Eternal X 1.2

[Pfhorrest]

Is Chronicles a type of sequel to Eternal? I thought Aaron got inspiration from it.

aaron was working on marathon chronicles ages ago, i don't think it originally took after eternal, but i gather he's trying to incorporate elements from all major scenarios into it including eternal he can speak more for himself probably

[halosammy]

Can you two try this version and see if it does any better with Eternal's textures: http://treellama.org/AlephOne-LAA.zip

It works.

[treellama]

Haha, Eternal must be using more than 2 GB of RAM. That's kind of excessive.

[halosammy]

Haha, Eternal must be using more than 2 GB of RAM. That's kind of excessive.

You have my gratitude.

[ravenshining]

Oh, easily. A couple months ago on Discord we were poking fun at how much memory Eternal takes up and how long it takes to load a level with Vasara, trading screenshots of top output while waiting for it to render. I got 12.7 GB virtual, 2.4 GB resident. Spooky was getting freezes when A1 hit 27 GB of I assume virtual.

[halosammy]

Where Giants Have Fallen must be the most resource-intensive one, because it’s still crashing my game. Even when I turn the settings down, the water is either pitch black or running in stripes.

[treellama]

Even at 2048x2048 (which is unnecessary aside from landscapes) that's 4 MB per texture with DXTC. To get to 2 GB would still take 250 textures (Aleph One stores a copy in RAM, and OpenGL does too) which I find inconceivable. I've never seen an Eternal screenshot that looks like it has more than a half dozen or so

What are your system specs? Nvidia and AMD cards are better for OpenGL.

[halosammy]

Even at 2048x2048 (which is unnecessary aside from landscapes) that's 4 MB per texture with DXTC. To get to 2 GB would still take 250 textures (Aleph One stores a copy in RAM, and OpenGL does too) which I find inconceivable. I've never seen an Eternal screenshot that looks like it has more than a half dozen or so

What are your system specs? Nvidia and AMD cards are better for OpenGL.

My card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB.

[ravenshining]

Each collection has 130 textures and is less than 256 MB compressed with DXTC. That could perhaps add up to 2.5 GB with Vasara running, but Eternal is relatively strict about not crossing collections (with the exception of liquids) so it wouldn't explain using > 2GB during normal gameplay.

Is it possible that textures are stored in memory decompressed? Or could there be a memory leak that Eternal triggers?

[Pfhorrest]

Also, TL has informed us in the past that AO only loads textures that are actually used, so it shouldn't necessarily be loading all 130 textures in a given set.

[halosammy]

Also, TL has informed us in the past that AO only loads textures that are actually used, so it shouldn't necessarily be loading all 130 textures in a given set.

Would there be a way to get you a more detailed error report? I want to help as best I can.

[treellama]

I can check it out now that Eternal is released and I have an example level that takes a lot of RAM. It’s possible there are memory leaks, it’s been a while since I ran Aleph One in Valgrind. But it’s also been a while since we did anything significant with the renderers

[HelviusRufus]

Two observations so far about the Inti Station levels.

1. I have no idea if the uplink chip outside is possible to get.

2. The Jjaro BOBs in The Philosophy of Time Travel have no walking animation.

If 1. is about Philosophy of Time Travel, yes, the outside chip is obtainable but you can fall off!
So, be careful out there!

[herecomethej2000]

Also, TL has informed us in the past that AO only loads textures that are actually used, so it shouldn't necessarily be loading all 130 textures in a given set.

That is unless you are a fool like me and put all 130 textures in a single zipped plugin.
I found that out the hard way with the CFP monster plugin. It would have to decompress the whole set before it could load the needed textures making the load time excruciating (even worse on OSX for some reason).

[halosammy]

Two observations so far about the Inti Station levels.

1. I have no idea if the uplink chip outside is possible to get.

2. The Jjaro BOBs in The Philosophy of Time Travel have no walking animation.

If 1. is about Philosophy of Time Travel, yes, the outside chip is obtainable but you can fall off!
So, be careful out there!

Were people even supposed to get that chip?

[HelviusRufus]

So, one person reports "Highest" walls work fine, but another has to set them down to "Higher" to run. Still others, myself included, can use "Unlimited"

For walls, "Highest" limits them to 1024x1024. Are there really textures in Eternal bigger than this!?

Also, are you both running 64-bit Windows?

For what it's worth, I'm 64-bit Windows 10 and the graphic card is Intel HD Graphics 520.

As for the higher highest etc.
Walls Unlimited simply does not work even with all the other options set to normal.
Walls Highest only works if Weapons in Hand or Landscapes is set to Normal. (the other options being set to highest)
There are probably other combinations of option levels that work and don't work, but searching them out probably wouldn't be useful.

[ravenshining]

You shouldn't be able to proceed without the chip. Nor should you be able to survive the burning sun long enough to get that screenshot. If you can finish the level without the chip and not be taking damage when you fall off, then we've got three bugs with this level O.O

[halosammy]

You shouldn't be able to proceed without it. Nor should you be able to survive the burning sun long enough to get that screenshot. If you can finish the level without it and not be taking damage when you fall off, then we've got three bugs with this level O.O

You can do all five of them without the chip.

[HelviusRufus]

Were people even supposed to get that chip?

Evidently... it's obtainable by normal game actions.

Nor should you be able to survive the burning sun long enough to get that screenshot

Screenshot was taken by a corpse.

[ravenshining]

Ah, yes, a corpse makes sense.

This might be a problem for later levels if you pick up the chip, but don't use it, leaving you with an extra chip in your inventory. Which is not something that Raptor would have picked up on in his playthrough - the only reported complete playthrough from start to finish we have - since he skipped that level, nor would Pfhorrest have, because he probably didn't know about the chip puzzle and was only testing that failure loop, not a complete playthrough.

[HelviusRufus]

Ah, yes, a corpse makes sense.

- since he skipped that level.

Unfortunate choice of words - failure - they are good and fun levels.
My favorite level - Mohicans - is now, I think, a "failure" level.
It may be my favorite because of the music - Rapture - since in the previous previous Eternal the music was different and the level wasn't as appealing. For some reason Rapture always makes me think of Wyeth's Christina's World.

[halosammy]

Anyway, I feel like I’ve been a huge Debbie Downer about 1.2, and I seem to have put enough on the dev’s plate to worry about, so I’ll switch to asking a question about the story.

Where do the Jjaro fit in their own time loop? I understand that beings that choose not to be W’rkncacnter lock themselves in a causal loop to limit their perception of reality. The thing is, I don’t grasp how humans being killed by the Pfhor or the sun blowing up and freeing Joshua in 2905 leads back into the hyper-advanced Jjaro of the distant past.

[HelviusRufus]

Where do the Jjaro fit in their own time loop? I understand that beings that choose not to be W’rkncacnter lock themselves in a causal loop to limit their perception of reality. The thing is, I don’t grasp how humans being killed by the Pfhor or the sun blowing up and freeing Joshua in 2905 leads back into the hyper-advanced Jjaro of the distant past.

It's a complicated story that I find confusing and hard to remember so I'd not be much help in that regard.
Go to the main page and click on Story Forum then search for jjaro, etc.
Also Marathon Story link on main page. And search the Pfhorums for jjaro, etc.
It's actually a pretty good research project. There's a lot o stuff written 'bout it.

[halosammy]

Where do the Jjaro fit in their own time loop? I understand that beings that choose not to be W’rkncacnter lock themselves in a causal loop to limit their perception of reality. The thing is, I don’t grasp how humans being killed by the Pfhor or the sun blowing up and freeing Joshua in 2905 leads back into the hyper-advanced Jjaro of the distant past.

It's a complicated story that I find confusing and hard to remember so I'd not be much help in that regard.
Go to the main page and click on Story Forum then search for jjaro, etc.
Also Marathon Story link on main page. And search the Pfhorums for jjaro, etc.
It's actually a pretty good research project. There's a lot o stuff written 'bout it.

The problem is that it’s hard to separate the story as it was originally envisioned, the story as it is now, and the story it might be in the future if it gets worked on more. From one perspective, the ending seems to transition into Phoenix and Rubicon as Marcus fights to end the war without allowing the Pfhor to get close enough to Sol to blow it up. Then again, Pfhorrest mentioned a few pages ago that he had an extremely different vision of how things would go if he had more time, or if he could go back in time and make it again.

[ravenshining]

You can do all five of them without the chip.

Are you sure you can complete the level without the chip - not just reach the end, but read the terminal and be sent back in time? I just tested it, and was unable to activate the terminal without using the chip, as it should be.

Of course, I see now that it would have been better to disable the catwalk switch rather than the terminal, since switches make a noise when there's a problem with them and terminals don't.