[WIP] The Edge of Time - TPC (Beta 2.0 "Gradius II - Gofer's Ambition") [GZDoom]

[FireSeraphim]

                                                                                                       

 

It's been a long time since anyone here has heard from me. As for the last few years I been working on a rather unique mod and one that is a expanded remake of one of my oldest ones; the original Edge of Time. The reason why I'm posting here is because I'm hoping to get more people interested in it. 

 

As for the premise...

Quote

You are the chief of security at a remote research facility near the polar caps on the recently terraformed planet of Venus, having been assigned to a
new project to create an alternate form of teleportation technology that can allow the user to go anywhere in space-time, including other time periods andeven other universes. Things seems to going perfectly, but perfect never lasts...

As you were taking your daily hike you briefly hear the alarms from the base and a radio message; A demonic invasion of the base has begun!
You immediately drop what you're doing, whip out your service pistol and rush back to base, hoping to stop the demons before they get their claws on the technology.

 

I will say that this incarnation of my mod is not like the previous versions that existed, especially since I want to do some interesting things to spice gameplay up a bit. I believe a summary is in order. 

 

• A rather unique scoring system coded by Zhs2 and PhantomBeta, where you get a random powerup once you get the amount to trigger a score bonus, inspired by the scoring system used in classic Konami arcade games
• Deployable inventory items, including fan favourites such as the Morph Ovum, an improved Flechette and cool new items such as the Golden Medikit, the Frost Ovum, carryable Radsuits and Nightvision Goggles
• Coins and Treasure items you can collect to add to your score to trigger score bonuses
• New AI for certain vanilla enemies to spice things up a bit, as well as a few new foes
• New Weapons, perfect for rising to the challenge!
• New Maps made just for the mod

 

There's not much else to be said about TEOTPC, although the contents of the mod itself is subject to change, stuff that might appear in the mod right now may be removed or altered depending on the evolution of the mod itself. I am mostly focused towards an arcade-y adventure.

 

I might not post here as often as I do on the ZDoom forums thread for this but I sincerely appreciate any critique and feedback I can get as well as potential volunteers for such things as beta testing.

 

 

======Screenshots======

Episode 1 - Venus Labs screenshots

 

 

Episode 2 - Ancient Egypt screenshots

 

 

 

 

Episode 3 - Medieval Europe Screenshots

 

             

Episode 4 - The End of History Screenshots

Spoiler

======Videos======

------Trailers------

 

 

------Other people's video's on The Edge of Time------

 

 

Downloads (Beta)

Click here for the latest version (Beta 2.0 "Gradius II - Gofer's Ambition")

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by FireSeraphim : A new major update

[FireSeraphim]

And now to attempt to post a changelog here.

 

===Beta 1.7 "Gradius"===

• Two new levels has been added: E1M3 - Deep Into the Forest (The entrance to the second secret level for episode 1 can be found here) and E2M5 - Desert Ruins
• And with that, all of Episode 1 and 2's maps are complete!
• A few minor glitch-sploits in E2M1 have been fixed
• A couple of minor visual glitches in E2M6 has been fixed
• Added Brightmaps to most of the textures and light sources (I been on a roll with brightmap support lately!)
• Fixed a long standing texture issues with the firewall traps in E2M1
• The pain chance of the Cyberdemons (both boss and non-boss variant) and the Spider Mastermind has been cut in half
• Fixed the missing intermission text for E2SM2
• The Argent Channeler no longer burns through ammo so quickly!
• The Argent Channeler Green Argent Mode now cost 32 units of Argent Energy to fire
• The Argent Channeler weapon pickup now gives 16 instead of 32 units of Argent Energy
• The ammo amount of big Argent Cells has been cut from 64 to 32 units of Argent Energy
• The bug with the Argent Particle Cannon lingering BFG balls has been fixed
• The Argent Channeler Blue Argent Mode has been buffed slightly
• The Argent Particle Cannon's primary rail shot has been greatly buffed
• The Nailgun's projectile damage has been slightly buffed
• Nightvision goggles and Envirosuits are now additive like the rest of the powerups  
• Optimized the PK3 via deleting some unused textures
• Optimized the png files that make up the brightmaps
• The smaller bushes are now destroyable
• Tweaked the visuals of certain Hexen trees
• Gore props are now breakable, they now have a chance to drop health and armor bonuses when broken

 

[Rince-wind]

I'm glad to hear this mod is being updated, I played it before and loved it, it's chaotic and busy in the best ways.

Keep up the good work!

[FireSeraphim]

Thank you my dear wizzard.

[FireSeraphim]

Happy New Year's everyone! I hope you'll enjoy this particular release, I have been burning the midnight oil for the last few weeks in order to get this build out before the year's end. You can find the Latest Build in the Opening Post as usual.

 

[FireSeraphim]

I almost forgot to share the changelog here, lemme remedy that.

 

====Beta 1.8 "Salamander"====

• Hellkites now have brightmaps
• Reworked the HUD icons for bullet ammo
• Rifle Ammo finally have their own HUD icons
• Ammo is now removed from your inventory on entering the portals leading to episode 2 (at the end of E1M8) 
  and episode 2 (at the end of E2M8)
• A new inventory item has been introduced: Land Mines (these things were originally cut from this project but in
  light of Zikshadow's ongoing playthrough of TEOTPC and his justified lament of a lack of land mines, I have decided
  to (re)implement them)
• The help screen has been updated again to account for the addition of the land mines and to improve the readability
  of certain pieces of text
• The Credits Screen has once again been updated!
• Fixed some missing items in a secret in E3M4
• Fixed the BFG Autofiring for REAL this Time, I swear it!
• Fixed the longstanding glitch where dying in Pojo mode killed the player instead of reverting them back to their 
  previous form
• The Cyberdemon Lord is now briefly invulnerable when he's charging up his railgun attack
• The max ammo amount of Argent Energy has been reduced from 999 to 768
• The Argent Channeler Green Argent Mode now cost 16 units of Argent Energy to fire instead of 32
• The Argent Challeler firemode swapping now has an audio cue in addition to slightly improved animation timings
• Fixed a minor oversight where the Spider Mastermind didn't flash white when damaged
• The Spider Mastermind nows has a fifty percent chance to spawn an Aracnorb Queen on death
• Slightly increased the Hi-Powered Revolver's firing speed
• Finally overhauled the Boss HP Meter for E1M8's Boss (Special Thanks to Zhs2 for basically reworking 
  the entire boss HP Meter Script from the ground up)
• The miniboss for E3M4 has once again been reworked
• The Officer's Pistol fire rate has been sped up slightly
• The Nailgun now gives +50 Nails on pickup
• Health and Armor Bonuses dropped from the Unwilling and Gore Props now last twice as long before fading away
• The Heavy Chaingun now has new and better firing, windup and wind-down sounds
• Further optimized Rain performance on E1M1 and E3M3
• The Combat Shotgun now fires slightly faster and a little more smoothly

 

[FireSeraphim]

Another month, another changelog!

 

====Beta 1.8 revision 1 "Life Force"====

• The Grenade Launcher Mode on the the Missile Launcher has been greatly overhauled, The Grenades now fly a little
  faster, does 144 damage on impact at the expense of it's damage radius being reduced to 64 unit and has an extra bounce 
  before exploding
• Fixed a minor oversight on the breakable glass windows in E1M3
• Fixed a bug with a monster teleporter on E2M5
• Added more ambient sounds on E2M5
• Explosive barrels now leave behind some bits of burning debris after their explosion and their HP has been cut in half
• Explosive Pod's health has been reduced to 10
• Fixed an exploit on E1M3 that allow for getting a key earlier
• Reduced the damage of the Former Demolition Expert's rocket by one-forth of it's previous value
• Made the flashing pain states on all imps and demons last an extra tic longer
• Fixed the impact on dumb missiles and imp fireballs, now they don't slide down the wall during their death states!
• Made the Nightmare Imps and Nightmare Spectres slightly more visible
• Lost Souls now flash red and play a klaxon sound three times before they explode and their explosion is now more
  spectacular!
• Quickswap priority for both the Missile Launcher and the Designated Marksman's Rifle has been swapped
• The Small Argent Cell's actual size has been slighty increased
• The Machete has been overhauled, it is now much smoother and less janky overall.
• Finally updated the Designated Marksman's Rifle sprite on page 7 of the readme screen, it is now accurate to the 
  current set of Designated Marksman's Rifle sprites

 

Quote

I been working on this update all month, but I couldn't have possibly done it without the helpful critique and insights of people like Zikshadow and Combine_Kegan! I am ever so slightly hyped, my birthday is coming up soon (It's on February 8th and I'll be turning 30 this year). Anyways I hope all of you appreciate this revision and please leave any helpful critique you can!

 

You can find the latest revision as usual in the opening post, as well as a new trailer!

[FireSeraphim]

A new version of the The Edge of Time is on the horizon.... Expect a video trailer soon.

[FireSeraphim]

It's been five months since I last posted a new version here, I figured the changelog would be appreciated.

 

--The Edge of Time - TPC (Beta 1.9 "Crisis Force")--

• Fixed some typos in the Help and Credits screen
• Iron Litches are no longer immune to the Nailgun or the Machete
• Golems and Nitrogolems now have a new appearance and the Nitrogolems sound effects have been replaced, including their attack cue sound!
• The amount of glitter spawned on treasure items has been reduced
• The Machete swing has been sped up, and that includes it's berserk state!
• The damage on the Machete has been slightly nerfed to account for the previously mentioned change
• Score Items are now worth half as much on I'm Too Young to Die and Hey, Not Too Rough
• The Combat Shotgun and Double-Barreled Shotgun have been sped up by a single tic near the end of their firing animation
• The E2M8 missing boss bug has been fixed
• The Regensphere now gives doubled damage resistance in addition to it's health regen
• Fixed the missing sky texture at the end of E2SM1
• Fixed the audio delay with the diamond collecting sound effects
• Lost Souls now play their klaxon sound two times instead of three
• The blood throwing, self reviving Unwilling are now a shade of raw blood red
• Fixed the incorrect ambient sounds on E2M5, no more grinding gears in the desert!
• Removed the Palette Flashes on all treasure items and further increased the transparency on the treasure's pickup
  flashes by 10. It is now 0.30 instead of 0.40
• A weird rendering bug in E3M1 with part of the water in the cistern area of the map has been fixed
• The rooftop ambush in E3M2 has been fixed
• The Radius of the Landmines has been greatly expanded from 10 to 24
• Fixed a minor typo on the endtext for episode 2
• The Heavy Chaingun windup on firing has been sped up 
• The Assault Rifle now has new firing sounds
• The Nailgun, Combat Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Missile Launcher and Double-Barreled Shotgun's firing sound has been improved
• The bullet eject lever on the Assault Rifle's reload animation no longer cocks back when reloading
• The Landmines now have a small LED light on them, making them more noticeable to the player
• The Landmines radius has been greatly increased
• The Explosive Pods have had their health reverted back to their vanilla values
• The Iron Lich encounter in E3M1 has been reworked
• The sprites for the second phase of E3M8's boss has been reworked to be more unique and much more visible
• The Argent Particle Cannon has it's ROF sped up slightly.
• The Argent Particle Cannon's ROF between refires has been greatly sped up.
• The Argent Particle Cannon's ammo cost has been reduced from 96 to 48 cells
• The Argent Particle Cannon now gives 48 Cells on pickup
• A minor glitch concerning a secret on E1M2 has been fixed
  

 

The Download is in the opening post as usual

[FireSeraphim]

Posted a few screenshots of E4M1 in the opening post. This map is one I've been fighting against when mapping it due to parts of the concept not panning out like I want and struggling to balance between Suspension of Disbelief and recognizability. The underlying concept is you start out in a cave in the year 3 Million A.D and it's kinda a riff on H.G Wells "The Time Machine" but the Time Machine you find takes you to New York in the Year 802,701 A.D and well you can kinda see my struggle if you looked at my screenshots for the far future NYC especially since I'm kinda riffing off H.G Wells a bit (and his city of choice in the novel was London). Can you imagine the challenge of envisioning NYC in the same general setting and in a doom map?

[jerrysheppy]

7 minutes ago, FireSeraphim said:

Posted a few screenshots of E4M1 in the opening post. This map is one I've been fighting against when mapping it due to parts of the concept not panning like I want and struggling to balance between Suspension of Disbelief and recognizability. The underlying concept is you start out in a cave in the year 3 Million A.D and it's kinda a riff on H.G Wells "The Time Machine" but the Time Machine you find takes you to New York in the Year 802,701 A.D and well you can kinda see my struggle if you looked at my screenshots for the far future NYC especially since I'm kinda riffing off H.G Wells a bit (and his city of choice in the novel was London). Can you imagine the challenge of envisioning NYC in the same general setting and in a doom map?

 

I saw the screenshots before scrolling down to this post, and that The Time Machine sequence with the guy on the beach in the far future with the strange creatures was precisely what I immediately thought of, so if you ask me, that means you did something right.

 

Not what to say about the other shots.  I don't think I would have ever guessed they were supposed to be far future NYC, but maybe subverting expectations is a good thing?  I will say that the tower thingy immediately made me think of Angkor Wat style architecture, for whatever that's worth.

 

[FireSeraphim]

That Tower thing is the top of the Chrysler Building, far into the future. The rest of the Building is buried beneath the earth.

[jerrysheppy]

Ahh, that's cool!

 

I went on a bit of a ramble about this, which I've decided to put behind a spoiler to emphasize that you can take it or ignore it, as it's just one bullet point in what is apparently a very big and ambitious project, and is something you may not care about at all.  Namaste.
 

Spoiler

 

From the point of view of realism (whatever that counts for in Doom mapping), it strains the suspension of disbelief extremely hard that any current human structure, let alone something like the Chrysler building, survives 800,000 years.  Several more centuries, sure, that's plausible.  Maybe even a couple of millennia; there are certainly human structures (castles, Roman aqueducts, etc.) that survive in recognizable form over that sort of time frame; a metal-frame skyscraper would have challenges that those don't, but on the other hand you can handwave it to where the Chrysler building gets maintained for longer than those did.  

 

Much past that and it gets really sketchy.  Take the relatively paltry timeframe of 10,000 years.  Realize that we basically can't predict anything about the geopolitical changes that will happen in that time, and even trying to figure out what will happen geologically (will Manhattan end up underwater?  Will an apocalyptic earthquake level everything?) gets more and more dicey. That's already twice as long as it's been since the first Pharaoh ruled over a unified Egypt.  We have a hard time forming an accurate mental concept of such times as applying to human civilization, perhaps because, well, they don't apply to human civilization.

 

Look at the Great Pyramid, which is basically a stack of stones (nothing to oxidize, etc.) in a fairly stable desert environment.  It's been standing for less than 5,000 years, and while still recognizable, the exterior is beat all to hell.  It's the only one of the wonders of the ancient world to survive for even so long; all the rest succumbed to disaster on a much shorter time frame, such that you pretty much can't even see their remains now.  (I think you can still see some of the stones of the Mausoleum scattered around where it used to be, and that's pretty much it.)  Then realize you are talking about a structure, in many ways much more fragile, enduring for over 200 times that span-- 200 times the entire recorded history of human civilization to this point.

 

So from the point of view of verisimilitude, I think most rigorous sci-fi writers would consider this a nonstarter, unless they were prepared to invoke some sort of macguffin (time stasis field?) to justify it.  Whether you want to worry about that when it comes to creating a cool setpiece for your Doom map is, of course, up to you.

 

 

[FireSeraphim]

This is mostly a minor gameplay improvement and bug fix update.

 

--The Edge of Time - TPC (Beta 1.9r1 "Contra")--

• Former Humans now fire three shot bursts from their pistol on Ultra Violence and higher.
• Consequentially, Former Lieutenants now fire seven shot bursts from their Assault Rifles on Ultra Violence and higher.
• Nightmare Imps are now slightly more visible
• A weird rendering bug in E3M1 with part of the water in the cistern area of the map has been fixed
• Buffed the Revolver Damage by 1.25 times it current damage value
• The Argent Particle Cannon now has an alternative firemode that can be toggled via the reload key
• The Argent Particle Cannon's ammo cost has been further reduced from 48 to 32 cells
• The rooftop ambush in E3M2 has been fixed
• E1M4 and E1M7's Red and Yellow Key fights have been slightly improved in the presentation department

[David Asaad]

This is incredible! I played E1M1 and E1M8 today, and I see lots of man hours were put into this. Well done and thanks for sharing it on my stream

[FireSeraphim]

Thank you for trying it out. I'm glad you appreciate it.

[FireSeraphim]

Sorry, no trailer this time. I don't feel like I'm up to it, but here's a new update regardless.

 

--The Edge of Time - TPC (Beta 2.0 "Gradius II - Gofer's Ambition")--

 

• A workaround was added for the crusher glitch with E3M6's spinning room
• Former Demolition Experts now have a more unique set of sound cues and laugh prior to firing their rocket launchers.
• A rendering issue with the sky texture in E3M3 has been quashed (to the best of my ability)
• The Combat Shotgun and Heavy Chaingun now have slightly smoother animations (in the case of the heavy chaingun 
  smoother animations for when you have a turbosphere)
• The first and second level of Episode 4 is now playable.
• Score Items on "Watch Me Die" and "Nightmare" difficulty now rewards three times score instead of two
• The Intermission screens now uses the correct BIGFONT file
• The Officer's Pistol can now be wielded akimbo (technically a separate weapon that takes a bit longer to reload)
• Pistol drops from Former Humans are now much scarcer and Former Humans will now drop pistol clips half of the time.
• Fixed a couple of monster ambushes in E2SM1, E2SM2 and E3M2 by turning them into pop-up ambushes
• Fixed a bug where the Archvile's resurrection ability causes it to revert to it's vanilla See state after reviving a monster.
• Speaking of Archviles, I have cut the resurrection ability's duration down in half, it is now 5 frames instead of 10.

 

Check the opening post for the latest version.

[Wo0p]

Oooooooooooooooooooooh this looks amazing. WILL PLAY rawr!