[FINAL RELEASE] Eviternity

[Dragonfly]

2 hours ago, Rimantas said:

Eternity runs Eviternity flawlessly, but shows some errors in its system console

 

I'd say that by definition, this isn't flawless. :P

 

As stated though, we're planning on testing in Eternity before RC2 sees release.

[ukiro]

I wasn't in charge of theme selection, theme ordering, level ordering, or play style directing for Eviternity, so I hope I can speak about that with some slight degree of objectivity. That said, having been on the inside seeing this all come together, I want to point out what I feel are some very well considered compromises.

 

30 (or 32) maps that are mostly the same in theme, scale, and gameplay will just turn tedious for all but the few people who obsess over that exact style of doom map. Given that this was spawned by my texture set, which is quite diverse, it was natural to structure it around several distinctly different themes. That said, I had exactly zero textures for winter maps and pretty much none for the heaven stuff when Dragonfly stated that those would be themes. This gave me a slight panic at the time but I'm thankful for it now. He'll get to speak to the justifications for the specific themes in Eviternity but showcasing Doom's breadth of thematic capabilities seems like a very reasonable objective for a release celebrating the game's  25th birthday. The inverse—celebrating Doom by focusing on a single theme (even if it's E1)—I think would be to overlook much of its gloriously diverse legacy.

 

Eviternity was started in March and the target was Doom's birthday (even if Dragonfly was not immediately committing to this date, as it was clearly daunting). To make a megawad in 9 months, let alone with this kind of scope and ambition, is insane. Apart from Jimmy I don't know who else could have pulled this off, but it did require a lot of restraint. I just made one map so I could let it balloon to a ridiculous size (not saying that was a good thing, but it's what happened), while Dragonfly ended up making 19 maps solo and 5 collaboration maps. This meant they couldn't be 5000 sector behemoths and/or UDMF script fests, so this would clearly not be a megawad for the players looking for each map to be an epic multi hour journey or filled to the brim with novel gameplay gimmicks. Instead, and I'd say appropriately for its aspirations to celebrate Doom, the focus was more of a classic-ish style of play. Given that we're complevel 11 and have some new enemies, certain things are distinctly non-vanilla, sure, but RC1 even enforced infinite height in GZDoom to make it as true to its core as we could. (That is getting removed in RC2 though, by popular demand.)

 

So if you're mostly forced to make small or medium sized levels due to time constraints, and you're not using scripting in order to be Boom (or, rather, MBF) compatible, the tools for providing a sense of gameplay progression are more limited. I think difficulty should increase for later levels and we're living in a world where some players are so good they cruise through map05 or 25 blind with no deaths on UV. So how do you cater to that crowd at the same time as you want to appeal to a more novice player, or perhaps someone returning to Doom after many years for some nostalgia on its 25th birthday? By letting UV gradually ramp up to a point where most elite players die every now and then on their first play-throughs while keeping HMP distinctly easier, I think Eviternity does a good job here.

 

I want to highlight one more thing around skill settings: There's not a lot of fights in all of Eviternity where there's a single, very specific way to do a fight in order for it to be survivable. In almost every scenario, in every map, there's room for multiple solutions, whether it's movement or enemy priorities or map routing or weapons use. Sure, there's some ambushes that a lot of people will fall prey to on their first go, but mostly in the later levels and again mostly on UV.  So it's a far cry from speedrunner specific designs where part of the challenge is to figure out where to even stand, how a fight is even theoretically winnable (not disparaging these—just saying it's a different approach to Doom gameplay).

 

I haven't put this in a chart to lay it out visually, but in terms of linear vs non-linear, key based vs keyless, single enemy encounters vs bigger more slaughter-y fights, there's a sense of constant variety here too, something I know Dragonfly was very consciously designing for. This ebb and flow of variety, within levels, across an episode, and through the whole megawad, is in my opinion expertly done.

 

Lastly I want to point out that I'm not saying those criticizing a specific level or the degree of gameplay style changes as you progress, are wrong. Doom is entertainment and if you feel that a level or episode is more of a chore than it is fun, then that's not what we wanted to do to you. But while we can't satisfy everyone, there should be some decent chunk of joy, delight, challenge and reward somewhere in Eviternity for anyone appreciating Doom.

[Firedust]

I completely agree with you, @ukiro.

This mapset is incredibly varied, so even if you find a couple of maps you don't like, there is still bound to be a few that will make you go, "Holy crap, that was a lot of fun!" And not for a single time did I feel that the intention, be it conscious or subconscious, to make no level similar to another resulted in a dip in map quality.

[Loud Silence]

@ukiro Your textures are stunning! I haven't finished Eviternity yet, but i can't imagine any bad map here. If someone complains, it means they didn't try their best to find a fun way to play these maps. There are always several ways, strategies to play and Eviternity is really open for them.

[ukiro]

Thank you for the compliment!

 

But I think it IS fair to say some maps are not fun; Nobody likes every kind of music, every flavor of icecream, every style of Doom map. Some things are an acquired taste and some things require a specific state of mind or context to be enjoyed, and I suppose the same is true here. Does your patience and concentration start to dip seriously after 5-10 minutes per map? You might really dislike 19 and 32 then. Do you prefer a clear objective over super non-linear open world type of maps? Then 32 is certainly not your thing... and so on. Those preferences are perfectly fine to have, but if you want to give a long and mostly linear map a go, 19 is fucking fantastic. And if you are someone who normally prefers long adventurous levels but wants to understand the charm of shorter stuff, the first couple of episodes are hopefully really strong examples of how fun those can be.

[grrfield]

Great stuff this is.

 

However, i got stuck in map19. Have no screenie cause of RQ (lol).

It is near the part with the nifty crushers. Some wall opens and after pushing some button, some stairs raise out of the floor. I got stuck behind them, tried to get past it by mining myself, but death was unavoidable.

 

 

[kristus]

Since it said it was made for MBF/BOOM, I figured I could play it with Eternity Engine. But in Map04 there are some missing things that don't seem to show up in GZdoom at all. They are thing ID# 2016 and I can't really find anything that tells what they are for.

 

EDIT: Nevermind, I figured it out it's a ceiling candelabra. Though not why it doesn't work in EE.

Edited December 18, 2018 by kristus

[Xaser]

Looks like it's this issue -- SMMU (which Eternity's based on) removed some of MBF's beta emulation stuff from way back, and EE hasn't restored it just yet.

 

Been chatting with Altazimuth, and we'll see about getting it fixed up one way or another. Thanks for the report!

[Woolie Wool]

I've been playing through this in GZDoom, and though I had to restart from map16 when GZDoom switched from skill 3 to skill 1 (and I wondered why the maps had suddenly gotten much easier and I was never running out of ammo!), I'm up to map18 now and this is the best wad I've played since Back to Saturn X E2. It has a lot of the look and some of the feel of a Skillsaw production with the themed episodes, abstract designs, and some of the architecture, but with a slightly more relaxed and free-flowing sort of combat, which gives you lots of opportunities to run away from a fight and then hit it again from another angle, but without making any of the approaches too easy. Kind of like a compromise of "modern" and "classic" gameplay styles, and one that feels relatively unique.

 

The new monsters are, eeeeeeeh. The nightmare demons are fun but the astral cacos feel cheap to die from and look silly with the Balor-style fireball spread, which is so obviously multiple mancubus shots that it becomes distracting. The cybruiser-like creatures originally seemed pretty scary until I realized they were basically General Fettgesicht from Wolfenstein and vulnerable to the exact same tactics as he is.

 

The textures are of course brilliant, with the ice theme being my favorite so far, but I can't wait to go to (and die in) heaven starting map26. I suggest switching the sky textures of E3 and E6 though. Heaven should not be grim and overcast! I liked that the maps were generally smaller with only a few large maps here and there; too many megawads these days have one gigantic, rambling map after another; this feels much more "classic" in that regard and makes it more inviting to play when you don't want to make your entire evening about Doom.

 

The soundtrack is brilliant (especially the ice midis and others that stay away from the usual guitar music), but somewhat marred by the fact that my Roland SC-88 crapped out in the middle of map15. Such is living with old electronics. :(

 

And, as @ukiro pointed out, it also cut down on dev time. I was expecting this to take two more years to come out. Bravo, guys!

[Deadwing]

Episode 4 finished! It's not ace as 2 and 3, but still really good! My favorite map was 18, which was a nice breather for the action-focused map 17 and featured lots of exploration  (I got lost sometimes but it wasn't too hard to find my way back :P). Overall, the episode felt similar to episode 2 thematically, with a stronger industrial feeling, but it is still quite tech-basey. Some random thoughts:

 

- Map 16 was a cool intro to the episode's theme, loved the different and curvy shapes here. It's very indoor and closed, which is a nice change from the more open previous maps.

 

- Map 17 was a lot tougher and featured two distinct main setpieces that were welcome. Very cool intro too with the cyberdemon in the dark. Still, I felt it could have a tad bit more health later on. I think I had to do both of the main setpieces with 15~30% health and after finishing both fights there wasn't any health.

 

- 18 was my favorite with lots of exploration, more paced action, and careful walking through nukage. It's heavy-navigation focused and I'm pretty sure lots of players will get lost lol But I enjoyed a lot.

 

- I have mixed-feelings about 19. It's a nice departure from the previous maps, with a huge adventure focus, which I enjoyed (especially when you got through some huge sections to reach the other side of a waterfall or crusher lol). I got lost in some bits of it, which was annoying and sometimes I ended backtracking more than I should've. Most of the fighting here is incidental, so I wished there was less hell knights and others high-hp monsters. In the end, I was expecting some greater finale, but I might have got a bug where no monster spawned in the large fan area. It was still fun with some incredible detailing work.

 

- 20 was very distinct visually level, with a cool early cacodemon + chaingunner setpiece. Loved the MIDI too. I felt it could've got a bit more health towards the laters sections, though, like map 17. Thankfully I was able to get the megasphere, and everything from there was a breeze :P Very fun map regardless, cool Cyberdemon setpiece.

 

- Maybe map 20 slot could've been switched with 19. So far, all the episode finale ended with some surprising factor, such as arena focused map 5 (+ green demons), very distinct architecture from 10 (+ rocket cybers), and the vistas from 15. 20 is a really good level, but felt more a mid-episode one instead of a finale. Map 19 has that factor, IMO.

 

- I felt some of the custom monsters could've been used more in episode 4, although I would understand the Frozen Caco's not being much used due to thematic reasons. Also, they fill some more specific roles in combat, and they are quite bulky to be used in incidental encounters, so I guess I understand why haha

Edited December 19, 2018 by Deadwing

[JDR]

Finished map14, visuals reminded me of my favourite map in 32in24-14, combat was really tight. So far - a great set, digging everything from new textures (clearly inspired from the best assets applied to doom) to dynamic pace throughout the megawad. 

A couple of bugs in map14: 

Spoiler

• After you exit the red door arena, if you close the door from the other side and enter back - the door would close and won't open again.
• Two projectile chaingunners won't teleport (Sector 2287)
• Monsters could break bars that raise in the yellow key room, if they're in the way.

 

[grahf]

6 hours ago, Deadwing said:

 

 

- I have mixed-feelings about 19. It's a nice departure from the previous maps, with a huge adventure focus, which I enjoyed (especially when you got through some huge sections to reach the other side of a waterfall or crusher lol). I got lost in some bits of it, which was annoying and sometimes I ended backtracking more than I should've. Most of the fighting here is incidental, so I wished there was less hell knights and others high-hp monsters. In the end, I was expecting some greater finale, but I might have got a bug where no monster spawned in the large fan area. It was still fun with some incredible detailing work.

 

Yes, I must have got that bug too.  I remember thinking that fan room was really anticlimactic and how could I have missed like 40 monsters?  I could hear them as I got close to the exit.  I noclipped and found them in a big empty room...  So whatever trigger was supposed to teleport them into the fan room didn't work for me either (gzdoom 3.5)

[elend]

Same here regarding Map19. I just thought it was only me, because I played on easiest difficulty and maybe was spared the big fight. xD

[Swalzi]

15 hours ago, Woolie Wool said:

I've been playing through this in GZDoom, and though I had to restart from map16 when GZDoom switched from skill 3 to skill 1 (and I wondered why the maps had suddenly gotten much easier and I was never running out of ammo!)

I had this happened to me about a week ago, except I was on skill 4 and went down to skill 2 or 1 with GZDoom 3.6.0 while playing continuously. I thought map16 was a "calm before the storm" map. I didn't realize my skill difficulty was lowered until I saw the blue armor in the beginning of map17 and the monster count was 70. I restarted on UV and the monster count on map17 is actually 159.

I don't know what caused it but I did do a quick monster count check on easier difficulties through a new game before loading my UV-continuous save and exiting map15 with the standard exit. It's been a week so my memory is a bit spotty about it.

Episode 3 is probably my favorite episode of the wad so far from what I've played. That timed mega-fight in map15 was awesome.

[Bauul]

3 hours ago, Swalzi said:

I've been playing through this in GZDoom, and though I had to restart from map16 when GZDoom switched from skill 3 to skill 1 (and I wondered why the maps had suddenly gotten much easier and I was never running out of ammo!)

 

Yep, it's a known bug that will be fixed in RC2.  It was to do with the script that handles the death-exit from the secret map IIRC, and somehow ended up resetting difficulty settings.

 

11 hours ago, Deadwing said:

In the end, I was expecting some greater finale, but I might have got a bug where no monster spawned in the large fan area. It was still fun with some incredible detailing work.

 

You're not wrong!  That final fight is completely bugged, it wasn't just you.  It'll be fixed in RC2.

[Deadwing]

Holy hell, that MIDI version of Leprous!! D:

[NinjaLiquidator]

Played through Ep3 (so far no speedrun). My fav there is Map15 cause it actually looks like a medieval castle, not like some abstract orthogonal shit with medieval textures (99% "castle" maps suffer from this). I have found a glitch there. You can turn on purple switch, then run forward and use the lowering switch as a ramp and jump thru window to central place, but there is no way out.

[Dragonfly]

1 hour ago, NinjaLiquidator said:

orthogonal shit

 

Sums up most representations of anything in the doom engine if you ask me.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, NinjaLiquidator said:

You can turn on purple switch, then run forward and use the lowering switch as a ramp and jump thru window to central place, but there is no way out.

 

Thanks for the report, fortunately, this has already been addressed in the RC2 dev build which will be released relatively soon

[NinjaLiquidator]

43 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

 

Sums up most representations of anything in the doom engine if you ask me.

Eviternity sucessfully avoids that (and if not, its a techbase where ortho is fitting)

[SP_FACE1]

48 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

RC2 dev build which will be released relatively soon

 

I hope during the weekend! :)

[JDR]

Map15 was as much of a break from the rest of the megawad as the guest maps in Ancient Aliens, but only gameplay-wise. Seeing the end of previous map at the start of a new one certainly make you perceive the integrity of aestetic consistency through what feels like an adventure now.

Map31 is in a dire need of a progression breaking bufix:

Spoiler

and a minor one: 

Spoiler

Edited December 21, 2018 by JDR

[Killer5]

Formal request to give astral cacodemon full on afrit attack.

[GarrettChan]

3 hours ago, Killer5 said:

Formal request to give astral cacodemon full on afrit attack.

This sounds legit!

[Deadwing]

Episode 5 finished! Amazing chapter, every level here were quite balanced, with a distinct layout and ideas providing a fantastic experience! Eviternity is already one of my favorite megawads  I've played (while I didn't enjoy that much AA, Valiant and BTSX, for example). More random thoughts:

 

- Map 21 was a fantastic opener for the episode. It plays very differently from the previous maps too, with a heavy focus on open space and crowd management. In-fighting here is a huge factor.

 

- Map 22 is a nice contrast from the previous one, giving some sort of dungeon-crawling feel and then giving distinct setpieces for each key fight. Loved the alien + purple setting here.

 

- Map 23 is shorter but no less awesome. In the beginning, I've thought that it would be more arena-focused, but it's more linear-adventure.

 

- 24 was the largest of the episode, although not too long (I think I took 20 minutes to finish it). It has incredible detailing and really cool setups, featuring lots of low-hp enemies and rocket gameplay, which I love haha. The 4-cyberdemon finale, in the end, was fantastic, I was missing some BFG action :D It's very memorable too with its distinct architecture.

 

- 25 was a worth closer, with very nice cinematic intro leading to a slaughter-lite battle. In the end, I was expecting to deal with 2 additionals Cyberdemons, though :D Regardless, the midi here only makes things even more epic, which fits a lot the mood of the fight! It's not a very hard battle (map 5 is still the hardest moment so far for me), but still one of the most epics fights so far!

 

- I haven't started the final episode yet, but I noticed that Map's 26 MIDI's is noticeably louder than the previous ones, if you want someday to look at this :P

 

[Dragonfly]

1 hour ago, Deadwing said:

25 was [...] not a very hard battle

 

This is going to be considerably harder in RC2, and 05 less difficult. MAP25 was made before MAP05 in the development cycle, hehe. Thanks for ploughing through, I'm very pleased you (and so many others) are enjoying it!

[GarrettChan]

1 minute ago, Dragonfly said:

 

This is going to be considerably harder in RC2, and 05 less difficult. MAP25 was made before MAP05 in the development cycle, hehe. Thanks for ploughing through, I'm very pleased you (and so many others) are enjoying it!

Ah, interesting background info. At least I also feel Map25 is not very impressive a fight. I expected the map will release 10 Arch-viles or something at the end to resurrect a bunch of stuff :D

[Gaia74]

I've been playing this wad and it's really fun! It has its style with every map, even though I have not finished it really fun

 

For now I have loved this wad, I am anxious to get to the set of maps of the heaven!, besides that they used new enemies! which are fun to eliminate (I liked the cybruiser edit so much that I would like to use it in a mod that I do but then ask for authorization after) so congratulations for this great wad!

[Joshy]

I've just finished playing through Eternity RC1 on UV difficulty, continuous playthrough with save/load, using Glboom+. This was a very good project altogether, well done to everyone involved and Dragonfly for churning out a mapset of this quality in such a short time. This is no easy feat, I know that myself. The visuals in this mapset, needless to say, is very impressive and intricate, a fantastic showcase for Otex textures which is indubitably a quality body of work. The Heaven theme is amazing and has a strong Zelda Wind Waker feeling to it. Well done Ukiro on such an achievement. I would like to make a map using these textures one day hopefully.

 

The gameplay across the board is good, although I did find certain moments to be 'heavy'; perhaps I felt intuitively that there were moments that lacked balanced gameplay flow, I'm not sure. There were also moments where limited ammo and health placement was more frustrating than challenging; the maps were challenging enough already that it was unnecessary (Map16 and 17 if I remember?). The new monsters are wow lethal as heck, but I liked the new gameplay dynamics they introduced. I suspect a slight tweak (though I see that's already being planned) would do wonders. I think my least favourite would be the green demon. I imagine it as a 'baron' variant of the demon to the extent that it is similarly tricky to find an effective balanced use of it and this mapset certainly demonstrated that. There were moments when the monster's usage was just too much, too heavy/tedious, and there were moments where it was used quite effectively and provided an enjoyable gleeful sense of sharp pressure. I wonder if a slight decrease in HP might just make it more balanced? The fact that it is fast and requires more than 1 SSG shot establishes a dominant presence beyond the mere pinky. Just a thought.

 

I only disliked Map05, there were just too many hellknights, wasn't exactly infinite-tall friendly, and it felt like it played longer than it should have. All the other maps were remarkably consistent and were generally enjoyable. My top 5 favourite maps, in no specific order, would probably be (yes I had to really think about it):

• Map26
• Map29
• Map15
• Map18
• Map14 (that difficulty spike, crikey!)

Again, thank you all for the mapset. Congratulations are in order, and of course, a very well deserved Cacoward is to be expected!

[Dragonfly]

16 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

Ah, interesting background info.

 

For the most part I tracked when each map was started in this spreadsheet - I figured someone somewhere will find it interesting. :D

[antares031]

10 hours ago, Joshy said:

Map14 (that difficulty spike, crikey!)

 

We're aware of the harsh difficulty spike of that level, and there will be some adjustments for that in RC2. Thanks for playing! :)