[WIP/Announce] Eschatology

[Dreemurr Deceevurr]

Looks gorgeous, glad to see the more underrated ports like K8Vavoom and Eternity get some love.

[Remilia Scarlet]

17 minutes ago, Giant Jumbo Jellyfish said:

Looks gorgeous, glad to see the more underrated ports like K8Vavoom and Eternity get some love.

Thank you, and me too!  Between this project and a few other one-off things here and there, I'm personally hoping to bring some love to K8Vavoom and Doomsday specifically.

 

Some progress updates on this project will come probably within the next week or so.  I've been busy doing WMC-related stuff, switching between that and this project.

[Remilia Scarlet]

So, update time!  Eschatology is going slightly better than I expected.  As of today, the first release is approximately 55-60% complete, with three maps being essentially finished minus some minor detailing and tweaking, and another one approximately 60-70% complete.  I actually was thinking it was further behind than this, so it was a pleasant surprise when I took the time to sort through everything earlier tonight.  So if all goes well, Eschatology should hit its intended November-ish release date with 5-7 maps plus a hub map.

 

These are the maps that are for sure going to be included in the first release:

• Decayed Faith (98% done) – Wet, watery ruins with strange glowing symbols on damp, gothic walls.  This place is inhabited both by demons and strange slime-flinging creatures.
• Halls of The Goat Child (99% done) – A dark, hot, musty temple devoted to a strange being that Hell calls “The Goat Child”.  This creature does not seem to come from Hell itself.  A fresh remix and expansion of my Doomsday level from last year.
• Dismembered Doll Parts (65% done) – Demonic wizards have spent eons collecting arcane books of spells and curses, some of which have ended up in this accursed library.  Of course, being Hell, the brick and copper walls are hot to the touch from nearby pools of lava.  Be afraid of this place, it's viscious.
• Catacombs (99% done) – A gothic tomb of death and decay.  What strange horrors await you in this nightmarish land?  Built by Elma-K.
• Colombian Necktie (10% done) – Fire and lava sear your flesh as you pass over grates of iron and through halls of stone and red glowing lines.  Don’t stand in the heat too long unless you want to die.  Literally.

An additional sixth map will also be included... if I can decide which one I want to use :-P  I have two started, one of which is based around the idea of “torture pits”, where the demons have been torturing souls.  This one’s theme is a bit too similar to the others, however, so I may hold this one back for a future update.  The other map I may include is a polished/expanded version of the level I did for my Oops! All Greyboxes! project.  Aside from properly detailing and texturing it, I would probably “remix” it to the point that it feels totally fresh, like I did for Halls of The Goat Child.  Right now I’m leaning more towards the latter idea.

 

On the gameplay side, there are two new power-ups that have been added to the base game.  The first is a proper Quad Damage powerup that boosts your damage by 4x for a period of time, and unlike the berserk pack, does not last the entire level.  Unlike its Quake counterpart, however, the Quad Damage in Eschatology boosts your melee attack more than 4x.  So if you feel lucky, you can always go around Tyson-ing them :-P

 

The second new power-up is the "sharpshooter".  This takes inspiration from a power-up in Arcane Dimensions in that it drastically reduces the spread of the pellets from your shotguns and other hitscan weapons.  Unlike the power-up in AD, the sharpshooter in Eschatology also provides a small damage boost – but only to the shotguns.  This makes it a much more nuanced power-up that requires some thinking and planning, while also giving you a good reason to use your shotguns to snipe distant enemies.  There's still some tweaking I have to do with it, but the basic concept is there and seems to work fine.  Mapping-wise, it gives me a power-up that I can place that won't unbalance the game too much, yet still feel like a definite power-up to the player.

So that's where it's at.  I've spent most of the past two months on Decayed Faith, which ended up being quite a large level.  Now I'm currently spending most of my time in the Dismembered Doll Parts level.

 

New/Updated WIP Screenshots:

Spoiler

Decayed Faith

 

Decayed Faith


Colombian Necktie


Decayed Faith


Decayed Faith


Decayed Faith


Dismembered Doll Parts


Dismembered Doll Parts


Dismembered Doll Parts

[ketmar]

looks absolutely fantastic!

 

(whispering) techbase bonus map, please? ;-)

[Xeogred]

Thank you @Endless for linking this thread in the Cacowards thread! Loved Remilia's maps in WMC01 and WMC02, so I'm keeping tabs on this now!

[NaturalTvventy]

My laptop is overheating just with the screenshots.

[Remilia Scarlet]

lol well... It Should™️ work on fairly low end hardware just fine.  I haven't done any real optimization with it yet, but I have been testing it on a weak laptop (integrated Vega 3 chip) fairly regularly and it seems to stay at 50-60fps pretty consistently.  With some optimization to the lighting, it should be fine.  I'm also thinking that the multitude of options in K8's renderer should also help people find settings that look good but perform well for your rig.

 

Making sure more people can play this than my previous releases has been a secondary goal with this.  I'm willing to sacrifice some minor visual fidelity here and there if it means more people can play.  After all, this is a nearly 30 year old game.  Thankfully I haven't had to do that, though.

I can't guarantee you can run it on something like a first gen Eee PC, though :-P

Edited September 23, 2021 by Remilia Scarlet

[Endless]

14 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

lol well... It Should™️ work on fairly low end hardware just fine.  I haven't done any real optimization with it yet, but I have been testing it on a weak laptop (integrated Vega 3 chip) fairly regularly and it seems to stay at 50-60fps pretty consistently.  With some optimization to the lighting, it should be fine.  I'm also thinking that the multitude of options in K8's renderer should also help people find settings that look good but perform well for your rig.

 

Making sure more people can play this than my previous releases has been a secondary goal with this.  I'm willing to sacrifice some minor visual fidelity here and there if it means more people can play.  After all, this is a nearly 30 year old game.  Thankfully I haven't had to do that, though.

I can't guarantee you can run it on something like a first gen Eee PC, though :-P

Wait a minute...

 

Are you telling me I can't play this on my Amiga 4000!?!?

[Arrowhead]

Just heard about this now. Have never used K8Vavoom, but now, I'll have to!

 

Screenies look stellar. Can't wait to see more. :)

[ketmar]

i should really replace demo screenshots in the k8vavoom thread with ones from this topic. this alone will surely make at least x10 more downloads! (and then more hating comments, when people will realise that they need a proper mapset too ;-).

[Remilia Scarlet]

Another update time!

 

This is now about 65% complete.  Work on Eschatology slowed down a little bit while I helped out with WMC03 (which should be out soon!), but is picking back up.  Due to the slow down, I don't believe I'll actually hit my original November deadline.  So the new planned release date is sometime in first quarter 2021.  I'd rather take the time and make it as solid and awesome as I can ^_^

 

Colombian Necktie (30% done) is the map that's had the most work done to it.  This map features "hellfire", where if you stand too long in certain bright red light, you take damage.  This damage ramps up, and is also dependent on the light intensity.  This effect is not a sector damage effect, but actually based on the light values the player receives from static lights, and is done in just a few lines of ACS.  You can kinda think of it like that planet in Mass Effect 2 that had a dying sun, and so you had to stay out of the sunlight.  The hellfire can be blocked, so if you find a moving shadow (3d polyobjects are a godsend here), or a switch that closes a barrier, you can get past hellfire easily and quickly (mmm I smell puzzles).

 

Once Colombian Necktie is done, I'll start work on the final map, finish up the Hub, finish up story text, and then get everything else prepared.  Well, and maybe a bonus techbase map for Ketmar ^_~
 

I've also started to work on the main Hub.  For this, I've taken an unfinished map I started back in 2019 and have been retrofitting it to be a hub.  It's dark, dingy, Hell-ish, and you can drop bodies into lava for amusement.  It's about 50% complete.

 

Update Screenshots:

Spoiler

New area in Dismembered Doll Parts.

 

Another new area in Dismembered Doll Parts.

 

A connecting hallway in Colombian Necktie.

 

This was a PITA to build.  Part of Colombian necktie.

 

Also part of Colombian Necktie.  The lava there is emitting the damaging Hellfire.  You can stand in the pillar's shadow to avoid damage while you look for something to maybe block the hellfire... and take care of enemies :-P

 

Opening scene to Colombian Necktie.  I just really like this initial shot.

 

WIP layout for Colombian Necktie.  So many control sectors for this one @_@

 

A mostly finished Decayed Faith map layout.

 

New titlepic!  Thanks to @4MaTC for his amazing work on this :D

 

[MFG38]

8 hours ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

first quarter 2021

 

I take it you meant to type 2022? :P

[Remilia Scarlet]

1 hour ago, MFG38 said:

 

I take it you meant to type 2022? :P

Err... yes, I haven't figured out time travel (yet), so 2022 :-P

 

I swear 2020 and 2021 feels like a single year to me.