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Bloodshedder

Waiting for Eternity

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You should also update Risen3D to 1.7.0 and Vavoom to 1.18 while you're at it, CodeImp.

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Are there any plans to increase the seg/sidedef etc. limit above 32,000 in Eternity? There are some maps I'd like to test out in Eternity but they're above the limit.

My music volume also always starts painfully loud with this new version, even though the slider is set to the second lowest setting.

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Extension of the harder map limits is an eventual goal, yes. The recent addition of this to prboom is possibly promising, since I should be able to easily share code for unsigned limit extension with that codebase. I myself have been extremely hesitant to experiment with this sort of change due to the possible difficulties of finding every code point that requires changing.

Music volume has a number of issues, some of which will hopefully be fixed in the *next* release when I add some Win32-specific MCI code to save, synchronize with, and restore the desktop MIDI volume level. This is necessary because SDL_mixer is braindead with respect to the matter, and it uses MCI, which can only utilize the global volume setting for MIDI.

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^I feel extremely geeky because despite having minimal programming experience I actually know what he means by all of that. :P

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Quasar said:

I myself have been extremely hesitant to experiment with this sort of change due to the possible difficulties of finding every code point that requires changing.

All the code to change should just be in p_setup.c. Create a USHORT macro that is like SHORT but casts to an unsigned short. Then check each use of SHORT in p_setup.c, and update the code if necessary. For example in P_LoadSegs:

li->v1 = &vertexes[SHORT(ml->v1)];
vertex indices can never be negative, so change SHORT to USHORT here.

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Ok, after goofing around with it for a bit, here's my suggestions ..

1. Add an autorun feature. If it's in there and I didn't find it, sorry :P

2. Make it so when you back out of a menu, it goes to the previous menu, not right back into to the game.

3. Don't make the user press a key in a cryptic DOS box after you quit. It should go away automatically .. preferrably never appear at all unless a command line switch is set.

4. Make the crosshair hilight turn bright red, not green. Green is usually something good .. I want to see red when I'm about to blow something to bits :P

5. Make no clipping reset after you die or start a new game. I was totally confused when I started passing through everything upon starting a new game.

6. The sound quality didn't sound that great compared to zDoom. Add an option to change the sample rate.

7. Get some better file organization .. put the readme and other stuff in a Docs folder, put random data files (.edf) in another.

8. OpenGL mode! You know you want to :P

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udderdude said:

1. Add an autorun feature. If it's in there and I didn't find it, sorry :P


Hit Caps lock.

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kristus said:

Hit Caps lock.


Well, putting it as an option in Basic Controls wouldn't hurt. ALSO IT'S ANNOYING TO HAVE TO TURN CAPSLOCK OFF AFTER I QUIT. oops.

I also had the problem of the game starting with the MIDI volume at max.

I've found another problem .. I can't seem to move the mouse cursor in order to move the eternity window, which is stuck partway down the screen.

When I switch to another window, and move the mouse from there to eternity's window, it resets my mouse position to the center of the screen. It seems impossible to move eternity's window.

You could fix this by setting the window to a position that's guaranteed not to cut off part of the screen when the program starts. FYI I'm running 1024x768, the window size is 800x600.

It's easy enough to calculate ..
(screenSizeW/2)-(windowSizeW/2)
(screenSizeH/2)-(windowSizeH/2)

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udderdude said:
3. Don't make the user press a key in a cryptic DOS box after you quit. It should go away automatically .. preferrably never appear at all unless a command line switch is set.

ENDOOM? That sould be there by default because it's a final message about the copyright, no-piracy and credits of the game. And in any case, if the option to disable it were available (fine with me) it should be a CFG setting, that you could change from the console.

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myk said:

ENDOOM? That sould be there by default because it's a final message about the copyright, no-piracy and credits of the game. And in any case, if the option to disable it were available (fine with me) it should be a CFG setting, that you could change from the console.


Nope, all it shows is some SDL startup data and

"Thanks for using the Eternity Engine.

Press any key to continue"

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Ah, you're right... I like PrBoom's quit handling better.

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1. Add an autorun feature. If it's in there and I didn't find it, sorry :P

Like others have noted, press the capslock key.

2. Make it so when you back out of a menu, it goes to the previous menu, not right back into to the game.

Eternity uses escape to exit menus and backspace to back up one, by default. Menu key actions are rebindable however, so change it to do whatever you want.

3. Don't make the user press a key in a cryptic DOS box after you quit. It should go away automatically .. preferrably never appear at all unless a command line switch is set.

There IS an option to toggle this in the configuration file. This pause is here by default to stop people from telling me that they cannot see error messages.

4. Make the crosshair hilight turn bright red, not green. Green is usually something good .. I want to see red when I'm about to blow something to bits :P

Sounds like a matter of preference to me. I can't make everybody happy here unfortunately.

5. Make no clipping reset after you die or start a new game. I was totally confused when I started passing through everything upon starting a new game.

Same here. I hate resetting cheats; so did Lee Killough, so he changed it. This I could make optional, but it's low priority for now.

6. The sound quality didn't sound that great compared to zDoom. Add an option to change the sample rate.

DOOM uses 11kHz sounds, I don't know what you expected. Last time I used zdoom, it sounded like I was inside a tin can. I wouldn't call that better exactly.

7. Get some better file organization .. put the readme and other stuff in a Docs folder, put random data files (.edf) in another.

Meh.

8. OpenGL mode! You know you want to :P

Not really.

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Eternity uses escape to exit menus and backspace to back up one, by default. Menu key actions are rebindable however, so change it to do whatever you want.

I hate that functionality too. Is there an option to change that? I thought you added an option at some point and it didn't work, but I don't remember. I'm also still waiting on the menu reorganization stuff I suggested :P

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Quasar said:
DOOM uses 11kHz sounds, I don't know what you expected. Last time I used zdoom, it sounded like I was inside a tin can. I wouldn't call that better exactly.

Heh, I always fix that if I use ZDoom (or PrBoom, for that matter), since it lets you lower it. You could add the option to please ZDoom users, though, leaving the default at 11025.

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One thing I do find annoying, and this may just be something to do with my monitor/gfx card, is that 640x480 and 800x600 don't fit my monitor properly in full screen mode, and whilst 1024x768 does, my computer can't really handle playing some maps in that resolution. I would play in a window but then the mouse handling seems to go a bit crazy. I get the same problem with PrBoom too, but not Zdoom.

To be honest, I do mainly use zdoom at the moment, but I'd like to switch to eternity/prboom, but these nagging problems put me off.

A 'previous weapon' key to go alongside the 'next weapon' key would also be cool, though not essential.

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The Flange Peddler said:
and this may just be something to do with my monitor/gfx card, is that 640x480 and 800x600 don't fit my monitor properly in full screen mode

It sounds like something between your GFX card and SDL. I've never had that glitch and have used different cards on different computers. What about 640x400? That should be as good as 640x480 for fullscreen, if not better because of the sprites.

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myk said:

What about 640x400?


I just gave that a try. Whilst 640x480 fits properly vertically but not horizontally, 640x400 does the opposite (which is surely a bit odd?).

320x240 seems to fit the monitor fine, but I find that a little too old school looking for my tastes these days. Trying 800x600 again it actually pretty much fits, bar a little bit off the top of the screen.

I'm sure it's probably my monitor. I think I recall some other games having similar problems, though, as I said, zdoom does seem to manage the different resolutions ok.

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Right. When a fullscreen resolution fails to fit the screen, it means SDL had to emulate that resolution by blitting a temporary buffer to a screen of a different size. This happens if it thinks your video hardware or drivers don't support the requested resolution. Keeping in mind that DOOM asks for an 8-bit color mode, this could have something to do with it.

I'm not sure there's any way to improve that behavior, but I will look into it :) I might be able to tell SDL that I'll accept slightly different video modes as long as it will handle the details for me, and maybe then it'll fit better.

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Most monitors have some means to adjust the settings. Normally they are stored per resolution so you should not need to do it more than once. And yes, far too many monitors have bad default settings, especially when using non-optimal refresh rates.

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Graf Zahl said:

Most monitors have some means to adjust the settings. Normally they are stored per resolution so you should not need to do it more than once. And yes, far too many monitors have bad default settings, especially when using non-optimal refresh rates.


Problem solved, thanks a lot.

May I never use Zdoom or any of it's derivatives ever again! :oP

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MasterOfPuppets said:

TerrainTypes?


TerrainTypes is the unnecessarily fancy name I gave to the terrain effects engine way back when I first added it to a modified version of MBF by ripping the code directly from Heretic. There's pretty much none of that left now. I did get some help from zdoom with fixing some issues related to viewheight behavior on edges, deep water plane hits, variable floorclipping, etc, back in v3.31.10.

Anyways, effects under the TerrainTypes umbrella currently include splashes (low and normal mass), particle bullet puff colors on liquids, floorclipping, and damage done to players.

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Quasar said:

Eternity uses escape to exit menus and backspace to back up one, by default. Menu key actions are rebindable however, so change it to do whatever you want.


Yes. This is the default behaviour for Doom engine menus and should not be changed. ZDoom got it wrong, not Eternity.

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