[FINAL RELEASE] Eviternity

[Pirx]

On 12/30/2018 at 1:28 AM, NinjaLiquidator said:

FOR THOSE WHO THINK MAP05 IS HARD - skip to 15:16 (improved UV Max of whole Ep1):

 

 

I think even Dragonfly doesnt know that we can rape the map this way. Route is now pimped to the limit, I did 20:11 with no missed monster, theoretical possible min is 19:17, but I will leave it to local MLGs and move on other eps.

 

I watched a part of your playthroughs yesterday and enjoyed them. Didnt get to play yet,  though. A work of art overall. The golden exit portal rocks, I think the only comparable portals were those in ancient aliens with the animal powers. After reading some complaints about difficulty spikes and astrocacos, I have to ask if the episodes should be played continuously  (as there's a death exit anyway,  iirc) , or doesn't one miss anything if pistol starting? Like the BFG. Thx

[Dragonfly]

It's definitely easier with continuous play but all maps were carefully built to be fully playable with pistol starts if one prefers.

[Lizardcommando]

I finally finished playing through this and I must say that this is one of the most impressive Megawads I have ever played. The levels all look unbelievably fantastic, especially the final levels that take place in Heaven (or was it Hell?!). The only thing I didn't like were those white Cacodemons. Man, those things were brutal! I hope they get changed to be slightly weakened or slower in a future update. Other than that, this definitely deserves a Cacoward!

[Firedust]

Map 5 is fine if you pistol start. Just stay at the top. C'mon people, get your shit together

[Sporku]

I just wanted to chime in and say I had a great time playing through this project from start to finish, and plan on doing a second playthrough very soon! Props to Dragonfly and everyone else that helped make one of the best WADs I've played in quite some time. :)

[NinjaLiquidator]

4 hours ago, Firedust said:

Map 5 is fine if you stay at the top.

Its fine even if you dont

[Scuba Steve]

Did anyone else find the final map a weak ending to such an epic project? Everything continued to build until it reached a crescendo with map29... then I battled a lowres angel boss in a small room and it ended.

[Tristan]

4 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

Did anyone else find the final map a weak ending to such an epic project? Everything continued to build until it reached a crescendo with map29... then I battled a lowres angel boss in a small room and it ended.

 

MAP30 has 665 other monsters, did you by any chance kill the angel with the BFG from the previous level before it really got going?

[Scuba Steve]

Yes... but that kinda misses my original point. I don't gauge a final battle by the sheer number of enemies, I take into account the scale and sense of grandeur of the entire encounter, and it just felt like an underwhelming ending.

[hella knight]

17 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

Yes... but that kinda misses my original point. I don't gauge a final battle by the sheer number of enemies, I take into account the scale and sense of grandeur of the entire encounter, and it just felt like an underwhelming ending.

No, your original point seems to be missing some things as it tries to misrepresent the ending and reduce it down to something you can just make fun of. Eris was addressing your point, not missing it, they were bringing attention to another thing you convinently left out so you could seemingly be contrarian.

[SyntherAugustus]

1 hour ago, Scuba Steve said:

Did anyone else find the final map a weak ending to such an epic project? Everything continued to build until it reached a crescendo with map29... then I battled a lowres angel boss in a small room and it ended.

 

Honestly I kind of felt the same way. I blew right through map30. I guess the boss should have been bigger? I liked the boss, but the battle was a bit too short.

[Tristan]

It is true that 30 can be disappointing from continuous play, Bauul managed it in 30 seconds - the rest of the map doesn't reveal itself until around ~0:55, you'd never even see it start to happen. Well, I don't spend two months on a music track for nobody to hear beyond the introduction :V Amongst other tweaks to MAP29 for RC2, I've added a new exit which kills the player similar to the episode endings, no more BFG cheese on 30!

[Pure Hellspawn]

I am of the belief that one should play maps with a pistol start.

[Scuba Steve]

6 hours ago, hella knight said:

No, your original point seems to be missing some things as it tries to misrepresent the ending and reduce it down to something you can just make fun of. Eris was addressing your point, not missing it, they were bringing attention to another thing you convinently left out so you could seemingly be contrarian.

Golly gee, I guess my personal opinion is void because it contradicts yours. There's no doubt this is an incredible mapset... but, after playing a map like Helios (I think that's the name?), one of the most breathtaking maps I have ever seen, the final map just feels underwhelming, both in appearance and scale.

 

I don't really feel like belaboring this any further and derailing the thread, but I gave my take, and I'll be dammed if someone is going to tell me my opinion is based around being a contrarian.

[WH-Wilou84]

I'll be a contrarian as well, heh : could you please NOT nerf the Astral Cacodemon ?
It's really good as it is to put pressure on the player while not being durable. Some kind of a glass cannon, and quite a scary one :)

The underground cave area in map 29 in which you fight a pack of them was particularly intense and fun.

I suggest reducing its numbers in lower skills instead... If it's not too late, of course. :)

[ukiro]

I am personally of the same opinion as you, but after watching 30+ hours of Eviternity streams I can say it is giving people more trouble than it's worth. It has not had its speed or health reduced, but its firing pattern has been altered for RC2.

 

In RC1 it fires two Mancubus fireball pairs. As we're using DEHACHED we can't angle these any way we want, resulting in 3 visible fireballs instead of 4, as the central one is two fireballs overlapped. This makes the central projectile extremely deadly unless you have a lot of health/armor. The ideal solution would have been to not have the central fireball doubled, but this is not possible unfortunately. So for RC2 it fires one Mancubus blast with wide spread, and a Cacodemon fireball as the central projectile. This has the added quirk that the Caco ball is much slower than the Mancubus fireballs, making them in a way more difficult to handle at range. Close up they become easier though.

 

Added bonus: Its final corpse state is now collapsed further, making the dead ones easier to tell apart from the live ones, and making them obstruct the view less.

[ukiro]

As for map30, it will not be turned into a huge one-hour level, but as Eris pointed out we are making amends to ensure continuous play doesn't run the risk of missing too much, like what happened to Scuba Steve (and some of the streamers I've watched). As we're removing the forced infinite height for GZDoom in RC2, we also need to be careful here as the final boss' movement will be very different when it never gets blocked like in RC1.

[Kristian Nebula]

2 hours ago, WH-Wilou84 said:

I'll be a contrarian as well, heh : could you please NOT nerf the Astral Cacodemon ?

 

 

^^ I'm also happy with how it is now!

[Dragonfly]

Thank you @Scuba Steve & co. for the completely honest review of map30 - Eris has made modifications to the way the map is entered; meaning you suffer a death exit. I may make more changes yet - if you have idea on how we can make what is essentially an arena fight better within the limitations of DeHackEd and Boom format, please throw your suggestions our way!

 

Thank you!

[Yugiboy85]

2 hours ago, WH-Wilou84 said:

I'll be a contrarian as well, heh : could you please NOT nerf the Astral Cacodemon ?
It's really good as it is to put pressure on the player while not being durable. Some kind of a glass cannon, and quite a scary one :)

 

I usually agree with you on many things but not on this. The way it is in rc1 imo is quite bullshit (way too fast, too many manc fireballs, too many repeated deaths :/). 

 

So yes, i'm completely for the nerf on this one :D 

 

 

[Killer5]

@WH-Wilou84

Agreed on the astral-caco. That thing is one of the best custom monsters I have run into.

[boris]

3 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

I may make more changes yet - if you have idea on how we can make what is essentially an arena fight better within the limitations of DeHackEd and Boom format, please throw your suggestions our way!

 

Since you're going for MBF compatibility you could check out if you can utilize the new A_Spawn and A_LineEffect code pointers. If you have have enogh free things it should be possible to make a boss battle with multiple phases. For example when boss dies it A_Spawn's it's second phase and use A_LineEffect with the usual voodoo doll shenanigans to do other additional other stuff.

 

Like the attached WAD. When the Hell Knight dies it spawns a Baron of Hell, and also teleports some Imps into the room. And when the Baron dies the platform with the blue key lowers. Of course it's pretty sloppily hacked together in a couple minutes, but I think it could be utilized for some nice encounters.

mbftest.zip

[CrimeAngler]

This was a very awesome wad, the level design is really good, and it was a ton of fun, my favorite chapter was the fifth one (Descension) and the last one.

 

My least favorite was the third one (Crystalline), the difficulty spiked, but that was already established.

The music was fantastic on my opinion

 

I found a weird bug in MAP26 (Transcendence)

 

Here's a screenie:

 

Its strange, since i saw nobody mentioned it, and depending of where i am on the map it changes to gray or yellow (as shown above)

 

I also found another one on MAP19 (Dehydration)

where you can go thought a wall:

Spoiler

They are pretty harmless since the dont affect the levels that much.

[Bauul]

12 hours ago, boris said:

If you have have enogh free things it should be possible to make a boss battle with multiple phases.

 

The boss actually already has a second phase.  We're ramping up the second phase though so he's a bit more noticeable and deadly (at the moment it just increases his movement speed).

 

1 hour ago, CrimeAngler said:

Its strange, since i saw nobody mentioned it, and depending of where i am on the map it changes to gray or yellow (as shown above)

 

I believe this is a GZDoom bug.  I've seen it happen in a few wads.  It's more noticeable on this map I believe because the real "sky" color is yellow, but is altered in-game using a Sky Transfer effect.  

[Scuba Steve]

15 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

Thank you @Scuba Steve & co. for the completely honest review of map30 - Eris has made modifications to the way the map is entered; meaning you suffer a death exit. I may make more changes yet - if you have idea on how we can make what is essentially an arena fight better within the limitations of DeHackEd and Boom format, please throw your suggestions our way!

 

Thank you!

How can you make the intro and closing of the map more memorable is my thought. A fun practice for so many memorable wads is a fun closing map/area that has no monsters but let's you explore a final area (think the ending of ancient aliens as you return to Earth). Could the death of the final boss expose a beam of light that teleports you back to Earth with a fun closing?

 

The previous map also had such neat teleporters and travel pads, that it might be neat to do something extravagant leading up to the final battle instead of just grabbing weapons (the self building architecture is nice). I also approve of a larger, more menacing and memorable second form for the boss. As it stands, it's currently just a small, low Fidelity Sprite flying around... At least make it something imposing like the spider Mastermind.

 

There so much potential in this mod, I'd love to see it end as something memorable.

[Salt-Man Z]

I've only played the first two maps (both excellent!) and will probably wait for RC2 before proceeding further. But I have been listening to the soundtrack, and I just have to ask: how has this thread gone 10 pages without anyone mentioning Jimmy's 43-minute-long track for MAP29?! I mean, holy crap.

[Tristan]

Yes, Godhood is a fucking masterpiece - and to my surprise it dates back to 2012, I thought it was a few years later than that. I was supposed to do the MAP29 track myself but I'm glad now it didn't happen, especially with the finished map being of a more persistent slaughter-lite style in contrast to the atmosphere/exploration-oriented direction I originally planned it to be. It's just a shame the map isn't long enough to accommodate the full MIDI - but maybe first time players will die enough that it does loop, that happened to me.

[Dragonfly]

On 1/7/2019 at 4:10 AM, Scuba Steve said:

How can you make the intro and closing of the map more memorable is my thought. A fun practice for so many memorable wads is a fun closing map/area that has no monsters but let's you explore a final area (think the ending of ancient aliens as you return to Earth). Could the death of the final boss expose a beam of light that teleports you back to Earth with a fun closing?

 

The previous map also had such neat teleporters and travel pads, that it might be neat to do something extravagant leading up to the final battle instead of just grabbing weapons (the self building architecture is nice). I also approve of a larger, more menacing and memorable second form for the boss. As it stands, it's currently just a small, low Fidelity Sprite flying around... At least make it something imposing like the spider Mastermind.

 

There so much potential in this mod, I'd love to see it end as something memorable.

 

Well you'll be pleased to know that @Clay has been a great help and we now have a new set of sprites in the works. Here's a preview:

 

 

As for the 2nd form, we're looking to scrounge a couple of extra frames to make him have additional attacks. The death of the boss is now more impressive too. The map's introduction is more impressive in the sense that the way MAP29 ends and leads into MAP30 is now more interesting. As for the way the map ends, I will see if I can do something to improve this further rather than a hard cut to the credits.

 

I'll also be working on a new bossback graphic; admittedly that was one bit of effort left out for RC1 due to the looming deadline. Unfortunately, Cage isn't free to make another kickass graphic like the titlepic, so we're limited to my skill set instead. :P

 

Overall, RC2 is making steady progress to being completed - hopefully the wait for the players won't be too much longer!

[elend]

Man, that sprite looks really amazing. Is it a custom creation and if so... based on a 3D Model?

[Dragonfly]

It is indeed based on a 3D model. Clay used this as a base model and created a sword to go with it. Between the two of us we tweaked the texture work, trying several different wing colours. Clay then rigged and posed the model in various poses and angles to match up with the original sprites poses; then exported each state as a rendered sprite.

 

From here on myself and Ukiro will be doing additional bits like overpainting effects such as the glowing sword attack animation, the boss 'powerup' phase where he goes to his second (final) stage, and lastly his death sequence. Once that's done we'll carefully adjust the sprites to fit into the Eviternity palette as well as possible and then import the frames into slade and apply offsets. :)