So Whats Up With Eternity?

I'm relatively a complete newbie when it comes to Doom and it's various source ports. Personally I primarily use PrBoom+, so I'm curious on what is the Eternity engine, what does it add to the Doom engine that other source ports don't, and why I should consider using it?

And no, I feel like someone's going to ask if this is or interpret this as a passive-aggressive "Why tho lol xd" post, but I'm seriously wondering, what's up with Eternity?

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Eternity_Engine

2 hours ago, act said:

why I should consider using it?

The short answers:

• Vaporware Demo
• Heartland

The long answers:

• the wiki entry posted above
• trying it out yourself to see if you like it

It adds a feature called portals. Basically, it involves rendering multiple levels of a building without teleporting you invisibly. GZDoom has a similar portal capability, but the difference is you can tell you're being teleported because of how said portals are arranged.. I'm no expert but that seems to be the main thing it does. Only thing is that visuals tend to lack vibrancy, but sets like Heartland that are designed with it in mind do a slightly better job.

Q1. What's the purpose of Eternity in a world so full of source ports?

A1. The Eternity Engine aims to provide features that extend the 
    DOOM experience in a way that is as natural and seamless as
    possible. It is one of only a few ports that boasts a DOOM
    compatibility level that is near 100%. New features are all
    optional and can be individually enabled or disabled by the
    player; even old v1.9 demos have a good chance of staying in
    sync, in large part thanks to enhancements shared with prboom.
    The small amount of work it takes to keep the engine compatible
    doesn't keep new features out of the it, either. See the next 
    question for some ideas of what will appear in future versions of 
    the Eternity Engine.

Haha, there used to be an EE FAQ which since long ago hasn't been included due to outdated info in it. The excerpt above is from the source code docs/eefaq.txt, with the addendum that demo support is much much better. Of course this is a niche interest unlikely for many to care for, but the idea stays that it's like a PrBoom with extra capabilities ahead for modding. GZDoom is still extremely powerful, but lacks the PrBoom part. PrBoom+ itself may also have superior backwards compatibility support. The ongoing breakthrough ports which enhance PrBoom/MBF with better modding like MBF21 and DEHExtra also present a challenge for Eternity to support these stuff just as well (until recently, the tendency was for each port to have its own exclusive incompatible editing features, which while cool, caused only a few ports, like GZDoom, to win the wads). 

It's the most advanced engine that can still look and play exactly like Doom. PrBoomalikes can also look and play exactly like Doom, but Eternity has EDF which gives editors control over all the game content, much more flexible and extensible than BEX, and it supports the UDMF map format and ACS, greatly increasing the possibilities for what level designers can do. It also has the best support for portals of any doom engine (GZDoom can do them, but they are subject to more caveats and limitations).

Unfortunately there are not many Eternity exclusive mapsets, but you can use Eternity for all the boom and below mapsets as well. There are a couple of mapsets which are playable in both Eternity and GZDoom but nothing else, so you can use eternity to play those in an engine which is faithful to the vanilla game.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/122115-megawad-tarnsmans-projectile-hell-rc2/

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/122483-dread-moon-map02-released/

18 hours ago, printz said:

Q1. What's the purpose of Eternity in a world so full of source ports?

A1. The Eternity Engine aims to provide features that extend the 
    DOOM experience in a way that is as natural and seamless as
    possible. It is one of only a few ports that boasts a DOOM
    compatibility level that is near 100%. New features are all
    optional and can be individually enabled or disabled by the
    player; even old v1.9 demos have a good chance of staying in
    sync, in large part thanks to enhancements shared with prboom.
    The small amount of work it takes to keep the engine compatible
    doesn't keep new features out of the it, either. See the next 
    question for some ideas of what will appear in future versions of 
    the Eternity Engine.

Haha, there used to be an EE FAQ which since long ago hasn't been included due to outdated info in it. The excerpt above is from the source code docs/eefaq.txt, with the addendum that demo support is much much better. Of course this is a niche interest unlikely for many to care for, but the idea stays that it's like a PrBoom with extra capabilities ahead for modding. GZDoom is still extremely powerful, but lacks the PrBoom part. PrBoom+ itself may also have superior backwards compatibility support. The ongoing breakthrough ports which enhance PrBoom/MBF with better modding like MBF21 and DEHExtra also present a challenge for Eternity to support these stuff just as well (until recently, the tendency was for each port to have its own exclusive incompatible editing features, which while cool, caused only a few ports, like GZDoom, to win the wads). 

 

This convinced me to try out Eternity later today. Hell, maybe it'll dethrone PrBoom+.

Sorry to double-bump my thread, but I'm having an issue with a module called "adlmidi". When trying to create the build files, CMake returns that I don't have adlmidi as an error. I can't find a package for adlmidi anywhere, would anyone know where I could find it?

11 minutes ago, act said:

Sorry to double-bump my thread, but I'm having an issue with a module called "adlmidi". When trying to create the build files, CMake returns that I don't have adlmidi as an error. I can't find a package for adlmidi anywhere, would anyone know where I could find it?

adlmidi is in the root of the repo, it's a submodule. Make sure you clone with the --recursive flag or initialise submodules.

I tried out Eternity recently to play Heartland and I was surprised at how good the software renderer looks. After playing with it some more and reading this thread I think I know how it fits - it feels like the logical evolution from prboom.

Chocolate Doom -> Crispy Doom -> prboom -> Eternity

I like how close to vanilla it feels despite offering advanced editing options. I've been trying it out as my daily driver and so far so great. As much as I enjoy messing around with GZDoom it doesn't feel like Doom, it feels like ZDoom. Eternity feels like Doom.

On 11/23/2021 at 8:58 PM, act said:

I'm relatively a complete newbie when it comes to Doom and it's various source ports. Personally I primarily use PrBoom+, so I'm curious on what is the Eternity engine, what does it add to the Doom engine that other source ports don't, and why I should consider using it?

And no, I feel like someone's going to ask if this is or interpret this as a passive-aggressive "Why tho lol xd" post, but I'm seriously wondering, what's up with Eternity?

Just read the wiki page Edward850 posted. Try it out for yourself to see if you like it. Personally it and GZDoom are my 2 main source ports (besides multiplayer stuff like Zandronum).