Eternal Doom in GZDoom?

[Sergeek]

I want to play this iconic project and I'm a sucker for modern features of GZDoom. In the latest third release of Eternal Doom there are four WAD files in the ZIP:

 

• CREDITS
• CSWEEPER
• ETERNALL
• NULL

 

Is there a proper load order for these?

[Doomkid]

You only want ETERNALL.wad, the others are just little extra bonus maps that replace map01 (NULL.wad is actually competely empty)

[Xulgonoth]

You should really consider playing it with a vanilla-compatible port. These old large maps tend to break in GZDoom.
An enemy not seeing through a self-referencing sector here, an enemy falling through a floor there, a staircase not being built properly, softlocking the map...

[Uncle 80]

Also, for CSWEEPER to play correctly, it needs to be run from Eshell.exe, otherwise the cybers will appear in the same spots every time (the eshell frontend runs a randomizer on the .wad each time you run it).

 

The Credits map it just that, an external "credits" map. Null.wad is only used by the eshell frontend if you choose its in-built feature to turn eternall.wad into an iwad instead.

[ketmar]

6 hours ago, Xulgonoth said:

These old large maps tend to break in GZDoom.

...and will continue doing so if people won't report that to GZDoom devs. so if you know what is wrong, please, report it!

[Xulgonoth]

4 hours ago, ketmar said:

so if you know what is wrong, please, report it!

 

I have no clue what's wrong, I think it might be the old nodebuilder they were using back then not really liking large maps. Black Tower from the Master levels for example has the exact same issue with enemies dropping into the floor. This glitch is surprisingly consistent - in Black tower in happens on the staircase of the tower's ground floor, and in Eternal Doom I know it happens for example on MAP12 with one of the chaingunners in the starting area.

The self-referencing sectors acting differently in GZDoom might not even be fixable, they got a replacement in Boom for a reason, they can pretty easily mess up some nodes, and I'm not surprised that ports so far from the original engine like GZDoom just start handling them slightly differently.

The stairs... I'm not going to lie, that's a complete mystery to me. I don't know what kind of black magic Team Eternal did with the stair builders, they work just fine when playing the wad unmodified in vanilla, but can break when you do as much as play with the wrong complevel. There's a staircase on MAP03 in one of the skull key areas that has this issue for example. That one will only lock you out of a secret, but it's still annoying. MAP25 on the other hand is based entirely around raising the same staircase over and over to reach higher floors of the building. I have had that staircase break on me in GZDoom too, and when it does, you can't progress without noclipping anymore.

 

I'm incredibly stubborn with my source port of choice, so I do want to play it in GZDoom as well. I thought I could fix these problems by rebuilding the nodes on these maps with a more modern nodebuilder, but while that fixed some issues, it made the stair builder problem even worse.

[ketmar]

this better to be reported on zdoom forums, one issue per topic. GZDoom "knows" alot of maps, and can apply fixes to them automatically, but if a non-working map is never reported, they cannot add a ha... workaround for it. ;-)

[Sergeek]

1 hour ago, Xulgonoth said:

Black Tower from the Master levels for example has the exact same issue with enemies dropping into the floor. This glitch is surprisingly consistent - in Black tower in happens on the staircase of the tower's ground floor.

 

Huh. Finished the Master Levels two weeks ago and had no issues with Black Tower in GZDoom (aside from that one stuck Caco, but it's not port related).