Eternity Engine Stable 4.02 Doesn't Read DehackEd "Blood Color" correctly

[Arsinikk]

I've run into an issue.

 

I'm currently finalising a megawad that is coming out soon, and I had included "Blood color = 3" for Cacodemons and "Blood color = 2" for Barons and Hell Knights in the DehackEd.

 

I know that the Eternity Engine only uses these values for particle effects and so the sprites would remain red... But I had added these specifically for the latest builds of PrBoom Plus and DSDA Doom. And even the older builds still worked fine without the new blood colour.

 

Problem is that from some reason, the stable build of the Eternity Engine 4.02.00 doesn't read these lines correctly.

 

When I add these to the DehackEd, this happens:

• Upon death of the Cacodemons, a shotgunner spawns.
• Upon death of Barons or Hell Knights, a former human spawns.

 

I say that this is a problem because the mapset was supposed to be a Vanilla mapset and so it was supposed to be compatible with all ports.

I was really looking forward to saying that it was fully compatible with Eternity with fully build EMUNUS episode lump and everything.

 

But I can't implement the "Blood color" in the DeHackEd of the wad, if I want to say that the mapset is compatible with the latest stable Eternity build.

 

(I will say that this is fixed in the dev builds... But since those are not considered stable releases, I don't really consider it to work correctly with Eternity at the moment)

Edited March 30, 2022 by Arsinikk

[Gwarl]

9 hours ago, Arsinikk said:

(I will say that this is fixed in the dev builds... But since those are not considered stable releases, I don't really consider it to work correctly with Eternity at the moment)

Well it will do with the next stable release. I would leave your wad as it is and mention that Eternity users will have to either use a devbuild or wait for 4.03 in the release thread.

[Edward850]

9 hours ago, Arsinikk said:

(I will say that this is fixed in the dev builds... But since those are not considered stable releases, I don't really consider it to work correctly with Eternity at the moment)

So you know it's already fixed, you've checked it yourself, but you are reporting it anyway... because? This is just a waste of people's time.

You do understand that the devbuilds are ahead in time chronologically from the latest release, right?

[Arsinikk]

1 hour ago, Edward850 said:

This is just a waste of people's time

This is an incredibly rude statement that disregards the user perspective as well as mappers.

This reeks of someone only viewing this through a developmental lens.

 

The stable build is just as important, if not more important, than the development builds simply because most people use the stable release.

 

Think of this through the perspective of the user: Most people only want to use the stable build, because it's guaranteed to have the least amount of bugs and be the most compatible. Dev builds are often avoided by most because they are unpredictable in nature.

 

In addition, think of my perspective as a mapper: I can use the stable build of a source port and thoroughly test and see if anything breaks in it. Dev builds however are much more frequent and are more prone to introduce bugs that I couldn't possibly account for.

 

It's already a bit more complicated that in order for people to play my wad correctly, they must use the "-vanilla" argument (and not "-complevel 2").

 

Again, with you saying that me reporting a bug with the stable version (that hasn't been updated in over a year) is "a waste of people's time" as you called it, while a fix isn't needed for new builds, it is still a vital piece of information to know.

 

Especially since the "blood color" DehackEd option is listed on the Eternity Wiki as an Eternity extension.

Quote

 

Blood color = <number>
This field is an Eternity extension. Allows this thing type to have differently colored blood when particle blood effects are enabled (this does not currently have any effect on blood sprites).

 

I think it's a valid enough reason to point out that the stable build has a currently-listed feature that's broken.

[Edward850]

I simply don't understand your perspective, sorry. A bug report isn't any good if the issue is already fixed. If something you're working on requires the fix, simply state the devbuild is necessary at the time of writing.

It's worth noting that devbuilds aren't "unstable" just because they aren't listed as stable, nobodies computer is going to catch fire just because you downloaded a devbuild. Major version releases really only serve as snapshots of milestones.

[Arsinikk]

@Edward850 I just find it a little ridiculous to have to say a dev build is required for a vanilla megawad, that just happens to include "blood color" in DehackEd to break the stable build of Eternity.

 

Even so, yes, I will agree that seeing this a bug report isn't that helpful. But I guess I place the importance of the stable builds much higher than you do.

 

I, personally, have no problem in using devbuilds. I, in fact, have the latest Eternity devbuild installed currently as well as the stable.

 

I would say however, especially on the Doomworld forum, is very difficult to find the link to the latest devbuild, especially for a normal user to just go to download.

The stable 4.02.00 post is pinned at the very top, but there really isn't one single development thread pinned nor could I find a main post with links to the current devbuilds.

 

So while you say that I could push people to download the devbuild, it's honestly not as easy as it should be at the moment; nor it is really being encouraged if there's no big post leading people to download the devbuild.

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, Arsinikk said:

I just find it a little ridiculous to have to say a dev build is required for a vanilla megawad, that just happens to include "blood color" in DehackEd to break the stable build of Eternity.

Well yeah, that's just how the passage of time works. The dev builds are newer than the last milestone release, thus have fixes that have come after. It really explains itself. The next milestone release will naturally have it fixed when that happens.

1 hour ago, Arsinikk said:

I would say however, especially on the Doomworld forum, is very difficult to find the link to the latest devbuild, especially for a normal user to just go to download.

Here you go: https://devbuilds.drdteam.org/eternity/ Just give that to people. Easy.

1 hour ago, Arsinikk said:

I, personally, have no problem in using devbuilds. I, in fact, have the latest Eternity devbuild installed currently as well as the stable.

Wait so then, what's the problem here? If the issue isn't yourself using the devbuilds, then who is?

 

I will note that while it would be nice to have milestone builds come out more often, Eternity has some kind of a curse for it where anybody who works on it ends up getting fulltime jobs on other things. This means such builds are a bit more uncommon to do, and using the devbuilds is usually the recommended choice as a result if you want bleeding edge fixes and features. It's not ideal presentation wise but we play the cards we are dealt.

Edited March 25, 2022 by Edward850