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Quasar

Eternity Engine v3.33.00 Released

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Stop by the Eternity page and pick up the newest version of the engine, including, at long last, completed Small scripting support.

By the way, you can reply to these sticky threads, so feel free to discuss the new version and its features here.

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Hi guys,

Some feedback is in order. First, thanks a million to James/SoM for the latest release! I love this engine so much it hurts.

Remember the problem I had with monsters staying inert on 3DMidTex lines? It's still in, BUT I found out this is related to the "walks on tall stairs" option. When it's turned on, there are no problems.. but when it's turned off all monsters that were placed on a 3DMidTex line during their initial, sleeping phase become inert and won't react to the player (except being shot and dying). You don't see that behaviour in SoM's maps, because he does not place monsters on 3DMT.. they start out on "solid" ground and only enter a 3DMT bridge when the player has woken them up and start walking about. However, in my levels I often lower monsters on a sinking pillar onto a bridge at map startup, so they will stand on those 3DMT while still dormant. There's probably a check done differently for those two monster states..?

Portals seem to have become very robust. I'm currently doing stuff with them that surprises even me :)

But, portal-within-a-portal does not work. In fact, the two cases I tried (with 3 simple squares, placed on top of eachother) actually locked up my computer which had to be hardbooted. Unf!

Still need to create a testcase for the HOM I detected earlier on some constructions and notably the fix I found for it. A simple portal model works, so I now need to find a way to break it like before.

Some wierd stuff I DID notice: apparantly the X,Y location of the portal structure in relation to the X,Y location of the target structure makes a huge difference! Eg. when I place a ceiling portal close to the sector being affected, the portal malfunctions and displays HOM. BUT, when moving the portal structure to the other side of the map it DOES work, with no alterations. That one had me stumped for a loooong while...

The music volume slider does not work. I find this very funny, considering the awesome features Eternity does have to offer ;)

No comment on scripting yet... just haven't had the time, with my job and all. That comment about interacting with NPCs sure sounded great!

Keep up the good work!

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You can now disable the statistics intermission between maps (user-requested feature, special thanks to Joel Murdoch).


That was me, was it? o_O Heh, I don't even remember doing that.

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Mordeth said:

Hi guys,

Some feedback is in order. First, thanks a million to James/SoM for the latest release! I love this engine so much it hurts.

You're welcome!

Mordeth said:

Remember the problem I had with monsters staying inert on 3DMidTex lines? It's still in, BUT I found out this is related to the "walks on tall stairs" option.

I tested this "tall stairs" issue over and over with the test map you sent me and it worked fine, so I don't understand why this problem persists. I have literally strengthened 3DMidTex monster clipping to the point where I don't know how to fix it any further. The fact is, it's extremely difficult to support this kind of thing in DOOM. The clipping engine is horrible. That problems like these exist doesn't surprise me or SoM, although it does aggravate me beyond belief. Please send me the exact map you are having problems with. If it requires a large resource wad, include it. My Hotmail account has 250 MB of space, it can handle it. I want to get to the bottom of this if I can, but without continued help, I won't be able to do it.

Mordeth said:

But, portal-within-a-portal does not work. In fact, the two cases I tried (with 3 simple squares, placed on top of eachother) actually locked up my computer which had to be hardbooted. Unf!


Please arrange to send the map to SoM. This should never happen unless you are trying to make a portal render inside itself. Please don't ever do that, I don't think it can handle infinite recursion ;)

Mordeth said:

Eg. when I place a ceiling portal close to the sector being affected, the portal malfunctions and displays HOM. BUT, when moving the portal structure to the other side of the map it DOES work, with no alterations. That one had me stumped for a loooong while...


Still sounds to me like you're building portal areas that aren't large enough to keep the portal camera contained inside them anytime the player can see the area that portal is rendered at. Portal cameras continue to move relative to the player's position, at all times. If one moves into the wrong area, you'll get HOM or start seeing something completely different. I may be wrong; again, SoM is best qualified to examine this kind of stuff. My understanding of the portals is limited to their basic premise.

Mordeth said:

The music volume slider does not work. I find this very funny, considering the awesome features Eternity does have to offer ;)


Please double check that Eternity is using the SDL_mixer.dll file that was included with the latest version, or that you download SDL_mixer 1.2.6 from the SDL site. The music slider never worked in version 1.2.5. This has always been an SDL_mixer bug, not an Eternity bug. With 1.2.6 on my machine, the volume slider works, although beware that it WILL permanently alter your desktop volume setting. There's currently no way to fix this without adding extensive Win32 API code, which I may resort to doing in the near future if I must.

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JoelMurdoch said:

That was me, was it? o_O Heh, I don't even remember doing that.


I'm about 80% certain you requested that for one of Mordeth, Millennium, or CoD, but it would have been a very long time ago ;)

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Quasar said:

Please send me the exact map you are having problems with. If it requires a large resource wad, include it.

Yeah Mord, you better send it to me too so I can help find the dilema.

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Mordeth said:

But, portal-within-a-portal does not work. In fact, the two cases I tried (with 3 simple squares, placed on top of eachother) actually locked up my computer which had to be hardbooted. Unf!


Please send me the test level :) I have posted screens on my page of a test level I made with 3 sectors stacked on top of each other... no crashes

Still need to create a testcase for the HOM I detected earlier on some constructions and notably the fix I found for it. A simple portal model works, so I now need to find a way to break it like before.

Some wierd stuff I DID notice: apparantly the X,Y location of the portal structure in relation to the X,Y location of the target structure makes a huge difference! Eg. when I place a ceiling portal close to the sector being affected, the portal malfunctions and displays HOM. BUT, when moving the portal structure to the other side of the map it DOES work, with no alterations. That one had me stumped for a loooong while...


Of course, I tried to explain this a while ago... When the area being viewed through the portal is close to another area of the map, the portal camera will enter the surrounding sectors and cause HOM. I really need to just sit down and write a detailed tutorial on how/why portals work in Eternity and what to do and what NOT to do :) I'm glad you like the feature so much though, I was worried when I made the feature that no one with any level design talent would ever use it. That's definitly not the case now!

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