make it less verbose. In the process, I’ll probably also split up a few of the longest terminals (most infamously, the “S’pht Happens” ending terminal) and move some of the exposition to later in the game, so that the player doesn’t get twelve screens of exposition at once. That whole process should take a couple of weeks as well.
I’ll release another public beta (or release candidate) once I’m satisfied with how the game is functioning so people can test it more widely. We’ll probably call it finished once the release candidate has been out for a month or so, and Pfhorrest and I have had time to test the whole game a few times in co-op – whichever comes later.
Spoiler:
(Eternal 1.3 will require at least Aleph One 1.4 to function correctly; we have no intention of supporting older versions, since we’re relying heavily on new engine features such as ephemera and more advanced monster scripting. Not supporting old releases is standard practice for Doom WADs, and in any case, it’s generally a bad idea to run very old versions of software unless there’s a good reason to do so; for starters, who knows what kind of unpatched security holes there are. Not that Aleph One is likely to have security holes, but ¯\(°_o)/¯.)
In any case, I’m going through the long list of issues on GitHub and clearing out as many as possible. Most are pretty minor and can be fixed relatively easily, and I should have that done within a week or two. I got nine done last night alone in a couple hours of work. There are 81 left, some of which are not planned until 1.4.
One other big feature that remains to be implemented is a precipitation script implementing ephemera. I’m not certain I possess adequate knowledge of the game’s Lua scripting to implement that myself, but hopefully I can get help with that reasonably soon.
Beyond that, there are a couple new terminals left to write, and I’m planning to go through and edit the whole game to make it less verbose. In the process, I’ll probably also split up a few of the longest terminals (most infamously, the “S’pht Happens” ending terminal) and move some of the exposition to later in the game, so that the player doesn’t get twelve screens of exposition at once. That whole process should take a couple of weeks as well.
I’ll release another public beta (or release candidate) once I’m satisfied with how the game is functioning so people can test it more widely. We’ll probably call it finished once the release candidate has been out for a month or so, and Pfhorrest and I have had time to test the whole game a few times in co-op – whichever comes later.
“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
“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
Because feature creep keeps pushing Eternal 1.3’s release back further, we’ve decided to polish up Eternal 1.2.1 – it’s been some two and a half years, and the “latest” release of the game still doesn’t work correctly on the 32-bit Windows build of Aleph One. You can get Release Candidate 1 here (click “Eternal X 1.2” to expand).
This is not purely a bug fix release; it features new sounds, remastered sounds, and some fairly significant gameplay changes to a few levels in addition to bug fixes. However, the most important change is that it should no longer cause the 32-bit Windows app to run out of memory. (Additionally, and for the same reason, it should load much faster.) It also (hopefully) fixes a few potential lock conditions whereby players could inadvertently render levels impossible to complete, thus requiring them either to use the Lua console to progress or to restart from an earlier saved game.
This is nearly feature-complete; apart from bug fixes, the only change left is that I’m going to change the player’s staff bolts and uncharged fusion cannon shots to activate switches. (Uncharged fusion cannon shots activated switches in 1.2.0, but since players could deactivate some switches that wouldn’t reactivate by hitting them with multiple fusion cannon shots, we disabled this at some point in 1.2.1’s development. However, we determined that this was a fault with the levels and should be fixed on that end, since it’d be possible to deactivate them by tabbing them twice as well; moreover, it’s better for the pace of gameplay for the fusion cannon to activate switches.)
Besides that, we just need testing and bug fixes in order to release 1.2.1 final. If you experience any bugs, let us know here! The biggest priority to fix are game-breaking bugs, such as crashes, inescapable traps, and lock conditions like the ones described above. Smaller bugs may not be fixed until 1.3.
1.3 will still follow, hopefully in a few months, but given how much feature creep it’s experienced, we may not finish it this year. If not this year, then we’ll hopefully have it ready early 2022, though.
I’m in the process of playing through all of 1.2.1 RC1 on Total Carnage; I’ll be posting my films to a YouTube playlist as I encode them. You can use these to preview the gameplay or as references in case you get stuck.
Enjoy!]
This is not purely a bug fix release; it features new sounds, remastered sounds, and some fairly significant gameplay changes to a few levels in addition to bug fixes. However, the most important change is that it should no longer cause the 32-bit Windows app to run out of memory. (Additionally, and for the same reason, it should load much faster.) It also (hopefully) fixes a few potential lock conditions whereby players could inadvertently render levels impossible to complete, thus requiring them either to use the Lua console to progress or to restart from an earlier saved game.
This is nearly feature-complete; apart from bug fixes, the only change left is that I’m going to change the player’s staff bolts and uncharged fusion cannon shots to activate switches. (Uncharged fusion cannon shots activated switches in 1.2.0, but since players could deactivate some switches that wouldn’t reactivate by hitting them with multiple fusion cannon shots, we disabled this at some point in 1.2.1’s development. However, we determined that this was a fault with the levels and should be fixed on that end, since it’d be possible to deactivate them by tabbing them twice as well; moreover, it’s better for the pace of gameplay for the fusion cannon to activate switches.)
Besides that, we just need testing and bug fixes in order to release 1.2.1 final. If you experience any bugs, let us know here! The biggest priority to fix are game-breaking bugs, such as crashes, inescapable traps, and lock conditions like the ones described above. Smaller bugs may not be fixed until 1.3.
1.3 will still follow, hopefully in a few months, but given how much feature creep it’s experienced, we may not finish it this year. If not this year, then we’ll hopefully have it ready early 2022, though.
I’m in the process of playing through all of 1.2.1 RC1 on Total Carnage; I’ll be posting my films to a YouTube playlist as I encode them. You can use these to preview the gameplay or as references in case you get stuck.
Enjoy!]
“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
“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
Some ten days after RC1, we’ve released our second release candidate for Eternal 1.2.1 (again, expand “Eternal X 1.2”).
Last week, I replayed RC1 in its entirety and changed the most pressing flaws I noticed; RC2 is the result. Beyond the enhancements in RC1 (of which the most important were probably fixes to Windows crashes and much faster load times), RC2 fixes at least three game-breaking bugs and numerous smaller issues (physics inconsistencies between levels, hall of mirrors glitches, and so on); it also makes a few physics changes that hopefully make the game more enjoyable.
I suspect RC2 is feature-complete; there are undoubtedly still some bugs to fix, but apart from those, the “official” release of 1.2.1 probably won’t play meaningfully differently. If you’ve been hesitant to try previous Eternal development releases because of potential instability, I think that’s probably not a major concern with this one, but I’d appreciate any testing/feedback people here could provide. When we feel it’s been tested enough, we’ll release 1.2.1 officially; I’m hoping to put a wrap on it this month, and the more testing it gets, the likelier that’ll be.
1.3 will follow the official release of 1.2.1 (in fact, to a large extent, I’m working on the two in parallel), but I can’t yet say whether that’ll be late this year, early next, or later than that. (I really hope it’s not later than early next year.) It’s still months off, at the earliest.
If you experience any pressing issues (inescapable game locks, game-breaking bugs, untextured polygon sides, etc.), please let us know. Other than that, we hope you enjoy it!
Last week, I replayed RC1 in its entirety and changed the most pressing flaws I noticed; RC2 is the result. Beyond the enhancements in RC1 (of which the most important were probably fixes to Windows crashes and much faster load times), RC2 fixes at least three game-breaking bugs and numerous smaller issues (physics inconsistencies between levels, hall of mirrors glitches, and so on); it also makes a few physics changes that hopefully make the game more enjoyable.
I suspect RC2 is feature-complete; there are undoubtedly still some bugs to fix, but apart from those, the “official” release of 1.2.1 probably won’t play meaningfully differently. If you’ve been hesitant to try previous Eternal development releases because of potential instability, I think that’s probably not a major concern with this one, but I’d appreciate any testing/feedback people here could provide. When we feel it’s been tested enough, we’ll release 1.2.1 officially; I’m hoping to put a wrap on it this month, and the more testing it gets, the likelier that’ll be.
1.3 will follow the official release of 1.2.1 (in fact, to a large extent, I’m working on the two in parallel), but I can’t yet say whether that’ll be late this year, early next, or later than that. (I really hope it’s not later than early next year.) It’s still months off, at the earliest.
If you experience any pressing issues (inescapable game locks, game-breaking bugs, untextured polygon sides, etc.), please let us know. Other than that, we hope you enjoy 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
“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
This is still going along. I’ve tested about three quarters of the levels in 1.2.1 by this point, and I’ve made a few notes on things to change while doing so. Ideally, I’d like a couple other people to play through the levels before calling it final, but I’m growing decreasingly hopeful that this will happen.
Work on 1.3 continues as well; we’ve made some substantial rewrites. Hathor hopefully has more humanity and warmth to her character, for lack of better terms; players consistently found her cold and off-putting in the old releases, but she’ll hopefully now treat Marcus more the way you’d expect someone to treat an old lover they’re still on good terms with. Additionally, I noticed that all three of the Marathon’s AIs would have known her from the days on the Marathon, but not one of them saw fit to mention that fact even once in past versions of the game, so Leela now goes into some detail about what Hathor was like before the events of Eternal (quite a bit like her mythological namesake, it so happens). Further revisions are still in the works; Hathor’s character arc is planned to proceed (in fact, already proceeds) quite a bit differently.
We’re also working on making K’lia feel less empty. Another thing I noticed is that Marcus never mentioned a single person on K’lia, which seemed odd. Of course, the intro level already has tons of exposition (although we have tried to trim some excess verbiage), so some of Marcus’ sketches of people from K’lia may end up in our dream levels (which will hopefully help to remind players of the stakes as well). However, we do introduce one enigmatic character in the intro level.
Beyond that, we’re also revising levels substantially. I’ve completely remade some segments of “Unwired” because I felt there was too much linear backtracking and too many boxy rooms.
And I’ve been retexturing a lot of areas to make them less monochromatic and make better use of Eternal’s four-colour theme. Sticking to “Unwired”, this is how the starting room looks in 1.2.x (using the SD textures; I don’t load the HD stuff when texturing because it adds three seconds to load time every time I want to go into visual mode, which adds up quickly):
As you can see, it’s just green and grey, with no other colours to be found anywhere. (Lest it seems like I’m singling out “Unwired” for this, I’ll note that almost every map in Eternal overused the grey textures; I just happened to be working on “Unwired” when I took these screenshots.) In any case, here’s the same area in 1.3:
They use a mixture of the new set’s red, orange, and yellow, so that it’s not just the same two tones throughout the level. (I throw in a lot of blue in places, too, but didn’t use any in the starting area).
There’s still a lot of this to do. Plus, we’ve still got new monster sprites to implement and more.
A few screenshots featuring a fantastic new sprite Tacticus made:
As there seems to be a ten-attachment limit per post, I’ll likely make another post with more screenshots of other levels.
Work on 1.3 continues as well; we’ve made some substantial rewrites. Hathor hopefully has more humanity and warmth to her character, for lack of better terms; players consistently found her cold and off-putting in the old releases, but she’ll hopefully now treat Marcus more the way you’d expect someone to treat an old lover they’re still on good terms with. Additionally, I noticed that all three of the Marathon’s AIs would have known her from the days on the Marathon, but not one of them saw fit to mention that fact even once in past versions of the game, so Leela now goes into some detail about what Hathor was like before the events of Eternal (quite a bit like her mythological namesake, it so happens). Further revisions are still in the works; Hathor’s character arc is planned to proceed (in fact, already proceeds) quite a bit differently.
We’re also working on making K’lia feel less empty. Another thing I noticed is that Marcus never mentioned a single person on K’lia, which seemed odd. Of course, the intro level already has tons of exposition (although we have tried to trim some excess verbiage), so some of Marcus’ sketches of people from K’lia may end up in our dream levels (which will hopefully help to remind players of the stakes as well). However, we do introduce one enigmatic character in the intro level.
Beyond that, we’re also revising levels substantially. I’ve completely remade some segments of “Unwired” because I felt there was too much linear backtracking and too many boxy rooms.
There’s still a lot of this to do. Plus, we’ve still got new monster sprites to implement and more.
A few screenshots featuring a fantastic new sprite Tacticus made:
“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
“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
More screenshots:
No idea when Eternal 1.3 will be ready – there’s still a lot to do for it. 1.2.1 should be ready later this month or early November, though.
YouTube playlists:
1.2.1 individual levels (WIP): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... ek3R6DriTf
1.2.1 full chapters: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... gW518CEsed
1.3 individual levels: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... WT_WWFeyeV
1.3 full chapters: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Ri-5P-SKEN
YouTube playlists:
1.2.1 individual levels (WIP): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... ek3R6DriTf
1.2.1 full chapters: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... gW518CEsed
1.3 individual levels: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... WT_WWFeyeV
1.3 full chapters: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Ri-5P-SKEN
“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
“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
Sorry if I'm out of the loop here, but are those enemy sprites now the default look for this scenario, or is that just a plugin preference you're using?
New default look; also used in Where Monsters Are in Dreams and Chronicles (both of which follow Eternal in Marcus’ subjective timeline), and we’ll probably also release a shapes patch so people can use these in M2 and Infinity at some point.
Part of the issue was that previous versions used a mixture of M1 and M2 sprites for the Pfhor, which resulted in an inconsistent look; this way, the Pfhor all have a similar art style. (Granted, some of the other enemies still have different art styles, but I think that’s fine.) Plus, we just like these versions a lot – and this way, we’re not just using the same enemy sprites everyone else has used for more than 25 years. (Not that either the M1 or M2 versions have aged badly, IMO, but it’s nice to have new artwork.)
ETA: I'm done testing Eternal 1.2.1. Pfhorrest is about to go through it as well; once they have, we’ll make any last-minute bug fixes and probably release it officially within the next couple of weeks.
Part of the issue was that previous versions used a mixture of M1 and M2 sprites for the Pfhor, which resulted in an inconsistent look; this way, the Pfhor all have a similar art style. (Granted, some of the other enemies still have different art styles, but I think that’s fine.) Plus, we just like these versions a lot – and this way, we’re not just using the same enemy sprites everyone else has used for more than 25 years. (Not that either the M1 or M2 versions have aged badly, IMO, but it’s nice to have new artwork.)
ETA: I'm done testing Eternal 1.2.1. Pfhorrest is about to go through it as well; once they have, we’ll make any last-minute bug fixes and probably release it officially within the next couple of weeks.
“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
“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
Ah, alright. Thanks for clearing that up at least.
No problem.
Eternal 1.2.1 is now officially available. We probably should’ve released this two and a half years ago, but better late than never. The biggest changes include much lower memory usage (Windows should no longer crash on load), fixes to game-breaking bugs that could render several levels incompletable, new and remastered sounds, refined weapon physics, and fixes to the sources of frequent complaints in a few specific levels. A detailed (although not exhaustive) change log is included in a readme bundled with the game.
If you experience any problems, let us know; there probably won’t be a 1.2.2 release, unless anyone finds anything absolutely game-breaking, but we’ll at least know to fix it in 1.3 (which will hopefully see release in 2022, but all release date estimates from me should be taken with a massive grain of salt unless I explicitly state otherwise). Also, note that many of the biggest additions and changes (i.e., the new story elements, monsters, music, landscapes, weapons, and final boss battle) are being held for 1.3: we deliberately limited 1.2.1’s feature scope to ensure it would actually be released this year.
Eternal 1.2.1 is now officially available. We probably should’ve released this two and a half years ago, but better late than never. The biggest changes include much lower memory usage (Windows should no longer crash on load), fixes to game-breaking bugs that could render several levels incompletable, new and remastered sounds, refined weapon physics, and fixes to the sources of frequent complaints in a few specific levels. A detailed (although not exhaustive) change log is included in a readme bundled with the game.
If you experience any problems, let us know; there probably won’t be a 1.2.2 release, unless anyone finds anything absolutely game-breaking, but we’ll at least know to fix it in 1.3 (which will hopefully see release in 2022, but all release date estimates from me should be taken with a massive grain of salt unless I explicitly state otherwise). Also, note that many of the biggest additions and changes (i.e., the new story elements, monsters, music, landscapes, weapons, and final boss battle) are being held for 1.3: we deliberately limited 1.2.1’s feature scope to ensure it would actually be released this year.
“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
“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
We've released a preview build of Eternal 1.3. This is by no means a finished product (I’ve already found a hall of mirrors glitch on “Unlucky Pfhor Some”, which I’m embarrassed I didn’t notice). Nonetheless, this represents some two years of work that wasn’t rolled into Eternal 1.2.1 because we didn’t want scope creep to delay that by several further months, and I’m really pleased with what we’ve come up with. Additions include:
Also, enjoy!
- New weapon renders
- New monsters and monster sprites
- New and remade textures
- New music
- Remade landscapes
- A new final boss fight (of sorts)
- Numerous refinements to gameplay, level design, and combat
- Revisions and additions to the story and characters, including entirely new plot arcs and characters
- Major improvements to pacing (the infamous opening diary and “S’pht Happens” novella have both been split up)
- Remixed stereo sounds, many straight from the sources
- A complete remake of the level “Unwired” (now entitled “Remedial Chaos Theory”)
- Numerous cases of gratuitous and probably at least occasionally ungrammatical Latin
- Precipitation & more sophisticated monster behaviour, thanks to new engine scripting features
Also, enjoy!
“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
“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
-
Lion O Cyborg
- Cyborg
- Posts: 188
- Joined: Jun 22nd '18, 19:00
- Location: UK (which is IN EUROPE!)
Looking forward to playing through it!The Man wrote: ↑Feb 27th '22, 07:01 We've released a preview build of Eternal 1.3. This is by no means a finished product (I’ve already found a hall of mirrors glitch on “Unlucky Pfhor Some”, which I’m embarrassed I didn’t notice). Nonetheless, this represents some two years of work that wasn’t rolled into Eternal 1.2.1 because we didn’t want scope creep to delay that by several further months, and I’m really pleased with what we’ve come up with. Additions include:
Let me know what issues you experience – we plan to produce a second preview to correct whatever issues people report by March 14, since ares540 will be running it at the Shots Fired marathon, which starts then.
- New weapon renders
- New monsters and monster sprites
- New and remade textures
- New music
- Remade landscapes
- A new final boss fight (of sorts)
- Numerous refinements to gameplay, level design, and combat
- Revisions and additions to the story and characters, including entirely new plot arcs and characters
- Major improvements to pacing (the infamous opening diary and “S’pht Happens” novella have both been split up)
- Remixed stereo sounds, many straight from the sources
- A complete remake of the level “Unwired” (now entitled “Remedial Chaos Theory”)
- Numerous cases of gratuitous and probably at least occasionally ungrammatical Latin
- Precipitation & more sophisticated monster behaviour, thanks to new engine scripting features
Also, enjoy!
Thank you so much for restoring the rain effects. Rain in 2.5D games like Marathon Eternal & Brutal Doom always looks so cool! Weather effects in 2.5D shooters and early full 3D games in general really.